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7472
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Lebanon to reinstate total lockdown amid spike in infections.
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Lebanese rushed to food stores to stock up on vegetables and basic items, hours before the government reinstated a nationwide lockdown Wednesday, following a spike in reported coronavirus cases.
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true
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Virus Outbreak, Religion, Understanding the Outbreak, Health, General News, Lebanon, Financial markets, Iraq, Middle East
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The government called on the public to stay home for four days starting Wednesday evening and until dawn on Monday, reversing measures that were gradually implemented since last month that phased out restrictions imposed since mid-March. The new shutdown is a rare reversal and comes as many countries have started easing restrictions despite grave concerns of a setback as they seek to balance economic and health care needs. Many countries are seeing an increase in infections after loosening lockdown restrictions. They include Wuhan, the Chinese city where the coronavirus pandemic first broke out, South Korea and Iraq, which recorded on Wednesday one of the highest single day number of infections since the outbreak. Restaurants in Lebanon will close down after they partially opened 10 days ago. The country’s top Sunni Muslim cleric announced that communal Friday prayers in mosques will also be halted, only a week after they were allowed to resume at limited capacity. The public health crisis comes at a particularly turbulent period for Lebanon. The country is facing an unprecedented economic and financial crisis, putting pressure on a population that is seeing its savings erode. The currency, pegged at a fixed rate to the dollar since 1997, has lost 60% of its value in a few weeks. Unemployment had been rising even before the coronavirus restrictions as economic growth and investment dropped. Officials say 45% of the population now lives in poverty. The government has asked the International Monetary Fund for financial assistance, and formal negotiations over the rescue plan led by the Lebanese Finance Minister began with the IMF on Wednesday. Lebanon began a phased-out plan to relax a national lockdown late last month that allowed small businesses to reopen, and shortened a nighttime curfew. But after a few days of single-digit cases detected, there was a spike in reported infections since last week, including among Lebanese returning home during repatriation programs who did not observe quarantine measures. Lebanon, a country of just over 5 million, has so far been able to contain the virus, recording less than 900 infections, including 120 repatriated Lebanese, and 26 deaths after imposing early lockdown measures and strictly implementing restriction on movement. But over the last few days, government and health officials criticized carelessness and lax implementation of social distancing and other restrictions among the public. Iraq has also seen a rise in infections since curfew hours were shortened ahead of the holy month of Ramadan. On Wednesday, the country recorded 119 new cases, according to figures from the Health Ministry, among the highest jumps since the government began documenting cases in late February. At least 115 people have died among more than 3,000 confirmed virus cases in Iraq, according to ministry numbers. Case numbers were dipping before curfew hours were relaxed from 24 hours to 12, beginning at 5 p.m. in late April. Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia said Wednesday it will go into a full lockdown during the days of celebration that follow the Muslim holy fasting month of Ramadan. The Interior Ministry said the lockdown would be in effect from May 23 through May 27 — days mark the Eid al-Fitr holiday that comes at the end of Ramadan. That holiday typically sees families invite loved ones over for meals and go out to eat and drink during the day. And the United Arab Emirates, a federation of seven sheikhdoms, said it will offer free coronavirus testing for all citizens, beginning next week. Foreigners in the country with coronavirus symptoms, pregnant women, those over 50 and those in contact with those who fell ill with COVID-19 also will be among those able to be tested for free. Private beaches at hotels are beginning to reopen in Dubai, even as the number of confirmed cases and deaths continue to rise in the country. In Tehran, mosques temporarily reopened Tuesday night after about two months closure, for a special night of prayers in Ramadan. A mosque at Tehran university campus in central Tehran hosted worshippers for the “Qadr,” or “Night of Destiny,” a special night of prayers in the Muslim holy month. Officials in Iran had closed down all mosques and holy sites across the country in mid-March, at the height of the coronavirus outbreak, to lower the risk of the contagion. The virus has killed more than 6,700 people and infected more than 110,000 people in Iran so far. ___ Associated Press writers Zeina Karam in Beirut; Jon Gambrell in Dubai, the United Arab Emirates; Mohammad Nasiri and Mohsen Ganji in Tehran, Iran, and Samya Kullab in Baghdad contributed to this report.
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40156
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There are various versions of this one but all warn about an aggressive form of breast cancer called inflammatory breast cancer or IBC. Some of the messages also include a link to a video posted at the website of a Seattle television station.
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Retired subway and bus driver Stanley De Freitas had just celebrated his 70th birthday when he started coughing, tiring easily and feeling short of breath. He was diagnosed with pulmonary fibrosis, a severe scarring of the lungs, and put on the wait list for a transplant.
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true
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Medical, Warnings
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“Life became unbearable. From the time I got up in the morning until when I went to bed at night, I struggled through every breath of air,” De Freitas, now 74, told Reuters by phone from his home in Toronto. After two years, De Freitas was offered a lung, with one significant downside: The donor had hepatitis C. In October 2017, he became the first patient enrolled in a just published study conducted at Toronto General Hospital testing a technique that aimed to flush out and inactivate the hepatitis C virus from donor lungs before a transplant. The research comes amid a spike in available organs linked to the opioid overdose crisis, meaning many are contaminated by hepatitis C as the virus is commonly spread by sharing needles. Since it can easily infect an organ recipient, those organs are usually discarded despite the urgent need. Data from the United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS), which matches donors with recipients, shows that 97 percent of people waiting for a lung in the United States last year were unwilling to accept an organ from a donor who tested positive for hepatitis C. While hepatitis C causes serious liver disease, the virus can be present in the blood in other organs. Researchers are testing different approaches to salvage infected organs. A study published in April showed that giving patients antiviral therapy just hours after transplant surgery can successfully attack the virus before it gains a foothold in the recipient. Eliminating the virus prior to transplant would simplify the procedure for patients, said UNOS Chief Medical Officer David Klassen. It could also significantly cut down on wasted donor organs. The technique used in Toronto, known as ex vivo lung perfusion, keeps organs “alive” outside the body by pumping them with a bloodless oxygenated liquid. They used ultraviolet C light to irradiate the solution, aiming to deactivate the hepatitis C virus and make it non-infectious. Perfusion allows doctors to evaluate and potentially rehabilitate organs for transplant, and buys them more time than storage in ice boxes, which can cause tissue damage. Toronto researchers used a solution from Sweden’s Xvivo Perfusion AB with the hospital’s own ex vivo lung perfusion system, a bubble-like machine made from off-the-shelf components and an intensive care ventilator. The study of 22 patients, published in The Lancet Respiratory Medicine on Wednesday, had mixed results. Adding light therapy significantly decreased the amount of virus, but all but two of the patients contracted hepatitis C, which is now curable. Infected patients, including De Freitas, were treated with a 12-week course of antiviral drugs that rendered the virus undetectable in all of them. Two of those patients relapsed but were retreated and cured. One patient in the study died due to complications from lung transplantation. “All of the patients were in a very sick condition,” said Marcelo Cypel, surgical director at University Health Network in Toronto and co-author of The Lancet Respiratory Medicine study. “Perhaps some of them wouldn’t have made it to the transplant in time if they were not offered these type of organs.” The researchers are planning another study combining perfusion with a photodynamic therapy, a type of light they believe could be more effective against the virus than ultraviolet because it can penetrate the organ as well as the solution. For a graphic on U.S. organ donors by mechanism of death: here In the United States alone, almost 113,000 people are on organ transplant lists, including more than 1,400 awaiting a new lung. Hundreds die each year while on the list or after becoming too sick to endure a transplant. A tragic public health crisis has led to an unexpected opportunity. With the jump in deaths from opioids such as heroin and fentanyl, overdose victims now account for 13% of U.S. organ donations, up from less than 4% a decade ago, according to UNOS. Many of those organs are going to waste. For example, last year less than 4% of hepatitis C positive donors in the United States had lungs used for transplantation, the study’s authors said in the paper. Other researchers are working with perfusion technology to improve the function of donated lungs, hearts and livers. Scientists at the University of Oxford were able to improve the quality of 16 donated livers with signs of a fatty liver disease. They treated donated organs outside the body with drugs and captured fat that was washed out of the liver through a filter on a transportable perfusion device developed by Britain-based OrganOx, according to a study presented last year. OrganOx has European Union clearance to use its device on livers and hopes to gain U.S. approval by the end of 2020. Perfusion device use currently is limited by cost, which can stretch to hundreds of thousands of dollars, and by lack of expertise and training. De Freitas, though, is grateful the Toronto researchers are testing perfusion to salvage organs. “Every day I get up and I thank the Lord, I thank the doctors because I am not supposed to be here,” he said. “I am supposed to be on the other side.” (This story adds dropped words to name of medical journal)
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24281
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Rick Perry Says his executive order requiring young girls to be vaccinated against HPV wasn't mandatory.
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Perry says the HPV vaccine he mandated would have been optional
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false
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Families, Health Care, Texas, Rick Perry,
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"When Gov. Rick Perry issued an executive order in 2007 requiring all Texas girls to receive a vaccine against the human papillomavirus before entering the sixth grade, lawmakers balked and blocked it. Critics said the vaccine, Merck & Co.'s Gardasil, was too new to declare safe. Some said too that Perry's order would infringe on parental rights or give girls a false sense of security, leading them to be sexually active too young. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, one of Perry's opponents in the GOP gubernatorial primary, frequently slams Perry's stilled order. Perry has stood by his action, most recently casting it as having created an optional vaccination requirement. ""That piece of legislation was not mandatory, in the sense of when you can say no, something's not mandatory,"" he said during the second Republican gubernatorial debate Jan. 29. A just-say-no gubernatorial order? We decided to check. What we found: On Feb. 2, 2007, Perry issued an executive order — not a piece of legislation, as he said — requiring the Texas Health and Human Services Commission to adopt rules mandating all girls entering sixth grade to receive a vaccination against the types of HPV, a sexually-transmitted virus, that causes most cases of cervical cancer and genital warts. The order included an opt-out ""in order to protect the right of parents to be the final authority on their children's health care."" Perry ordered the Department of State Health Services to allow parents dissenting for philosophical or religious reasons to request a conscientious objection affidavit form. That form, which has been available since 2003, enables parents to enroll their children in public school even if they lack state-required immunizations. It's automatically granted as long as parents provide all required information. According to the Department of State Health Service's 2008-09 immunization report, which uses data from kindergarten and seventh-grade students at 1,300 independent school districts and 800 private schools, 0.28 percent of the students filed conscientious objection forms. Parents must renew exemption affidavits every two years to maintain their validity, according to Allison Lowery, assistant press officer at the Texas Department of State Health Services. We thought the opt-out form for public-school students proved Perry correct until we learned that not all private schools accept the affidavit. That means some private schools may not allow their students to exempt themselves from any state-required vaccinations. Some 15 percent of more than 1 million Texas girls in fifth through 12th grade in 2008 were enrolled in private schools, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. According to a 2006 Texas Attorney General's opinion: ""A private school that does not accept state tax funds is not required to accept for enrollment a child who has received an exemption from the immunizations required by the Texas Health and Safety Code."" In its policy for Catholic schools, the Catholic Diocese of Austin states: ""Immunizations are not in conflict with the Catholic faith. Conscientious objections or waivers, which may be permissible for enrollment in public schools, do not qualify as an exception to this policy."" Catholic schools in the diocese do accept medical exemptions, meaning if the immunization could somehow harm the child, it's not required to enroll. We wondered if the diocese's policy in favor of requiring state-mandated immunizations would have extended to refusing the opt-out form for girls subject to the HPV vaccination. Perry aides may have had the same question. According to internal e-mails published online by Hutchison's campaign (also obtained by the Austin American-Statesman under Texas open records laws in 2007), Brandon LeBlanc, then the governor's community affairs public liaison, wrote Feb. 6, 2007: ""I don't have an answer for the questions I'm getting regarding private schools. Apparently Catholic schools in particular will require all state vaccines, but won't except (sic) the exemptions. My first inclination, assuming this is true, is that this is for the parents and the schools to sort out. Is there a better answer to this 'problem'?"" Nora Belcher, then assistant director at the Governor's Office of Budget, Planning and Policy, replied: ""I believe in the short term your answer is the correct one, plus, enrolling in Catholic school is a CHOICE (for parents, anyway)."" In February 2007, the Roman Catholic Bishops of Texas came close to saying they wouldn't require the vaccine, issuing a statement recommending that ""civil authorities should leave this decision to parents."" But would parochial schools absolutely have left that particular vaccination decision to parents? Margaret McGettrick, director of education at the Texas Catholic Conference, the statewide association of the Roman Catholic diocese in Texas, recently said the superintendents, bishops and accreditation commission at the association responsible for setting school policies never formulated policy specific to the HPV vaccine. McGettrick said ""it's a non-issue for us"" because the HPV vaccine was never added to the state's list of required immunizations once lawmakers froze the order until the starting date of the 2011 regular legislative session. Allison Castle, Perry's press secretary, said: ""We consider (the order) null and void and (Perry) will not pursue it in the future."" En breve: Perry did issue an order requiring schoolgirls receive the HPV vaccine. In arguing that his order was not a mandate, Perry points to the Conscientious Objection to Immunization form that lets parents of public school students decline immunizations without consequence. The burden to file and refile the notarized forms on time falls on the parents. However, our research determined that it's not certain the opt-out would have been accepted for the 15 percent of Texas girls attending private schools. Also unknown: Whether every Catholic school would have allowed students subject to Perry's order to abstain from the three HPV shots in the vaccination series. Ultimately, the governor issued an order for the Health and Human Services Executive Commissioner to ""adopt rules that mandate the age appropriate vaccination of all female children for HPV prior to admission to the sixth grade."" According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, a mandate is ""a clear instruction, authorization or direction."" Perry says the executive order wasn't mandatory, which, according to Webster, means ""demanded or required."" But that's what Perry's order did: it set up a requirement. Just because there's a loophole — a way to ""say no,"" in the governor's parlance — doesn't mean the requirement doesn't exist. Physical education classes are also mandatory to graduate high school, but if you have any number of health conditions, you can skip the timed mile. On July 27, 2011, we changed the name for the rating to ."
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25649
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“Covid-19 means ‘certificate of identification of vaccination with artificial intelligence.’”
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COVID-19 is an abbreviation of “coronavirus disease 2019.” “CO” stands for “corona,” “VI” stands for “virus” and “D” stands for “disease.” The number 19 reflects the year the disease was identified — 2019.
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false
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Facebook Fact-checks, Coronavirus, Viral image,
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"For months, misinformation about the novel coronavirus and vaccines has spread on social media — including about the meaning of the name assigned to the disease caused by the virus: COVID-19. Back in March, we debunked a claim that it ""literally stands for Chinese Originated Viral Infectious Disease."" Now, a new Facebook post claims that COVID-19 means: ""Certificate of identification of vaccination with artificial intelligence."" 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 post is wrong. The 2019 novel coronavirus was first reported in Wuhan, China, on Dec. 31, 2019. On Feb. 11, the World Health Organization announced that the name for the disease would be COVID-19 and the complete official name for the virus that causes the disease would be ""severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2"" or ""SARS-CoV-2."" Until that point, the virus and the infection had been referred to as the ""2019 novel coronavirus"" or ""2019-nCoV."" ""Having a name matters to prevent the use of other names that can be inaccurate or stigmatizing,"" tweeted Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director-general of the WHO. COVID-19 is an abbreviation of ""coronavirus disease 2019,"" the CDC says. ""CO"" stands for ""corona,"" ""VI"" stands for ""virus"" and ""D"" stands for ""disease."" The number 19 reflects the year it was identified — 2019."
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4645
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Clinic CEO: Republican health care bill inefficient, costly.
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The Cleveland Clinic’s chief executive says he’s opposed to the Republican health bill in the U.S. Senate because he believes it will burden hospitals, throw people off insurance and fail to address the rising cost of health care.
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true
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Health care reform, Legislation, Bill Cassidy, Health, Lindsey Graham, Cleveland, Bills, Barack Obama
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Dr. Toby Cosgrove said on Monday he believes doctors and insurers weren’t given enough time to assess the impact of the proposed legislation, which was revised overnight to win over wavering GOP senators. “The bill is changing even as we’re about to vote on it later this week,” Cosgrove said. “It’s really unreasonable to expect all the various players to understand what we’re signing up for.” Republicans have pinned their hopes to scrap former President Barack Obama’s health reforms on a measure by GOP Sens. Lindsey Graham, of South Carolina, and Bill Cassidy, of Louisiana. The bill, called Graham-Cassidy, would eliminate Obama’s expansion of Medicaid and subsidies the law provides to millions of people to reduce their insurance costs. Instead, block grants would be given to states with few strings on how the money would be spent. Cosgrove said the bill would flood hospitals with patients unable to make payments and create 50 different networks for each state, putting stress on health care systems and making them less efficient. He said it fails to address underlying problems with health expenses, foremost among them the burden of an aging population. “It’s easy to just move money around and take people off coverage, but it’s not going to deal with the rising cost of health care,” Cosgrove said. Cosgrove said a bipartisan effort is needed to streamline health systems and address rising drug prices, excessive regulation and a lack of universal electronic medical records. He said he “cannot believe” Senate Republicans are trying to scrap Obama’s health law again after prior attempts during President Donald Trump’s time in office failed. The bill faces an uphill battle. Facing uniform opposition from Democrats and doubts from key GOP senators, top Republicans amended the measure on Sunday to add $14.5 billion for states and ease coverage requirements. With a slender 52-48 Senate majority, Republicans will lose if just three GOP senators stray from the bill. A spokesman for Republican Sen. Rand Paul, of Kentucky, said Monday that he remains opposed to the revised bill. GOP Sen. John McCain, of Arizona, opposed the bill’s initial version, and Republican Sen. Ted Cruz, of Texas, said Sunday he was against it. Republican Sen. Susan Collins, of Maine, appeared to lean against it, and GOP Sen. Lisa Murkowski, of Alaska, remained undecided. Collins, Murkowski and McCain killed the last Republican effort in July. A vote must occur this week for Republicans to prevail with their narrow Senate majority. On Oct. 1, protections against a Democratic filibuster, bill-killing delays that Republicans lack the votes to overcome, will expire. Cosgrove has been a consistent critic of Republican efforts to repeal the Democratic former president’s health reforms in the past few months. He was an adviser on the current Republican president’s Strategic and Policy Forum until the group disbanded in August. The Cleveland Clinic is among the largest health systems in the country, with about 51,000 employees. Besides its sprawling main campus in Cleveland, it has 10 regional hospitals, outpatient sites elsewhere in Ohio and branches in Canada and Abu Dhabi.
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3556
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US preschoolers less pudgy in latest sign of falling obesity.
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Preschoolers on government food aid have grown a little less pudgy, a U.S. study found, offering fresh evidence that previous signs of declining obesity rates weren’t a fluke.
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true
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Nutrition, AP Top News, Health, General News, Obesity, U.S. News
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Obesity rates dropped steadily to about 14% in 2016 — the latest data available — from 16% in 2010, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported. “It gives us more hope that this is a real change,” said Heidi Blanck, who heads obesity prevention at the CDC. The results were published Tuesday in the Journal of the American Medical Association. The improvement affected youngsters ages 2 through 4 who receive food vouchers and other services in the federal Women, Infants and Children nutrition program. About 1 in 5 U.S. kids that age were enrolled in 2016. An earlier report involving program participants the same age found at least small declines in obesity in 18 states between 2008 and 2011. That was the first decline after years of increases that later plateaued, and researchers weren’t sure if it was just a blip. Improvements in food options in that program including adding more fruits, vegetables and whole grains may have contributed to the back-to-back obesity declines, researchers said. Other data show obesity rates in 2016 were stable but similar, about 14 percent, for children aged 2 to 5 who were not enrolled in the program, Blanck noted. While too many U.S. children are still too heavy, the findings should be celebrated, said Dr. William Dietz, a former CDC obesity expert. “The changes are meaningful and substantial.” Dietz said program changes that cut the amount of juice allowed and switched from high-fat to low-fat milk likely had the biggest impact. He estimated that amounted to an average of 9,000 fewer monthly calories per child. The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends low-fat milk for children. It also suggests kids should limit juice intake and choose fresh fruits instead. Further reducing U.S. childhood obesity will require broader changes — such as encouraging families and day care centers to routinely serve fruits, vegetables and whole grains; and employers to extend parental leave to make breastfeeding easier for new mothers, said Maureen Black, a child development and nutrition specialist at the University of Maryland. Studies have shown breastfed infants are less likely than others to become obese later on. ___ Follow AP Medical Writer Lindsey Tanner: @LindseyTanner ___ 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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7368
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U. Iowa researchers project hundreds more COVID-19 deaths .
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University of Iowa researchers warned that the coronavirus would continue spreading through the state even before Gov. Kim Reynolds reopened restaurants and churches, a move they said would exacerbate the problem, documents released Friday show.
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true
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Iowa, Health, General News, Iowa City, Kim Reynolds, Infectious diseases, Virus Outbreak, Restaurants
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The researchers, including some of the state’s top epidemiologists and infectious disease experts, also warned that hundreds more residents will likely die through the end of May even if widespread business closures remained in effect. “Evidence shows that COVID-19 will continue to spread in Iowa, likely at an increasing rate,” the team led by Dr. Joseph Cavanaugh, head of the university’s biostatistics department, concluded in a May 4 paper. Reynolds has downplayed the importance of such models and continued her push to reopen the economy, despite surging numbers of deaths this week. Restaurants, gyms, barber shops and salons reopened Friday in 22 counties, including the state’s largest metropolitan areas, where they had been closed for two months. On Friday, the governor said she appreciated the university’s work but that she was relying on real-time data from hospitals and testing to manage the state’s pandemic response. She said she was encouraged by increased testing, declining numbers of positive tests statewide and the amount of hospital resources available. She also warned that not reopening the state would have a “social cost,” including high unemployment, rising domestic abuse and food insecurity. The Iowa Department of Public Health had asked experts at the UI College of Public Health for technical assistance forecasting the pandemic’s severity in Iowa. A contract signed last month said the modeling would be for the state’s internal use and barred the school from releasing any findings for a year. The department released the university’s latest two reports Friday in response to media inquiries. In a report to the Iowa Department of Public Health on April 27, the research team said that Iowa had not reached a peak and reopening the state economy before then would “result in a rapid rise of cases.” Nonetheless, the governor announced that day that restaurants, malls and stores could reopen in 77 counties and in-person church services could resume statewide effective May 1. In a paper dated May 4, the researchers found that the virus was still likely spreading in Iowa communities. They said that school and business closures and ban on gatherings of more than 10 people had strongly mitigated the amount of infection but nonetheless were not “sufficient to prevent uncontained spread” by themselves. “The State of Iowa is sufficiently interconnected that we expect continued growth of COVID-19, even in the absence of any measures to relax social distancing or to reopen previously closed businesses and religious institutions,” they wrote. “Importantly, even though much of the recent spread in Iowa has been attributed to clusters (e.g., workplaces, long-term care facilities), continued increase in community spread is expected.” They said the governor’s decision to reopen restaurants, churches and other businesses would increase social contacts and therefore the rate of transmission. But they also said the impact of the partial reopening likely would not be known for several weeks. The researchers said the state’s observed deaths, which jumped by 18 to 336 on Friday, closely tracked their projections from an earlier paper. That research forecast a median outcome of 747 deaths by May 28. Reynolds has called the deaths, including 65 over the past four days, a “lagging indicator” of the pandemic’s severity because they happen after several days of illness.
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11007
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Beta Blockers May Slow Spread of Breast Cancer
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"This piece reports on preliminary results suggesting that there is an association between beta blockers and the decreased risk of dying from breast cancer or having a recurrence. The story could have been strengthened had it emphasized that the results have not yet been published in a medical journal, included a discussion of costs, presented the results in terms of absolute risk reduction, and provided more information on alternative treatments for reducing the risk of recurrence. As one expert said in the story “There is more work to be done before you can say whether this relationship is meaningful and will hold up.” Perhaps it’s more accurate to say to that ""there is much more work to be done…"""
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mixture
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"There was no discussion regarding the cost of beta blockers. The story indicates that those taking beta blockers reduced their risk of dying by 71% compared to those not taking beta blockers. The story also suggests that beta blockers reduce the risk of recurrence by 57%; however, it is not apparent how this percentage was calculated, as it does not appear in the abstract. The results are only provided in terms of relative risk, but absolute risk would give the reader a better sense of the magnitude of the benefit. See our primer on this topic. The story offered no detailed discussion of side effects of beta blockers. While they are generally considered ""safe,"" the story didn’t explain what – if anything – was observed, and it could have at least listed some of the more common side effects, including drowsiness, dizziness and weakness. While the story mentioned that the findings were presented at the European Cancer Conference, it did not explicitly indicate that the results are preliminary and have yet to be published in a medical journal. Results that are unpublished have yet to undergo a rigorous review process. It would have also been helpful, had the writer pointed out that the women in the study had primary operable breast cancer. More information on the stage and whether the treatments received were similar across the groups would have also been useful. Despite these shortcomings, the story did a nice job of describing the methods and indicating that this was a retrospective study and more research is needed to verify the results. Furthermore, it’s clearly stated that the reported relationship between beta blockers and a reduced risk of recurrence and death may be by chance or there may be confounding factors involved."
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9091
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Therapy proves effective in subgroup of COPD patients
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This news release describes two studies published in the New England Journal of Medicine that looked at the benefit of using the drug mepolizumab to treat chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) patients who had an eosinophilic phenotype — an unusual proportion of eosinophils cells in the blood. Patients with a higher level of eosinophils face more frequent flare-ups that can send them to the hospital or emergency room. The release does a number of things well. It provides some numerical data to back up its claims of efficacy and does a good job of disclosing the commercial interests involved in funding the study. However, the release doesn’t mention the high cost of the drug or any possible side effects of its use. Moreover, the most useful information about the extent of the benefit provided is buried toward the bottom of the release. Although the release touts these benefits as “statistically significant,” it is unclear if the modest differences between groups would be meaningful to most patients. COPD is a chronic inflammation of the lungs that seriously compromises breathing in these patients. An estimated 40 percent of COPD patients have an eosinophilic phenotype that has limited their successful treatment in the past. Since there is no cure for COPD, improvements in its treatment can mean a substantive improvement in the quality of life for patients coping with the disease. If a new drug approach shows promise in treating the disease, then it could be a step forward for patients and a new tool for healthcare providers.
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true
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COPD,mepolizumab,University of Pittsburgh Schools of the Health Sciences
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There is no mention of the costs of the drug mepolizumab in the news release. An online search reveals that the price for the drug can run from $2,800 to $4,200 per vial (a one month’s supply). Given that the drug appears effective only with some COPD patients, and its considerable price, readers would benefit from having this information, as well as perhaps the costs of standard therapies for COPD (triple inhalers and corticosteroids) which might still be needed by these patients. The primary endpoint of the studies was to reduce the number of flare-ups that sent COPD patients either to the hospital or to the emergency room. The release reports on the findings of two studies looking at the usefulness of the drug in a subset of COPD patients. For the METREX trial, which enrolled 837 volunteers for one year, it says, “The patients with high eosinophil counts who received mepolizumab had a statistically significant 18 percent lower rate of moderate/severe exacerbations (1.4 per year compared to 1.7 per year) than those in the placebo group.” It’s not clear what a difference in exacerbation rate of 0.3 per year really means. Does this mean that each person will get one less exacerbation about every 3 years? That doesn’t sound like much of a difference. For the METREO trial, the release said, “the exacerbation rate was reduced by 20 percent in the high eosinophil group after 100 milligrams of mepolizumab. The METREO results narrowly missed statistical significance.” The release doesn’t describe any possible side effects from the use of mepolizumab, even though there are several. They include headaches, back pain, fatigue and flu symptoms, urinary tract infections, abdominal pain, itching, eczema, and muscle spasms. To its credit the release does say that the side effects encountered from the drug and the placebo were similar. “The safety profile of mepolizumab did not differ from placebo in either trial,” it says. We’ll give the release a satisfactory in this category since it describes both studies as phase 3, randomized, placebo-controlled, double-blind, parallel group trials. While it deals with a subgroup of COPD patients, the focus on subgroups here is appropriate since the researchers are pre-specifying that a subgroup will be studied, separate from simply looking for subgroups within a larger study. No disease mongering here. The release identifies GlaxoSmithKline as the funder of both trials and names numerous GSK employees as authors of the study. The latter makes it possible that the biases could have been introduced in the writing process. The news release notes the standard treatments for COPD are “triple inhaled therapy” including bronchodilators and glucocorticoids. The release gets a satisfactory in this category since it mentions that the drug maker intends to seek FDA approval for its use in this type of patient, a fact that suggests to readers that it isn’t currently available to patients. The release claims that the study showed that eosinophilic inflammation plays a role in flare-ups in COPD, that mepolizumab provides “a new treatment option for patients with treatment-resistant, moderate to severe COPD,” and that the study identified a potential biomarker for the disease. If this research proves that the drug mepolizumab is effective in these patients, then surely it is novel enough for a news release, but the results would require a larger confirmatory study to assure that. No unjustifiable language is used in this news release.
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2940
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Connect the dots: infant mortality, graft and elephant poaching.
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What do infant mortality and elephant poaching have in common? Plenty, according to conservation groups.
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true
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Environment
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Researchers have for the first time made clear connections between elephant poaching in Africa, which has been surging to meet soaring ivory demand in Asia, and factors such as poverty, as shown by high rates of child deaths, and corruption. These links have always been suspected but never pinned down with hard data. The findings come in a report prepared for an African elephant summit in Botswana in December by groups including TRAFFIC, which tracks the global trade in wildlife products, the International Union for Conservation of Nature, and the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species. Areas where child mortality and poverty are worst also see higher levels of elephant poaching, but poor villagers typically do not benefit from the illicit ivory trade. In this regard, the ivory trade - with its long and blood-stained history - is similar to other extractive industries in Africa, which have been exploited to meet demand elsewhere with few rewards for local people. Demand for ivory - used for carvings and valued for millennia for its color and texture - has been rising sharply in newly affluent Asian countries, notably China, fuelling a new wave of elephant slaughter. Following a decline in the 1990s, poaching of the world’s largest land mammal has risen dramatically and in 2012 an estimated 15,000 elephants were illegally killed at 42 sites in Africa monitored by MIKE - the U.N.-backed program for Monitoring the Illegal Killing of Elephants. Since 2010, elephant poaching levels in Africa have exceeded 5 percent of the total population - a tipping point because killings are now outpacing the animals’ birth rate. In a related trend, the killing of rhinos for their horns - used in traditional medicine in Vietnam and China - has also soared, notably in South Africa, home to the vast majority of the animals. According to South African government statistics, as of December 19, a record 946 rhinos had been poached in the country in 2013, compared to 668 in all of 2012. The report found a striking link between infant mortality rates - measured by the number of deaths of infants under one year old per 10,000 live births - and the illegal killing of elephants. “Human infant mortality, which is interpreted as a proxy for poverty, is the single strongest site-level correlate ... with sites suffering from higher levels of poverty experiencing higher levels of elephant poaching,” the report said. The relationship between poverty and poaching - in Africa and elsewhere - has long been assumed because wildlife is a source of food or money for impoverished rural dwellers. But links between measurements of poverty and living standards, such as infant mortality, and the illicit killing of elephants, have not been made before with the kind of clarity that researchers have found in the data over the past two years. Julian Blanc, a co-author of the study and acting coordinator for MIKE, told Reuters infant mortality was the best barometer for poverty because data for it, based on work by the Center for International Earth Science Information Network, exists at local levels. It can therefore be linked to localized incidents of elephant poaching, making it far more useful than other measurements such as per capita GDP, which can give a skewed picture, especially in countries with high levels of inequality. Ziama in Guinea, Niassa in Mozambique, and Bangassou in Central African Republic were the three areas covered in the report with the highest rates of infant mortality, ranging from 1,240 to almost 1,400 deaths per 10,000 live births. All three areas also had extremely high levels of elephant poaching. In the case of Ziama, its elephant population is small but has been reduced by over half in the past few years. The next four areas in the infant mortality rankings were all found in Democratic Republic of Congo. The report also found, using Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index, that at the national level “high poaching levels are more prevalent in countries where governance is weaker, and vice versa”. Poverty and governance are the “enabling” factors for poaching, with consumer demand the other key link in the chain. Poor governance and high poverty levels overlap between countries such as Congo and Central African Republic, which are also areas where local people see little value in elephant populations. “In many parts of Africa people living with elephants derive no benefits from that coexistence and only bear costs in terms of crop damage, injury or death,” Blanc said in a telephone interview from his Nairobi base. TROPICAL, LAND-LOCKED Many of these countries - such as Central African Republic - also suffer from the development curses of having tropical climates, which impose the heavy disease burden seen in their infant mortality rates, and being landlocked, which imposes economic costs. Still, that does not mean that wildlife in such places could not be utilized in a way that might bring economic benefits. Heavily forested and tropical Gabon, for example, is building a wildlife tourist industry aimed at the more adventurous. But elsewhere in central Africa, elephants, a natural resource that could lift rural economies in the form of eco-tourism, or even a regulated ivory trade down the road, are being exterminated, depriving future generations of potential income. Such poverty traps serve as a sobering reminder, against the backdrop of the “Africa Rising” narrative, that much of the world’s poorest continent is still being excluded from the region’s dynamic economic growth and investment story.
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9257
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GSK's candidate shingles vaccine shows high efficacy against shingles and its complications in adults aged 70 years and over in phase III study published in NEJM
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This news release summarizes the findings of a phase III clinical trial of an investigational vaccine for shingles, a painful skin rash that can affect anyone who has ever had chickenpox. The study, described in a NEJM article, involved 13,900 adults 70 or older from 18 countries in North America, Europe, Latin America and the Asia-Pacific region. The study results showed that the new vaccine reduced the likelihood of developing shingles by nearly 90% and decreased by nearly 89% the likelihood that those who did develop shingles despite the vaccine would experience the lingering, sometimes severe, pain that affects about one-in-five people who have shingles. The release generally did a good job of quantifying the benefits and acknowledging side effects without using sensational language. It neglected to note that many financial ties exist between numerous researchers involved and GSK . In addition, the release didn’t mention that another vaccine (though less effective) is already in use or that the study excluded individuals with compromised immune systems, who are at the greatest risk of developing shingles. Shingles, a virus that results in a painful skin rash, is common in the United States, affecting about one-in-four adults at some point in their lifetime. Caused by varicella zoster, the same virus that causes chickenpox in children, shingles produces a line of blisters that can be extremely painful. Although the rash usually clears up within two to four weeks, about one in five shingles sufferers will experience lingering pain, sometimes severe, known as post-herpetic neuralgia. The likelihood of developing shingles and of suffering continuing pain after the rash clears increases with age. A vaccine to prevent shingles has been available since 2006, however its effectiveness depends on age and it is not very effective in the older age groups. According to the CDC, the current vaccine prevents shingles for 51% of those who receive it but prevents post-rash pain for two-thirds of the recipients. With the widespread adoption of varicella (chickenpox) vaccine in kids, we are probably going to see a lot less shingles in seniors in the future, and consequently a lower demand for the vaccine in 30-40 years.
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true
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GSK,shingles vaccine
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The vaccine in question has not yet been submitted to the FDA for approval, so we wouldn’t expect to have a specific price for the vaccine. The price GSK will charge for the vaccine will vary by country. Still, GSK ought to have some idea of how much this vaccine would cost in one of the largest global markets. The release never mentions cost at all. The news release, like the original article on which it reports, states that the vaccine effectively prevented shingles in 90% of participants, including preventing the pain often associated with shingles. Absolute numbers in addition to or rather than relative reductions would have been a more meaningful quantification for readers. The news release notes that serious adverse reactions occurred with about equal frequency among study participants who received the vaccine and those who had placebo injections. Although the release acknowledges the most common injection site and systemic adverse reactions, most commonly mild-to-moderate pain at the injection site and fatigue, it could have been more forthcoming about how common these reactions were. The article on which the release is based states that 79% of participants who received the vaccine, versus 29.5% of placebo recipients, reported local and/or systemic side effects. This was a large multi-site study that included evaluations of 13,900 participants 70 and older from 18 countries worldwide, according to the published study. Overall. the release warrants a satisfactory for describing the study and evidence. However, it slightly overstates the number of participants, saying it involved 14,800 adults, but the lower number used in the study article reflects participants who actually were evaluated; thus, the lower number would have been more appropriate to use in the news release. The release calls this an “observer-blind” study, but the study article states that investigators, participants and other observers were all blind to whether specific participants had received the vaccine or a placebo. One important, and missing, bit of information was that the study excluded immune-compromised individuals, who are at the greatest risk of developing shingles. Shingles is a common problem, and it can be severe. The news release avoids overstating either the frequency of shingles’ occurrence or the severity of its symptoms. The news release was issued by GSK so it’s assumed that GSK provided the funding for the study. The release makes no mention of numerous potential conflicts of interest between the many researchers involved in the study and GSK. These include holding GSK stock, employment with GSK, serving on a GSK board, grant support, lecture fees, consulting fees, travel fees, honoraria, and royalties from a zoster vaccine patent. The news release does not acknowledge that another shingles vaccine has been in use in the United States since 2006. Although the study results do suggest that GSK’s vaccine is likely to be more effective than the currently used vaccine, the release could easily give a casual reader the impression that no other vaccine exists. It is clear from the press release that GSK has not yet applied for regulatory approval of the vaccine in any country. Thus, it should be obvious that the vaccine is not yet available for use. The release acknowledges that the “headline results” of this trial were reported in October 2015. That earlier release focused on the apparent efficacy of the vaccine but did not include any information about safety or side effects. The new PR release provides information about adverse reactions and also notes that the GSK vaccine retains its effectiveness for at least four years, representing an apparent fix to a shortcoming of the already available vaccine. The language in the news release is straightforward and matter-of-fact. The closest it comes to hyping the study results is a quote from the GSK senior vice president for vaccine research calling the findings “remarkable.”
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8019
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China defends against incoming second wave of coronavirus.
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A growing number of imported coronavirus cases in China risked fanning a second wave of infections when domestic transmissions had “basically been stopped”, a senior health official said on Sunday, while eased travel curbs may also add to domestic risks.
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true
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Health News
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China, where the disease first emerged in the central city of Wuhan, had an accumulated total of 693 cases entering from overseas, which meant “the possibility of a new round of infections remains relatively big”, Mi Feng, spokesman for the National Health Commission (NHC), said. Nearly a quarter of those came from arrivals in Beijing. “Beijing, the capital, still bears the brunt of the risks,” said Xu Hejian, spokesman for the Beijing government, told reporters. “There’s no reason to lay back and relax yet. It’s not a time when we can say everything is going well.” Most of those imported cases have involved Chinese returning home from abroad. A total of 3,300 people have now died in mainland China, with a reported 81,439 infections. China was widely accused of a delayed response when suspected cases first emerged in December, with a young doctor reprimanded for “spreading rumors” when he tried to raise the alarm. But the world’s most populous country has since won praise from the World Health Organization for its efforts to lock down affected areas and isolate patients. In the last seven days, China has reported 313 imported cases of coronavirus but only six confirmed cases of domestic transmission, NHC’s data showed. There were 45 new coronavirus cases reported in the mainland on Saturday, down from 54 on the previous day, with all but one involving travelers from overseas. Airlines have been ordered to sharply cut international flights from Sunday. And restrictions on foreigners entering the country went into effect on Saturday. Five more people died on Saturday, all of them in Wuhan, the capital of Hubei province. It has reported only one new case in the last 10 days. Saturday marked the fifth consecutive day that Hubei recorded no new confirmed cases. The sole case of domestically transmitted coronavirus was recorded in Henan province, bordering Hubei. On a cold and rainy Sunday, Wuhan streets and metro trains were still largely empty. The Hubei government said on its official WeChat account that a number of malls in Wuhan, as well as the Chu River and Han Street shopping belt, would be allowed to resume operations on Monday. With traffic restrictions in the province lifted, Wuhan is also gradually reopening borders and restarting some local transportation services. “It’s much better now,” a man, who gave his surname as Hu, told Reuters as he ventured out to buy groceries in Wuhan. All airports in Hubei resumed some domestic flights on Sunday, with the exception of Wuhan, which will open to domestic flights on April 8. Flights from Hubei to Beijing remain suspended. A train arrived in Wuhan on Saturday for the first time since the city was placed in lockdown two months ago. Restrictions have also been eased on people looking to return to the capital, although the procedure still appears much more vigorous as it’s done on an application approval basis. More than 7,000 have returned to Beijing from Hubei by charted trains or private cars, Mao Jun, a Beijing government official, said on Sunday. But as travel restrictions are rolled back, concerns about asymptomatic cases have intensified. Gansu, a province in northwestern China, reported a new case on Sunday of a traveler from Hubei who drove back on a health code declaring the person free of virus. It is unclear how the person became infected, according to the report by state broadcaster CCTV. As scientists worldwide scramble to fight the battle against the coronavirus, a Chinese research institute said this week it has developed a nanomaterial that can absorb and deactivate the coronavirus, and that it is looking to work with companies to apply the technology in making air purifiers and face masks. Lab tests by a CDC branch in China’s Anhui province showed the material deactivated 96.5-99.9% of the coronavirus, the Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics under state think tank Chinese Academy of Sciences said in a statement. (This story corrects paragraph 14 to state that Hubei reported zero new coronavirus cases for the fifth consecutive day on Saturday, not fourth consecutive day as previously stated)
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18441
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Every Florida teacher gets a pay raise.
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"Rick Scott said ""every Florida teacher gets a pay raise."" Will every Florida teacher get a pay raise? It seems likely, with the influx of money poured into education this year. But Scott can’t decree it, and the budget is written so that it applies to high-performing educators. Plus, some superintendents have said the inclusion of non-instructional personnel will make it harder if not impossible to award every teacher a raise."
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mixture
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Corrections and Updates, Education, State Budget, Florida, Rick Scott,
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"Update: We updated this story to reflect updated budget proviso language that leaders agreed to May 1. These changes include removing the requirement that raises be delayed until June 2014 and giving boards the option to come up with their own merit-pay plans. Gov. Rick Scott declared ""victory"" after legislative leaders announced they included $480 million in the 2013-14 budget for teacher pay raises. Scott, who made a $2,500 pay raise for every teacher one of just two priorities this legislative session, announced the news on his Facebook page April 29: ""Our teachers are some of the best in the nation and they deserve to be rewarded for their great work. Today I am proud to announce that every Florida teacher gets a pay raise."" He included a photo of a male teacher with can’t-miss-it, all-caps text that reads ""EVERY FLORIDA TEACHER GETS A PAY RAISE! IT’S WORKING."" He’s over-simplifying it. The truth is, the Legislature’s offering of $480 million for raises may be in the amount Scott wanted, but he’s glossing over the fine print for how they want it spent. Earlier in the session, House and Senate leaders weren’t keen on Scott’s idea because it does not align with 2011 legislation they pitched and Scott signed implementing a merit pay system for teachers. But with a week left in session, leaders found a way to please both sides. Here are three details not included in Scott’s Facebook post, which last we checked had more than 2,400 likes: The raises would not be limited to just teachers. They are not immediate. And they are not a guarantee. You can find the conditions the Legislature placed in its bill implementing next year’s budget (page 21). House and Senate leadership agreed to allow for salary increases not only for school district and charter school classroom teachers, but for guidance counselors, social workers, psychologists, librarians, principals and assistant principals. The throng of education workers would not see an immediate raise. Initially, the budget was written so they would have to wait until June 2014 before getting a lump-sum payment for the 2013-14 school year. Hearing negative feedback on this provision, House and Senate changed this language so that school boards can distribute salary increases anytime before June 2014 ""as negotiated with collective bargaining units and educators."" But that’s if they qualify. The raises are based on merit. Lawmakers suggested school professionals be judged based on 2013-14 performance evaluations to be determined by school districts and approved by the state Department of Education. For education personnel deemed ""effective,"" lawmakers recommended salary increases of at least $2,500. Those rated ""highly effective"" are eligible for up to $3,500. New language that lawmakers added May 1 gives districts the options to come up with their own merit-pay plans, a move the FEA applauded. But there is still no mandate that every teacher get a raise. Factors that districts could use in their evaluations may include results on Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate assessments, as well as SAT, ACT, FCAT and end-of-course exam results. For those who don’t teach courses with standardized tests, districts will develop separate evaluation criteria. The Legislature took a different approach for state workers, awarding them $1,000 or $1,400 pay hikes (plus a chance for $600 more for some based on merit) depending on their income starting in October. Law enforcement officers would get their raise this summer. The caveats for teachers disappointed the Florida Education Association, which praised Scott for his efforts but dinged the Legislature for the strings attached, as well as Miami-Dade and Broward county superintendents Alberto Carvalho and Robert Runcie. The superintendents said they could not afford to give every teacher $2,500 on top of paying the ""unfunded mandate"" of raises for principals and staff. (Carvalho said the updated language is a positive move.) The South Florida superintendents said even though the Legislature will increase per-pupil funding by $1 billion statewide ($134 million for Miami-Dade and $93 million for Broward), there would still not be enough money to pay for raises, other benefits and healthcare, and other earmarks from the state, according to the Miami Herald. ""The math simply does not add up,"" Runcie said. Based on the 2011-12 evaluations, just about every teacher would qualify for a raise. Of the teachers who were evaluated, 22.6 percent of teachers were highly effective and 74.6 percent were effective, leaving just under 3 percent of teachers with ratings of needs improvement or unsatisfactory. Ten percent of the state’s teachers were not evaluated. The numbers were similar for non-classroom personnel measured by merit pay, though 27.2 percent were not evaluated, according to Department of Education data. Even with the merit requirements, Scott spokeswoman Melissa Sellers said it’s not realistic to think unions and districts won’t try to get money to all teachers. The budget language is written flexibly enough so that districts are not precluded from using money from the state to award every teacher a raise, even if they do not qualify for merit pay or are rated below effective. Miami Rep. Erik Fresen, who is in charge of House education appropriations, told the Miami Herald ""we provided $480 million for districts to provide much-deserved salary increases to whom they determine meet their criteria of effective."" His Senate counterpart, Sen. Bill Galvano, R-Bradenton, told us while the raises are not guaranteed to every teacher, ""At the end of the day, there should be something for everybody."" But it’s not up to Scott, or the Legislature for that matter. Florida law says the state cannot dictate teacher salaries. Teacher salaries are negotiated between the school districts and teachers union. So even though legislators approved a half-billion dollar pot of money for teacher raises, there is no guarantee that every teacher will get a raise. School districts in talks with unions will ultimately decide who gets raises, who doesn’t and how much. All the state and Scott can do is strongly suggest how school districts dish out the extra money they’re getting. ""However, it must be kept in mind that other funding increases are being provided to school districts,"" said FEA spokesman Mark Pudlow. ""Presumably, that money could be bargained for increased salaries, so technically, every Florida teacher ‘may get a pay raise.’"" Our ruling Rick Scott said ""every Florida teacher gets a pay raise."" Will every Florida teacher get a pay raise? It seems likely, with the influx of money poured into education this year. But Scott can’t decree it, and the budget is written so that it applies to high-performing educators. Plus, some superintendents have said the inclusion of non-instructional personnel will make it harder if not impossible to award every teacher a raise."
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27409
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A new division of the Department of Health and Human Services will allow doctors to refuse to treat LGBTQ patients for religious reasons.
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The creation of an unnecessary new division that is likely to promote a license to discriminate diverts needed enforcement resources and encourages discrimination against LGBTQ people. Every American deserves access to quality health care, and that should not be determined by the personal opinions of individual medical providers or administrative staff.
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true
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Politics, lgbtq
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On 18 January 2018, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced that they would expand protections for health care providers who refuse to provide abortion-related care or apply anti-discrimination protections against certain clients for religious reasons: Today, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is pleased to announce the formation of a new Conscience and Religious Freedom Division in the HHS Office for Civil Rights (OCR). The Conscience and Religious Freedom Division has been established to restore federal enforcement of our nation’s laws that protect the fundamental and unalienable rights of conscience and religious freedom. OCR is the law enforcement agency within HHS that enforces federal laws protecting civil rights and conscience in health and human services, and the security and privacy of people’s health information. The creation of the new division will provide HHS with the focus it needs to more vigorously and effectively enforce existing laws protecting the rights of conscience and religious freedom, the first freedom protected in the Bill of Rights. OCR already has enforcement authority over federal conscience protection statutes, such as the Church, Coats-Snowe, and Weldon Amendments; Section 1553 of the Affordable Care Act (on assisted suicide); and certain federal nondiscrimination laws that prohibit discrimination on the basis of religion in a variety of HHS programs. OCR Director Severino said, “Laws protecting religious freedom and conscience rights are just empty words on paper if they aren’t enforced. No one should be forced to choose between helping sick people and living by one’s deepest moral or religious convictions, and the new division will help guarantee that victims of unlawful discrimination find justice. For too long, governments big and small have treated conscience claims with hostility instead of protection, but change is coming and it begins here and now.” Acting HHS Secretary Hargan said, “President Trump promised the American people that his administration would vigorously uphold the rights of conscience and religious freedom. That promise is being kept today. The Founding Fathers knew that a nation that respects conscience rights is more diverse and more free, and OCR’s new division will help make that vision a reality.” The announcement quickly led to criticism and threats of potential legal action from pro-LGBTQ advocacy groups. Louise Melling, deputy legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union, told us in a statement: We may not know exactly what this new division will look like in practice, but we do know that this means they prioritize religious liberty over the health and civil rights of women, transgender people, and others. They are prioritizing providers’ beliefs over patients’ health and lives. In a separate statement, HHS indicated that they would follow a 31 December 2016 order issued by U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor, who determined that the agency could not require that anti-discrimination protections for patients mandated by the Affordable Care Act cover gender identity as well as services relating to abortion: It is incorrect to say that laws that explicitly prohibit discrimination on the basis of, for example, a nurse’s refusal to participate in an abortion, are themselves discriminatory. The new Conscience and Religious Freedom Division will simply be enforcing important bi-partisan conscience protection laws that have been on the books, in some cases, for decades. Additionally, [O’Connor] has ordered that the Department of Health and Human Services cannot interpret prohibitions on sex discrimination in health care programs to cover gender identity, and the Department is abiding by that order as required. O’Connor, who was appointed to the bench by then-President President George W. Bush in 2007, wrote that “Plaintiffs will be forced to either violate their religious beliefs or maintain their current policies which seem to be in direct conflict with the Rule and risk the severe consequences of enforcement.” Severino had objected to the idea of gender identity applying to patient protections before taking his position at HHS, and in January 2016 he co-authored a report for the conservative group the Heritage Foundation stating that such regulations would “lead to unreasonable and costly litigation” for health care providers and insurers, among others: They effectively require controversial procedures, such as “sex-reassignment” surgery, that respected medical professionals argue have not been proven to be effective in treating serious mental health conditions. Rather than respect the diversity of opinions on sensitive and controversial health care issues, the proposed regulations endorse and enforce one side of the debate and trample on the freedom of conscience of many in the medical community. The ACLU warned on their Twitter account that should the department’s new initiative proceed, “we will see them in court.” The Human Rights Campaign also criticized the HHS announcement, saying that they would continue to make sure that “bigotry has no place” in the health care arena:
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38205
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After committing to hiring Muslim refugees, Starbucks’ Muslim workers have been slipping feces into coffee and spreading tuberculosis.
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Starbucks Muslim Workers Slip Feces into Coffee, Spread Tuberculosis
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false
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9/11 Attack on America
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A website known for spreading disinformation is behind false claims that Starbucks’ Muslim workers have been caught slipping feces into coffee. The story first appeared at USA Politics Today on August 11, 2017, under the headline, “Starbucks’ Muslim Workers Slipping FAR Worse Than Feces In Your Drinks – This ‘Extra’ Could Kill You.” 21.4 percent of Muslim refugees in the San Diego County carry tuberculosis, a disgusting disease that infects the lungs and is easily spread through the air by speaking, coughing, sneezing, or spitting. The location that Starbucks is picking their Muslim workers from is in San Diego County, a place where this highly-contagious disease runs rampant throughout the Muslim migrant community. We couldn’t find any proof to back up the claim that feces was found in Starbucks coffee, and that it was linked to Starbucks’ hiring of Muslim refugees. As is often the case with these disinformation reports, however, the story combines a number of recent news stories to form the false narrative that Starbucks employees slipped feces into coffee. In June 2017, we investigated claims that fecal matter was found in Starbucks (and other coffee chains’) iced coffee and found them to be true and misleading. It’s true that testing found fecal matter present at some level — but experts say that fecal matter can be found at some level in nearly all processed food. And in January 2017, there were misleading reports about a Starbucks commitment to hire 10,000 Muslim refugees. Anti-immigrant websites claimed or implied that Starbucks would hire 10,000 refugees in the U.S. — but the company committed to hiring 10,000 across its locations in 75 countries around the world. Claims that surfaced in August 2017 about Starbucks workers slipping feces into coffee appear to combine these earlier and unrelated stories into one false narrative. And the story’s claim that 21 percent of refugees in San Diego have tuberculosis don’t check out, either. TB cases in San Diego have been on the decline for the last 20 years, and while 74 percent of cases involve people born outside the country, 54 percent of them are from Asian countries, 33 percent were from Mexico and 8 percent were from Africa in 2016, according to San Diego public health officials. Based on country of origin, the correlation between Muslim refugees and TB in San Diego don’t appear to hold up. USA Politics Today is known for publishing fabricated reports like this one. We’ve looked at false reports from the website that Bill Clinton was on his deathbed and that Jill Stein endorsed President Trump during the 2016 election. The website’s disclaimer comes close to admitting that it’s fake news by stating, “no claims whatsoever can be made as to the specific benefits” of the content that appears there. Given all that, we’re calling claims about Starbucks’ Muslim employees “fiction.” Comments
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36327
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A cook and a janitor stayed at an abandoned care home without pay to ensure the safety of the residents.
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Did the Cook and Janitor of a Bankrupt Assisted Living Home Stay to Care for Abandoned Residents?
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true
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Fact Checks, Viral Content
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On June 16 2019, the Facebook page “Weird Facts” shared the following meme (archived here), about a cook and a janitor who purportedly refused to abandon the residents of a bankrupted care home:Atop an image of two unidentified men, the meme read:A Californian care home went bankrupt. About 16 elderly residents were abandoned, most staff left but the janitor and the cook stayed behind to care for the residents at their own expense.Information, citations, links, or even commentary was absent from the post, which consisted solely of that meme. Commenters praised the purported actions of the unnamed men, but few seemed to know further details of the story.The image used in the meme first appeared in a November 2014 NPR StoryCorps piece titled “‘If We Left, They Wouldn’t Have Nobody. '” NPR’s coverage described the incomplete closure of a residential facility for elderly patients in late 2013:The staff at the Valley Springs Manor left when they stopped getting paid — except for cook Maurice Rowland and Miguel Alvarez, the janitor.“There was about 16 residents left behind, and we had a conversation in the kitchen, ‘What are we going to do?’ ” Rowland says.“If we left, they wouldn’t have nobody,” the 34-year-old Alvarez says. […]“I would only go home for one hour, take a shower, get dressed, then be there for 24-hour days,” says Alvarez.Rowland, 35, remembers passing out medications during those long days. He says he didn’t want to leave the residents — some coping with dementia — to fend for themselves.“I just couldn’t see myself going home — next thing you know, they’re in the kitchen trying to cook their own food and burn the place down,” Rowland says. “Even though they wasn’t our family, they were kind of like our family for this short period of time.”A December 2017 Huffington Post article included a bit more detail, such as the circumstances surrounding the closure of the facility:In October 2013, the California Department of Social Services (DSS) closed the Valley Springs Manor Residential Care Facility for the Elderly for a number of violations, ABC 7 reported. The elderly residents of the Castro Valley facility were supposed to have been relocated, but about 16 of them — some of whom were confined to their beds — were left behind to fend for themselves, according to an NPR report.In another portion of the piece, the outlet described the pair’s decision to remain at the facility “around the clock” in order to give the patients the care they needed:After Rowland and Alvarez watched the more experienced staff vacate the property, the two held a quick powwow and agreed to care for the residents until more help came through.So, over the following weekend in October [2013], the janitor and the cook bathed and fed the residents and doled out medications, despite their limited training, Mercury News reported.Though they weren’t getting paid, Alvarez told NPR that they worked around the clock, only taking quick breaks to shower.A 65-year-old resident who had disappeared in the past, walked off the premises during the turmoil. He was found the following week, according to CBS.Once another resident’s condition started to deteriorate, the pair called 911, which eventually alerted the authorities to the gravity of the situation, according to Mercury News.About 40 minutes after that call, the Alameda County Sheriff’s department was notified and the overdue evacuation finally took shape.The story was initially reported in late October 2013, but the actions of Rowland and Alvarez were not mentioned in that coverage.By November 1 2013, a more detailed version of events began to come to light. A local outlet reported that state investigators moved to shutter the care home on October 25 2013, setting into motion a chain of events that left Rowland and Alvarez alone in charge of the 16 abandoned residents, and that “state workers were supposed to have made sure before they left, particularly when the facility officially closed at 6:30 p.m. on Oct. 24 [2013], that residents were being safely transitioned to new homes”:After the state officials took off, the cook and janitor who stayed on — with no pay — said their supervisor was nowhere to be found, leaving just the two of them to bathe, feed and monitor residents despite not having the proper training.Rowland, the cook, said the state agency workers should have done more to help after witnessing alarming conditions after caretakers began walking off the job.“She was aware of everything that was going on,” Rowland said of the last state official to visit the home. “She had some authority and she could’ve made something happen. She could have done more than what she did.”[…]As the cook and the janitor were left alone with residents on [October 25 and 26 2013], newly released 911 calls documented their exasperation.“What’s wrong with him?” the dispatcher asks the cook about an ill resident.“Well, I haven’t seen him,” Rowland said. “But they just told me to call 911 because he is looking pretty bad.”In another call, Rowland said while it was not a “life or death” situation, one of the residents was breathing heavily and “may have been running a bit of a fever.”Roughly 40 minutes later, a fire captain, who realized the gravity of the situation, called Alameda County Sheriff’s deputies for help. The hours long evacuation began shortly after.“It’s a convalescent home that’s been shut down by the state and there are still clients in the building without any support,” the dispatcher said. “It looks like the management people have left them here.”A follow-up item published by SFGATE in November 2013 about the two men had the following note appended at the top:Editor’s note: This article from November 2013 is apparently going viral on Facebook in April 2015.A spike of viral interest in April 2015 possibly led to another update on Rowland and Alvarez after the incident, this one published in June 2015. The two men were then working with a documentary filmmaker on their experience at the abandoned care home:In better news, Rowland and Alvarez are now involved with If We Left, the film in progress from Miles Maker, the independent Los Angeles filmmaker who has become a close friend. Maker calls them weekly to check in and update them on the film, the script for which is currently in development.As for Maurice and Miguel, who have been friends since middle school — although “it was around high school that we got close,” Alvarez clarifies — they still see each other daily.“We hang out all. The. Time. We live five to seven minutes apart,” they both say nearly in unison on our three-way phone call.A YouTube channel and IndieGogo effort to support the film appeared inactive as of June 2019.In March 2015, charges were filed against two individuals in relation to the botched care home closure:The owner and a top administrator who are accused of abandoning elderly and mentally ill residents in a Castro Valley senior home in 2013 without proper staffing or care for two days have been charged with felony elder abuse and could face up to 17 years in prison if convicted, officials said [in March 2015].California Attorney General Kamala Harris announced the indictment of Valley Springs Manor owner Herminigilda Noveda Manuel and administrator Edgar Babael on 14 felony counts of elder abuse. Authorities say the pair left residents in the care of only a janitor and a cook for several days after the state abruptly shut down the facility in October 2013. […]The only people who stayed behind were janitor Miguel Alvarez and cook Maurice Rowland, who struggled to provide basic care for the residents for more than two days. Neither was trained to care for the residents but said they didn’t want to leave the elderly men and women behind.Both men said Monday that they were glad someone was being held accountable for the debacle at Valley Springs.“It’s about time someone steps up to the plate and (takes) the blame for what happened,” Rowland said when he heard about the charges.Alvarez added: “They gotta pay their consequences for what they did. I don’t wish bad on anybody, or that they should go to jail. I just think they should pay a fine.In December 2015, California adopted a new law prompted in large part by the abandonment of Valley Springs Manor.The actions taken by Maurice Rowland and Miguel Alvarez were accurately described in the above meme and the many that came before it, but the underlying story was worth telling in detail. Eventually, authorities stepped in and evacuated the home’s residents to safety and both men were commended for their response to the situation.
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10214
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Cervical cancer shots are gaining reputation as painful
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This article about reports of pain and fainting linked to Gardasil, the vaccine used to decrease risk of cervical cancer, fails to make the case for its publication. The suggestion that the vaccine stings and burns more than most may be accurate. But the article itself reports that the pain is often fleeting and in more serious cases may cause lingering discomfort for a day. Nothing in the article supports the implication in the first paragraph that Gardasil is the most painful vaccine given in childhood. The implication that the drug causes fainting is not justified by evidence. The article cites raw data that appears to suggest an increase. But the data are self-reported and do not have a denominator. There is no way to know whether the 180 reports of fainting cited are more or less than would be expected with the same number of girls getting any kind of vaccination. The report fails to indicate that the vaccine has been shown effective in preventing HPV and therefore likely to reduce risk of cervical cancer. It fails to mention that HPV is often passed between sexual partners unknowingly and that by the time cervical cancer is discovered it is often deadly. By emphasizing fleeting pain and an uNPRoven link of fainting, and failing to emphasize the vaccine’s established benefits, the article does not serve the public interest well. Curiously, the article acknowledges these shortcomings by including expert commentary that calls the story’s premises into question. The reporter and editor clearly knew the article’s thesis is not sustained by data and expert observations. Why was it published?
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false
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"The article states that the shots cost $120. The cost is around $120 per injection; three injections are required. Using only the $120 figure is misleading. Most media reports more accurately cite the total cost of $300 to $400 for the series. The article does not report the efficacy of the vaccine in preventing cervical cancer, thereby providing no corresponding balance. The article focuses on harms related to the Gardasil vaccine. Yet by focusing on one of the more trivial side effects, pain at the injection site, it fails to mention more severe side effects, such as Guillian Barre syndrome. Five percent of reported adverse effects were considered serious. Since 7 million vaccinations have been given, this 5 percent figure of serious events is certainly worth mentioning. Highlighting pain on injection seems a bit trivial in this context. The articles uses informal observations and lower-quality data to make the case that the injections are unsually painful and linked to fainting. The article fails to make clear the context and source of the data on fainting. The description in the article suggests the data is from the CDC/FDA Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System, which accepts voluntary reports from across the healthcare system. The data is considered raw and at best suggestive of patterns worthy of investigation. The article should have made clear the source and limitations of the data. It is not clear whether the number of reports linked to Gardasil are higher or lower than would be expected with any vaccination given to the same group of people. The article exaggerates the amount and importance of injection-site pain, and it implies without justification that it is more likely to lead to fainting than other vaccines given to girls and teens. The article quotes one patient, two clinicians, and one CDC expert in immunization safety. It also draws on raw federal data (without identifying its source) and information from the drug’s maker. Because of the multiple sources used, we’ll rate this satisfactory. However, a key shortcoming is the failure to provide any detail about the ""recent meeting of vaccine experts,"" where the public health authority comments about pain. The article fails to make clear that this is the only vaccine shown to reduce the incidence of the types of human papilloma virus which are responsible for a majority of cervical cancers. Tha story does indicate the vaccine has been available for a year. However, the main point of the story is the level of discomfort associated with the injection and the development of syncope in some recipients. But without discussing how widely the vaccine has been used, case reports provide no useful information. The fact that over 7 million doses of the vaccine has been distributed would have been a valuable piece of information for the readers. The story does note that Gardasil is an ""important new protection"" but points out that another version in in clinical trials. There is no evidence the article is based on a press release."
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7985
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No let-up in coronavirus deaths in Italy, new cases steady.
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The death toll from an outbreak of coronavirus in Italy has climbed by 837 to 12,428, the Civil Protection Agency said on Tuesday, with the daily tally rising, albeit slightly, for a second day running.
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true
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Health News
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The number of new cases was broadly steady, growing by 4,053 against 4,050 on Monday, and bringing total infections since the outbreak came to light on Feb. 21 to 105,792. Some 5,217 new cases were registered on Sunday and 5,974 on Saturday, suggesting the growth curve of new infections is flattening. The daily tally of deaths in Lombardy, the worst-affected region, declined sharply, and new infections were also down for at least the third day running, suggesting the situation is improving there faster than elsewhere in the country. In neighboring Piedmont, on the other hand, the daily death toll of 105 was up sharply from the day before. Of those originally infected nationwide, 15,729 had fully recovered on Tuesday, compared to 14,620 the day before. There were 4,023 people in intensive care, up from a previous 3,981. Italy has registered more deaths than anywhere else in the world and accounts for around 30% of all global fatalities from the virus. Italy’s largest daily toll from the five-week-old epidemic was registered on Friday, when 919 people died. There were 889 deaths on Saturday, 756 on Sunday and 812 on Monday.
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23930
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Bill McCollum on the Arizona immigration law.
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Bill McCollum sends mixed signals on Arizona's immigration law
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false
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Immigration, Florida, Bill McCollum,
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"Arizona's controversial immigration law has proven problematic for Florida Republicans, who in large part appear wary of fully endorsing a proposal that's supported by a majority of Floridians but one that also could cost votes among Florida's Hispanic population. The tightrope-walking act is perhaps no more apparent than when it comes to Attorney General Bill McCollum, a Republican running for governor.McCollum's primary opponent , Rick Scott, unabashedly supports the law, which will require local law enforcement officials, once police stop a person, to verify the immigration status of those they reasonably suspect of being in the country illegally. The law is also supported by a 58 percent of Floridians, according to a May 2010 St. Petersburg Times/Miami Herald/Bay News 9/Central Florida News 13 poll. We decided to rate McCollum's statements on the Arizona law using our Flip-O-Meter, which measures how consistent someone has been when taking a position on an issue.Before we get to that, though, we need to give you a quick history of how the Arizona law came to pass.The bill in question originally was signed into law on April 23, 2010, by Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer. An amended version of the bill -- one to lessen the prospects that racial profiling could occur -- passed and was signed into law on April 30. The new version of the law says: ""A law enforcement official or agency of this state or a county, city, town or other political subdivision of this state may not consider race, color or national origin in implementing the requirements of this subsection except to the extent permitted by the United States or Arizona Constitution. ""The prior version had said that an official ""may not solely consider race"" in such circumstances.The change in the bill -- though its impact can be debated -- is important to note when discussing McCollum's position, since his first comments refer to the first version of the bill, while later comments refer to the second version.McCollum's first published comments about the Arizona law came on April 27, after the original bill had passed.He was asked whether he would like a Florida version of Arizona's law. ""I think Arizona has its own unique problems,"" McCollum said. ""I don't think Florida should enact laws like this -- quite that far out. ""Then in stories on May 13 and May 14 -- after the amended version of Arizona's law passed -- McCollum about-faced and said he would support a Florida version. ""As state and local law enforcement officials in Arizona begin to implement the state's aggressive new border security law to crackdown on illegal immigration, I applaud Gov. Brewer and the Arizona Legislature for stepping up their enforcement efforts at a time when President Obama's administration has let states down,"" McCollum said. ""I support Arizona's law as amended, and if the federal government fails to secure our borders and solve the problem of illegal immigration, I would support a similar law for Florida. ""And he also said: ""Arizona leaders recently made needed changes that address concerns I had that the law could be abused and misused to perform racially profiled stops and arrests. I do not support any measure that would result in racial profiling or other unintended consequences for law-abiding American citizens. ''Then, on May 16, came another comment to a television reporter in Port St. Lucie. This time, McCollum said he didn't think an Arizona-style immigration law was needed in Florida. ""I didn't change my position, but Arizona changed its law after they passed a law that was very bad (and) that had that the potential for racial profiling,"" McCollum said.He was then asked if it was realistic that a similar law might be passed in Florida. ""We don't need that law in Florida,"" he said. ""That's not what's going to happen here. ""McCollum's most recent comments were picked up on by the Scott campaign, which highlighted the quote in a television ad.McCollum called the original version of the Arizona immigration law far out, but then said he would support the amended law being adopted in Florida. Since there's a debate over how much difference the amendment ultimately will have in how the law is enforced, it's hard for us to properly measure whether McCollum's position shift in this instance is a complete flip-flop.But what does strike us are McCollum's comments on May 13 and May 16 -- both in reference to the amended version. On May 13, McCollum said he would support implementing the Arizona law in Florida. Then on May 16 he said Florida doesn't need that law.Which is it? McCollum spokeswoman Kristy Campbell said McCollum's position since the final version of the law passed has been consistent. She says McCollum supports the law Arizona passed, in large part because of failures at the federal level. However, McCollum thinks an Arizona-style law is not currently needed in Florida because of the state's unique issues dealing with immigration. But McCollum's statements to the media on May 13 and May 16 are just too different to us, and warrant a rating of Full-Flop."
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8555
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China seeks to contain 'silent carriers' of new coronavirus.
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China took new measures on Wednesday to try to prevent asymptomatic “silent carriers” of the new coronavirus from causing a second wave of infections, as the country reported another modest rise in confirmed cases.
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true
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Health News
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While new cases have declined from their peak since China imposed strict travel restrictions, authorities have called for continued vigilance amid fears of a fresh resurgence of infections as the economy cranks back to life and more people move around. Mainland China reported 63 new infections on Wednesday, up from 62 a day earlier, the National Health Commission said. Of those, 61 were travellers arriving from overseas, bringing the total number of confirmed cases in China to 81,865. China is also increasingly focused on managing asymptomatic virus carriers. It only began announcing figures for such cases on April 1, reporting 657 new asymptomatic cases so far this month, of which 57 have developed symptoms. On China’s Twitter-like Weibo, “Are asymptomatic people really asymptomatic?” was one of the most-discussed topics on Thursday, highlighting a media interview with Liu Youning, a professor of respiratory medicine at the People’s Liberation Army General Hospital. Liu said asymptomatic carriers posed little risk, but that people should continue to avoid crowded areas, maintain social distancing, wear masks and wash hands. Zhang Dingyu, president of Jinyintan Hospital in the central city of Wuhan, the original epicentre of the outbreak that began this week allowing people to leave after a more-than two-month lockdown, said he was not worried about a big second wave of infections given the containment measures in place. “We think in the future there could be some sporadic cases and even some local outbreaks, like how at a company you might see 30 or 20 contagion cases that become an outbreak. But the possibility of a big outbreak, there isn’t really such a possibility,” he told reporters. Zhang also said 14 patients in the hospital had recovered from COVID-19 but continued to test positive for the coronavirus. “We currently don’t dare to let them out but we may feel that this measure might be wrong in the future,” he said, adding that such patients showed “weak” toxicity. “This virus could be dead already, and has just left behind some of its debris in the cells,” Zhang said. “We are protecting everyone by overdoing protective measures and treatment,” he said, adding the longest the hospital has kept the patients so far is for about 60 days. China reported 56 new asymptomatic cases on Wednesday, bringing the total number of such cases to 657 since data for such infections were published daily from April 1. The State Council, or Cabinet, published new rules to manage asymptomatic coronavirus carriers late on Wednesday. Under the regulations, medical institutions must report detection of asymptomatic cases within two hours of their discovery. Local governments must then identify all known close contacts of the case within 24 hours. Asymptomatic patients will be quarantined collectively for 14 days, and will be counted as confirmed cases if they start to show symptoms. People who have had close contact with them must also be quarantined for two weeks. The Beijing government on Thursday announced new guidance for bars in the capital, mandating that tables be set at least one metre (3.3 feet) apart and vigorous disinfecting efforts. However, in an easing measure, the commercial centre of Shanghai said it would begin reopening some schools from April 27. Of the 61 new confirmed cases arriving from overseas, 40 were in China’s northeast Heilongjiang province, which shares a border with Russia. All were among returning Chinese nationals, state news agency Xinhua said. The Heilongjiang city of Suifenhe is building a makeshift hospital to manage the rise in imported cases, the Global Times reported on Thursday, as all of the city’s isolation hotels were full. Suifenhe has closed its borders to all arrivals and implemented restrictions on the movement of its citizens on Wednesday, similar to measures seen in Wuhan. As of Wednesday, 3,335 people in China had died from the virus that causes a flu-like respiratory disease. Wuhan accounts for more than 75% of the fatalities. Interactive graphic tracking global spread of coronavirus: open tmsnrt.rs/3aIRuz7 in an external browser.
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30231
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In the summer of 2018, President Donald Trump donated his entire $400,000 annual salary to the Department of the Interior for the purpose of rebuilding military cemeteries.
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The news media has not reported on the president’s donation of his entire $400,000 annual salary for the reconstruction of military cemeteries due to the plainest reason of all: because it hasn’t happened.
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false
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Politics, donald trump, the gateway pundit, uncle sam's misguided children
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During his 2016 presidential campaign, Republican candidate Donald Trump, a billionaire real estate developer, vowed that if elected he would forgo the $400,000 annual presidential salary. So far as president Trump has stuck to that promise, handing over checks every three months for various projects overseen by different government departments. In the first quarter of 2017, for example, President Trump donated $78,333 (his $100,000 salary for that quarter, after taxes) to the Department of the Interior, specifically for the National Park Service’s maintenance of an historic Civil War site. His contribution was put towards two projects at Antietam National Battlefield in Maryland. In July 2017, the White House announced in a press release that President Trump had donated his second-quarter salary to a science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) camp for children, overseen by the Education Department. He signed over his third-quarter salary to the Department of Health and Human Services for a public awareness campaign about opioid addiction, and the last of his 2017 salary went towards an infrastructure grant program overseen by the U.S. Department of Transportation. As the Washington Post has pointed out, some of the initiatives President Trump donated to were at uncertain stages of development or did not yet exist at the time he made his contribution, which prompted some additional scrutiny, but President Trump has nonetheless stayed true to his word and handed over a check representing his presidential salary every three months. Trump continued this tradition in 2018, donating his first-quarter salary to the Department of Veterans Affairs, a sum which then-Acting VA Secretary Robert Wilkie said had been earmarked for “caregiver support in the form of mental health and peer support programs, financial aid, education training, and research.” The president donated another quarter’s salary to the U.S. Small Business Administration for the purpose of establishing an “Emerging Leaders” program focused “on helping veterans start small businesses after military life.” And the third quarter of his 2018 salary went to the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, according to the Associated Press. On 18 March 2019, President Trump announced on Twitter he was donating a quarter of his salary to the Department of Homeland Security. ‘Military Cemeteries’ In late July and early August 2018, scattered social media posts and memes claimed that the president had donated his entire $400,000 salary to the Department of the Interior, for the purpose of rebuilding military cemeteries. Many of these posts criticized the news media for not having reported on this purported donation. On 31 July 2018, for example, conservative radio host Mark Simone wrote, in a tweet that has since been deleted: White House sent their spending report to Congress. This was in it: “Instead of taking his salary, Trump donated all $400,000 to the Department of the Interior where it will be used for construction and repair needs at military cemeteries!” Media gave this no coverage. Charlie Kirk, a prominent conservative activist and founder of the Turning Point USA organization, followed suit: News the media didn’t report today: Today @realDonaldTrump donated his $400,000 salary to rebuilding military cemeteries — Charlie Kirk (@charliekirk11) August 1, 2018 One Facebook user garnered almost 150,000 shares within three days for a 31 July post which made similar claims: And on 2 August, “Uncle Sam’s Misguided Children” posted a widely-shared meme on Facebook, which was almost identical to Charlie Kirk’s tweet: These social media posts were accompanied by articles published by various right-wing web sites including the Gateway Pundit, the Right Scoop, and the viral content web site Social News Daily. Analysis There were two immediate problems with this set of claims. First, President Trump could not possibly donate his entire $400,000 annual salary for 2018 for the purpose of rebuilding military cemeteries, because he has already donated the first quarter’s worth of that salary to the Department of Veterans Affairs for an entirely separate initiative. So he only had three-quarters of his salary left to distribute, a mathematical fact that undermines the credibility of these claims. Second, the social media posts and articles making this claim were very thinly sourced, to say the least. Neither the viral Facebook post nor meme that we highlighted above cited any source, and the three news articles we mentioned all relied on the two tweets from Charlie Kirk and Mark Simone. Kirk’s tweet cited no source whatsoever. Simone claimed that the information came from a White House “spending report” sent to Congress, which he asserted contained the following statement: “Instead of taking his salary, Trump donated all $400,000 to the Department of the Interior where it will be used for construction and repair needs at military cemeteries!” Simone did not include a link to that report in his tweet, and neither he nor Kirk responded to our requests for clarification or documentation. The White House did send a somewhat related report to Congress a month before these claims emerged online. The White House Office’s Annual Report to Congress on White House Personnel lists the names, titles and salaries of White House employees, and the 2018 report, published on 29 June, made no mention of President Trump’s salary, nor his donations from that salary. Furthermore, we did not find the quotation that Simone included in his tweet in any official White House document or report to Congress. We did, however, find it in several online postings from the summer of 2017. As posted to the web site MyCrazyEmail.net on 25 July 2017, the message typically read as follows: The Trump administration released their annual report to Congress on White House Office Personnel. It includes the name, status, salary and position title of all 377 White House employees. The report also said that Trump decided not to take a dime of his salary, instead he donated it to an amazing cause. … It’s what the report said Trump did with this salary that has everyone talking! Instead of taking his salary, Trump donated all $400,000 to the Department of the Interior where it will be used for construction and repair needs at military cemeteries! AMAZING! It’s so great to have a President who loves our brave military men and women so much! Oh, and where’s the media coverage of this? Oh that’s right, they don’t cover anything good that the President does. So the claim that Trump donated his entire $400,000 annual salary for rebuilding military cemeteries actually comes from online rumors posted in 2017. This means the vast majority of claims made in July and August 2018 are false on this basis alone, since they stated that Trump’s donation had happened “today.” However, the claim was as false in 2017 as it was in 2018. As we outlined at the beginning of this article, President Trump distributed his 2017 salary in four separate chunks, to four separate projects, none of which involved military cemeteries. The White House had already announced two of those donations by 26 July 2017, so the viral rumor was demonstrably false even as it first emerged online, twelve months before Mark Simone and Charlie Kirk’s viral tweets. The 2017 rumor, which was the source of Simone’s tweet, claimed that the 2017 White House Office Personnel report had described President Trump’s intention to donate his whole salary for repairs on military cemeteries. That official report, which can be viewed here, did not mention the president’s salary, his donations from that salary, nor cemeteries of any kind. The original source of this flurry of inaccurate rumors appears to have been a 2 July 2017 article in Forbes magazine, about that year’s White House Office Personnel report. The rumor which spread online later that summer plagiarized whole sections of the article, indicating that the Forbes piece provided a template for subsequent distortions and falsehoods — particularly the section that read as follows: While on the campaign trail, Donald Trump vowed to forego his paycheck. However, Article II of the United States Constitution mandates a presidential salary. In the first quarter, President Trump donated his pay to the Dept. of Interior for construction and repair needs at military cemeteries. The president did donate his first-quarter 2017 salary to the Department of the Interior, but not for the reconstruction of military cemeteries. This inaccuracy was then compounded in the subsequent online rumor, which took Forbes’ accurate description of the donation as being “in the first quarter,” and simply replaced it with “all $400,000” (i.e., the entire yearly salary). According to a Department of the Interior press release, President Trump’s $78,333 donation formed part of a larger $263,545 fund which was used by the National Park Service to make repairs at Antietam National Battlefield in Maryland, site of the Civil War Battle of Antietam (or the Battle of Sharpsburg, as it was commonly known in the South). A press release described the project in detail: The donation will restore the historic Newcomer House on the Antietam battlefield, and will underwrite the replacement of 5,000 linear feet of deteriorated rail fencing along the Hagerstown Turnpike where some of the most intense fighting of the battle occurred. There is a cemetery at Antietam National Battlefield, but President Trump’s donation had nothing to do with it. Conclusion The claim that President Donald Trump decided either in 2017 or 2018 to donate his entire $400,000 salary to the reconstruction of military cemeteries, and that a blinkered, biased news media refused to report this, is false. Each of President Trump’s actual salary donations (executed in quarterly disbursements, not once a year) has been reported by major news media, including some of the nation’s biggest and most widely-read news outlets.
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15764
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"Say Michelle Obama ""mandates"" weighing children in day care."
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"Bloggers say Michelle Obama ""mandates"" weighing children in day care. A law she supported -- that was passed by unanimous consent in the Senate -- has set in motion a proposed study of how children in day care are eating, and part of the monitoring would include periodically weighing the participating students. However, the headlines of most of the posts on social media painted this as a sweeping, new requirement for all children in day care. That’s not true -- the study aims to track 3,000 children, or about one ten-thousandth of all children in day care."
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false
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National, Children, Corrections and Updates, Food Safety, Government Regulation, Public Health, Bloggers,
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"First Lady Michelle Obama’s initiative on healthy eating and physical activity may have been intended to be noncontroversial, but it hasn’t turned out that way. She has faced pushback from critics who assail her call for healthier school lunches as forcing kids to eat unappetizing meals and who say she’s second-guessing parents who know what’s best for their kids better than the government does. Now, a new front against her has opened in the conservative blogosphere: Michelle Obama, critics say, is requiring day care centers to track their children’s weight. A reader tipped us off to this social media phenomenon, which has been driven by such headlines as ""Michelle Obama Sending Government Monitors To Weigh Children In Daycare"" (downtrend.com), ""Government plans to weigh and measure your child in daycare,"" (American Thinker), ""Michelle O Mandates Weighing Children in Daycare,"" (InfoWars), and ""Michelle Obama Now Mandating Daycare Centers Weigh Kids"" (Western Journalism Center). So is Michelle Obama really mandating the weighing of children in day care? No, this rumor is wildly overblown. Here’s how it came about. In 2010, President Barack Obama signed the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act. Michelle Obama was a high-profile supporter of the measure -- she joined her husband in speaking at the bill-signing ceremony -- after it passed the Senate by unanimous consent and the House by a fairly (but not perfectly) party-line vote. The law included a provision (section 223) for a Study on Nutrition and Wellness Quality in Childcare Settings, or SNAQCS. The study was designed to look at four topics: the nutritional quality of foods offered, the amount of physical activity, the amount of sedentary activity and the ways that child care centers and family day care homes can improve their performance on these metrics. On March 23, 2015, the U.S. Department of Agriculture released details on the proposed study, along with a request for public comments. ""Good nutrition is a key to proper childhood development, but not enough is known about the food children are eating in child care and related programs,"" the document reads. Among other things, the study would involve a child food diary to be completed by parents, a standing height and weight form to be collected by study staff, an infant food intake form and a parent interview. If this were a mandatory requirement for all day care centers -- as the blogosphere trumpeted -- that would be pretty intrusive. But it’s not -- it’s a study of a limited number of day care centers and students. The USDA document says it will involve an estimated 3,000 children, 3,753 staff members at child care centers, family day care homes and after-school childcare providers, and 4,175 parents. That’s a tiny fraction of the more than 30 million children in some form of day care -- about one ten-thousandth, to be exact. The Agriculture Department told PolitiFact that the only mandatory aspect of the program is that all facilities receiving federal funding from the Child and Adult Care Food Program will have to fill out a form. Day care centers that don’t participate in that program may be asked on a voluntary basis if they would like to take part as a control group. Moreover, only a small sampling of children at the federally supported centers would ever be weighed, and parents would be allowed to opt their children out of the weighing part if they wish. The headline of the article that sparked the flurry of social media commentary -- published by the Washington Free Beacon, a conservative website -- was more measured than the later iterations. The Free Beacon piece was titled, ""Feds to Weigh Children in Daycare: USDA collecting data for study mandated by Michelle Obama’s healthy eating law."" The Free Beacon mentioned the fact that the study was limited to 3,000 children high up in the story and quotes at length from the USDA’s explanation of the purpose of the study. Some of the subsequent articles that appeared on the Internet also mentioned the size of the study and the department’s justification for undertaking it, but the headlines glossed over these nuances. (Email inquiries to several of the publications in question were not returned.) ""I'm not responsible for how the blogosphere picks up my stories,"" Elizabeth Harrington, the Beacon reporter who wrote the story, told PolitiFact. ""Though other sites may have gone farther, the mandate in the Healthy Hunger-Free Kids Act, which the First Lady was largely responsible for, is still clear. And that's what I reported on."" Our ruling Bloggers say Michelle Obama ""mandates"" weighing children in day care. A law she supported -- that was passed by unanimous consent in the Senate -- has set in motion a proposed study of how children in day care are eating, and part of the monitoring would include periodically weighing the participating students. However, the headlines of most of the posts on social media painted this as a sweeping, new requirement for all children in day care. That’s not true -- the study aims to track 3,000 children, or about one ten-thousandth of all children in day care. CORRECTION, Mar. 27, 2015: This version corrects a mathematical error in the initial posting of this story. Three thousand children is one ten-thousandth of the 30 million children in day care nationally, not one ten-thousandth of 1 percent."
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9876
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Ginkgo Won’t Slow Decline of Aging Brain
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In a story that describes another study raising doubts about this product’s value, there was as much attention given to the remaining true believers as there was to the skeptical evidence. Many people (estimates of ~$100 million in annual US sales) buy this stuff. Evaluating the evidence about it is not only a health issue but a consumer protection issue.
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mixture
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"There was no mention of how much ginkgo biloba products cost. Even an NBC story, with limited broadcast time, mentioned that Americans spend more than $100 million on a year on these products. A USA Today story said US sales were $99 million in 2008. But what does it cost the individual? The story stated that the researchers found no evidence that ginkgo delayed or prevented cognitive declines. The story stated that the study found that ginkgo was safe and no serious side effects were noted. But it could have noted that the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine states that ""Side effects of ginkgo may include headache, nausea, gastrointestinal upset, diarrhea, dizziness, or allergic skin reactions. More severe allergic reactions have occasionally been reported."" The story did an adequate job explaining the study. But it allowed the American Botanical Council exec to complain about limitations in the study without having the authors or anyone else specifically address those claims point by point. This introduced an imbalance that readers may have found very confusing. There was no exaggeration of the problem of cognitive decline. Yes, the story sought out different perspectives. But oddly, despite the mounting negative evidence, it afforded more space (265 words) to those defending ginkgo biloba than it did to those discussing the evidence raising huge questions about its value (249 words). He said/she said science journalism doesn’t serve anyone well. In a story based on a study that pokes holes in some peoples’ beliefs about a product to prevent cognitive decline, there could have been at least one line about other research into cognitive decline. It’s clear from the story that ginkgo biloba is used widely. The novelty of these products is not in question. Quotes from two of the sources – both defending ginkgo bliloba – were apparently taken from news releases. With the evidence stacking up against this product, why depend on canned responses to continue to breathe life into these product claims?"
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30953
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"Celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay directed his entire staff to ""take a knee"" and refuse service to Miami Dolphins players over national anthem protests against police brutality."
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Given the popularity of Gordon Ramsay and topical widespread debate over NFL “take a knee” protests, the story would have certainly made headlines were there any truth to it. But it was not reported by any credible news outlets and, like everything else on Last Line of Defense, the story is fictional.
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false
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Junk News, gordon ramsay, last line of defense, miami dolphins
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Fake news site TheLastLineofDefense.org claimed on 1 October 2017 that celebrity chef and star of Kitchen Nightmares Gordon Ramsay aimed his notoriously biting rhetoric — typically reserved for fumbling new chefs — at Miami Dolphins players who had hoped to dine at one of his restaurants: Gordon Ramsay Has His Entire Staff Take A Knee-Refuses To Serve Miami Dolphins Players Four Miami Dolphins showed up at Gordon Ramsay’s Soho Social Gastropub for a bite to eat after their horrible performance and disrespect for our flag and our country. Linebackers Malcolm Warner and Clyde Vargus along with right guard Jefferson Michaels and left tackle Mutombo Toki Del Fuego were seated at a corner booth. Ramsay walked over and introduced himself, telling them that he had followed all of the drama on TV, and invited them to join him at the pass for “something special.” LLOD correspondent Cynthia Luwhoe, who was enjoying a French Dip at the time, reported in on what happened next: “Ramsay had the entire staff gather at the pass and instructed them to take a knee. ‘You are four of the most disrespectfrul young men I’ve ever met, said Ramsay, ‘my staff is better than that; better than you. You won’rt be getting service here tonight. F*ck off with the lot of you.’” The item caused a stir on social media due to a raging debate over professional football players “taking a knee” during the national anthem to protest police brutality and Ramsay’s well-known sharp tongue. Moreover, it appeared on the same day several Miami Dolphins players “took a knee” before facing off against the New Orleans Saints in London, England: Three Dolphins took a knee this morning: Julius Thomas, Michael Thomas & Kenny Stills. pic.twitter.com/Tr5z95yGjQ — Darren Rovell (@darrenrovell) October 1, 2017 However, Last Line of Defense is fake news site whose disclaimer states: DISCLAIMER: America’s Last Line of Defense is a satirical publication that uses the imagination of liberals to expose the extreme bigotry and hate and subsequent blind gullibility that festers in right-wing nutjobs. We present fiction as fact and our sources don’t actually exist. Names that represent actual people and places are purely coincidental and all images should be considered altered and do not in any way depict reality.
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37951
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A photograph shows a mysterious patch or implant on the side of U.S. President Donald Trump's head during the September 2020 presidential debate.
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A September 29 2020 debate night tweet featured an image from March 2016 or earlier, and did not show Trump’s hair during or before the debate — nor at any time in 2020. The image began circulating in March 2016 (or earlier), and was initially speculated to be a briefly visible hair extension track, then a shunt. In 2020, the image was falsely labeled as new in March and then again in September; while we don’t know what the photograph might show and do not wish to speculate, we can say with authority that it is not new as of 2020.
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false
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Disinformation, Fact Checks
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On September 29 2020, during the first round of presidential debates ahead of the November 3 2020 U.S. election, a popular tweet purportedly showed a patch or implant on President Donald Trump’s head:First presidential debate question from Chris Wallace to Donald Trump: What is that thing on your head? pic.twitter.com/j6cFGBK3NK— JRehling (@JRehling) September 29, 2020Source for the Image, Earliest Variations: ‘Ya Track Out Ma’Although it was sent on the same night as the debate, the tweet was timestamped at 7:07 PM Eastern time, before the debate began — and it did not show Trump’s head before or during the September 29 2020 debate. Neither was the image recent in September 2020; a reverse image search indicated that it was first crawled in March 2016 — before Trump won the 2016 Republican primary:Most of the initially crawled pages from March 2016 led to Tumblr pages, not posts, making it difficult to locate those early images. However, every initial iteration appears to have been shared to Tumblr by user justsza:The initial post referenced tape-in hair extensions:ya track out maA “track” is part of tape or sew-in hair extensions, and hair is typically styled to obscure or conceal “tracks.” In a 2020 People item, actor Zendaya explained the various methods for attaching hair to people’s heads, and what a “track” was in that context:Extensions “These are clips, they are a form of extension that you clip into your hair,” she says, holding up a weft of hair with a clip attached to it. She then holds up a similar piece without a clip, saying, “This is a track. Tracks can be made into clips, they can be taped into hair, or they can be sewn into hair.”Weaves “A weave is when you braid your hair up, you have a net over it and you weave the hair — the tracks — into the net that is sewn onto your head,” she says. “You can have it up to a month and some change depending on how your hair grows and how you take care of it. You must get it re-done, it can’t stay on forever, that is disgusting.”By saying “ya track out,” justsza was speculating that then-candidate Trump’s purported hair extensions were inadvertently visible in the close up image. Although it was entirely possible the image showed a portion of Trump’s hair where an extension track was styled in, tracks were typically narrower, longer in length, and not as thick or large (particularly on fine hair or short hairstyles):Wefts and tracks are also normally placed in such a way that they’re concealed by the direction in which hair falls. When tracks are placed in short or fine hair, placement toward the top of the crown is less likely.In 2016, now-defunct site Gawker did an “investigation” into whether Trump was wearing hair extensions at the time. That piece included screenshots like the one above, which were also blurry and inconclusive:Other 2020 Versions of the ImageThe image in the 2020 tweet also appeared in the comments of a Reddit thread in May 2016. Regardless of its explanation, it was neither from the September 2020 debate nor 2020 at all. In March 2020, a separate Twitter account shared the image as part of a set, claiming something was “exposed” on Trump’s head during a Fox News appearance:🤔Something was exposed on Trump’s head last night on Fox.Theories:Hearing aid/bone/cochlear implant?Hair/wig/extension tape?Facelift pull-back tape?Neuro-stimulator patch?TENS patch?Transdermal drug patch?Electrode?Invis-a-fence sensor?What do you think it is?🤷♀️ pic.twitter.com/c3rFbEGD7H— Clear Cider (@TheClearCider) March 6, 2020Again, the close up image in the bottom left corner was the one circulating in March 2016; it was not from any appearance in 2020. On March 9 2020, three days after the above tweet appeared, the image was one of several shared to a Facebook page:A status update that appeared with the photos speculated that the patch or “track” in the image of Trump’s hair was a “shunt”:These photos are all over TwitterWHAT IS THIS?“It appears that Trump has a shunt sticking out of his head and it’s new enough that his ear is still swollen.Dementia patients use these for hydrocephalus. * A side effect is incontinence. * Photos from his tour of the CDC in Atlanta and a Tennessee disaster meeting. *Certainly would explain the mystery visits to Walter Reed.”A popular tweet from March 5 2020 featured the same speculation:There is a serious problem here…. Stitches? Shunt for an experimental drug? When you have what he has, you’ll try anything. @pesachlattin @SamSanderson123 pic.twitter.com/AAz0AWugFI— Tom Joseph (@TomJChicago) March 6, 2020As did a March 6 2020 Reddit post:Tonight’s Fox News Town Hall: WTF is with Trump’s head? Is that a patch where the apply electroshock treatments? Is the human mask peeling away from the Reptoid skull? Why isn’t No Agenda analyzing this? from thedavidpakmanshowOnce again, the image was falsely labeled as a photo from 2020, although by then this point, the image had been circulating for four years. A March 9 2020 tweet contrasted the image with a photograph of a shunt, and suggested that a wrinkle next to Trump’s ear was part of the apparatus:Why's this not been picked up by the media??! Trump has a shunt, most likely for hydrocephalus!! pic.twitter.com/yEmgCJtgJZ— 44thGenerationRoman🗣️ (@acrobay) March 9, 2020We were unable to locate any credible information suggesting the object in Trump’s hair was a “shunt” of any sort, only ongoing and baseless social media speculation about the long-circulating photograph and possible explanations.Moreover, all information we located [PDF] indicated that when a shunt is used, no portion of the device is visible outside the body:… as the entire shunt is implanted either within the skull or under the skin, no components of the shunt are visible outside of the body. Recovery from a VP shunt placement takes about one to two days.Therefore, any such device would not likely be visible.TL;DRA September 29 2020 debate night tweet featured an image from March 2016 or earlier, and did not show Trump’s hair during or before the debate — nor at any time in 2020. The image began circulating in March 2016 (or earlier), and was initially speculated to be a briefly visible hair extension track, then a shunt. In 2020, the image was falsely labeled as new in March and then again in September; while we don’t know what the photograph might show and do not wish to speculate, we can say with authority that it is not new as of 2020.Comments
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9993
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Antibiotic shows lasting effects against diarrhea-focused irritable bowel syndrome
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"The 457 word story presents a glowing appraisal of a study reported in an abstract at a scientific meeting. The study has not been subjected to peer review and the abstract provided is, by its very nature, incomplete in many of the study details necessary to draw any definitive conclusions. Despite these limitations, the headline suggests the antibiotic has been demonstrated to be effective and its effects are ""lasting."" The information on the disease, the approach used, the study results and the interpretation is provided by the senior author of the study. The study results are not accurately depicted and no statistics are provided to support the notion that the drug reduced symptoms as compared to placebo. The story correctly notes the linkages between the study, the senior investigator and the manufacturer of the drug. Unfortunately, many patients with Irritable Bowel Syndrome are severely impacted by the symptoms and do not find adequate relief or long term relief from available treatments. As a result, many resort to off label use of available drugs to combat the disorder. The primary investigator of the study has written a book entitled, ""A New IBS Solution"" in which he promotes among other treatments the use of rifaximin, a use that has yet to be approved by the FDA. New treatments for this common, sometimes debilitating disorder would be most welcome. Despite suggestions of an association between IBS symptoms and bacterial overgrowth in the small intestines, the role of antibiotics has not been clearly established. While the new data are encouraging, especially for those with severe symptoms, the article is overly optimistic considering that the study was presented at a conference."
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false
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"Costs of this drug are not discussed – an interesting oversight since the drug is commercially available and the costs are known. This criterion shines a light on a significant flaw, and it’s a great example of why we ask this question. The story’s first sentence tell us that new research demonstrates that ""rifamixin can provide long-last relief for patients with IBS […]."" Based on that sentence, guess how many subjects in the study experienced relief? No seriously, guess. According to the abstract, about 40% of those who received the drug experienced relief. In comparison, about 30% of those who were given a placebo experienced relief. The placebo effect has a significant role in the treatment of IBS. Without quantifying results, comparing them to the outcomes in the comparison group, and giving us the statistical significance, you can make any treatment seem like a superhero if you want to. The research itself may prove significant and beneficial to the world of medicine, but you would not have known from this article that the drug didn’t work for most people. Note that the data we quote above refer to the key measurement of the study (its primary endpoint): the number of people who experienced relief for at least 2 weeks during the first month following the course of treatment. Results for more sustained relief, cited qualitatively in the story with the line ""effects lasted at least 10 weeks,"" are not presented in the abstract, so we don’t know how many subjects taking the drug actually experienced sustained relief, and how that compares to the result for the placebo group. This point underscores why results from conference presentations should be wrapped in some caution. Without a full publication, we and the medical community at large don’t have a full set of data to check. We also find fault with the vague quote that ""this is the first drug you take for two weeks and stay better after that."" Perhaps the lead investigator’s quote has been taken out of context. The study took place over 3 months (and, again, not even the abstract provides data after week 6). Since IBS is generally a lifelong disease with no known cure, this unbounded statement could be read by those with IBS as implying that a cure has been found. No specific harms or rates of harms are mentioned, only that the treatment approach was designed to achieve the maximum benefit with minimal side effects. The abstract itself states that in this study the safety profile of the group receiving rifaximin was similar to that receiving placebo. In addition, we think it’s a little strong to claim that rifaximin ""is unable to pass through the walls of the intestine and thus has no effects on the rest of the body."" The drug is indeed minimally absorbed, and only a limited amount reaches the rest of the body, but there is some systemic exposure. The story describes a few key points about the research: the large number of subjects, the use of a placebo control, and the fact that it was conducted as part of the process of obtaining FDA approval for the drug company to market the drug for IBS. Of note, the story also points out that the results were presented at a conference, and that this evidence applies to the specific form of IBS that is not characterized by constipation. (The research abstract itself calls it ""non-constipated IBS."") However, one big omission prevents us from giving a satisfactory rating: the story fails to mention that data presented at conferences is preliminary. While the studies themselves were Phase 3, a fairly advanced phase of human research, the investigators’ report of that research hasn’t gone through the peer review that happens when you try to publish a study. It’s the difference between reading a draft bulletin and a complete, final report that has been vetted and blessed by independent experts who were not affiliated with the researchers, their research, or the drug maker. The preliminary information in the presentation and the abstract from the conference don’t allow us to fully evaluate the methods and results. On a lesser note, while the story refers to a singular clinical trial, in fact the results discussed are pooled from two separate trials (TARGET 1 and TARGET 2). No overt disease-mongering. The story strikes out on this criterion for failing to consult a single independent source. As a result, although it doesn’t appear that the author copied and pasted the news release, would it read any differently if he had? The lack of independent analysis permeates the tone of the entire story. The article does identify several conflicts of interest, including financial ties to the drug manufacturer. We give it points for that observation. But without independent eyes on the investigator’s claims, we’re unsure if they reflect the general world of medical research or current practice. There is some good historical background on his past work in the article. (And note that Dr. Pimentel and colleagues have for years championed this line of thinking, and he published a 2005 book for patients, A New IBS Solution, discussing bacterial overgrowth and the benefits of rifaximin for this type of IBS.) But the article gives us no sense of the current evidence, only his opinion. Despite his claim that his work is no longer controversial, we don’t know if how mainstream or not his ideas are, or how often overgrowth is responsible for cases of IBS. Our reading of the literature reveals that the situation is not as uncontroversial as it seems. Independent sources would have placed the claims in context. The article states that ""Most treatments are aimed at the symptoms and have little effect on the course of the disease."" The comparison is vague and the message unclear, because that sentence as written tells us that some other drugs do affect the course of the disease, and more than a little. Later comes the quote that ""this is the first drug you take for two weeks and stay better after that."" We’re unsure which result was unique. Is it that rifaximin is the first drug to provide lasting relief? Or is it that other drugs provide relief but only after longer courses of therapy? Regardless, the comparative significance of the new approach would have meant a lot more had it been corroborated by someone who doesn’t have financial ties to the drug-maker. Among the missing detail, it may have beem nice to include a discussion of the limits of current treatments for IBS and the nonpharmacologic approaches. The author explains that the drug is currently available and approved for other uses. We learn the history, rationale, and current regulatory status of the treatment approach. The story does not appear to rely solely on the news release."
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21936
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Taxpayers pay for roughly 45 percent of all births in Wisconsin! And 60 percent of the births in Milwaukee!!!
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Wisconsin GOP Rep. Michelle Litjens says taxpayers pay for 45 percent of births in state, 60 percent in Milwaukee
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true
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Health Care, Medicaid, Wisconsin, Michelle Litjens,
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"Some of the biggest bashers of government entitlement programs are tea party folks, many of whom are newly elected officials. Among them is Wisconsin state Rep. Michelle Litjens, R-Oshkosh. While campaigning ahead of the November 2010 elections, she organized the tea party rally where another Oshkosh Republican, Ron Johnson, gave his first political speech. Johnson went on to defeat Democrat Russ Feingold for the U.S. Senate. Like Johnson, during her campaign, Litjens railed against government spending and taxes as being too high. And on June 2, 2011, Litjens, a 38-year-old married mother of two, let loose on the Internet with this anti-entitlement tweet: ""Unreal! Taxpayers pay for roughly 45 percent of all births in Wisconsin! And 60 percent of the births in Milwaukee!!! No wonder we’re broke."" A misinformed right-wing rant? Or evidence of the pervasiveness of public assistance, which many conservatives blame for high taxes and government deficits? We wanted to know. We’ll go to the Truth-O-Meter only for the statistical claims in Litjens' statement. But to add perspective, we’ll also address her ""we’re broke"" comment. When we asked Litjens’ legislative aide for evidence to back her statement, he provided Wisconsin birth statistics from the state Department of Health Services for 2008. We confirmed that they are the most recent available in terms of taxpayer funding. The figures show that 71,977 babies were born in Wisconsin in 2008 -- and that Medicaid, the state-federal program that pays medical bills for low-income individuals and families, paid for the care provided in 32,792 of the births. That’s 45.6 percent, which confirms Litjens’ first claim. The 45.6 percent figure -- it was 44 percent in ‘07, 43 percent in ‘06 and 42 percent in ‘05 -- put Wisconsin on the higher end of Medicaid-financed births nationally in 2008. That’s according to data from the Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonpartisan group that studies health care policy. The rate ranged from 8 percent in New Jersey to 70 percent in Louisiana, although figures were not available for 15 states. As for Litjens’ second claim, that taxpayers paid for 60 percent of the births in Milwaukee, she didn’t specify whether she meant Milwaukee County or the City of Milwaukee. But either way, her claim is accurate. State figures show there were 15,353 births in the county in 2008, and that Medicaid paid for the care of 9,170 of them, or 59.7 percent. In the city, Medicaid paid for 72.5 percent of the 11,311 births. Here’s a little more on the state statistics for 2008 births: Over 85 percent of the 130 births in Menominee County were paid for by Medicaid, the highest percentage in Wisconsin. In Ozaukee County, Medicaid paid for 19 percent of the 822 births, the lowest rate. In Litjens’ home county, Winnebago, Medicaid paid for nearly 39 percent of the 1,955 births. Medicaid, by the way, pays for more than just labor and delivery. It also finances prenatal visits and postpartum care. We asked Jon Peacock, research director of the Wisconsin Council on Children and Families, a Madison-based advocacy organization, about Litjens’ statement. He didn’t disagree with the statistics, but took issue with her suggestion that Medicaid-financed births are one reason ""we’re broke."" Peacock said prenatal care provided through Medicaid saves tax dollars by reducing the number of low-birth-weight babies. He cited a November 2010 state health department report about births in five Wisconsin counties in 2005. The average Medicaid hospital charges for a low-birth-weigh baby during the first year of life was $164,257, compared with $3,514 for a normal-birth-weight birth. Peacock also said that the elderly and people with disabilities account for at least 70 percent of Medicaid expenditures, far more than babies. But critics of entitlement programs can also cite statistics about the size of the government safety net. An October 2010 Milwaukee Journal Sentinel story, which reported that Medicaid paid for 45 percent of all baby deliveries in Wisconsin in 2008, also reported that at that time: More than 1.1 million people in Wisconsin depended on Medicaid health programs. Medicaid provided health care for one in five Wisconsin residents. Medicaid health programs had expanded faster in Wisconsin over the previous nine years than in any state except Arizona. But let’s return to what brought us here. GOP state Rep. Michelle Litjens claimed that taxpayers paid for roughly 45 percent of all births in Wisconsin, including 60 percent of the births in Milwaukee. Her staff said she was referring to state figures for 2008, which we confirmed are the most recent available in terms of how many of the births were financed by Medicaid. State statistics confirm both of Litjens’ claims."
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14262
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In 2009 … Hillary Clinton was at the State Department working with U.S. corporations to pressure Haiti not to raise the minimum wage to 61 cents an hour from 24 cents.
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"Camp said, ""In 2009 ... Hillary Clinton was at the State Dept working with U.S. corporations to pressure Haiti not to raise the minimum wage to 61 cents an hour from 24 cents."" Leaked cables show that the U.S. Embassy in Haiti opposed the minimum wage hike that the Haitian parliament passed in 2009, and discussed the issue with business groups. However, the cables do not contain conclusive evidence that the State Department actively pressured Haiti to block the increase nor do they prove that Clinton personally played a role."
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mixture
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Global News Service, Labor, Foreign Policy, Workers, Lee Camp,
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"Hillary Clinton colluded with big business to maintain slave wages for workers in one of the world’s poorest countries, according to the host of an RT American comedy news show. Comedian and activist Lee Camp of RT’s Redacted Tonight mocked Clinton’s efforts to ""keep 37 cents per hour out of the hands of destitute Haitians."" ""In 2009, while Bill Clinton was setting up one of the family’s shell companies in New York, in that same year Hillary Clinton was at the State Department working with U.S. corporations to pressure Haiti not to raise the minimum wage to 61 cents an hour from 24 cents,"" Camp said April 17. ""Seriously."" Seriously? Sort of. Memos from 2008 and 2009 obtained by Wikileaks strongly suggest, but don’t prove without a doubt, that the State Department helped block the proposed minimum wage increase. The memos show that U.S. Embassy officials in Haiti clearly opposed the wage hike and met multiple times with factory owners who directly lobbied against it to the Haitian president. The Clinton campaign refuted the claim, and the State Department didn't comment. HOPE, not change In 2011, Wikileaks made nearly 2,000 cables available to the progressive magazine, The Nation, and Haiti Liberté, a weekly newspaper in Port-au-Prince. The two media outlets assessed the cables and found, among many other revelations, that the ""U.S. Embassy in Haiti worked closely with factory owners contracted by Levi’s, Hanes, and Fruit of the Loom to aggressively block a paltry minimum wage increase"" for workers in apparel factories. The Wikileaks cables show U.S. Embassy officials began monitoring the minimum wage issue as early as 2008, when the Haitian Parliament began discussing doubling or tripling the daily minimum wage of 70 Haitian gourdes to keep up with inflation. That’s roughly equal to $1.75 a day, or about 22 cents per hour. (Some context here: Three quarters of Haitians live on less than $2 a day, according to the United Nations’ World Food Program, while garments constitute about 90 percent of Haiti’s exports, according to the Guardian. Haiti increased the daily minimum wage to the equivalent of $5.11 in 2014.) But back in 2008 and 2009, embassy officials repeatedly told Washington that a hike would hurt the economy and undermine U.S. trade preference legislation known as HOPE. The program, shorthand for the Haitian Hemispheric Opportunity through Partnership Encouragement Act of 2006, gives garments manufactured on the island duty free access to U.S. markets. Levi Strauss, Haneswear, Nautica, and Dockers are just some of the American companies that benefit from HOPE. Congress passed HOPE II in 2008, extending the program for another 10 years. In January 2008, Ambassador Janet Sanderson wrote that representatives of the business community — including the man tasked with implementing HOPE — had met with embassy officials and criticized Haitian President René Préval’s efforts to raise the minimum wage as the wrong medicine for the ailing economy. An unsigned embassy cable sent to Washington in December 2008 echoed the private sector’s assessment and reported that increasing the minimum wage would ""have significant impact"" on business. The State Department continued to promote HOPE as an economic boon for the island. In memos prepping U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice and Clinton for their visits to Haiti, chargé d'affaires Thomas Tighe told the diplomats to ""urge"" the Haitian government take advantage of HOPE and HOPE II. After advising a congressional delegation to Haiti almost exactly the same thing, Sanderson told Washington that Haitian Prime Minister Michele Pierre-Louis was onboard with HOPE, ""although pending legislation to nearly triple the minimum wage would likely set back those efforts in the short term."" Deputy Chief of Mission David Lindwall put it most bluntly, when he said the minimum wage law ""did not take economic reality into account but that appealed to the unemployed and underpaid masses."" Préval as proxy Nonetheless, the Haitian Parliament voted to triple the daily minimum wage to 200 gourdes ($5 a day, or about 62 cents per hour) in May 2009. As the bill awaited President Préval’s signature, students protested over the delay while factory owners criticized the legislation. The U.S. Embassy, meanwhile, continued to lament the hike and raised concerns about the stability of the region that they hoped Préval would help address, according to the cables. Préval, as they say, leaned in. Sanderson, in a June 10 memo, cited a study by the Haitian Association of Industry (ADIH) stating that the new minimum wage ""would result in the loss of 10,000 workers in the sector"" and noted that ADIH has met with Préval three times. ""A more visible and active engagement by Préval may be critical to resolving the issue of the minimum wage and its protest ‘spin-off' — or risk the political environment spiraling out of control,"" she wrote. A few days later, Préval seemed to be on board with the embassy and industry position on the minimum wage issue. On June 17, Tighe told Washington that industry and USAID studies found that a 200 gourdes minimum wage ""would make the sector economically unviable and consequently force factories to shut down."" He also noted that ADIH members and HOPE factory owners told U.S. officials that in lieu of greenlighting the legislation as is, Préval would instead propose a lower, phased-in minimum wage for the textiles sector (100 gourdes in 2009, 125 gourdes in 2010, and 150 gourdes in 2011). Protesters continued to call for Préval to sign the original bill, with some demonstrations escalating into violence, as parliament considered the president’s amendments. In a June 24 cable to a congressional delegation, Tighe said the demonstrations added uncertainty to the political and security situation in Haiti and ""job creation under HOPE II may be threatened by a bill Parliament passed May 5 to nearly triple the minimum wage."" When the delegation met with Préval the next day, the president parroted this line and encouraged the congressmen ""to write to Haitian members of Parliament to express concern about the devastating impact a sector-wide increase in wages would have on job security and job creation,"" according to a memo from Tighe. By July, Préval was a formal and vocal opponent of the 200 gourds wage, warning of the consequences for jobs and emphasizing the importance of the assembly sector for exports, according to cables. ""This is the only issue in recent memory where the president has made a strong effort, by negotiating with stakeholders and using the media, to effect a legislative outcome,"" Tighe said. In the fall of 2009, Préval and Parliament agreed to enact the $5 daily wage for all sectors except textiles, which got a $3 wage. But was the State Department right in opposing the increase? ""I have no idea what would happen if Haiti did have a $5-a-day minimum wage,"" Adam Davidson of NPR’s Planet Money said in 2011. ""But I do think it's reasonable to assume that some factories would close and far fewer new ones would be built. Far fewer Haitians would be allowed to take that first tentative step on to the ladder of industrial development."" Our ruling Camp said, ""In 2009 ... Hillary Clinton was at the State Dept working with U.S. corporations to pressure Haiti not to raise the minimum wage to 61 cents an hour from 24 cents."" Leaked cables show that the U.S. Embassy in Haiti opposed the minimum wage hike that the Haitian parliament passed in 2009, and discussed the issue with business groups. However, the cables do not contain conclusive evidence that the State Department actively pressured Haiti to block the increase nor do they prove that Clinton personally played a role. Update, April 21, 2016: After we published this fact-check, the State Department told us it had no public, official position in the Haitian minimum wage debate. ""The U.S. Department of State did not officially oppose or support the three-step proposed minimum wage increases in Haiti – in 2009, 2010, and 2012 – as this was an internal matter,"" a spokesperson said. The State Department’s public stance does not alter the content of the memos, however. They show that U.S. Embassy officials in Haiti clearly opposed the wage increase."
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15692
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"Hillary Clinton Says ""all my grandparents"" immigrated to America."
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"Talking about immigration in Iowa, Clinton said, ""All my grandparents, you know, came over here."" It’s very clear from the evidence that not all of Hillary Clinton’s grandparents were immigrants. In fact, only one was. It’s possible she misspoke, but it doesn’t make her comment more accurate."
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false
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Immigration, National, Candidate Biography, Hillary Clinton,
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"Hillary Clinton this week became the latest example of a politician flubbing her family’s ancestry while making the case for her presidency. Clinton was speaking at a business roundtable inside an Iowa produce store when she related her personal family heritage to the struggles of undocumented immigrants trying to work in the United States. ""I think if we were to just go around this room, there are a lot of immigrant stories,"" Clinton said, according to a video of the event. ""All my grandparents, you know, came over here, and you know my grandfather went to work in a lace mill in Scranton, Pa., and worked there until he retired at 65. He started there when he was a teenager and just kept going. So I sit here and I think well you’re talking about the second, third generation. That’s me, that’s you."" BuzzFeed’s Andrew Kaczynski quickly pointed out that Clinton was wrong, primarily using census and military records from Ancestry.com. An unidentified Clinton spokesman admitted the error in a statement to BuzzFeed, saying Clinton’s ""grandparents always spoke about the immigrant experience and, as a result she has always thought of them as immigrants."" While it’s clear Clinton is incorrect, and why her claim rates on the Truth-O-Meter, we wanted to provide as much context as possible to this claim. Megan Smolenyak, a ""genealogical adventurer and storyteller"" who recently examined Clinton’s Welsh roots, can see where the campaign is coming from. Seven of Clinton’s eight great-grandparents were born overseas into working-class families. Clinton’s paternal grandfather, Hugh Rodham Sr., was born in England, but her three other grandparents were born in the United States. Hugh Rodham’s wife, Hanna (also Hannah) Jones Rodham, was born in Scranton, Pa., to Welsh parents a couple years after they emigrated. Census, civil and military records show Clinton’s maternal grandparents, Della and Edwin Howell, were born in Illinois. (Della’s mother was the one great-grandparent born in the United States.) Even though three of Clinton’s grandparents were born in the United States, Smolenyak said they probably strongly identified with their immigrant parents and older siblings, and she considers Clinton’s ancestors more ""off the boat"" than most politicians. Clinton is not the first person, famous or not, to potentially confuse family lore with the cold facts of her roots. Her misfire follows the misinterpreted family trees of U.S. Sens. Marco Rubio, who wrongly said his parents were Cuban exiles, and Elizabeth Warren, who claimed American Indian heritage while working as a Harvard professor. ""We hold politicians to higher standards for accuracy in their family histories than we do genealogists and historians,"" Smolenyak said. ""Your Great Aunt Tilly tells you something, and you believe it."" Finding Hanna Jones Again, it is clear Clinton was wrong when she said ""all my grandparents"" immigrated to America. But Smolenyak recently upended the real story about one-quarter of Clinton’s roots. A few months ago, Smolenyak started researching Clinton’s Celtic connections for Irish America magazine. She was not expecting to find anything new in the well-documented background of a high-profile American, but she wrapped her investigation with a ""wake-up call"" for genealogists. Researchers had made critical mistakes in the background of Clinton’s paternal grandmother, Hanna Jones Rodham (born in Scranton), she found. At the beginning, Smolenyak knew she needed to search for records with names spanning all kinds of possibilities, as Jones is a common name in Wales , and a woman named Hanna could go by several names, including Annie, Anna, Hanna, Honora or Nora. (Americans weren’t as picky about the spelling of their names and records retention back then, she said.) Census records show two women born in the early 1880s in Lackawanna County, Pa., named Hanna (or Hannah) Jones. But researchers chose the wrong Hanna Jones and ran with it, wrongly assigning Hillary Clinton’s roots to that woman’s parents and creating a echo chamber (PolitiFact can relate to the frustration). The wrong Hanna Jones, born in 1883, had a readily accessible birth record, but the right one, born in 1882, did not. Smolenyak confirmed the real Hanna Jones, Clinton’s grandmother, by picking up clues from records over time. A low-key marriage announcement in the Aug. 9, 1902, edition of the Scranton Times-Tribune offered potential proof that Jones and Hugh Rodham eloped in a nearby New York town where marriage had fewer restrictions: Ms. Anna Jones, of Brick avenue, was quietly wedded to Hugh Rodham, of Park place, at Binghamton, Memorial Day. Mr. and Mrs. Rodham will make their residence with the bride’s parents on Brick avenue. From there she could find out more information about the Joneses who lived on Brick in Scranton and match up what she knew about Hanna with other records about the family. Census records from 1910, 1920 and 1930 say Hanna (and also Hannah) Jones was born in Pennsylvania while her husband was born in England. Her parents are listed as born in Wales. PolitiFact found an unfinished application for a 1937 marriage license from Clinton’s father, Hugh E. Rodham, that lists the birthplace of both of his parents, Hugh Sr. in England and Hannah in Scranton. Interestingly, the marriage license does not list Hugh Jr.’s eventual wife and Hillary’s mother, Dorothy Howell, but another woman whom he did not marry, Catherine Meisinger. Our ruling Talking about immigration in Iowa, Clinton said, ""All my grandparents, you know, came over here."" It’s very clear from the evidence that not all of Hillary Clinton’s grandparents were immigrants. In fact, only one was. It’s possible she misspoke, but it doesn’t make her comment more accurate."
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3178
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Trump says he went through ‘very routine physical’.
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President Donald Trump said Tuesday he went through a “very routine physical” when he visited Walter Reed National Military Medical Center over the weekend.
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true
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Health, General News, Melania Trump, Politics, Donald Trump
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The president complained that first lady Melania Trump and some of his staff members expressed concern about his health based on media reports about Saturday’s trip to the hospital. He said it’s the media that’s “sick.” Trump’s weekend hospital visit was not on his public schedule. It raised questions about his health in part because the trip didn’t follow protocols the White House has used for previous physicals, including advance public notice. Trump brought up the hospital visit on Tuesday while meeting with his Cabinet. He complained that when he returned from Walter Reed, the first lady asked him “Darling, are you OK? What’s wrong?” He said false reports about a health problem caused her to worry. The White House released a statement late Monday from the president’s personal physician, U.S. Navy Cmdr. Sean Conley. He said Saturday’s visit was a “routine, planned interim checkup.” He said that due to scheduling uncertainties, the trip was “kept off the record.” “Despite some of the speculation, the President has not had any chest pain, nor was he evaluated or treated for any urgent or acute issues,” Conley wrote. Conley added that Trump consented to sharing his cholesterol level, now at 165, down from 196. A total below 170 is considered good. He said a more thorough exam will be conducted next year and a full summary of the president’s physical on Saturday will be incorporated into next year’s report.
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22745
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"The nation's food supply is ""99.99 percent safe."
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Georgia Congressman says food supply extremely safe
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false
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Georgia, Food Safety, Jack Kingston,
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"Congress has passed major legislation aimed at making food safer, but that doesn't mean it will pay for it. Widely considered to be the first major overhaul of the agency's food safety provisions since 1938, the Food Safety Modernization Act tightens safety rules and boosts Food and Drug Administration inspections at an estimated price of $1.4 billion over the next five years. That's way too high a price, some say. The nation's food is just fine to eat, said Republican U.S. House Rep. Jack Kingston of Savannah. ""We still have a food supply that's 99.99 percent safe,"" Kingston told The Washington Post. ""No one wants anybody to get sick, and we should always strive to make sure food is safe. But the case for a $1.4 billion expenditure isn't there."" Kingston spokesman Chris Crawford repeated the claim in a Jan. 4 article in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. The food supply is 99.99 percent safe? That sounds great, but is it true? Kingston has a big say in whether food safety legislation gets funded. He is chairman of the subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee that holds the FDA's purse strings. ""I would not identify it [funding] as something that will necessarily be zeroed out, but it is quite possible it will be scaled back if it is significant overreach,"" Kingston told The Post. Crawford told us this is how Kingston and his staff determined the food supply is almost completely safe: They took the Center for Disease Control and Prevention's latest estimate for the number of food-borne illnesses each year and divided it by the number of times people in the U.S. eat each year. The CDC said that in 2011, just under 48 million people will contract a food-borne illness. There are about 310 million people in the U.S. If they eat three times a day, that's 339.45 billion meals. And 48 million is roughly 0.01 percent of that. So Kingston's math is accurate. But does that mean his overall point is correct? We found Kingston was comparing apples to oranges. He used CDC data that measured a person's risk of getting ill to measure the risk of the food safety supply. But those are not the same thing. The CDC's figure came out as part of an announcement that one out of six people in the U.S. will contract a food-borne illness in the coming year. In other words, about 16.66 percent of the population will have problems this year ranging from a bad stomachache to deadly kidney failure because of dangerous pathogens in their food. We talked to Elaine Scallan, an assistant professor at the University of Colorado School of Public Health who formerly worked for the CDC. She did research on which the CDC results are based. Kingston's calculation measured the risk that your next meal will make you sick. But it is ""definitely not a good indicator of the safety of our food supply,"" Scallan said. Each time you eat a meal, you take that same risk again. Over time, that risk adds up, Scallan said. Robert Scharff, a professor at Ohio State University and a former economist with the Food and Drug Administration, calculated that food-borne illness costs the U.S. $152 billion annually. His report described food-borne illness as ""a large problem that deserves the attention of policymakers."" He also noted in an e-mail interview with AJC PolitiFact Georgia that Kingston's approach only covered the risk of eating a single meal. Other criticism was more blunt. Barbara Kowalcyk, director of food safety for the Center for Foodborne Illness Research and Prevention, expressed similar concerns and said Kingston's measure ""just doesn't make sense."" New York University professor Marion Nestle, a well-regarded food safety and nutrition expert, had similar concerns. ""Isn’t 48 million people getting sick or dying unnecessarily worth doing something about? I think so,"" Nestle said. So experts think Kingston's method has a crucial, if not fatal, flaw. But we decided to dig deeper. We looked at a sampling of food safety tests to see whether their results resembled Kingston's. A recently completed nationwide survey on young chickens by the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Food Safety and Inspection Service found some 7.5 percent tested positive for salmonella and 46.7 percent for campylobacter, which the CDC describes as ""one of the most common causes of diarrheal illness in the United States."" The federal government also looked at fruits and vegetables at processing plants in 2008 and found that while 5 percent had e. coli bacterial levels that suggested they came into contact with unclean water, only 0.3 percent of samples tested positive for the form that can make you sick. It reported 16 of nearly 11,700 samples tested positive for salmonella. Consumer Reports magazine tested for salmonella and campylobacter in chicken it bought from grocery stores. Its results, published in the January 2010 issue, were that campylobacter was present in 62 percent and salmonella was in 14 percent. Both were present in 9 percent. The magazine's publisher, the nonprofit consumer advocacy group Consumers Union, backed the food safety bill. To sum up: Kingston's calculation mixed up its apples and oranges. He said his calculation showed that the food supply is ""99.99 percent safe."" But his numbers described something very different: the risk that your next meal will make you sick. The problem is that you have to eat far more than your next meal to survive. And with each meal, your risk increases. Your risk of getting sick is actually much greater -- predictions say one in six people will get sick in 2011 from food-borne illness. In other words, while Kingston's math is correct, his results didn't say what he claimed they did. Studies that do measure the safety of certain foods contradict him. Since his statement has an element of truth but ignores crucial facts."
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22215
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Democratic Party of Wisconsin Says Wisconsin state Sen. Randy Hopper, R-Fond du Lac, has already been recalled.
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Democratic Party of Wisconsin calls state Sen. Randy Hopper already “recalled”
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false
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Labor, State Budget, Wisconsin, Democratic Party of Wisconsin,
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"He may not be widely known, but state Sen. Randy Hopper’s political fate could help write the final chapter in the historic Wisconsin legislative battle over the future of public employee unions. The Republican is one of eight GOP senators targeted by state Democrats for removal from office as part of a coordinated series of recall campaigns that aim to reclaim the chamber for the Democrats. As residents gathered signatures in an attempt to force him into a recall election, the state Democratic Party focused on casting Hopper in a negative light. The party issued a news release highlighting an embarrassing flub in which a Hopper constituent newsletter included a phone number that directed callers to a sex chat line promising access to nasty talk with hundreds of hot, horny girls. Hopper said it was an inadvertent mistake. Ahem. The party’s press release caught our eye -- but only for professional reasons, we assure you. This was the headline on the party’s release, which quoted party chairman Mike Tate: ""Recalled Randy Hopper Directing Constituents to Adult Chat Line."" Recalled already? That struck us as an unusual claim. With recall fever hitting the state -- eight Democrats are also the target of recall attempts -- we thought we’d look at whether the ""recalled"" label is appropriate at this point in the process. In the case of Hopper, the senator from Fond du Lac, recall advocates filed petitions on April 7 seeking an election. A review of the signatures on the petitions -- by the state’s Government Accountability Board -- is pending. We asked Democratic Party spokesman Graeme Zielinski to explain the ""recalled"" label. He called our request a waste of time and our questions ""an act of pedantry."" With the party offering no clear rationale, we turned to some election experts. They noted the term ""recall"" has inspired much confusion among the public. And legal and political professionals disagree over the point in time when it is appropriate to label an elected official ""recalled."" John Coleman, a political scientist at UW-Madison, said you can make a case for two points in time. One: When the state certifies the need for an election after confirming the validity of signatures on recall petitions. Two: When the incumbent loses the election. The term recall ""suggests an official who is being brought back to stand before the people,"" Coleman told PolitiFact Wisconsin. ""This has some historical resonance along the lines that in days gone by, transportation and communication were difficult, and the elected official was in some far off place remote from his or her constituents. The recall election was a way to bring them back to the constituents."" Coleman said that in everyday conversation, ""when people say ‘Legislator X has been recalled,’ they’ll probably mean the legislator has to face a recall election. It’s a handy shorthand term."" Coleman, who has a national perspective on elections, said he personally leans toward ""recall"" meaning removal from office. By either measure, though, the state Democratic Party’s depiction of Hopper’s status would be wrong. We asked Hopper’s campaign manager, Jeff Harvey, when he would consider his candidate ""recalled."" He said it would be after state elections officials certify the request for a recall election -- and only after a Hopper defeat in the contest. ""If he wins that means he was never recalled,"" Harvey said. OK, so that’s the other end of the spectrum from the Democrats. Let’s go to Kevin Kennedy, the state’s lead elections official as director of the Government Accountability Board. Through a spokesman, Kennedy said an incumbent is ""recalled once they have to stand for election."" Here’s what the state’s official recall manual says about it: ""Recall gives voters the right to reconsider their choice of an elected official. However, it does not automatically result in removal of an official from office."" Where exactly does the Hopper case stand in the process? Pro-recall workers on April 7, 2011 turned in signatures to the Government Accountability Board seeking to force an election. Hopper’s side filed a challenge to some signatures on April 21. The GAB will take weeks to review the signatures and decide whether a sufficient number are valid. At that point, either Hopper or the recall forces could appeal the GAB’s decision to court. So there is a long way to go before an election is set to proceed -- the trigger point for the ""recall"" label being accurate. Coleman, the UW political scientist, said the notion that somebody is ""recalled"" at the point when signatures are turned in is a ""non-starter."" It strikes us that the Democrats’ labeling of Hopper is akin to calling a criminal suspect ""charged"" at the point at which police have turned over evidence to the district attorney -- but before prosecutors have decided whether to file charges. Let’s return to the statement: The state Democratic Party issued a statement that labeled Hopper as already ""recalled."" There is some disagreement among experts about when it’s accurate to use the term ""recalled."" But there is no dispute that the party jumped the gun by at least several weeks. Hopper might be recalled sometime this spring, but we are not there yet."
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41807
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"Said of the National Climate Assessment: ""And you have to look at the fact that this report is based on the most extreme modeled scenario."
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The Trump administration has inaccurately attacked the National Climate Assessment for lacking transparency and factual basis, and for focusing on an “extreme” climate scenario.
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false
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climate change,
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Since the National Climate Assessment dropped on Black Friday, members of the Trump administration have inaccurately attacked the report for lacking transparency and factual basis, and for focusing on an “extreme” climate scenario. The EPA has also suggested — without evidence — that the Obama administration “pushed” the “worst-case scenario.”The report — which is the product of 13 federal agencies and more than 300 governmental and non-governmental experts — is legally required to be produced by the U.S. Global Change Research Program, or USGCRP, which issued its first assessment in 2000. It details how climate change is already affecting the country, from increased temperatures and flooding to more frequent hurricanes and large wildfires. It also looks at potential future consequences on the environment, infrastructure, human health and the economy. President Donald Trump has largely dismissed the report. When asked about the assessment, the president has minimized the impact of human activity on climate change and made unrelated claims regarding the cleanliness of U.S. air and water, as we’ve written previously.But more specific critiques came from administration officials and White House representatives.For example, White House Deputy Press Secretary Lindsay Walters released a statement to us that downplayed the report by claiming it “is largely based on the most extreme scenario,” adding, “we need to focus on improving the transparency and accuracy of our modeling and projections.” She also noted that the next climate assessment “gives us the opportunity to provide for a more transparent and data-driven process that includes fuller information on the range of potential scenarios and outcomes.”Many of these talking points were reprised by White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders during a White House briefing on Nov. 27, when she said the report “is based on the most extreme modeled scenario,” is “not based on facts” and is “not data-driven.” Instead, she said, the report is “based on modeling, which is extremely hard to do when you’re talking about the climate.”In an interview with the NBC affiliate in Sacramento, California, on Nov. 27, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke also referenced the scenarios, saying “it appears they took the worst scenarios and they built predictions upon that.” He added, “It should be more probability.” Zinke, who has since resigned, also said “there is some concern within the USGS” about the climate report, referring to the U.S. Geological Survey, without providing any evidence. Finally, acting Environmental Protection Agency head Andrew Wheeler said at a Washington Post Live event on Nov. 28 that he “wouldn’t be surprised if the Obama administration told the report’s authors, ‘Take a look at the worst-case scenario for this report.’” The EPA press office then doubled down on Wheeler’s speculation, issuing a press release that said the Obama administration “pushed” the “worst-case scenario'” and citing the Daily Caller’s reporting as proof of such manipulation. These claims, however, are false, exaggerated or unsubstantiated:Because the claims clustered around these four themes, we’ll address each of them in more detail in the sections below.As for Zinke’s comment that there is “concern within the USGS” about the climate report, there is no evidence to support his statement. U.S. Geological Survey representatives did not respond to our inquiries, but the USGS is one of the key agencies that was responsible for creating the report. In fact, nearly two dozen USGS scientists served as authors, contributing to 10 of the 29 chapters. And Virginia Burkett, USGS chief scientist for climate and land use change, is part of the leadership of the U.S. Global Change Research Program.The report is organized into four main sections, the first tackling “national topics” such as water, agriculture, air quality and coastal effects. For each issue, the authors describe existing climate change impacts as well as those that could be on the horizon. For example, on temperature, the authors explain that annual average temperatures in the contiguous U.S. have increased by 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit since the beginning of the last century. Over the next few decades, temperatures are expected to rise to an increase of 2.5 degrees, regardless of future emissions. And by the end of the century, the increase could be anywhere between 3 and 12 degrees, “depending on whether the world follows a higher or lower future scenario.”The next section takes a closer look at 10 specific regions of the country, each of which faces different challenges because of variation in geography, climate and population. For example, the Northeast is already seeing less distinct seasons that “adversely impact” tourism, farming and forestry, while the Southeast is already vulnerable to flooding and the Southwest has seen more intense wildfires and droughts.A third section discusses mitigation strategies — approaches that reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and therefore limit the amount of climate change — and adaptation strategies, which refer to methods of reducing the risk of climate change, for example, by elevating homes threatened by flooding. The mitigation chapter, in particular, has been frequently cited in the press, because it goes into the possible economic impacts of climate change, which the report says could amount to “hundreds of billions of dollars” by 2100 under a higher emissions scenario. Finally, a fourth section is devoted to a series of appendices, including explanations of how the report was put together and what kind of information was used. We’ll be coming back to these, because they contain a lot of the nitty-gritty details that demonstrate the report’s transparency and data-driven approach.Wheeler, Zinke, Sanders and Walters each criticized the National Climate Assessment for using or being “based” or “largely based” on a scenario they variously described as “worst-case” or “the most extreme.” They’re referring to a scenario known as RCP8.5, which is the highest of the four scenarios most frequently used by scientists to do climate projections.But a quick skim of the National Climate Assessment reveals that the document does not rely on this single scenario. Figures often feature at least two scenarios, and sometimes include a third.“Not every statement has every RCP scenario in it,” said Katharine Hayhoe, a climate scientist and director of the Climate Science Center at Texas Tech University, and an author of the report, in a phone interview. But, she said, there are “dozens of examples” where multiple RCPs are used.Indeed, the report itself says it focused on RCP8.5 as a “higher” scenario with more warming, and RCP4.5 as a “lower” scenario with less, while also including other scenarios, such as the “very low” RCP2.6. We’ll return to the specifics on this decision later. RCPs were used in the fifth and most recent climate assessment from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC, which is part of the United Nations.And of course, none of the scenarios are relevant to the many statements in the report about the climate change effects that have already happened, such as the fact that the U.S. has already become warmer by about 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit over the last century, or that, because of sea level rise, multiple communities are now five to 10 times more likely to have high tide flooding than in the 1960s.It’s worth pausing here to understand what RCPs are in the first place, because they can be easily misinterpreted.RCP stands for “representative concentration pathway,” and each numbered scenario refers to the total amount of radiative forcing — essentially the amount of climate change — that would occur by the year 2100, relative to pre-industrial times. RCP8.5, then, is a pathway that assumes that by the turn of the next century, the Earth will have added an extra 8.5 watts per square meter to its energy balance.By focusing on radiative forcing, the RCP system avoids making specific assumptions about emissions, population growth, or economic and technological development.“For any one radiative forcing trajectory, there are theoretically an infinite number of socioeconomic and emission scenarios to get you there,” said Richard Moss, a visiting senior research scientist at Columbia University’s Earth Institute, in a phone interview. He helped formulate the RCP approach.But there are certain trajectories that are consistent with the various RCPs, and these are often used to describe them. For example, RCP8.5 is consistent with a future in which fossil fuels continue to dominate, there is no climate policy to speak of, and there is high population growth and low — but not zero — technological development. RCP4.5, in contrast, does include climate policies, such as a price put on emissions, and there is less population growth and more technological development. In RCP2.6, more stringent mitigation policies are in place and emissions peak and turn negative by the beginning of the next century.The RCP system may be less straightforward than a basic emissions scenario, but Moss said scientists developed RCPs because it allowed them to be more flexible and do climate modeling more quickly than before. In 2007, an independent group of climate scientists selected four RCPs that represented the wide range in the scientific literature and were well-spaced apart: 2.6, 4.5, 6.0 and 8.5.A larger issue with RCPs is that they aren’t intended to be forecasts of what will happen, even though that’s exactly what the public often interprets them to be. “They’re not predictions, they’re what-if exercises,” said Moss. Many people assume scientists are offering forecasts on the most likely scenario, he said, but the “point is specifically not to say what is most likely.” Scientists, then, want to use a range of scenarios that give a solid idea of where we might be headed, while at the same time, not overselling any particular one. The other angle is that scientists use scenarios for risk assessment. And as Moss explained, “you don’t choose a middle scenario” for that. You choose a high scenario to describe the potentially bad outcomes that “may have low probability but high consequence.”As for RCP8.5 itself, Moss and Hayhoe both said it’s inaccurate to call the scenario the “worst” or a “worse-case.” Hayhoe said it was a very deliberate choice on the authors’ parts to call RCP8.5 the “higher” scenario, to contrast with the RCP4.5 “lower” scenario. In the report, these are often used together.In chapter four of the earlier volume of the climate report, the authors note that RCP8.5 “is not intended to serve as an upper limit on possible emissions” (see section 4.2.1). Moss and Hayhoe also said climate modeling might be missing certain elements that could make RCP8.5’s projections too low.Finally, there is the fact that, of late, the Earth seems to be following RCP8.5. The climate report explains that the “observed acceleration in carbon emissions over the past 15–20 years has been consistent with the higher future scenarios (such as RCP8.5).” It goes on to say that while emission rates began to slow in 2014, and even approach zero growth in 2016, preliminary data in 2017 suggest a return to an increasing rate of emissions. Separately, reports released in early December indicate 2018 is also headed toward a higher emission rate. This doesn’t mean 80 years down the line the Earth is likely to still be following RCP8.5, but it is plausible.Andrew Wheeler, the acting EPA chief, suggested on Nov. 28 that the Obama administration told the climate assessment authors to use the highest scenarios. In a Washington Post Live interview, Wheeler said he “wouldn’t be surprised if the Obama administration” directed authors to the “worst-case scenario.” Later that day, the EPA press office wrote in a press release that Wheeler “was right” when he made that statement, adding, “In fact, the Obama administration did just that.” The press release was titled “Fact-Check: Obama Administration Pushed ‘Worst-Case Scenario’ In Climate Assessment.”It’s true that the scenarios were selected at a time when Obama was in office, but that is not evidence that the administration pushed for a higher scenario. As we’ve just explained, RCP8.5 was in standard use at the time.In the press release, the EPA pointed to reporting by the Daily Caller, a conservative website, which wrote that a May 2015 memo proved Wheeler’s the point. The website also wrote that the memo contradicted John Holdren, Obama’s director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy, or OSTP, who told Politico that he did not choose the authors of the report and was not involved in scenario selection. In an email to us, Holdren also denied playing a role in the report’s approach. “The insinuations out there that I or some other senior official was behind it [scenario selection] are absolutely false,” he said.The memo, which is unsigned, does not show that the Obama administration pushed for certain scenarios. The memo lays out the rationale for using a range of scenarios, and for focusing on the RCP8.5 and 4.5 for impact assessments. “For assessments of impacts, vulnerability, and adaptation responses,” the memo states, “NCA4 will focus on RCP 8.5 as a high-end scenario and RCP 4.5 as a low-end scenario. Other scenarios (e.g., RCP 2.6) may be used in addition where instructive, such as in analyses of mitigation issues,” adding that “using a low-end and a high-end scenario will facilitate communications of assessment findings.”The memo goes on to explain that the choice of these two main RCPs was made in part to “maintain continuity and consistency” not only with other major climate assessments, such as the IPCC reports, but also to previous National Climate Assessments. Two earlier editions of the assessment, for example, used an older set of scenarios that are roughly equivalent to RCP4.5 and RCP8.5. (The memo doesn’t mention this, but this includes the second climate assessment published in 2009, which would have largely been developed during the Bush administration. )Many of these points are also made in the climate assessment itself, such as in the report guide and in the third appendix. The report also cites the memo — something you would not expect if it contained proof of political meddling.The choice of using RCP8.5 and 4.5 is not limited to various climate assessments. A literature search with both terms, for instance, reveals dozens of papers that are premised on the very same comparisons. Moss, for his part, said the decision to focus on RCP4.5 and 8.5, was “very reasonable.”In a statement to us, White House Deputy Press Secretary Lindsay Walters said that “we need to focus on improving the transparency and accuracy of our modeling and projections” and that the next climate assessment “gives us the opportunity to provide for a more transparent and data-driven process.”The climate report, however, is by design a transparent document. The creation process included repeated opportunities not only for scientists in and out of the government to make changes, but also for the public to comment.Each draft and outline was subject either to an interagency review, technical review by a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration-funded group at North Carolina University or an outside review.The third draft, for example, was released to the public for three months, during which time the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine also reviewed it. Chapter authors were then “required to respond to each and every comment” and to update their sections accordingly. Review editors made sure the responses were adequate. All of the feedback, along with the responses, is available online.With transparency in mind, scientists also included “traceable accounts” at the end of chapters to document the evidence base and uncertainties for each “key message.” These provide explanations of why authors came to the conclusions that they did, as well as a description of the confidence or likelihood for that message.“The traceable accounts go into excruciating detail,” said Hayhoe. “It’s hard to imagine anything more transparent.”The final claim we’ll address is the notion that the National Climate Assessment isn’t “based on facts,” or isn’t “data-driven,” as Sanders said. As is clear from the extensive reference lists for each chapter, the report is fact-based. The report describes its many sources this way.NCA4, November 2018: The findings in this report are based on an assessment of the peer-reviewed scientific literature, complemented by other sources (such as gray literature) where appropriate. In addition, authors used well-established and carefully evaluated observational and modeling datasets, technical input reports, USGCRP’s sustained assessment products, and a suite of scenario products. Each source was determined to meet the standards of the Information Quality Act.In the second appendix, the report goes into even more detail about its sources, noting that the “vast majority” are from the peer-reviewed scientific literature. In the rare circumstance that information didn’t come from the literature or the government, authors evaluated the quality of the source by asking a few key questions, such as how important the source is to the topic, and whether it is objective and publicly available. NOAA also checked that all sources met its guidelines.Sanders claimed that climate modeling is “an extremely complicated science that is never exact.” She repeated the idea again, after saying that the administration would like to see something “more data-driven,” adding, “it’s based on modeling, which is extremely hard to do when you’re talking about the climate.”Part of what Sanders is saying is absolutely correct. “She’s right climate modeling is very complex,” said Hayhoe.But just because modeling is difficult doesn’t mean it’s not based on data, or that climate models are unreliable. This misrepresents how climate modeling works and what we know about its performance.Climate models essentially are sets of equations that incorporate what scientists know about the fundamental physics, chemistry and biology of Earth systems. To make projections about the future, researchers first make the problem more manageable by divvying up the Earth’s atmosphere and surface into smaller chunks, or grid cells. Then they run the models for each cell over a set period of time, allowing neighboring cells to interact with one another. That data is recorded, and then repeated until a researcher reaches a target year. In this iterative fashion, scientists develop maps of varying resolution that show how the climate might change under certain scenarios.There are, of course, uncertainties associated with modeling. Scientists are well aware of this and don’t claim to have everything figured out. In fact, they know they’re missing some of the more complex interactions. But Hayhoe said it’s precisely because of this that scientists are “more concerned, not less.”“We know that there are processes not included that would make sea level rise faster and greater,” she said. “We’re so conservative — unless we totally understand something, we don’t put it in the model.”This point is also made in the climate assessment. “While climate models incorporate important climate processes that can be well quantified, they do not include all of the processes that can contribute to feedbacks, compound extreme events, and abrupt and/or irreversible changes, including key ice sheet processes and arctic carbon reservoirs,” the report reads. “The systematic tendency of climate models to underestimate temperature change during warm paleoclimates suggests that climate models are more likely to underestimate than to overestimate the amount of long-term future change; this is likely to be especially true for trends in extreme events.”Contrary to Sanders’ insinuation, complexity isn’t a reason to doubt the projections, although no one should view them as certainties. If anything, it’s a reason to think they could be on the low side.
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25637
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Joe Biden Says he was the first person to call for invoking the Defense Production Act.
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Biden was far from the first official to call for use of the Defense Production Act to boost manufacturing of urgently needed medical supplies. A full 18 days before Biden made his first public comment on the act, Trump’s Health and Human Services secretary had publicly floated the idea, and Trump made it official the same day Biden made his remarks. In between, dozens of Democratic lawmakers publicly called for the act to be used, and Biden did not mention it in a Democratic primary debate.
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false
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Military, Public Health, Coronavirus, Joe Biden,
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"During an event to discuss school reopening amid the coronavirus pandemic, Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden repeated a talking point he’s used previously — that he was ahead of the curve in calling for the Defense Production Act to be used to boost manufacturing of high-demand health products, such as protective equipment. In a question-and-answer session with reporters following his Sept. 2 event in Wilmington, Del., Biden said, ""When it got up to March, I kept saying, look, you’ve got to invoke, and you remember, I think I was the first — I may be mistaken — person calling about the Defense Production Act. … Use that authority. Use it to go out there now and don’t wait to talk about the need for us to have masks."" Biden said he may be mistaken, and he is. But Biden made similar remarks in mid to late March, which our friends at FactCheck.org rated skeptically. Since he has continued to say it, we will put it on the Truth-O-Meter. Let’s take a fresh look. The Defense Production Act was signed by President Harry Truman in 1950 and amended periodically since then. Broadly, it allows the federal government to take a stronger role in directing domestic manufacturing capabilities during a national emergency, according to the Congressional Research Service. These powers allow the government to tell private businesses when and how to fulfill orders for essential goods. Over the years, its scope has been expanded from military needs to natural hazards, terrorist attacks, and other national emergencies. ""The DPA is one of those seemingly obscure laws that is actually extraordinarily significant,"" Margaret O’Mara, a University of Washington historian who studies the connections between government and industry, told us in March. The earliest discussion of using the Defense Production Act to combat the coronavirus came on Feb. 26, just three weeks after the first coronavirus death in the United States. Here’s a rundown: Feb. 26: New York City emergency management commissioner Deanne Criswell, at a press conference with Mayor Bill de Blasio, speaking about masks, said, ""There's just a long waiting list and the only way to fulfill that is by the federal government. They have means where they can enact the Defense Production Act and get people to produce these more quickly."" Feb. 28: Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar said at a White House roundtable for the media: ""We will use the Defense Production Act as necessary to enable that our contracts go to the front of the line on contracting. That is an authority that we have, and we intend to use it to acquire anything that we need to acquire. We won't use it unnecessarily, of course. We don't want to be disruptive if that's not needed. But if we need to, we will use it. We won't hesitate."" March 1: Azar said in an appearance on Fox News Sunday, ""Right now, we are initiating the procurement processes for personal protective equipment, so that would be masks, as well as gowns, gloves, etc. We've got that process initiated. We're gathering information from potential vendors."" Asked by host Chris Wallace whether that would be using authority under the act, Azar said, ""If we need to."" March 13: A letter from 57 House Democrats urged the president to ""use the powers afforded by"" the Defense Production Act ""to begin the mass production of supplies."" March 15: Sen. Edward Markey, D-Mass., released a statement about a letter he wrote to the White House urging use of the Defense Production Act. March 15: During the evening Democratic debate, Biden did not mention the Defense Production Act (nor did any of the other candidates). Biden pointed to his coronavirus plan on his campaign website, but that version of the plan did not include the Defense Production Act. March 17: At a White White House coronavirus task force press briefing, Trump himself was asked, ""Do you need to invoke the Defense Production Act to get more of those medical supplies to different hospitals across the country?"" He answered, ""Well, we're able to do that if we have to. Right now we haven't had to, but it's certainly ready."" March 18: In the first statement we could locate by Biden on the issue, he released a statement urging the administration to ""prioritize and immediately increase domestic production of any critical medical equipment required to respond to this crisis — such as the production of ventilators and associated training to operate — by invoking the Defense Production Act."" March 18: Trump signed an executive order citing the authority of the act to curb the spread of coronavirus. He specifically mentioned Title I, part of which involves prioritizing contracts that serve national emergency goals over any other contracts or orders. Trump’s executive order specifically named ""personal protective equipment and ventilators."" Later that day, Trump indicated a certain reluctance in a tweet. ""I only signed the Defense Production Act to combat the Chinese Virus should we need to invoke it in a worst case scenario in the future. Hopefully there will be no need, but we are all in this TOGETHER!"" Biden’s campaign did not respond to an inquiry seeking earlier comments by the candidate about the Defense Production Act. It’s worth noting that while several contracts have been awarded under the act’s authority, critics have said that Trump hasn’t used the Defense Production Act to its fullest extent. Several experts made this case to the New York Times in late July. Trump has not used the act ""to create a permanent, sustainable, redundant, domestic supply chain for all things pandemic: testing, swabs, N95 masks, etc.,"" Jamie Baker, a former legal adviser to the National Security Council and a professor of national security law at Syracuse University, told the Times. Still, even if Biden agrees that Trump’s follow-through has been weak, it doesn’t mean that he was the first official to call for the Defense Production Act to be used. Biden has said several times he was the first person calling for use of the Defense Production Act. But Biden was far from the first. A full 18 days before Biden made his first public comment on the act, Trump’s Health and Human Services secretary had publicly floated the idea, and Trump made it official the same day Biden made his remarks. In between, dozens of Democratic lawmakers publicly called for the act to be used, and Biden did not mention it in a Democratic primary debate."
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9852
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Researchers Say Common Test For Prostate Cancer May Not Work
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The imbalance in the story occurred in that it only discussed the perils of failing to treat prostate cancer aggressively enough because of a treatment course based on clinical staging. But the flip side is equally important and the story did not mention the pitfalls of treating a prostate cancer that was not destined to be problematic. Understanding the aggressiveness of a prostate cancer is crucial for making decisions about whether and how to treat the cancer. This story could have done a better job in reminding readers that some prostate cancers are aggressive disease but that most are not.
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mixture
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Cancer,NPR
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There was no discussion of costs. What does clinical staging add to a man’s bill? Especially if this is a “wakeup call to those who are over-relying on the clinical staging system” – as the story states – what impact could that have on costs? The story covered a study that raised questions about clinical staging being “worthless.” The story made clear that there were serious new questions about the absence of benefit. The story mentioned that doctors ‘erred 35% of the time’ with clinical staging and this leads doctors to conclude that a given prostate cancer “is less serious than it really is.” However – this is only half of the story. There’s also a significant harm that occurs from overtreatment of lesions that were never destined to be problematic. To be balanced and complete, the story should have mentioned this as well because it is another important problem. For example, a MedPageToday story addressed this issue: “For those men with prostate cancer found to have been staged incorrectly, the assigned clinical stage was too low 55.1% of the time — and too high in 44.9% of cases.” We never learned how the study was done and, thus, were given no basis to judge the quality of the evidence. By comparison, a MedPageToday story addressed limitations of the study: “Limitations of the study included the differences among clinicians in their levels of skill in physical examinations and imaging interpretations, and the fact that the current analysis only included patients who underwent radical prostatectomy.” There was an imbalance in the story in that it only discussed the perils of failing to treat prostate cancer aggressively enough because of a treatment course based on clinical staging. But the flip side is equally important and the story did not mention the pitfalls of treating a prostate cancer that was not destined to be problematic. So, in effect, the story only focused on the aggressive prostate cancers but didn’t remind readers that most prostate cancers are not. An expert in this field without ties to the study reported on was quoted in this story. The story included one expert’s perspective that the new study questioning the value of clinical staging “may not make much difference in the real world” because other tests are used like the Gleason score and the percentage of biopsies that are positive for cancer cells. So some attempt was made to put this into the context of other tests that are used. The story states that clinical staging is “widely used” and that 10 years ago the American College of Surgeons “decreed that doctors should use these types of clinical staging tests to help decide how to treat cancers.” The story reported that clinical staging has been recommended for use by the American College of Surgeons Commission on Cancer for the past 10 years and gave one doctor’s statement that “this is the first study that quantifies the magnitude of the inadequacy.” Does not appear to rely solely on a news release.
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10319
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Radiation From CT Scans May Raise Cancer Risk
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Computed Tomography (CT) scans produce incredibly detailed high-resolution pictures of the body, making them invaluable tools for the detection and treatment of disease. However as doctors rely on them more and more for diagnosis and monitoring and patients demand them for every ache and pain, the utilization of these high-tech scans has increased dramatically over the past 20 years. But how much imaging is too much? What if the burden of radiation exposure from these scans outweighs the benefits? Two new studies published in the Archives of Internal Medicine this week raise the concern that all of this scanning may be too much of a good thing. One study predicts that between 15,000 and 45,000 future cases of cancer may be caused by the radiation exposure, while another study tracks huge variation in the amount of radiation patients are exposed to, even for the same type of scan. Overall, this story was well done. By accurately describing the predicted number of cases of cancer and resulting dealths in the study, the story avoids disease mongering. The story mentions several other testing options, such as simpler CT tests, conventional X-rays, ultrasound or MRI that involve less or no radiation. The story does a good job of describing the harm of exposure to radiation due to CT scanning, but could have also mentioned other harms from overuse of scanning, such as follow-up testing and procedures to evaluate suspicious findings that turn out to be benign. The story could have been improved by describing the costs of CT scanning, which are substantial and climbing. We also think the story should have commented on the nature of the study projecting the number of deaths due to radiation from CT scans. The study used a model to predict cases of cancer and subsequent deaths. These cases were projected, but not directly observed. Modeling studies, while useful, have certain limitations and their results should be interpreted with caution. The story does not describe these limitations, other than to cite skepticism from a radiologist. Consumers should be aware that they may be exposed to more radiation than they think and should discuss this risk with their doctor before undergoing CT scanning.
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true
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The story does not mention costs of CT scans, which are substantial. It would not be necessary for the story to quantify the benefits of CT scanning. There is in fact no way to quantify the benefits of such a general test. The story does a good job of describing the harm of exposure to radiation due to CT scanning. The story could have also mentioned other harms from overuse of scanning, such as follow-up testing and procedures to evaluate suspicious findings that turn out to be benign. The story does not adequately describe the strength of the study projecting the number of deaths due to radiation from CT scans. The study used a risk model to predict cases of cancer and subsequent deaths. These cases were not directly observed. Modeling studies, while useful, have certain limitations and their results should be interpreted with caution. The story does not describe these limitations, other than cite skepticism from a radiologist. The story accurately represents the number of cancers that are expected from the radiation doses observed in the study and how many of them could be fatal. The story quotes multiple experts, including the authors of the study, the author of the accompanying editorial and a Radiologist who was not involved with the study. The story mentions several other testing options, such as simpler CT tests, conventional X-rays, ultrasound or MRI that involve less or no radiation. Clearly CT scans are available. The story highlights the risks associated with the increasingly common use of CT scans. This issue is certainly not new. While the two cited articles in the story are important additions to our understanding of the risks, they are not seminal articles by any means. The issue of risk, necessity of testing and dose delivered per test have been discussed in the literature for at least a decade. Nonethless, we’ll give the story a satisfactory score on this criterion. 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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11622
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New method could make IVF more effective
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This year’s Nobel Prize in Medicine went to Robert Edwards, a UK physiologist who, over 30 years ago, developed the technique for in-vitro fertilization (IVF). Since then, IVF has become an enourmous industry. An individual cycle of IVF can cost $10-15,000 but the average chance of success is roughly 1 in 5 (varying widely according to many factors). Therefore, any improvements in the technique to improve the success rate is welcome news to potential parents. This story reports on a new technique that entails observing the embryo divide and develop to attempt to predict which ones would have the highest chance of success. While this method may be truly an advancement in IVF technology, this story does little to educate readers on its potential importance. It provides inadequate information about the availability, costs and potential harms of IVF. It does not discuss the strength of the evidence to support the new technique nor does it describe the success rates of the procedure compared to existing methods. The story does not quote any independent sources that could have provided some perspective on the importance of the results, which is sorely missing from this story. Most distressing, the story exagerrates the perils of pregnancy by providing such scary statistics as the 50% miscarriage rate. In doing so, it overstates the need for reproductive assistance technologies, including IVF. In the end, this story appears to be little more than a thinly-veiled advertisement for IVF, an industry which is in little need of help. Couples who seek to have children using IVF face high costs and frequent failures. Stories on this topic must tread carefully to not raise unwarranted hopes.
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false
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"The story makes no mention of costs of IVF, other than to point out the total revenues of the IVF industry. There is no estimate of the possible costs of (or even savings from) adding this test to standard IVF. The story suggests this test would benefit couples by reducing the number of IVF attempts needed to have a baby or by reducing the risk of multiple births. However, the researchers have not even begun to explore those outcomes. The story should have made more clear that in fact the research is too preliminary to for anyone to guess at whether or not it might improve either birth rates, reduce the typical number of embryos implanted or otherwise improve the IVF experience. The story mentions no potential harms of the new IVF method. Readers are not told whether the test itself could damage the embryo. The story provides few details about the study. It refers the ""fate"" of the embryos without pointing out that this experiment did not go beyond the blastocyst stage. The story would have been better if it clearly pointed out that this work was done entirely in lab dishes and that none of the embryos was implanted, so there is not yet any evidence about the ultimate outcome that readers care about: live births. The story exagerrates the perils of pregnancy by providing such scary statistics as the 50% miscarriage rate. In doing so, it overstates the need for reproductive assistance technologies, including IVF. Further, it misstates the recommendations about multiple embryo transfer. Twin transfers are common and not always ""born to early and face lifelong health problems."" Guidelines suggest transferring number of embryos not likely to result in higher order than twins. This is often three but can be more embryos based on maternal age, prior loss record, egg quality, and other genetic testing/observation of the likely viability of the embryos. The story notes that the researchers are licensing development of a commercial test. However, it does not quote any independent sources. Only the CEO of the IVF company and a study author are quoted. Independent sources could provide some perspective on the importance of the results, which is sorely missing from this story. The story mentions conventional IVF and ""the old fashioned way"" but does not provide any real content on the pros and cons of the different methods. There are many choices for reproductive assistance but the story doesn’t describe any of them. While the story suggests that this new IVF method is new and the results are preliminary, it does not indicate when the method may become available or how widely. Indeed, the story does not make clear that the researchers have yet to attempt clinical trials and do not have any data about development beyond the blastocyst stage (which is only vaguely described), readers may be led to believe that clinical use is nearer than it probably is. This method of evaluating embryos may be new, but since the story does not mention any alternative approaches nor any comments from idependent experts it is impossible for readers to know how this work compares to either current practice or other methods under development. There is no way to know if the story relied on a press release as the sole source of information."
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11131
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Asthma treatment alternatives promising
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A recent study in the New England Journal of Medicine evaluated different approaches to the treatment of mild asthma. The goal of the study was to identify the minimum therapy that can be used to manage mild asthma with the fewest negative effects. Adherence to medication for mild asthma is far from optimal for many reasons and the hope is that identifying the least intrusive therapy while maintaing good asthma control will help improve adherence. This story reports on the findings of this study. The story does a good job of describing the current study and the strength of the available evidence. It also adequately describes the availability of the medications, quantifies the benefits of treatment, and presents the treatment alternatives. (Except that the story set up reduced steroid use as a goal, but then never quantified that result anywhere in the story.) The story never mentioned that the current study was only in patients with mild asthma, and the results should not be applied to those with more severe asthma. Costs of the different treatments are not mentioned in the story. This is a major limitation given the differences in costs between the treatments. Furthermore, because these drugs need to be taken long-term, costs can really add up. Finally, the story only quotes one expert who was an author on the current study. The story should have quoted other independent experts who could have provided more insight on what, if any, impact this new study will have on clinical practice.
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true
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Costs of the different treatments are not mentioned in the story. This is a major limitation given the differences in costs between the treatments. Furthermore, because these drugs need to be taken long-term, costs can really add up. The story adequately quantifies the benefits of the treatment by providing actual percentages of patients having treatment failure with the different medications. However, the story should have been more clear that the study was only in patients with mild asthma. The same results should not be applied to those with more severe asthma. The story also set up reduced steroid use as one of the major benefits, but it never quantified this anywhere in the story. Nonethless, we'll give it the benefit of the doubt on this criterion. The story fails to list the specific harms of inhaled steroid use, which are not the same as those from steroids in pill form. The story adequately describes the design and strength of the current study. However, the story should have been more clear that the study was only in patients with mild asthma. The same results should not be applied to those with more severe asthma. No overt disease-mongering. The story only quotes one expert who was an author on the current study. The story should have quoted other, independent experts who could have provided more insight on what, if any, impact this new study will have on clinical practice. The story mentions the inhaled steroid Flovent, the combination inhaler Advair, and the pill Singulair as treatment options. The story clearly states that inhaled steroids are commonly used and widely available. The story clearly states that inhaled steroids are not new, but it is less clear if the combination inhaler or the pill (Singulair) are novel approaches to treating asthma. The story should have been more explicit. We can't be sure if the story relied on a press release as the sole source of information. We do know that the only person quoted was involved in the study.
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7197
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Health care, Trump among diverse stands of Colorado hopefuls.
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Republican treasurer Walker Stapleton has attacked his opponent in the race for Colorado governor, Democratic U.S. Rep. Jared Polis, as too radical and extreme for the rapidly growing state as the GOP tries to prevent a complete Democratic takeover of the Statehouse.
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true
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Colorado, Health, Jared Polis, Universal health care, Denver, Elections, Campaigns, Bernie Sanders, Politics, Gun politics
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Stapleton’s repeated criticism of the liberal Polis underscores Republican fears that the party could lose control of the state Senate in Tuesday’s election. The Senate has acted as a check on attempts by the Democratic-led House to restrict gun rights and raise taxes for public schools. “Colorado does not want a socialist for governor,” Stapleton declared when Polis, an advocate of universal health care, campaigned with Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders last month. In response, Polis cites a high-tech entrepreneurial career that made him wealthy before he entered Congress in 2009 and has let him personally invest more than $22 million in his campaign this year. Polis and his supporters largely view the race as a referendum on President Donald Trump, whom Stapleton has embraced. Trump’s efforts to dismantle former President Barack Obama’s health care law top the list of issues. “Health care is on the ballot. Social Security and Medicare are on the ballot,” Tom Perez, chairman of the Democratic National Committee, told activists while campaigning with Polis at Servicios de la Raza, a Denver community center. “You need guardrails here in Colorado.” Colorado Republicans haven’t held the governor’s seat since 2007. Early returns suggest Stapleton, 44, is the underdog in an election in which independents, the state’s largest voting bloc, are turning out in high numbers, as they did in Colorado’s Democratic primaries. If elected, Polis, 43, would be Colorado’s first openly gay governor. A Democratic-controlled Statehouse could move forward on gun regulations, expand public school funding and limit drilling options for Colorado’s $31 billion oil and gas industry — one that’s prospered under centrist Democratic Gov. John Hickenlooper, a former petroleum geologist who is term-limited. Colorado’s Republican-led Senate has forced compromise on those issues. Senate President Kevin Grantham credits that compromise for the state’s fast-growing economy, one of the strongest in the nation. “That balance of government is good for predictability and stability and steady sailing for businesses,” Grantham said. Republicans have a one-vote Senate edge entering the election. A cluster of races in Denver’s suburbs will determine the outcome, and they have attracted money from the national parties and outside groups. Voters have been bombarded with daily mailers, television ads, texts and door knocks in targeted races such as Democratic state Rep. Faith Winter’s challenge of Republican state Sen. Beth Martinez Humenik. Democrat Hillary Clinton won the district by 5 percentage points in 2016. Stapleton has attacked Polis’ advocacy of green energy and publicly funded preschool and kindergarten. He defends state constitutional limits on taxes and spending that require voter approval for any tax hike. As treasurer, Stapleton worked with both parties to ensure a stable state investment portfolio and to rescue an underfunded state pension fund. He claims Polis’ plans for fully funded preschool and kindergarten and universal health care coverage would triple Colorado’s budget — if Polis could raise the taxes to fund them. “I’m a big believer that if you ask people to pay for things, you have to explain how you’re actually going to fund government, health care, transportation,” Stapleton said. Polis pledges to “build coalitions” to fund transportation and schools and promote green energy investment — suggesting that restrictive tax laws eventually need to change in a state whose population has grown from 4.3 million in 2000 to an estimated 5.7 million this year. Polis called for restricting access to guns for those in crisis and urged voters to elect a governor who supports abortion rights. Stapleton said he would be a “pro-life governor” who would respect Roe v. Wade as the law of the land but didn’t address during the campaign what he would do if the U.S. Supreme Court were to overturn that ruling. Trump weighed in Thursday on Twitter, saying Stapleton “will be an extraordinary Governor for the State of Colorado” and calling Polis “weak on crime and weak on borders — could never do the job.” Polis — who founded high schools for new immigrants and English learners — cited Trump’s escalating midterm rhetoric about immigration as a critical reason to vote Democratic. “I’m willing to stand up to this president or any president that tries to profit on division and on fear-mongering,” he told the Servicios de la Raza crowd. “Colorado could either elect a Donald Trump ‘yes man’ as governor or somebody with a track record of creating opportunities for families and bridging the great divides in our state.” ___ Associated Press writer Colleen Slevin contributed to this report. ___ For AP’s complete coverage of the U.S. midterm elections: http://apne.ws/APPolitics
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8251
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Britain brings in army to get protective kit to health workers.
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Britain brought in the army on Monday to help deliver supplies of protective equipment to healthcare workers after doctors said they felt like “cannon fodder” and pleaded with the government to provide the right kit.
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true
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Health News
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The distribution and delivery of millions of items of personal protective equipment (PPE) including masks will now be carried out by the army who will drive trucks throughout the day and night, health minister Matt Hancock said in a statement. Millions more items have been provided to hospitals, ambulance trust, GP practices, care homes and other health services in the last few days, he added, after complaints emerged from medical staff that they did not have enough kit. In a letter pleading with Prime Minister Boris Johnson to increase PPE supplies, over 6,000 frontline doctors said they were being asked to put their lives at risk with out-of-date masks, and low stocks of equipment. “We want to see action immediately,” the letter in The Sunday Times said, adding that it was very upsetting to hear healthcare professionals say they felt like “cannon fodder”. Hancock admitted to the BBC that there had been “challenges” and said that the authorities were trying to “solve” those problems. Protective kit from the national stockpile reserved for pandemic influenza had now been released said the joint statement from the department of health and National Health Service on Monday. They said that supply of protective equipment was rising. “We are taking urgent action to ensure dedicated frontline NHS and social care staff – who are working tirelessly to tackle this outbreak – feel supported. Today they are getting millions more PPE kits as part of that promise,” Hancock said. There was now enough supply of PPE available, added the statement, but acknowledged that there could be challenges in future due to unprecedented global demand plus the fact that most kit is made in China, where coronavirus hit production. “The NHS is working closely with the government, NHS Supply Chain and industry to continue to secure additional supplies,” the authorities said in a statement.
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28043
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A photograph showing U.S. President Donald Trump awarding a purple heart to a wounded veteran went unreported by the mainstream news media.
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When you make a contribution to this fund, you will help ease this transition. Money raised with this fundraiser will be used to cover gaps in coverage for care outside of hospital bills, to include vehicle modifications, traveling costs for family members, moving expenses, and construction costs to ensure their house is properly adapted to ADA standards.
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true
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Politics
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On 16 March 2019, an image of President Donald Trump bestowing a Purple Heart decoration on a wounded veteran named Clint Trial went viral after a Facebook user shared it along with the claim that the event “didn’t make the news”: The text of the meme reads: “The President Awarding a Purple Heart to Marine MSGT Clint Trial. This Didn’t Make the News, Share, Because It Should Have.” This is a genuine photograph of President Trump awarding a Purple Heart to a wounded veteran reportedly named Clint Trial. While the majority of “news media blackout” claims that we’ve encountered — an allegation often levied in an attempt to either spread fake news or to push narratives of biased reporting — have proved false, in this case, it’s true that mainstream news outlets provided little (if any) coverage of this event. So why didn’t this photograph make the news? While many social media users shared this image as “evidence” of the news media’s alleged bias against President Trump, that claim wasn’t supported by what we found. If this were simply a case of “liberally biased” mainstream media outlets ignoring a positive story about President Trump, we would still expect coverage of this event to turn up in conservative-leaning news outlets. However, we found almost no information about this veteran’s receiving a Purple Heart from President Trump in any news outlets, regardless of their perceived political leanings. The only article we could turn up was published in a Pennsylvania newspaper, the Titusville Herald, on 16 February 2019. That paper reported on the event not because of its national importance, but because of the pictured veteran’s family ties to Saegertown, Penn. The report also contained an editor’s note explaining that the veteran’s surname was omitted due to a request for privacy: “*Editor’s note: There are two Clints referenced in this story. One, simply referred to as Clint, is Luke McGill’s uncle, while the second is his father. The last names of Clint and his wife, Casey, have been omitted by request of the family for privacy.” The event began with President Trump’s visit to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Maryland in February 2019 for his annual physical. While there, the president met with a few of the wounded veterans who were being treated at that facility: The Titusville Herald also reported that President Trump’s visit with Trial was unexpected, and that no members of the press were present at the meeting. In other words, President Trump didn’t meet with this wounded veteran for a photo op or with the expectation of garnering positive news coverage. The newspaper also reported that the photographs were taken by a White House photographer (not a press photographer) and were privately provided to the family as keepsakes: A Saegertown boy and his family got an unexpected visit from the President of the United States while meeting with an uncle who was injured in the military. Luke McGill, 11, travelled with his mother, Stacey Gotchy, of Saegertown, and his cousin to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland, on Feb. 6 to visit his uncle Clint, a marine who lost both of his legs to a land mine in Afghanistan … While they were there, Clint was asked if he would be up for seeing a special VIP visitor, according to Gotchy. Little did they know, the special VIP visitor would turn out to be the president of the United States … According to Gotchy, the meet and greet was not political in any way. There was no press at the meeting, and the only pictures taken were by a White House photographer who provided images as keepsakes for the family. “President Trump was very kind and compassionate,” Gotchy said. “There was nothing political about it. He was very kind, concerned and very respectful and you could tell his sole purpose was to make sure [Luke’s uncle] Clint was okay and his family was supported throughout the process.” The visit became even more special when the president learned that Clint had not yet received his Purple Heart. Casey reached out to the staff at the office with the request that the president be the one who pinned the medal awarded to soldiers wounded in the line of duty on Clint’s shirt. President Trump saved Clint’s visit for last and held an award ceremony with the family present. We haven’t been able to track down the initial internet origins of this image, but it seems likely that the photograph was lifted from one of the personal social media pages of Trial (whose Twitter account is now set to private) or those of one of his relatives, and then turned into a meme and shared (against his wishes for privacy) with his full name. This meme does not appear to demonstrate any news media “bias” against President Trump but rather a private interaction that was never meant to receive press attention. President Trump didn’t meet with this veteran for a photo opportunity, nor did the news media refuse to cover the event out of a desire to provide nothing but negative stories about the president. If anything, this meme seems to demonstrate that some social media users will exploit even wounded veterans in order to advance their own political viewpoints. A GoFundMe campaign to help Sgt. Trial with his injuries was established in March 2019: In mid-January 2019, Clint Trial was working overseas when an explosion caused serious injuries to his body, resulting in a bilateral leg amputation, traumatic brain injury, and numerous internal injuries. We want to make sure this warrior and his family never have to worry about future costs as he adapts his life to a new normal and learns to get back on his “new feet.”
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9111
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A new HER2 mutation, a clinical trial and a promising diagnostic tool for metastatic breast cancer
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This news release describes the effects a new drug, neratinib, had on a very small subset of patients with metastatic HER2+ positive breast cancers. Neratinib (marketed as Nerlynx) very recently received FDA approval as an add-on treatment for early stage HER2+ positive cancer, but this information was left out of the release. In fact, the release refers to neratinib as an “experimental” drug. It was also confusing as to what was being highlighted in the release. The first part describes the results of a 16-patient clinical trial for which only five patients showed a “meaningful clinical response” (no details were given on what that meant), but the second part of the release describes a new screening tool used to recruit subjects into the clinical trial. It was concerning that the release didn’t talk about the limitations of the clinical trial results, disclose the lead authors’ numerous financial ties with the drug maker, discuss costs associated with the drug, or describe any side effects. In the end, despite its optimistic tone and claim of novelty, the release doesn’t provide much information on progress towards treating this type of cancer. Metastatic breast cancer patients have limited treatment options. Touting such limited effects of a drug in a small phase 2 trial does little to help inform patients seeking better treatments.
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false
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Baylor College of Medicine,HER2,neratinib
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There was no mention of cost in this release. Neratinib (marketed as Nerlynx) was approved July 17, 2017 for the treatment of early-stage HER2+ breast cancer so cost estimates should be available. The release mentioned that about five patients in the trial had a “meaningful clinical response showing significant disease stabilization or regression,” but did not provide any details as to what that means in patients with metastatic disease. The release irresponsibly speculates, based on extrapolated (not actual) data about how many people with metastatic breast cancer with the “new mutation” could benefit from the drug. “The number of patients who could potentially benefit from this new treatment approach is estimated to be in the thousands. The researchers estimate that as many as 200,000 patients are likely to be living with metastatic breast cancer today in the United States. Based on the estimate that the new mutation is present in 2 to 3 percent of cases, the researchers calculated that approximately 4,000 to 6,000 patients with metastatic breast cancer carry a HER2 mutation and are therefore potential candidates for neratinib treatment.” Remember, these estimates in the thousands are based on a study of just 16 people. No side effects of the drug were mentioned. It was also glossed over that most of the patients in the trial did not seem to have any response to neratinib. The release’s only reference to harms was that “Neratinib was well tolerated by most patients.” Other research (including the peer-reviewed paper this release is based on) has shown diarrhea to be a significant side effect of neratinib. This was a small phase 2 clinical trial of 16 women with HER2+ metastatic breast cancer — only five of whom had some “response” to the drug. The small size and modest result are limitations that should have been noted in the release. The release did not appear to commit disease mongering. The release didn’t name funders or discuss any potential conflicts of interest, instead referring readers to the full study, for which a journal subscription is required. The published study on which the release is based does list the full funding sources and the study authors’ conflicts of interest. Puma Biotechnology Inc, the maker of neratinib, was one of the study funders. This should have been disclosed in the release. All three corresponding authors of the study have multiple financial ties with Puma Biotechnology and other pharmas. This, too, should have been noted in the release. No alternatives were compared in this study although the study authors mentioned that this drug was aimed at those women who did not respond to conventional therapies to treat HER2+ cancers. The release didn’t make it clear that more research is needed following the phase 2 trial. The release could have mentioned that neratinib has already been approved by the FDA for women with early-stage HER2+ breast cancers as a follow-on therapy. The release made it seem that neratinib was an experimental drug that could be used for women with a particular gene mutation related to HER2+ metastatic breast cancer. It wasn’t made clear that neratinib is already used to treat early-stage HER2+ breast cancer. No sensational language here. But with only five patients (out of 16) showing a response to neratinib, the release seems to inflate the study results.
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8131
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New Zealand prepares to enter lockdown as coronavirus cases surge.
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New Zealand said on Monday it will move to its highest alert level imposing self-isolation, with all-non-essential services, schools and offices to be shut over the next 48 hours as the number of coronavirus cases more than double.
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true
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Health News
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Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said the decisions will place the most significant restriction on New Zealanders’ movements in modern history, but it was needed to save lives and slow the virus. “We are all now preparing to go into self isolation as a nation,” Ardern said in a news conference, adding that tens of thousands of New Zealanders could die without these measures. People lined up outside supermarkets shortly after the announcement to stack up essentials, despite assurances from the government that there were sufficient supplies and stores will remain open. Crowds were also expected at domestic airports as New Zealanders return home before complete lockdown takes effect for the next four weeks. Police Chief Mike Bush said more officers will be seen across the country to make sure instructions are followed and order is maintained. “We don’t want to get to a place where we need to enforce these instructions, but we will if required,” Bush told reporters. The number of coronavirus cases in New Zealand shot up to 102, more than double since Friday, as the country reported 36 new infections. New Zealand has had no deaths. Ardern said the cabinet agreed that effective immediately, the country of 5 million people would move into alert level 3 nationwide, and after 48 hours it will be at the highest level 4. New Zealand has already closed its borders to foreigners. Ardern said all bars, restaurants, cafes, gyms, cinemas, pools, museums, libraries, playgrounds and any other place where the public congregate must close their face-to-face function. She said supermarkets, doctors, pharmacies, service stations, access to essential banking services will all be available throughout New Zealand at every alert level. The move comes after neighboring Australia, which has thousands of COVID-19 cases, started lockdown measures on Monday, but has stopped short of self-isolation. Schools will be closed from Tuesday, except for children of essential workers such as our doctors, nurses, ambulance drivers and police. Schools will close entirely from midnight Wednesday. Workplaces were asked to implement alternative ways of working. New Zealand’s stock market reacted immediately to the announcement plunging 10% to biggest intraday percentage drop ever. The Reserve Bank of New Zealand (RBNZ) announced quantitative easing earlier on Monday as it decided to buy up NZ$30 billion ($17 billion) worth of government bonds to offset the impact of the coronavirus. Last week, the RBNZ slashed rates by 75 basis points and the government rolled out a NZ$12.1 billion fiscal stimulus package to support businesses and citizens. Finance Minister Grant Robertson said further support will come soon, including removing the cap on the wage subsidy scheme, which will inject a further NZ$4 billion into the economy over the next eleven weeks. He announced temporary support for mortgage holders, a business finance guarantee scheme and a freeze on all rent increases. “We cannot guarantee to stop all job losses, but we are doing our best to cushion the blow,” Robertson said. New Zealand’s opposition National Party said it had put on hold its campaign for a general election on Sept 19. Ardern said there was no impact on the election for now.
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13242
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"Department of Veterans Affairs doctors ""are prohibited from recommending medical marijuana."
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"The ad claimed, ""VA doctors are prohibited from recommending medical marijuana."" That’s on the mark. Veterans can still seek medical marijuana on their own -- where it’s legal -- and VA health care."
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true
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Arizona, Marijuana, Campaign to Regulate Marijuana Like Alcohol,
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"The effort to legalize recreational marijuana in Arizona has seen millions of dollars in contributions opposing the initiative -- and political advertisements on both sides of the issue. A recent ad from the Campaign to Regulate Marijuana Like Alcohol, a pro-pot group, tells the story of a post-9/11 veteran, Bruce Laird, who was prescribed multiple drugs before he turned to medical marijuana to treat his post-traumatic stress disorder. ""VA doctors are prohibited from recommending medical marijuana,"" the Oct. 14 ad’s on-screen text reads, before urging a ""yes"" vote on recreational marijuana to help veterans. As we’ve noted previously, voters approved medical marijuana in November 2010. The first dispensary opened in December 2012. We wondered if the ad’s claim about U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs doctors checked out, especially given the continued delays for health care at the Phoenix VA Health Care System. Cannabis concessions The prohibition is outlined in the VA’s 2011 directive on medical marijuana. ""It is VHA policy to prohibit VA providers from completing forms seeking recommendations or opinions regarding a veteran’s participation in a state marijuana program."" According to the Drug Enforcement Administration, marijuana is a Schedule I drug, which means it cannot be used for medical purposes and has high potential for abuse. The DEA has a five-schedule drug scale -- the higher the number, the less dangerous. However, 25 states have already legalized medical marijuana. Dr. Andrew Saxon of the VA Puget Sound Health Care System in Seattle said federal health care systems have to obey federal laws. Marijuana is still illegal federally. However, a veteran could still receive VA health care -- as the 2011 directive notes -- and seek medical marijuana elsewhere. ""A military veteran who is eligible for VA health care cannot be refused those services if he/she is using medical marijuana authorized by a non-VA health care provider,"" Saxon said. Legislation on amending the VA’s policy has come up short. Earlier this year, an amendment to the VA’s budget bill would have allowed VA doctors to recommend medical marijuana to veterans in states where it’s legal. However, the amendment was removed from the spending bill, which eventually passed. Our ruling The ad claimed, ""VA doctors are prohibited from recommending medical marijuana."" That’s on the mark. Veterans can still seek medical marijuana on their own -- where it’s legal -- and VA health care.
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3920
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New Mexico school district adopts medical marijuana policy.
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A northern New Mexico school district’s board has approved a policy allowing the administration of medical marijuana to students enrolled in the state’s medical marijuana program.
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true
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Medication, Medical marijuana, Farmington, Marijuana, New Mexico
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The policy adopted by the Aztec district’s board Tuesday brings the district into compliance with a 2019 state law, the Farmington Daily Times reports. The law mandates that districts allow students access to medically prescribed marijuana on school grounds, as long as it is not administered via smoke or vapor and not administered or possessed by the student. Under the policy, schools cannot store prescribed medical cannabis. Instead, parents of students with prescriptions who are enrolled in the state program will have to bring the medication onto campus to administer it to their child. District Superintendent Kirk Carpenter said allowing medical marijuana at schools is controversial but what state law requires. Board member Wayne Ritter said the district might lose federal anti-drug funding because of the policy obeying the state’s mandate, but Carpenter said that’s not going to happen. Board member Roger Collins said he was neutral on medical marijuana but said he was concerned about students who needed the medication for seizures or chronic pain.
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31412
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An American Muslim man raped a 13-year-old girl in Ohio, and then was beaten by Trump supporters.
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Ironically, before it was employed by RedInfo.com, Ayad’s story and image in the hospital bed had been circulated in 2013 by numerous far-right and anti-Muslim blogs like BareNakedIslam.com and GatewayPundit.com to drum up anti-Muslim sentiment against his attackers.
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false
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Politics
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On 26 April 2017, RedInfo.us posted a grisly picture of a badly battered man in a hospital bed with the inflammatory headline, “BREAKING: This is American Muslim who rape 13 years old girl in Ohio he was beaten by Trump supporter. Do you support this?” The story contains only one line of text, written in poor English: This is American Muslim who rape 13 years old girl in Ohio he was beaten by Trump supporter. Do you support this? The short story is a total fabrication, and in fact, the man in the photograph is not Muslim. He is Amir Ayad, a Coptic Christian who, according to reports, was beaten by Islamic hardliners in 2013 in the Egyptian capital city of Cairo. Ayad was featured in several news stories about the incident, a riot in which members of the Muslim Brotherhood and their opponents clashed on 22 March 2013 near the Brotherhood’s headquarters in Cairo. A reporter from Mideast Christian News (MCN), an agency that covers the Copts and other Christian minority communities in the Middle East, took the photograph of Ayad as he was recovering in a hospital. The MCN report and photograph was subsequently used by Fox News for their story on the incident. (A caption that reads “MCNdirect” can be seen in the lower right corner of the photograph.) Fox reported on 26 March 2013: “They accompanied me to one of the mosques in the area and I discovered the mosque was being used to imprison demonstrators and torture them,” Amir Ayad, a Coptic who has been a vocal protester against the regime, told MidEast Christian News from a hospital bed. Ayad said he was beaten for hours with sticks before being left for dead on a roadside. Amir’s brother, Ezzat Ayad, said he received an anonymous phone call at 3 a.m. Saturday, with the caller saying his brother had been found near death and had been taken to the ambulance. Ayad recounted the experience to reporters from the Associated Press: Bearded Brotherhood members dragged dozens of activists into the Bilal bin Ramah Mosque, where they beat them and flogged them with whips, several of those who were held told The Associated Press. Christian activist Amir Ayad recalled how, while he was being beaten, he’d hear Brotherhood supporters coming into the mosque greeted by their comrades who told them, “Go warm up on that Christian dog inside.” Ayad — who was left with a fractured skull and broken ribs — said Brotherhood members forced him to pose for photograph, wielding a knife they pushed into his hands to use as evidence that he was thug. Opponents, meanwhile, snatched a number of Brotherhood members and took them into the Al-Hamad Mosque. A reporter for the Brotherhood’s party newspaper, Mustafa el-Khatib, told the AP he was seized and carried by his arms and legs into the mosque and beaten. “You sheep, we’ll show you,” his tormentors shouted, using a term many protesters use against Islamists they see as blindly following their leaders, el-Khatib told the AP. He had deep cuts in his head and bruises all over his body. The web site RedInfo.us is based in the Veles, a small city in the Eastern European nation of Macedonia, according to the domain lookup took WhoIs. Veles serves as a curious hub for web sites that spread fake news, often with an slant favoring U.S. president Donald Trump. As BuzzFeed News reported in November 2016: Over the past year, the Macedonian town of Veles (population 45,000) has experienced a digital gold rush as locals launched at least 140 US politics websites. These sites have American-sounding domain names such as WorldPoliticus.com, TrumpVision365.com, USConservativeToday.com, DonaldTrumpNews.co, and USADailyPolitics.com. They almost all publish aggressively pro-Trump content aimed at conservatives and Trump supporters in the US. The young Macedonians who run these sites say they don’t care about Donald Trump. They are responding to straightforward economic incentives: As Facebook regularly reveals in earnings reports, a US Facebook user is worth about four times a user outside the US. The fraction-of-a-penny-per-click of US display advertising — a declining market for American publishers — goes a long way in Veles. Several teens and young men who run these sites told BuzzFeed News that they learned the best way to generate traffic is to get their politics stories to spread on Facebook — and the best way to generate shares on Facebook is to publish sensationalist and often false content that caters to Trump supporters. Despite the fact the story is completely fake, it was shared by numerous Facebook users, often with vengeful, misspelled comments like, “He is a pig monster America should cut off his winnie” and “No, I do not support this . They should have beheaded him, then sent him back to where he can from.”
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10867
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A Genetic Test for Prospective Parents
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"This Wall Street Journal story hits many of the right marks when describing a test created by a Silicon Valley start-up, Counsyl Inc., that allows prospective parents to determine whether they carry genes that could lead to their children having specific hereditary diseases. Such tests have been available previously. The news here is that this company’s innovation makes testing far cheaper and easier. The Journal found the test so remarkable it gave it a Bronze award as part of its annual awards for technology innovation. We did not find the story about the test quite as remarkable, mainly because it did not thoroughly explain the evidence behind this advance and the risks involved with genetic screening. The story itself makes it clear why a better genetic test — and careful coverage of the test — matter. ""Proponents of universal prepregnancy genetic screening make a bold claim: If these tests were widely available, they could significantly reduce, and possibly eliminate, hereditary diseases."" To test that bold claim, stories like these need to provide more of the evidence to readers in easy to understand terms. If the test can help individuals considering having children who may be at high risk for a genetic defect, it does not mean that it will help an individual who is worried about genetic defects, but not at high risk. The reason is that as the likelihood that the person has a genetic defect falls, the ability of the test to differentiate between a false positive and a true positive gets harder. False alarms for prospective parents could be devastating. There isn’t even the briefest mention of this incredibly important issue."
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mixture
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"This story is particularly complete, if brief, on the subject of costs. The story explains that previously, a single genetic test might cost anywhere from $500 to $1,000. The company’s new test, which covers approximately 100 different genetic conditions, costs about $350. The story also points out that most insurance plans will cover the fee. That has not been the case with previous tests. The does not address the down stream costs. For example, if one of the tests is positive, does it need confirmation or is the specificity of the test adequate? If a patient is really at high risk based upon her/his family history, is a negative test sufficiently sensitive to be sure that person does not have the genetic defect? The story addresses two major advantages to Counsyl’s test – the fact that it much cheaper and much easier. On the latter point, previous genetic tests typically covered a single disease and required a blood sample. Counsyl’s new method covers about 100 disorders, as mentioned above, with a saliva test. But the focus should have been expanded beyond mere convenience. Does this test improve the quality of life for ""families at risk for conceiving children with familial diseases""? No evidence is presented suggesting that it does. Does the test ""significantly reduce, and possibly eliminate, hereditary diseases""? No evidence is presented suggesting that it does. The story does not discuss potential harms. In a story like this, which is about a test that gives parents options, harm is a tricky concept and is very much in the eye of the beholder. Those who are likely to see a harm are those concerned about the slippery slope toward ""designer babies."" Is there a moral and/or ethical question raised when parents can more easily conduct a test that might lead them to not have children? There is also the potential harm of falsely reassuring or alarming data. The story does not evaluate the reliability or accuracy of the new test. How sensitive and specific are the results? How often is a test falsely negative or positive? For potentially serious genetic defects such as Tay-Sachs disease, you need a really sensitive test. You don’t want to miss anyone with the gene. The story does avoid disease-mongering by presenting the new test as a useful and practical advancement without making any heart-wrenching claims about any of the disorders a child may inherit. In our view, this is a shortcoming. How many children are born each year with genetic diseases? That would be telling information, but the story does not provide it. We do get a different statistic – that approximately 20 percent to 30 percent of infant deaths are due to genetic diseases. This is interesting, and worth including, but it gets at only a part of the picture. One outside voice was included in the story – that of a judge in the Innovation Awards competition. The judge, a venture capital executive, is not a medical expert, and it’s not made clear that he is not an investor in the company or in that technological field. Presumably the awards are not judged by people with a financial interest in the outcome, though the story does not say so. We hunted throughout the Journal’s quite interesting package but could not find any ""how we did it"" story or anything about the judges. We think this weakened the story and the overall package. It would have been nice to hear from an obstetrician who would consider using such a test. The story does a good job of comparing the status quo to benefits offered by Counsyl’s new test. Another alternative to this test is to wait until pregnancy to screen. The Counsyl test would be best where one parent having a single copy of the defective gene would be enough to cause problems. The story says that after a period during which the test was available only at certain clinics, it now is available nationally. That sounds like good news, but I was left wondering if ""nationally"" meant the same as ""everywhere."" Are we just as likely to see this test in Casper, Wyoming, as we are in Manhattan? The story clearly states that until now, testing for diseases that parents might pass onto their children has been available, but due to the expense and hassle, it has been little used. For most parents interested in knowing as much as they can about the potential health of future children, this clearly represents a step forward. The story is part of a larger awards package that involved asking a panel of judges to review innovations and decide which ones deserved special merit. It was not based on a release."
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7575
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Battered by floods, U.S. river communities try new remedies.
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Hollywood Beach Road was once such prime real estate that the neighborhood had its own airstrip, enabling well-heeled residents to zip back and forth between homes in nearby St. Louis and weekend cottages on the Meramec River in suburban Arnold, Missouri.
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true
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Mississippi, Michael Brown, Science, Weekend Reads, Floods, General News, Wetlands, AP Top News, Mississippi River, U.S. News
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Floods eventually took their toll. Nowadays, all that remains of those waterfront dwellings are crumbling concrete foundations amid a tangle of skinny trees and beaver-gnawed stumps. Nature is reclaiming the area — and is welcome to it, local leaders say. Instead of building levees to keep floodwaters out, Arnold has used federal and local tax dollars to buy out hundreds of homeowners so the landscape could revert to wetlands that soak up overflow waters. Those wetlands helped the town of 21,000 escape major damage in 2019 when the Mississippi River reached its second-highest level on record. And they reflect a pattern quietly emerging from a growing number of communities that could help the nation’s midsection cope with rivers often surging beyond their banks at this time of year. Each spring, melting snow in the north and seasonal rains send huge volumes of runoff into waterways that have been heavily armored to protect surrounding land from flooding. This system of levees, dikes and walls usually held up during the last century but is now being over-topped more frequently by heavier storms that scientists link to global warming. Floods in the Missouri, Mississippi and Arkansas river basins caused $20 billion in damage in 2019, the second-wettest year on record. The National Weather Service forecast moderate to severe problems in 23 states this spring but said last week the risk had declined because of below-normal rainfall in the past two months. Longer term, one government assessment predicts annual flood damage in the Midwest growing by $500 million by 2050. But the floodplain awaiting this year’s surge is part of a changing picture, altered from just a few decades ago. It is now dotted with more parks, marshes and forests on land surrendered in recent years by communities and individuals. Some experts envision this expanding green patchwork as a promising model for relieving pressure on a river system that can no longer stay in its man-made channels. “It’s becoming evident that we have to do something different,” said Colin Wellenkamp, executive director of the Mississippi River Cities and Towns Initiative. “That increasingly means shaping our cities around the river instead of shaping the river around our cities.” To give rivers more room to sprawl, cities are keeping adjacent lands for limited uses such as parks that can flood when rivers rise. A few rural levees have been set back or removed to create wider flow paths. Wetlands have been restored as buffers. In Arnold, the improvement was evident after last year’s Midwestern floods, said Robert Shockey, police chief and emergency management director. “Instead of 100 homes getting wet, we have a dozen.” No one suggests replacing levees, dams and walls as a primary means of flood control. “But they need to be augmented by natural assets,” said Wellenkamp, whose organization represents nearly 100 municipalities. This approach is gradually catching state and federal policymakers’ attention. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which has built dams and levees since the late 19th Century, is becoming more receptive. Congress has instructed the agency in recent years to consider “natural” or “nature-based” flood control measures. “We are definitely trying to make sure we’re giving these features a fair shake,” said Maria Wegner, senior policy adviser with the Corps headquarters in Washington, D.C. Experts don’t know exactly how many land buyouts or set-asides have taken place to create new buffers, but said the cases are adding up. Wellenkamp’s organization has commissioned a study to compile a list. Some projects emphasize restoring wildlife habitat, with flood prevention an additional benefit. In one case, the Army Corps moved back a levee south of Hannibal, Missouri, to open about 325 acres to river flow. But for many towns, flood control is the primary motive. Davenport, Iowa, is in the vanguard of rethinking flood control. Even after waters covered its downtown business district last year, the town decided against a flood wall. Instead, it will continue relying on parkland along its 9-mile-long Mississippi riverfront and on a 300-acre marsh. The small town of Grafton, Illinois, perched where the Mississippi and Illinois rivers meet, also has rejected building walls that would obscure scenic views. Instead, it used sediment dredged from a marina to recreate a wetland in a shallow area of the Mississippi. Similar projects are being tried elsewhere. Minneapolis went with natural floodwater retention basins instead of levees to protect a new mixed-use development. Dubuque, Iowa, restored a Mississippi tributary creek and floodplain paved over a century earlier. Cape Girardeau, Missouri, created a natural area for floodwaters rather than extend a wall north of town. Skeptics question whether natural features can play a major role. “You’re seeing a little bit of a trend,” said Nicholas Pinter, an earth sciences professor at the University of California, Davis. But such projects are “small in scale and the exception to the rule.” Some attempts to give rivers more room have drawn resistance — particularly along the Missouri, the nation’s longest. Hundreds of farmers and business owners sued the Army Corps for creating more wildlife habitat along the Lower Missouri, saying it worsened flooding. And property rights activists have opposed federal plans to expand the Big Muddy National Wildlife Refuge from 16,600 to 60,000 acres by purchasing more land from willing sellers. Still, there are signs of changing attitudes. Republican senators from Iowa, Kansas, Missouri and Nebraska introduced legislation in March that calls for the Army Corps to use “both structural and nonstructural measures” to reduce flooding on the Missouri. A new Corps plan for the Lower Meramec River, hit by three record floods since August 2015, endorses wetland restoration and property buyouts. In Atchison County, several farmland owners are negotiating to sell more than 500 acres to move back portions of a levee on the Missouri River. “I’d much rather be farming it, but I’ve come to the realization that it’s not going to happen,” said tenant farmer Phil Graves, who grew corn and soybeans on land now smeared with up to four feet of sandy silt from last year’s flooding. If completed, the project could set an example for other flood-prone counties along the Missouri, said Dru Buntin, deputy director of the state Department of Natural Resources. Already, said Buntin, “you have landowners themselves talking about how this approach benefited them, as opposed to state or federal agencies trying to convince them.” After last year’s flooding, nearly 750 farmers in a dozen heartland states volunteered for a federal program that pays to take property out of production and restore natural features. Federal disaster legislation provided an extra $217.5 million for conservation easements in 13 hard-hit states. “We don’t have anywhere near the funding we’d need” to accept all who want to participate, said Jon Hubbert of the Natural Resources Conservation Service office in Des Moines, Iowa. —- Associated Press writer Scott McFetridge in Des Moines, Iowa, contributed to this story. —- Follow John Flesher on Twitter: @johnflesher. —- 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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228
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Patient groups push back against Gilead's pricey HIV prevention treatment.
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Gilead Sciences Inc (GILD.O) hopes to soon introduce a pricey new pill to prevent HIV in people at risk of contracting the infection, but the drugmaker faces opposition from an unusual source: patient advocates.
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true
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Health News
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Such groups have traditionally lobbied for insurance coverage of newer HIV drugs regardless of expense. But at least three U.S. organizations now question whether Gilead’s Descovy would be the best option for most people at risk of exposure. A generic version of the current prevention pill, Truvada, is due in the United States in September 2020, which should bring down costs and give many more people access to the therapy, they say. Their resistance is being echoed by some insurers, which are hinting that price will be a barrier to providing coverage for Descovy. “Based on the science that we have seen thus far, there is no indication that everyone needs to be taking Descovy,” Tim Horn, director of medication access and pricing at the National Alliance of State and Territorial AIDS Directors (NASTAD) told Reuters. “We see no reason to push back against commercial payers or Medicaid programs that would move to prefer generic Truvada (for prevention), provided there are guard-rails that do not deny access to Descovy for those who need Descovy,” he said. Truvada, also made by Gilead, has been used to treat people infected with HIV since 2004. It was approved as a daily pill for pre-exposure prophylaxis, or PrEP, in 2012, and remains the only preventive therapy on the U.S. market. Descovy, shown to be less toxic than Truvada to the kidneys and bones in clinical trials, was approved in 2016 for people already infected with HIV. Advisers to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration recommended on Wednesday that the agency approve Descovy to reduce the risk of sexually acquired HIV infection in men and transgender women who have sex with men. When asked about the patient groups’ criticism, Gilead said Descovy is safer than Truvada and offers more efficient delivery of its antiviral component, resulting in greater concentration of the drug in cells where HIV infection can occur. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that 1.1 million people in the United States could benefit from PrEP. High-risk populations include people having sex with someone who is infected with HIV or who share injection needle equipment. Gilead said 213,000 people were taking Truvada for HIV prevention in the second quarter of this year. The company has pledged to help the Trump administration achieve a goal of stopping the spread of HIV in the United States within a decade. In May, Gilead said it would donate enough Truvada annually to supply 200,000 uninsured Americans with PrEP until Descovy is approved for HIV prevention, then switch patients to the new drug. HIV drugmakers have largely been shielded from generic competition. Each time one of their therapies came close to losing patent protection, scientific advances allowed them to introduce a new drug that improved on its predecessor, often with a higher price. Both Truvada and Descovy are priced at $21,000 per year, before discounts provided to public and private health insurers. In the first half of 2019, Gilead’s Truvada sales totaled $1.3 billion. Descovy sales amounted to $700 million and are expected to rise to $3 billion dollars annually by 2024, according to IBES data from Refinitiv. Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd (TEVA.TA) is due to sell a generic version of Truvada next year. More significant price competition is expected when other competitors emerge in 2021. Teva’s Chief Executive Kare Schultz expressed confidence that he will find a market for generic Truvada, and said the company has held preliminary talks with U.S. payers. Health insurers “will normally say that if there was something that was the gold standard then they will prefer to use the generic for the gold standard rather than switch to a new product,” Schultz told Reuters. Some prominent patient advocates, including community-based Treatment Action Group (TAG) and NASTAD, which advocates for public health, told Reuters that Gilead has not proven the newer treatment provides enough of a benefit to justify its use beyond people at risk of kidney or bone density problems. At a time when HIV drug prices are soaring, their views may provide support to health insurers who routinely push generic drug use to curb costs. Jeremiah Johnson, HIV project director at TAG, told Reuters he is open to a conversation about health plans requiring individuals try a generic drug before using a significantly more expensive regimen like Descovy. TAG and PrEP4All Collaboration, which aims to expand access to PrEP for all Americans, earlier this year called for the FDA to convene the advisory committee review of Descovy, citing concerns over Gilead’s trial data and pricing practices. Not all experts are as vocal in questioning Gilead’s aims. Dr. Paul Volberding, director of the AIDS Research Institute at the University of California, San Francisco, told Reuters that Descovy for PrEP should be made available to people that have insurance to pay for it, while a generic could make sense for people with less access to coverage. “The safety difference is small, but real,” he said. Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told Reuters that Descovy may provide an advantage because it remains in the body for longer than Truvada. “If you miss a dose or two it is unlikely that there is going to be a gap in protection,” he said. But some health insurers, which largely cover Truvada for PrEP, are not convinced of a significant benefit from Descovy. “Based on the current information and data available to us at this time, we believe generic Truvada will be the most cost effective option for PrEP,” said David Lassen, chief clinical officer at Prime Therapeutics, which manages pharmacy benefits for Blue Cross Blue Shield health plans. Express Scripts, the pharmacy benefit manager owned by Cigna Corp (CI.N), said cost is a big barrier to U.S. use of Truvada for PrEP. “We would certainly look to leverage cost savings from generic Truvada to help improve affordability for patients and payers,” the company told Reuters.
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16784
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"The U.S. Supreme Court is ""five guys who start determining what contraceptions are legal."
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"Pelosi said, ""We should be afraid of this court, the five guys who start determining what contraceptions are legal."" This sweeping claim was a misstatement, her spokesman acknowledged to PolitiFact. The Hobby Lobby decision didn’t turn on whether certain types of contraception should be legal, but rather on the question of whether certain corporations could decide on religious grounds not to pay for specific types of contraceptives in employee health insurance plans. Experts say that there are solid legal precedents that would keep the Supreme Court from actually banning forms of contraception outright."
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false
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National, Health Care, Sexuality, Women, Nancy Pelosi,
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"More than 10 days after the Supreme Court decided Burwell vs. Hobby Lobby, the landmark case was still sending shockwaves through Washington and the political world. In the decision, a 5-4 majority ruled that a closely held, private corporation, such as the craft retailer Hobby Lobby, could decline on religious grounds to pay for four kinds of contraceptives otherwise mandated in employee health coverage by the Affordable Care Act, the law proposed and signed by President Barack Obama. At her weekly press conference on July 10, 2014, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., referenced the decision with a note of alarm. ""Really, we should be afraid of this court,"" Pelosi said. ""The five guys who start determining what contraceptions are legal. Let's not even go there."" Several readers asked us to scrutinze whether Pelosi was right to say that the Supreme Court was deciding which contraception methods are legal, rather than whether some corporations must pay for them through their employees’ health insurance plans. Later that day, Fox News Channel host Megyn Kelly took the media to task for not immediately shooting down Pelosi’s assertion. ""I’ve seen the media rush to clarify Ms. Pelosi’s misleading remarks … Oh, no, I have seen none of that, except on Fox News,"" Kelly said sarcastically. ""When you’ve got somebody in such a powerful a position as Nancy Pelosi, in a position to influence so many people on such a platform, come out and tell blatant hoods, there should be some fact-checking. Where is PolitiFact on that? Where is the mainstream media calling her to account?"" Well, here we are. We can eliminate any reader suspense by sharing the response Pelosi’s office sent PolitiFact after we inquired: ""She misspoke,"" spokesman Drew Hammill acknowledged. ""Obviously the impact of the court’s decision is not to make these four contraceptive methods illegal – i.e. no longer allowed to be sold."" Hammill went on to explain that Pelosi’s ""overriding point"" was that the decision ""does in fact limit access … which is the key point Pelosi made."" He pointed to portions of Associate Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s dissent in which Ginsburg notes that IUDs are expensive and that removing company support for them could leave some female employees without the ""most effective"" medical option for their needs. Indeed, one of Pelosi’s later comments from the news conference -- when she focused on the issue of who pays for contraceptives, rather than whether they remain legal -- seems to be on firmer ground. She expressed concern ""that five men could get down to specifics of whether a woman should use a diaphragm and (whether) she should pay for it herself, or her boss. It's not her boss' business. The business is whatever his business is, but it's not what contraception she uses."" We asked legal experts whether it was plausible to think that the Supreme Court would actually make certain kinds of contraceptives illegal, as Pelosi’s now-disowned comment suggested. The experts agreed that the scenario was farfetched. ""There is no reason to think the Court will ban any contraceptives,"" said Susan Bloch, a constitutional law professor at Georgetown University. ""Hobby Lobby involved the question of whether a company can, for religious reasons, refuse to pay for health insurance that covers certain contraceptives. Hobby Lobby does not relate to the legality of contraceptives at all."" Kurt Lash, a University of Illinois law professor, agreed. Pelosi’s original comment, he said, suggested ""either that the Supreme Court has started 'determining what contraceptions are legal,' or that recent decisions suggest that a majority might be heading in that direction. Neither is true, or even plausible."" As evidence, Lash cited solid legal precedent in favor of making contraceptives legal. Regardless of the court’s recent jurisprudence, Lash said, ""it is -- and will be -- ‘legal’ for employees to obtain contraceptives on their own. Employees have that right as a matter of constitutional law under the Supreme Court's 1965 decision in Griswold vs. Connecticut, a case no one is challenging anywhere in the country and which is not implicated in any way in the ACA litigation."" In fact, he added, ""even if a majority of the the Supreme Court reversed Griswold -- something that will never happen under the Roberts Court -- this still would not make contraceptives ‘illegal.’ At most, it would leave the matter to the states to decide for themselves. And every state allows the distribution of contraceptives and has done so for decades, even prior to the Court's 1965 decision in Griswold."" Our ruling Pelosi said, ""We should be afraid of this court, the five guys who start determining what contraceptions are legal."" This sweeping claim was a misstatement, her spokesman acknowledged to PolitiFact. The Hobby Lobby decision didn’t turn on whether certain types of contraception should be legal, but rather on the question of whether certain corporations could decide on religious grounds not to pay for specific types of contraceptives in employee health insurance plans. Experts say that there are solid legal precedents that would keep the Supreme Court from actually banning forms of contraception outright."
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4805
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Illinois gets federal grant to improve maternal health.
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Illinois is getting $450,000 in federal funds to improve maternal health and reduce the number of women and babies who die during or shortly after pregnancy.
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true
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Infant mortality rate, Health, General News, Illinois, Tammy Duckworth, United States
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Sens. Dick Durbin and Tammy Duckworth say the Illinois Department of Public Health will use the funding from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to review maternal deaths and find opportunities for prevention. The U.S. maternal and infant mortality rate has been rising, especially for women and babies of color. A state review found African-American women in Illinois are six times more likely to die of pregnancy-related complications than white women. About 72% of Illinois’ pregnancy-related deaths were preventable. Durbin says “no nation as rich and advanced as the United States” should have moms and infants dying at rates the U.S. is seeing.
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41843
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"Rep. Marsha Blackburn ""voted to give members of Congress health care for life."
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A Democratic TV ad in the Tennessee Senate race spins the facts on votes that Rep. Marsha Blackburn cast on health care.
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mixture
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Affordable Care Act, American Health Care Act, health insurance, maternity coverage,
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A Democratic TV ad in the Tennessee Senate race spins the facts on votes that Rep. Marsha Blackburn cast on health care:The TV ad was launched in early October by Majority Forward, a 501(c)(4) organization that is affiliated with the Democratic super PAC Senate Majority.Blackburn is running against Democrat Phil Bredesen, a former Tennessee governor.We’ll take the votes referenced in the ad in chronological order.In the ad, a woman named Elizabeth from Williamson County, Tennessee, says: “Congresswoman Blackburn voted to give members of Congress health care for life.” Majority Forward’s support for the ad references a July 2012 vote to repeal the Affordable Care Act. It was not specifically a vote on congressional health benefits, though Democrats spun it that way at the time.What does the repeal of the ACA have to do with lawmakers’ health care? When the health care legislation was being debated, an amendment by Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley was added to the Senate bill to require that members of Congress and their staffs get insurance coverage through the ACA’s exchanges — for those who buy their own coverage through the individual market — as opposed to continuing to get insurance through the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program.The idea behind Grassley’s amendment was that if the exchanges were good enough for other Americans, they should be good enough for Congress.This created some issues, however, for the Office of Personnel Management, which is essentially the human resources department for the federal government. (And it sparked a stream of false claims over the years about Congress being “exempt” from the health care law. )Federal employees can keep their FEHB coverage once they retire, provided they are eligible to retire and had at least five years of FEHB coverage immediately before retirement, or coverage for the entire period of their service. It’s not free — they would continue to pay part of the premiums, just as they do while working.But once the ACA was enacted in 2010, it required members of Congress to eventually move to the ACA exchanges, which held the first open enrollment period in late 2013, for plans starting in January 2014. It looked like lawmakers would lose their health insurance retirement benefit.So, when House Republicans voted to repeal the law in 2012, Democrats made the argument that the vote would reinstate the benefit for Congress.An anonymous Democratic official told the Hill newspaper at the time: “House Republicans are set to repeal the promise that members of Congress have health care just like everyone else and to restart the perk of lifetime government health care for themselves.”This talking point, however, has grown stale. The ACA wasn’t repealed, of course. And Congress didn’t lose its retirement benefit, either.In October 2013, a few months before the ACA exchange coverage would take effect, the Office of Personnel Management issued a final rule saying that lawmakers and their staffs would still be eligible to join the FEHB in retirement, provided they had five years of continuous coverage through either the FEHB or the ACA exchanges, as the Congressional Research Service explained in a 2017 report.While some Democrats may have cast the repeal vote in 2012 as one that would have reinstated the health care retirement benefit, Republicans were focused on repealing other aspects of the law. Blackburn issued a statement the day of the vote, saying, “Obamacare was a mistake and I’ll keep fighting to repeal it until we get this law off the books. House Republicans remain committed to working step-by-step to replace Obamacare with real solutions.”And the ad doesn’t mention that eligible lawmakers had this so-called “health care for life” benefit before the ACA and still have it today.In the ad, Elizabeth says she had an “incredibly complicated” delivery that required a lengthy hospital stay and would have cost about $950,000 without insurance. “I met with Congresswoman Blackburn as they were talking about taking away maternity coverage from women,” she says. “She basically said that there was nothing she could do.”The reference is to the Republicans’ American Health Care Act — one of the repeal-and-replace efforts in 2017. The House passed it, and Blackburn voted for it. The Senate did not pass it.The bill wouldn’t have automatically taken away maternity coverage. But it would have allowed states to get waivers to change or waive the 10 essential health benefits requirement of the ACA for individual market and small-group market plans. That means some states could have waived a benefit requirement like maternity coverage for those markets.The ACA’s 10 essential health benefits are: ambulatory, emergency, hospitalization, maternity and newborn care, mental health and substance use disorder services, prescription drugs, rehabilitative services and devices, laboratory services, preventive care and chronic disease management, and pediatric services including dental and vision.Before the ACA was enacted in 2010, 18 states offered some protections for maternity coverage in the individual or small-group market, and 11 of those required insurers in the individual market to include coverage of maternity care, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. Tennessee was not among those states.A 2012 report from the National Women’s Law Center examined 3,331 individual market policies in state capitals in 48 states and Washington, D.C., and found that just 12 percent of them included maternity coverage. None of the 107 plans in Tennessee included such coverage, though 16 offered a separate maternity rider. Those riders, which function like add-on coverage to the main policy, cost $101.35 to $228.20 per month in the state. The NWLC report notes that riders often included waiting periods as well before they would cover a pregnancy.We can’t predict whether Tennessee would have waived the maternity coverage requirements if the Republican health care bill had been enacted. But it certainly would have been a possibility. The TV ad would be accurate to say that Blackburn voted for a bill that “would have eliminated guarantee of maternity coverage,” as Majority Forward’s support for the ad says in pointing to a brief on this issue by the Kaiser Family Foundation. A state would have to decide to eliminate the coverage requirement.In the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office’s analysis of the legislation, it estimated that about one-third of the U.S. population lives in states that would “make moderate changes to market regulations” under the bill, and about one-sixth lives in states that would request both waivers to change the essential health benefit requirements and to allow pricing based on health status for a limited time for those without continuous coverage.Average premiums would decrease, CBO explained, in states that reduced or eliminated the benefit requirements, but out-of-pocket expenses for those who used the eliminated benefits would go up. “In particular, out-of-pocket spending on maternity care and mental health and substance abuse services could increase by thousands of dollars in a given year for the nongroup enrollees who would use those services,” CBO said.To mitigate this issue, the House bill included $15 billion in funding to states to be used for maternity coverage, and mental health and substance abuse treatment. And maternity coverage could be sold as an optional rider, as it was before the ACA. Still, CBO said the cost of the rider would cause “substantially higher out-of-pocket health care costs for pregnant women.” Insurers would “price that rider at close to the average cost of maternity coverage, which could be more than $1,000 per month,” CBO said. Or they could offer a less expensive rider for limited coverage.Like many aspects of the ACA, the essential health benefits requirement mainly affects the individual market, where 7 percent of Americans get their insurance. Employer plans with 15 or more employees are separately required to cover maternity care under the Pregnancy Discrimination Act of 1978. And even smaller firms have been affected by that law. The Kaiser Family Foundation explained that the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 broadened the effect of the PDA by forbidding small-group plans, for employers with as few as two employees, from denying coverage to some employees. “This means small employers not subject to the PDA nonetheless had the opportunity to buy policies with maternity benefits sold to larger employers,” KFF said. The woman in the ad has a personal stake in this issue. She is Elizabeth Wanczak, who — in addition to meeting with Blackburn in her Franklin, Tennessee, office in April 2017, according to Majority Forward — also attended a town hall meeting hosted by Blackburn in February of that year. The Tennessean quoted Wanczak and reported that she said “she wouldn’t have been able to have her daughter if not for the insurance she found through the federally run health insurance exchange. She came to learn about maternity coverage included in any replacement plan pledged by congressional Republicans.”Viewers of this ad, however, aren’t getting the whole story on the Republican plan, how it would have worked and who it potentially could have affected.
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22877
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"There are ""10 or 20 deaths a year from foodborne illness"" in the United States."
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Tom Coburn says that only 10 to 20 people die annually from foodborne illnesses
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false
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Agriculture, National, Health Care, Regulation, Tom Coburn,
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"On Nov. 30, 2010, the Senate, by a 73-25 vote, passed the FDA Food Safety Modernization Act, a landmark bill that would expand food-safety regulations. The House had earlier passed a different version, and the two chambers are now trying to reconcile the measures before the congressional session ends. Almost two weeks before the Senate passed its version of the bill, Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., made a floor speech critical of the bill. During the Nov. 18 speech, Coburn referred to the number of deaths from foodborne illnesses annually in the United States. ""The question is, how do we stop the 10 or 20 deaths a year from foodborne illness? Can we do that?"" Coburn asked. ""Well, as a physician trained in epidemiology, we could do it. But I will posit we do not have the money to do that because it would take billions upon billions upon billions of additional dollars to ever get there. So we find ourselves in a dilemma."" A number of readers wrote us to ask whether Coburn was correct, citing widespread media references to the U.S. experiencing 5,000 foodborne-related deaths a year. So we decided to take a closer look. The 10 to 20 deaths a year originates in a study by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The summary was published in the August 13, 2010, edition of the CDC publication Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. The study recaps the number of illnesses and deaths caused by the 1,097 reported foodborne outbreaks in 2007, the most recent year available. The paper found that these outbreaks produced 21,244 cases of foodborne illness and 18 deaths. So, federal statistics do show that at least 18 people died from foodborne illness during the most recent year for which statistics are available. But epidemiologists say that statistic is a floor, not a ceiling, since there are several types of foodborne deaths that aren't included in that number. These were merely the deaths related to outbreaks that are officially reported to CDC. And CDC says that most foodborne illness is not associated with outbreaks, and would therefore not be included in these outbreak numbers. A more inclusive way of looking at foodborne deaths comes from the Foodborne Diseases Active Surveillance Network, or FoodNet. That's a program run by the CDC's Emerging Infections Program that tracks foodborne illnesses in 10 states, based on laboratory results. In 2009, FoodNet found 74 deaths caused by the 10 foodborne germs it tracks. Since the 10 FoodNet states account for about 15 percent of the population, ""a reasonable extrapolation would put you close to 500 deaths"" nationally, said Craig Hedberg, a professor at the University of Minnesota School of Public Health. ""These are real deaths associated with confirmed illnesses. This represents a justifiable minimum floor"" for the number of foodborne deaths every year. (There may be overlap between official outbreak deaths and FoodNet-reported deaths, so we'll just use the 500 deaths figure from FoodNet on its own.) There's also a second layer of hidden foodborne deaths -- those that slip through the surveillance system and aren't tabulated as foodborne deaths at all. Many people with foodborne illness don’t seek medical care, and, even if they do, they may not see a doctor and have a lab test ordered. All of those steps are needed before FoodNet even hears about their case. The lack of lab testing means that ""there is usually no way to know whether (someone) got their infection from contaminated food or from another source,"" CDC epidemiologist Barbara Mahon told our colleagues at PolitiFact Texas in September. ""Only if they are part of an outbreak for which a source is determined -- usually less than 5 percent of cases of Salmonella infection -- would it be possible to know where that particular infection came from. Otherwise, it might or might not have been foodborne."" As a result, Mahon said, estimating the true number of Salmonella deaths due to food requires looking at ""many different kinds of data from multiple sources and using appropriate statistical techniques to adjust for the various sources of infection and for under-diagnosis and under-reporting."" The CDC is currently working on a new estimate -- which is expected to be released soon, a spokeswoman said, -- so for now, the most recent figures come from a 1999 paper. This paper, published by the CDC and authored by a team led by epidemiologist Paul S. Mead, included the following estimate that has been quoted countless times over the last decade -- ""76 million illnesses, 323,914 hospitalizations, and 5,194 deaths each year."" The numbers look quite specific, but they actually mask quite a bit of uncertainty. In the paper, the authors note that ""precise information on food-related deaths is especially difficult to obtain because pathogen-specific surveillance systems rarely collect information on illness outcome, and outcome-specific surveillance systems (e.g., death certificates) grossly underreport many pathogen-specific conditions."" So, in order to estimate the number of deaths due to foodborne bacteria, the team calculated the number of deaths among reported bacterial cases, then doubled this figure to account for unreported deaths, and then multiplied by a percentage of infections believed to be attributable to foodborne transmission. This represented a good-faith effort to estimate the number of foodborne deaths, but it still relied on assumptions that could be -- and have been -- challenged by other scientists. At least one other paper published by CDC -- written by Paul D. Frenzen, a U.S. Department of Agriculture demographer -- warned that the estimate was ""inherently uncertain."" In fact, the real number of deaths, if it could be accurately calculated, might either be higher or lower than the roughly 5,000 cited in Mead's paper. ""The estimate of deaths (in the Mead paper) was derived from hospital discharge and death certificate data on deaths attributed to gastroenteritis of unknown cause,"" Frenzen wrote. ""Fatal illnesses due to unknown foodborne agents do not always involve gastroenteritis, and gastroenteritis may not be accurately diagnosed or reported on hospital charts or death certificates. The death estimate consequently omitted deaths from unknown foodborne agents that do not cause gastroenteritis and likely overstated the number of deaths from agents that cause gastoenteritis."" Hedberg, of the University of Minnesota, agreed that, while the number of foodborne deaths fluctuates from year to year, the number may well be lower than the 5,000 cited commonly in the media. However, he added, it is certainly at least the 500 suggested by the tracking by FoodNet. ""There can be no doubt that the number is much higher than 10 to 20,"" he said. Other experts agreed. ""There is no factual (or imagined) truth to Sen. Coburn's comment,"" said Michael Osterholm, the former Minnesota state epidemiologist. When we contacted Coburn's office, spokesman John Hart noted that Coburn's broader point was that the frequency of foodborne illness has been decreasing over time. ""In 1996, for every 100,000 people in this country, we had 51.2 cases of foodborne illness--the best in the world, by far,"" Coburn said in the speech. ""But, in 2009, we only had 34.8 cases--three times better than anybody else in the world. So the question has to be asked: Why are we doing this now when, in fact, we are on a trendline to markedly decrease it? The second question that should be asked is: No matter how much money we spend, is there a diminishing return?"" These are fair questions, but they don't justify Coburn's later use of a lowball estimate of deaths from foodborne illness. We would have given him some credit if he'd said there were 10 to 20 deaths per year from officially declared outbreaks, even though this still would have been misleading since official outbreaks represent a fraction of all cases. We also acknowledge that reasonable scientists can disagree over whether Mead's team made the right assumptions when they made their calculations. But Coburn's estimate also ignored a much more solid number -- the number of deaths estimated through laboratory-confirmed data from FoodNet. By themselves, the confirmed death figures just from FoodNet's 10 states are roughly five times bigger than Coburn's estimate, and the national approximation based on those numbers is 25 times as large. So"
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7909
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Like the flu? Trump's coronavirus messaging confuses public, pandemic researchers say.
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The coronavirus is not as bad as the seasonal flu. President Donald Trump is not worried about having had direct exposure to the virus. The United States is in far better shape than other countries.
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true
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Health News
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Those are some of the messages from Trump to the American public in recent days On Monday, when Trump tweeted that the coronavirus was not as perilous as the flu, he said, “So last year 37,000 Americans died from the common Flu. It averages between 27,000 and 70,000 per year. Nothing is shut down, life & the economy go on. At this moment there are 546 confirmed cases of CoronaVirus, with 22 deaths. Think about that!” Two days later, Anthony Fauci, head of infectious diseases at the National Institutes of Health and a member of Trump’s task force on the outbreak, said the coronavirus was far more deadly. “This is 10 times more lethal than the seasonal flu,” Fauci said on Wednesday, when was asked by a House of Representatives committee for a fact that would help Americans gauge the danger. These are textbook examples of contradictory communication during disease outbreaks, according to some researchers into the psychology of pandemics and how leaders can most effectively communicate to keep the public safe during them. Trump has also said he is not worried about having had a direct exposure to the virus and that the United States is in far better shape than other countries, leading some experts to criticize him for playing down the dangers of the disease and lulling citizens into complacency. History has shown that leaders trying to manage pandemics without full transparency hamper citizens from acting to help, said Steven Taylor, a psychiatry professor at the University of British Columbia and author of the 2019 book “The Psychology of Pandemics.” He maintains that if the public loses the trust of its leaders, people will not listen to them when they offer good advice. “On the one hand it creates increased anxiety among those who doubt the truth is being told,” he said of a leader who has lost the trust of citizens. “And on the other it increases the number of people who think the whole thing is overblown.” Asked about Trump’s messaging around the coronavirus, including his public comments, a White House spokesman said: “While the media wants to spin up fear, this White House is working around the clock to protect all Americans from the coronavirus. As President Trump said this week, we are using the full power of the federal government and the private sector.” Trump is known for his informal style in attempts to, for instance, calm markets amid trade wars. In the past few days, various organizations and individuals in the United States including the president have taken a flurry of steps to try to curb the spread. Trump restricted travel to the United States from Europe. The National Hockey League suspended its season and the men’s college basketball tournament was canceled. Disney theme parks and Broadway theaters closed. Trump, who has been criticized over the pace of testing for the virus, on Friday promised “large scale” testing and declared a national emergency. Yet across social media and in private conversations, many Americans still doubt the pandemic is that bad. In their social media posts, many link their suspicions that the danger is exaggerated directly to Trump’s early downplaying of the illness. “This is insanity, I think this coronavirus hype is bull,” said Rene Rodriguez, doing some late-night grocery shopping in Austin with his wife and infant child. “The media is hyping this to get at Trump. Nobody can explain why this is more dangerous than the flu. Everybody I work with thinks this is a joke.” Managing a pandemic is one of the toughest tasks for a leader, some experts say, as there is a fine balance between not stoking panic while also speaking truthfully of the dangers. Trump’s address to the nation on Wednesday evening was his most somber public appearance to discuss the pandemic. He imposed the Europe travel curbs, called for unity and asked people to set aside partisan differences. But for some experts in effective messaging during pandemics, he did not go far enough to plainly lay out to Americans the sacrifices they need to make - such as isolating themselves if they think they have been exposed to the virus. Indeed, just hours later, Trump again seemed to be relaxed about the risks. He got word that he had been in direct contact earlier this week with someone who later tested positive for coronavirus - the communications director for Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro. Asked if he was worried, Trump told reporters on Thursday: “Let’s put it this way – I’m not concerned.” On Friday, the president said he would “most likely” be tested “fairly soon”, but he denied it was because of his meeting with the Brazilian delegation. In an emailed statement sent before Trump’s comment that he would likely be tested, a White House spokeswoman pointed out that the guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention say testing is not needed unless a person shows symptoms. Taylor said past pandemics - such as the SARS outbreak in 2003 - have shown how playing down dangers only helps the virus spread, as people are less vigilant about hygiene, avoiding crowds and getting tested. “China delayed the announcement of SARS and that delayed the efforts to contain the spread of the infection,” he said. “Delays in delivering truths about pandemics result in more cases of infections and more deaths.” M.J. Crockett, a neuroscientist and director of the Crockett Lab at Yale University whose work centers on investigating altruism, morality and economic decision-making, has researched behavior in pandemics and the type of messaging that spurs people to make sacrifices for the common good. Her research has shown that people are far more likely to make sacrifices - such as cancelling trips, increasing awareness about hygiene and going into home quarantine if they think they have been exposed to a virus - if they are clearly told that not doing so could result in someone becoming gravely ill. Such messaging was not coming from Trump and his Cabinet, she said. “The response of the American government has been shameful,” Crockett said. “There are a lot of mixed messages.” She pointed to Trump stating on March 7 that anybody who wants to get a coronavirus test can get one. In fact, relatively few Americans have been tested, in part because the CDC sent out faulty test kits to states last month. Fauci, the infectious disease expert, was questioned by the House committee about the lack of testing. He said: “It is a failing. Let’s admit it.” While acknowledging flaws in Trump’s messaging, some of Trump’s senior advisers and other experts praised him for taking certain necessary, but unpopular steps. For instance, Fauci described Trump’s ban on travelers from Europe as a justifiable and “compelling” move because Europe is the new epicenter of the pandemic. Some health experts had criticized the decision on the grounds that such bans typically are most effective in the early days of an outbreak or if enacted by a country that has not yet seen any cases. Leaders in some countries harder hit by the coronavirus have made more forceful statements to motivate their citizens to make sacrifices, both Crockett and Taylor said. Chancellor Angela Merkel told Germans on Wednesday that up to two-thirds of the country’s citizens could become infected. Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte, while his government has been strongly criticized for bungling the response, has stepped up effective communications. “We realize that these measures will create discomfort, sometimes small, sometimes very large. But this is the moment of self-responsibility,” Conte said this week. In Austin, postal carrier A.J. Graham was stuffing mail into dozens of mailboxes. “I’m definitely not hearing messages that I need to make sacrifices for the common good,” she said. “We’ve overcome our differences and come together before - just look at America after 9/11,” she said, referring to the Sept. 11, 2001 hijacked plane attacks. “But we need leaders who know how to ask for it.”
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17953
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We've seen priests beheaded by the Islamic rebels on the other side. We've also seen an Islamic rebel eating the heart of a soldier.
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Paul said Islamic rebels have decapitated priests, and one was seen eating the heart of a Syrian soldier. News reports show that Islamic rebels gunned down a priest but did not behead him. The murder of a priest speaks to religious warfare and that carries great weight. However, thousands of innocent people have died from gunfire in this civil war. The claim is evocative in part due to the beheading, and that aspect is plainly inaccurate. In addition, the truth has been widely available for two months and Paul had ample opportunity to know better. Paul’s claim about a rebel eating a heart is more accurate, but the details are sketchy. Both the focus on a heart and the idea of cannibalism push strong emotional buttons. But it might not have been a heart, and there might not have been an actual bite. Still, a rebel carved up a dead Syrian soldier, boasted about it as he did so, and at the very least, spoke and acted as though he were eating the dead man’s liver and heart. The first statement is flawed, and the second is largely on the mark with some weak points. Editor's note: This report had been updated to include a response we received from Paul's office shortly after our initial publication.
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mixture
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National, Corrections and Updates, Foreign Policy, Military, Terrorism, Rand Paul,
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"A major conundrum facing the United States in Syria is the prevalence of Islamic extremists, some with links to al-Qaida, among the rebel forces. Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., said Syrian President Bashar Assad is probably a war criminal but some of his opponents are equally dangerous. ""We've seen priests beheaded by the Islamic rebels on the other side,"" Paul said on the inaugural edition of CNN’s relaunched Crossfire. ""We've also seen an Islamic rebel eating the heart of a soldier."" These are dramatic and gruesome claims that have great staying power on the Web, so we decided to see if we could verify them. The short answer is that rebels gunned down a priest but didn’t behead him. And a rebel commander made a show of cutting organs from a dead Syrian soldier but denies actually taking a bite. The Franciscan priest A California-based news service called Catholic Online was one of the first to report the beheading of Francois Murad, a priest at a monastery in northern Syria. The killing took place on June 23, 2013, and the article appeared on June 30. There was graphic video of three men kneeling on the ground. As a crowd cheers, rebels cut their heads off. The early reports claimed the Vatican confirmed the death of the priest and took that to be confirmation that he was beheaded. The Blaze, the website of conservative talk show host Glenn Beck, carried an item of its own on June 30. The headline couched the claim as ""allegedly"" but the first line of the article was slightly less reserved with ""Syrian Catholic priest Francois Murad killed last weekend by jihadi fighters was beheaded, according to a report by Catholic Online, which is linking to video purportedly showing the brutal murder."" The Blaze article garnered nearly 41,000 re-postings on Facebook. Other websites followed with their own versions on July 1. But a more accurate account was available within hours of the original report. On June 30, an editor for the British newspaper The Telegraph, initially linked to the story of the beheading, and then issued this correction: ""I need to update and correct reports that Fr. Francois Murad, a Franciscan friar, was beheaded last week. The priest was actually shot inside his church, it seems – and the video of a beheading, which went viral, does not depict him. The Vatican was widely quoted as confirming the beheading, but an investigation by the Telegraph's Ruth Sherlock has established that this attribution was false."" We found no dispute that a jihadi group, Jabhat al-Nusra, conducted the attack. Murad was shot eight times. A fellow Franciscan collected his body, and he was buried in a nearby village. By July 2, CNN also aimed to set the record straight. An article emphasized that the rebels had killed but not beheaded the priest. The next day, two other news operations followed up with their own corrections: the right-leaning CNSnews.com (""Syrian Rebels Did Not Behead Franciscan Priest--They Shot Him 8 Times"") and the New York Daily News (""Catholic priest NOT among three beheaded on video by Syrian rebels, says head friar"") . Nevertheless, as recently as this past week, a columnist for the conservative website Townhall had the headline ""Syrian rebels attack Christian village, behead priests."" A heart or other organ Paul’s second example hews more closely to the facts. On May 12, Time reported on a video that its reporters had seen earlier but was posted anonymously on the Web that day. In the video, a rebel cuts open the body of a dead Syrian soldier and removes two bloody masses. The rebel, who has taken the nom de guerre, Abu Sakkar, says to the cell phone camera, ""I swear to God we will eat your hearts and your livers, you soldiers of Bashar the dog."" His men shout ""Allahu akbar (God is great)."" Sakkar then lifts one of the lumps of flesh to his mouth. Multiple news organizations carried the story and an edited version of the video. Time interviewed Sakkar via Skype on May 14. He did not deny what he had done. He explained that he felt his behavior was justified because his men had found a cell phone on the dead man with him abusing three naked women, a mother and her two daughters. ""We opened his cell phone, and I found a clip of a woman and her two daughters fully naked and he was humiliating them, and sticking a stick here and there,"" Sakkar told Time. Two months later, a BBC reporter spoke face-to-face with Sakkar. Sakkar at that time said, ""I didn't bite into it. I just held it for show."" However, days after the video went public, he had told the BBC that he had taken a ritual bite. The video available to us makes it impossible to tell for sure. It is also unclear what body parts he was holding. Sakkar told the BBC it was a lung; a doctor who saw the video told the BBC that’s what it looked like to him. Sakkar is the founder of the Omar al-Farouq brigade, a group of about 60 men. According to Time, the man who posted the video described him as affiliated with al-Qaida. How close he actually is to al-Qaida is unclear. The person who put the video online added the caption, ""These are the freedoms they want to import to our country."" Time reported that graphic videos of this sort have become familiar among combatants on both sides of the Syrian civil war. ""Footage of rape, torture and amputations are passed like trading cards,"" said Nadim Houry of Human Rights Watch. There is no question that such videos travel widely. Beck featured the video of Sakkar on his radio program as a clear warning against being drawn into a war in the Middle East. Beck urged viewers to share it with their friends and to contact their representatives in Congress. Paul's office sent us a statement that read, in part, ""To get caught up in the specifics of which organ was eaten or how, or the manner in which an innocent priest was murdered is to miss the truth to argue over the details: that atrocities have been committed by both sides of this civil war."" Our ruling Paul said Islamic rebels have decapitated priests, and one was seen eating the heart of a Syrian soldier. News reports show that Islamic rebels gunned down a priest but did not behead him. The murder of a priest speaks to religious warfare and that carries great weight. However, thousands of innocent people have died from gunfire in this civil war. The claim is evocative in part due to the beheading, and that aspect is plainly inaccurate. In addition, the truth has been widely available for two months and Paul had ample opportunity to know better. Paul’s claim about a rebel eating a heart is more accurate, but the details are sketchy. Both the focus on a heart and the idea of cannibalism push strong emotional buttons. But it might not have been a heart, and there might not have been an actual bite. Still, a rebel carved up a dead Syrian soldier, boasted about it as he did so, and at the very least, spoke and acted as though he were eating the dead man’s liver and heart. The first statement is flawed, and the second is largely on the mark with some weak points. Editor's note: This report had been updated to include a response we received from Paul's office shortly after our initial publication."
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10391
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UT Southwestern research shows 98 percent cure rate for prostate cancer using SBRT
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This news release draws from a Phasel/ll safety study of 91 patients who were given a concentrated form of higher-dose radiation known as stereotactic body radiation therapy, or SBRT, instead of typical radiation therapy for early-stage prostate cancer. The study was designed to test the toxicity of increasing levels of radiation, not to assess the survival rate. While the five-year study showed benefits, the release failed to provide the numbers and details that we believe would help readers understand the risks vs. benefits. The “cure” rate referred just to men who had no evidence of rising prostate-specific antigen (PSA) — and the study acknowledges that most men were not actually followed for 5 years so a “cure rate” was statistically estimated. However, over a third of the men had low-risk cancer where the 5-year cancer-specific survival is estimated to be 100 percent. It’s not certain that these men actually required treatment. The National Cancer Institute estimates there will be about 180,890 new cases of prostate cancer diagnosed in the United States this year. Some of them will be treated with active surveillance, the “watch and wait” treatment. More aggressive cancers may require surgery, radiation or chemotherapy. Among those treated with radiation, stereotactic radiotherapy (SBRT), an alternative form of radiation therapy described in this release, may offer a shorter course of treatment (five sessions) compared to external beam radiation therapy which is typically delivered over the course of about six weeks. The shorter SBRT approach suggests an important convenience benefit to patients. Treatment toxicity with this procedure was also low, according to the release, although there was no control group in the study to compare it with.
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false
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Hospital news release,Prostate cancer
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The release does not discuss costs. We find this disappointing, but also ironic. In a very quick search, we discovered that one of the major topics regarding SBRT is its low-cost relative to the existing therapies. In the Journal of Oncology Practice, authors in 2012 directly compared it cost-wise to another method and concluded: “SBRT for low- to intermediate-risk prostate cancer has great potential cost savings for our health care system payers and may improve access to radiation, increase patient convenience, and boost quality of life for patients.” This is an odd news release. The study, described as a Phasel/ll, was conducted to assess the safety of escalating doses of radiation with the goal of determining whether varying doses of SBRT had an acceptably low rate of toxicities. The study was not intended to provide any definitive assessment of survival benefit, and yet that’s what the release is about. It states: “The study — the first trial to publish five-year results from SBRT treatment for prostate cancer — found a 98.6 percent cure rate with SBRT, a noninvasive form of radiation treatment that involves high-dose radiation beams entering the body through various angles and intersecting at the desired target.” The “cure” rate referred just to men who had no evidence of rising PSA — and the study acknowledges that most men were not actually followed for 5 years so “cure rate” was statistically estimated. However, over a third of the men had low-risk cancer where the 5-year cancer-specific survival is estimated to be 100 percent. It’s not certain that these men actually required treatment. Beyond that, the release did not quantify benefits precisely. There was only one sentence directly addressing the study results. There was no description precise study group demographics. The release does not define “cure” as it is used in the sentence below and the headline. The release does include a paragraph about urinary side effects (among others) for patients in the trial. But the release deliberately seems to try to minimize these. (Editor added italics.) “In addition to shorter treatment times, researchers found that side effects were not necessarily different compared to other forms of prostate cancer treatment. In the short term, the side effects of SBRT can include urinary issues (urgency, frequency and burning) and rectal irritation, which are often temporary and reverse within four weeks of treatment. Researchers found a small risk of longer-term urinary and rectal complications, which is also comparable to conventional treatments. Decrease in erectile function was seen in 25 percent of patients, fewer than with conventional radiation or surgery, said Dr. Hannan.” Many men might find a one-in-four chance of impotence a high price to pay for treatment for early-stage prostate disease. We have to complain that the release does not give us numbers for the harms — in any way that is meaningful and allows us to compare this new therapy to existing therapies. The phrase “not necessarily different” is not helpful. The phrase “a small risk” is not giving us a number we can use. As noted above, a substantial proportion of the patients might not have needed treatment — so that even a “small risk” of complications would be unacceptable. In the absence of a comparison group, no conclusions can be drawn as to whether this represents a less harmful active treatment option. This was basically an observational cohort study which was powered to accurately determine the proportion of men who would suffer radiation toxicity. The study was not designed to determine whether this treatment was more effective than other radiation modalities or surgery. We did not find the sort of descriptions of the study protocols that we expect from a release. The study — which we took the time to read — appears of good quality but the release did not tell us that. The study was limited to 91 patients, which isn’t a very big study. There is no disease mongering. The release provides the funding source (the U.S. Department of Defense) although it does not explicitly comment on the absence of conflict. The release gives us some information about this treatment vs. traditional radiation and lists other important alternatives including prostatectomy (surgical removal of the prostate gland), brachytherapy (the implantation of small radioactive seeds), and external beam radiation. One alternative not mentioned — which is appropriate for low-risk cancers — is active surveillance (monitoring the patient and deferring active treatment). The news release hints that SBRT is available at the study location but does not provide readers with any other indication about its availability in other regions. We do know that SBRT is widely available at other academic medical centers and has been in use for more than a decade. It is also sometimes marketed as the “CyberKnife” at private medical facilities. The release claims that the study was the first published trial to follow patients receiving SBRT for five years. We question the use of “cure” in the headline. And, while the current report did focus on “freedom from biochemical failure (i.e., no increase in PSA)” — which is not the same as cure — the primary intention of the study was to assess toxicity. Talking about a “strikingly” high cure rate is misleading given the absence of a control group.
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11381
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Eye Tracking Has High Sensitivity as a Biomarker for Concussion; Eye Tracking Detects Concussion with Sensitivity Comparable to that of Blood Tests for Heart Attack
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This news release is a wonderfully detailed summary of a study of a novel eye-tracking measure of brain injury, one with the potential to significantly advance the accuracy of tests to detect the severity of traumatic brain injuries, whose consequences can range from a temporary and mild concussion to permanent damage and death. The release ranks as a very good piece of explanatory journalism, going beyond the results of a single study to inform readers about the complexity of brain injury and the challenges inherent in attempts to identify precise and consistent biomarkers for concussion. Because the release makes ample use of good quotes, metaphors, and attention to numbers, journalists and other readers of this news release will come away with a good understanding of a significant clinical problem (over- and under- diagnosis of “mild” traumatic brain injury) in young people; and ample context for evaluating the significance of the eye-tracking test. The description of the eye-tracking test itself — which requires patients to watch a music or other video on a TV screen — is deft. Physicians and other medical personnel in emergency rooms, on playing fields, and in offices struggle with diagnosing concussions and determining the severity of the underlying brain injury. While brain imaging can identify patients with fractures, bleeds, and strokes, the ability to categorize the severity of patients with head injuries without anatomic abnormalities is limited. The authors report on a new test that can potentially categorize patients with head injuries as having a concussion or not, as well as potentially to assess the severity. Though the results presented are encouraging, the value of the test remains to be determined. Only by applying this prospectively to patients presenting to clinicians with head injuries and then following outcomes over time, can we be certain whether the test will improve our prediction over usual care. Where it may be most helpful would be in patients with normal findings on the test – they can be reassured. But this has not yet been proven. Similarly, it remains to be seen whether an abnormal test result can be effectively used to improve care. A challenge the authors identify is the lack of a gold-standard definition of concussion. Because of that uncertainty, only studies that examine outcomes over time will help determine whether this test improves patient care or not.
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true
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Academic medical center news release,Diagnostic tests
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The release, (surprisingly, given its overall thoroughness) does not supply any information about the estimated costs of traumatic brain injury, the costs (in time and money) of providing the eye tracking technology, or even the costs of CT scans. This information, even in rough numbers, would have added another layer of good reporting. This release quantifies results of the study to a degree rarely seen in news releases, going so far as to explain how the researchers scored not only their own new measure, but also how other currently used biomarkers are scored. A bravura performance here. Based on the nature and description of the technology and how it is used with patients, there are no direct harms from watching music videos, except perhaps acute boredom. But while the test itself may not produce harm, the question is what if the test is wrong? Say the test is positive and in fact the person does not have a concussion? May they receive additional tests or treatments that may cause harm? More importantly, what if the test is normal and the patient has a concussion? The test may falsely reassure, and the patient returns to the activity that caused the problem in the first place, risking additional serious injury. At this point, one cannot say whether or not there are harms to this test, but the potential for harm certainly exists and could have been mentioned. The release explains pretty carefully that the eye tracking system in question — which measures how well part of the brain work to focus the eyes in tandem — is not perfect, but has a reliable specificity and sensitivity with regard to accuracy of more than 85 percent. It also explains the challenges inherent in any test for concussion, which is that it’s very difficult to establish with any method whether a concussion has, in fact, occurred. It would have been even better if the release had explained, as discussed above in our review, that it’s unclear even if an accurate test will ultimately lead to better care of patients and improved outcomes. Only a large study following many patients over time and tracking their results will be able to tell us that. It’s hard to overstate the already severe impact of traumatic brain injury on youth and young adults worldwide, or the anxiety sustained by patients, parents, and medical personnel alike in the absence of definitive diagnostic tools for concussion. The release offers statistics and quotes that put the research in context, including quotes from a researcher at a collaborating institution. The release notes both the sources of funding for the study and the financial interests of researchers on the study in a company that has licensed the new technology. Although we found it odd that the journal published an editorial written by the same person as the study being commented on, that’s beyond the scope of the news release. The release goes to some lengths to describe the strengths and weaknesses of other brain injury biomarkers and tests. One way to look at alternatives is the current way doctors evaluate head trauma, which is highly variable among providers. In the future, it would be helpful to compare the test results to clinical opinion and then to see what the difference is in terms of outcomes. Although it is implied that the technology is not currently approved or available, the article doesn’t explicitly state this. A clear statement as to availability would have been helpful for readers. The release does a good job of explaining that the innovation is in the mathematical model that assesses eye movements. The lede could have made a bigger distinction between the means of tracking eye movements and the algorithm that assesses it, but again, in the context of the whole release, this was not a big problem. Opinions as to the value of the new technology are properly attributed and/or qualified, although we found the headline referencing tests for heart attacks to be a stretch. There is tons of data on heart attack biomarkers, so it’s somewhat misleading to suggest that this test, based on one study, is comparable.
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9046
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Boston Scientific Receives U.S. FDA Approval for Spectra WaveWriter™ Spinal Cord Stimulator System
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Getty Images Millions of Americans suffer from chronic pain. The primary non-opioid strategy for treating that problem are nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDS), like aspirin, acetaminophen, ibuprofen, naproxen and celecoxib. The alternative described here — electrical nerve stimulation — uses a small generator to send electrical pulses to relevant nerves in an effort to interfere with the nerve impulses that create feelings of pain. The device, Spectra WaveWriter Spinal Cord Stimulator, has just received approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, and this news release portrays it as the beginning of a new day. But the release lacks specifics, and readers have no way of judging whether this optimistic framing is justified. We worry that the release misses on a number of our evaluation criteria, including information about cost and details of both risks and benefits stemming from the small studies conducted to date. Chronic low back pain is a common, disabling condition for many individuals. For many, there is no cure, rather the goal is to manage pain and improve function. There are numerous treatments for chronic low back pain ranging from oral medicines, to physical treatments, behavioral therapy, injection drugs, various invasive procedures to treat presumed causes such as the disc between the spine bones, joints, nerves, arthritic changes that narrow the spinal canal and pinch nerves. Spinal cord stimulation is an invasive technique that doesn’t focus on the pain generator, but rather attempts to block nerve stimuli from the spine that travel to the brain. Spinal cord stimulation has been available for many years, but evidence supporting its use is limited. Finally, a note about nerve stimulation being an advantage over opioid treatment for pain. The messaging about moving from an opioid to a non-opioid treatment strategy for chronic pain is an important one in a world awash in opioid over-use. Medical reporters and potential patients need to tread carefully.
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false
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Boston Scientific,Spectra WaveWriter,Spinal Cord Stimulator
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Although the purpose of the news release is to signal federal approval of a treatment, cost does not make an appearance. For uninsured patients, typical out-of-pocket costs for spinal cord stimulation are $15,000- $50,000 or more. While the release touts the recent FDA approval of this spinal cord stimulator system, it offers no specific information about its impacts on participants in recent clinical studies on which that regulatory decision was based. The release encourages readers to infer that the device works, but we have no idea how successful it has been in diminishing chronic pain. This is a problem, as electrical nerve stimulators generally have a spotty record in clinical studies. Despite searching, our reviewers could not locate results from the Whisper study, one of two named in the release. Spinal cord stimulation requires surgical implantation of a device. One study published in a pain journal found that 38% of participants in clinical studies of the technique experienced device-related problems such pain, lead migration, hardware failure, and infections at the implantation site. Other minor issues include electromagnetic interference, such as from an MRI, and skin irritation. There is no mention that complications from the device are common. None of this makes it into the news release. The text refers to “more than a decade of clinical research” and to two recent studies that go by the acronyms PROCO and WHISPER. The PROCO study enrolled just 33 patients, 10 of which did not respond to the treatment. Results from the WHISPER trial have not yet yet made their way into the peer-reviewed literature. That study planned to enroll up to 146 previously implanted patients. Further, the release adds a “cautionary statement regarding forward-looking statements,” an increasingly common addition to news releases, which seeks to absolve the source, in this case Boston Scientific, from push back should future research or use of the device belie the positive statements in the release. The release suggests that spinal cord stimulation will be an alternative to opioids, implying this could be used in millions of individuals. The potential harms and evidence suggest that’s premature, if not a dangerous position for which to advocate. The release states that “100 million Americans suffer from chronic pain” but only a small subset may be candidates for treatment with nerve stimulators. Chronic pain plagues many people and deserves medical attention. However, distinguishing between pain that can be managed with over-the-counter treatments and unmanageable pain that needs medical intervention is important, and the release offers no usable distinction for readers. The release makes no statement on funding sources for the two studies. The release barely meets the standard on this criteria. It mentions the popularity of opioids for chronic pain treatment and heralds the spinal cord stimulator as a non-opioid alternative. And although given short shrift, it mentions other devices are available. No reference to eventual availability is offered. The FDA often approves devices in “pre-market” mode, so it is difficult to tell when this particular device will be in use. A source in the release references the “main advantage” of the device (integrates multiple therapies and offers individual control) over existing ones. Language seems sufficiently restrained here.
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6950
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Bill would charge fee to help combat invasive aquatic plants.
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Boaters will pay a new fee to help cover the cost of combatting invasive aquatic plants if proposed legislation becomes law.
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true
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Legislation, Environment, Connecticut, Invasive species, Bills
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The House of Representatives on Saturday voted 131-10 in favor of a bill that imposes a $5 fee for Connecticut residents and a $20 fee for out-of-state individuals who register vessels intended to operate on state waters. The General Assembly’s Office of Fiscal Analysis estimates the fee will generate approximately $400,000, to be used by Department of Energy and Environmental Protection for various invasive species programs, including grants for research on managing state lakes, rivers and ponds. Proponents of the bill say various lakes around the state are experiencing pervasive and invasive aquatic species and toxic cyanobacteria blooms, a problem that can be expensive to address. The bill awaits Senate action.
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37915
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"Authorities found ""39 missing children in a double wide trailer"" in Georgia, but the media suppressed the story."
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‘How is Finding 39 Missing Children in a Double Wide Trailer in Georgia NOT the Biggest News Story in America?’
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false
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Disinformation, Fact Checks
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"An August 28 2020 Facebook post claiming authorities in Georgia found 39 missing children in a double wide trailer in Georgia went massively viral, apparently by pondering why it was not the biggest story in the United States:That post racked up an astonishing one million shares in just three days, and it read:How is finding 39 missing children in a double wide trailer in Georgia NOT the biggest news story in America?Other variations on the “39 missing children in a double wide trailer in Georgia” claim were popular in their own right:In that version, “the biggest story in America” was replaced with “on the planet,” and Facebook tacked a “false information” label to the bottom of the claim:Can someone – anyone – explain to me why finding 39 missing KIDS in a double wide trailer in Georgia not the biggest news story on the planet ? ?As the posts also demonstrate, the nearly identical post with a million shares bore no such label — despite the lesser iteration receiving only 3.5 percent as many shares as the first version.Unfortunately, a cursory Google search might have led sharers to believe concurrent news reporting validated the claim. On August 29 2020, CNN.com ran an article (“US Marshals find 39 missing children in Georgia during ‘Operation Not Forgotten'”), which began:Authorities have found 39 missing children in Georgia during a two-week effort to rescue endangered minors [in August 2020].The US Marshals Service Missing Child Unit led the search, dubbed “Operation Not Forgotten.” It collaborated with the agency’s Southeast Regional Fugitive Task Force, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children and state and local agenciesThe operation resulted in the rescue of 26 children and safe location of 13 others, US Marshals said in a news release on [August 27 2020].“The US Marshals Service is fully committed to assisting federal, state, and local agencies with locating and recovering endangered missing children, in addition to their primary fugitive apprehension mission,” US Marshals Service Director Donald Washington said in a statement. “The message to missing children and their families is that we will never stop looking for you.”An August 27 2020 tweet by @FBIAtlanta offered similar information:Acting Special Agent in Charge, Phil Wislar attends a press conference with our partners @USMarshalsHQ announcing the recovery of 39 missing children in Georgia during ""Operation Not Forgotten"". Thank you to all our partners involved!https://t.co/CtnXnmbLXW pic.twitter.com/yMC4TIAVKO— FBI Atlanta (@FBIAtlanta) August 27, 2020Authorities provided little detail about the location of the various minors recovered during Operation Not Forgotten, likely because of the nature of the crimes. A press release issued by the US Marshals Service on August 27 2020 only said:The U.S. Marshals Service Missing Child Unit, in conjunction with the agency’s Southeast Regional Fugitive Task Force, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) and Georgia state and local agencies, led a two-week operation in August in Atlanta and Macon, Georgia, to rescue endangered missing children.“Operation Not Forgotten” resulted in the rescue of 26 children, the safe location of 13 children and the arrest of nine criminal associates. Additionally, investigators cleared 26 arrest warrants and filed additional charges for alleged crimes related to sex trafficking, parental kidnapping, registered sex offender violations, drugs and weapons possession, and custodial interference. The 26 warrants cleared included 19 arrest warrants for a total of nine individuals arrested, some of whom had multiple warrants.“The U.S. Marshals Service is fully committed to assisting federal, state, and local agencies with locating and recovering endangered missing children, in addition to their primary fugitive apprehension mission,” said Director of the Marshals Service Donald Washington. “The message to missing children and their families is that we will never stop looking for you.”These missing children were considered to be some of the most at-risk and challenging recovery cases in the area, based on indications of high-risk factors such as victimization of child sex trafficking, child exploitation, sexual abuse, physical abuse, and medical or mental health conditions. Other children were located at the request of law enforcement to ensure their wellbeing. USMS investigators were able to confirm each child’s location in person and assure their safety and welfare.Trafficking was mentioned, as were instances of “parental kidnapping, registered sex offender violations, drugs and weapons possession, and custodial interference,” many of which were crimes involving disputed custody. Nowhere in the press release was a single location mentioned (the purported double-wide trailer), and it did not appear the total of 26 children rescued and 13 located safe (totaling 39) hewed to any single location.An August 31 2020 fact check from Nashville’s WKRN (“Fact check: 39 missing children not found in Georgia trailer”) addressed the claims, but did not really go beyond the content of the press release:Over the weekend [of August 29 and 30 2020], you may have seen posts on Facebook asking why the story of 39 missing children found in a double-wide trailer in Georgia wasn’t being covered by the media.Plain and simple: because it didn’t happen that way.Last week [ending August 30 2020], the U.S. Marshals announced they rescued 26 children and located 13 others in a 2-week operation dubbed “Operation Not Forgotten.” Those children were found in various locations across the state — not inside a trailer.An August 29 2020 fact check by LeadStories.com further noted that the news was widely reported across national and international news organizations:The rescue of the children in “Operation Not Forgotten” made national news.Fox News covered the story, as did CNN, ABC News, CBS News, MSN, the Atlanta Journal and Constitution and the British website the Daily Mail.Screengrabs show the story on both Fox News and CNN.It is not clear where the idea that more than three dozen children were found in one single location — a double wide trailer in Georgia — originated, but it was not reported in any of that coverage, nor was it mentioned by various law enforcement agencies collaborating on Operation Not Forgotten.It is very clear that the virality of the claims was innately tied to the QAnon-spawned interest in child trafficking. In July 2020, a viral rumor alleged that retailer Wayfair was “selling” children in overpriced cabinets, a claim that appeared to catalyze later coronavirus-related trafficking rumors:How COVID-19 Triggered a #SaveTheChildren Child Trafficking PanicAmid a massive surge of interest in trafficking, the claim that 39 missing children were found in a double wide trailer in Georgia became incredibly widespread on Facebook — and it was not true. On August 27 2020, authorities disclosed that Operation Not Forgotten led to “the rescue of 26 children, the safe location of 13 children and the arrest of nine criminal associates” in a two-week-long span. In total, 39 endangered minors were recovered or deemed safe — some of whom were sought due to custodial interference or parental kidnapping. Although the number was obtained from the press release (likely to give the disinformation a veneer of truth for those who did an online search for the story), the rest of the claim — that 39 children were rescued from one single double-wide trailer in Georgia — was false. We have therefore rated this story Not True.Comments"
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9797
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Prevention: Fish Helps Reduce Risk of Polyps in Women
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The headline says “fish helps reduce risk” and the body of the story talks about “effect.” Both are inaccurate. You can’t establish cause and effect – such as risk reduction – in an observational study. You can point to a statistical association. Period. If that’s too wordy or geeky, don’t report the story. Because to say more than that is inaccurate. We urge all journalists to read our primer, “Does the Language Fit the Evidence? Association Versus Causation.” We’ve written about miscommunication about observational studies many times. This is the kind of story that gives readers health news fatigue.
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false
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colonoscopy,Omega-3
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Not applicable. The cost of fish in the diet is not in question. The language matters. The story states: “The researchers found no effect in men, and no effect of omega-3 consumption on hyperplastic polyps.” (emphasis added) Observational studies can’t prove cause and effect, so language like this just confuses the communication of the findings. Not applicable. The harms of fish in the diet are not really in question, although some research has raised concerns about possible toxic effects of mercury found in some species. Not one word about the limitations of drawing conclusions from observational studies. Not applicable. In 223 words, there really wasn’t much meaningful background given at all about colon polyps. No independent source was quoted. The story didn’t discuss any other research in the field of colon polyp risk reduction – or even what other observational studies may have suggested about other strong associations. And there was nothing on whether these results apply to fish oil supplements, which is how many people get their omega-3s instead of eating fish. Availability of fish is not currently in question, although its future availability has been questioned considering the rate we are overharvesting wild stocks. Stories that don’t critically evaluate these kinds of studies might conceivably contribute to the problem. The story at least provided one line of context about past research in this field: “Animal studies have suggested that omega-3 fatty acids may have anti-cancer effects, but the results from human epidemiological studies have been inconclusive.” It does not appear that the story relied on a news release. We couldn’t find one from the Journal. And the news release from Vanderbilt was actually far more complete than the NY Times story.
|
4030
|
State orders shutdown over lead levels at Water Gremlin.
|
Authorities shut down production of goods containing lead at a Twin Cities-area manufacturing company Monday amid concerns about lead poisoning among plant workers’ children.
|
true
|
Lead poisoning, Health, General News, Minnesota, Environment, Poisoning
|
Water Gremlin hasn’t done enough to limit workers’ exposure to lead dust at its White Bear Township facility, Minnesota’s health and labor commissioners told reporters on a conference call. The company, which makes lead fishing sinkers and battery terminals, has been penalized in the past for other environmental safety violations. At least 12 children of employees who apparently carried lead dust home on their bodies and clothing were found with elevated blood levels of lead, the commissioners said, including two with levels above 15 micrograms per deciliter, the level considered to be a serious health risk to children. “We have not seen issues of this magnitude in Minnesota in other companies that may be in this line of business,” Health Commissioner Jan Malcolm said. Labor and Industry Commissioner Nancy Leppink used her authority to order a 72-hour shutdown just before noon Monday. Leppink and Malcolm also asked a Ramsey County judge to extend the shutdown until the company takes the necessary steps to protect workers’ children. Lead levels above the 15-microgram threshold can cause decreases in IQ among children and affect learning and development, said Stephanie Yendell, supervisor of the health risk intervention unit at the Minnesota Department of Health. While some plant workers have elevated lead levels, Yendell added, none of them have levels high enough that would require removing them from the workplace. Water Gremlin said in a statement that it’s working with state and county agencies to immediately implement protective actions. “Any lapse in employee industrial hygiene practices is the top contributing factor to an increase in an employees’ blood lead level and the inadvertent home exposure,” said Carl Dubois, vice president of international manufacturing. “To ensure the safety of our employees and their families, hygiene training and policies have long been in place. If necessary, the company will utilize disciplinary action for employees who do not follow those policies.” The company agreed in March to pay $7 million in fines and remediation for other environmental violations at the plant. They involved excessive emissions of the industrial solvent TCE, which has been linked to birth defects and certain types of cancer.
|
9041
|
Prompt clot-grabbing treatment produces better stroke outcomes
|
This news release describes a study — the DAWN trial — which found that ischemic stroke patients that meet specific criteria may benefit from stroke clot removal (a procedure called a thrombectomy) up to 24 hours after the onset of a stroke. The release is strong on context and explaining the procedure but would have been more informative with a more thorough discussion of harms and use of actual patient data rather than relative risk numbers when describing benefits. We also reviewed a related story on the DEFUSE 3 trial which looked at blood-clot removal within a 16-hour window. Like this news release, that article skimped on cost, harms and study details. Strokes were the fifth-leading cause of death in the United States in 2016, and ischemic strokes (when a clot blocks a blood vessel) are by far the most common type. Before this trial and the new recommendations, doctors would only perform a thrombectomy within 6 hours of the onset of a stroke. This meant that many stroke patients, including those who had a stroke while sleeping, came to the hospital outside the window of this treatment. The expanded treatment guidelines are very important because they offer many more stroke patients a chance at a recovery with no or minimal brain damage.
|
mixture
|
American Heart Association,clot removal,DAWN trial,stroke
|
The cost of a thrombectomy procedure isn’t addressed. Even through the study is comparing the procedure within 6 hours vs. within 24 hours, it would help readers if they knew how much this procedure runs. From a health policy standpoint, expanding the treatment window for more people would certainly cost more, but just what those costs might be is hard to extrapolate. The news release describes benefits in terms of relative risk, not absolute risk numbers. Each one-hour delay of treatment, they wrote, reduces the chance of recovery with minimal damage by 11%. Furthermore, patients who had their clots removed were 35.5% more likely to have minimal disability in the future. This was helpful, but it would be more informative to tell us how many patients had clots removed and what their outcomes were. It also should have been emphasized that not all stroke patients are eligible for the procedure after 6 hours; according to the updated recommendations from the American Heart Association (AHA) and the American Stroke Association (ASA), only patients with a blood clot in a specific area of the brain, who have clinical symptoms that are disproportionate to the size of the stroke, are eligible for treatment after 6 hours. The news release skimmed over the harms associated with the procedure. As discussed in a previous review, there are adverse effects attributable to this procedure, including the risk of tearing an artery which could cause bleeding in the brain. The DAWN trial that found the beneficial results of clot removal within 24 hours was a rigorous randomized clinical trial, involving 206 patients (107 received the thrombectomy, the others did not) and adjusted statistics. However, none of this was mentioned in the news release, which simply called it an “international trial.” This leaves the reader with no real sense of the quality of the evidence, though it turns out that the quality is quite good. No disease mongering. The news release mentions that the DAWN trial was funded by Stryker Neuroendovascular. What it did not mention is that Stryker is a company that produces medical devices, and their device for clot removal was the only one used in the trial. Presumably, the good results from this trial will lead to an uptick in their product sales. Indeed, the news release from Stryker contains a lot more information about the specific product compared to this news release. While many journalists reading the release will understand who Stryker is and why this represents a conflict of interest, consumers reading a reposted version of the release may not have that context. For their benefit, it would be better to spell things out directly. The news release does a good job of explaining the comparison of doing the procedure between 6 and 24 hours after a stroke and not doing it. Theoretically, they could have compared the procedure to clot-busting medication which is sometimes used in these settings, but that would have been a different study altogether. Unfortunately, this news release did not mention that the results from the DAWN trial contributed to updated guidelines for treatment issued by the AHA and the ASA. While thrombectomy after a stroke is already practiced in many larger centers across the country, it is unclear whether this treatment — actually an expanded indication for an existing treatment — will now be offered in more hospitals as a result. The release should have addressed that issue as well as described where the procedure is currently offered. The news release established that this study was one of the first to demonstrate that clot removal between 6 and 24 hours can still be beneficial. It did not mention, however, another trial that also found similar results. The DEFUSE 3 trial, published last week, found that thrombectomy can be beneficial between 6 and 16 hours after the onset of a stroke. Both of these trials together were used to influence the updated AHA/ASA guidelines. No unjustifiable language was used; the language of the news release was appropriately cautious and reinforced multiple times that even small delays in treatment could contribute to more brain damage.
|
14902
|
Since we last debated in Las Vegas, nearly 3,000 people have been killed by guns.
|
"Clinton said, ""Since we last debated in Las Vegas, nearly 3,000 people have been killed by guns."" We found a few problems with her statement. First, we don’t actually know how many people have died in the last month. Clinton’s statement is based on 2013 data from the CDC, which tallied nearly 3,000 gun deaths per month that year. There’s not more recent data available. Experts say the number of gun deaths this year is likely to be similar to or higher than 2013, so Clinton’s claim is probably not too far off. But we can’t know for sure. Also, it’s likely that at roughly half of these deaths are due to suicide. It could be even higher. Clinton’s phrasing obscures that point. Clinton used very specific language even though she’s actually extrapolating from old data. Editor's note: The Gun Violence Archive got back to us after publication, and we've updated the piece to include their comments."
|
mixture
|
National, Corrections and Updates, Guns, Hillary Clinton,
|
"At the Democratic presidential debate in Des Moines, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called for more gun control. ""Just think about this -- since we last debated in Las Vegas, nearly 3,000 people have been killed by guns,"" she said. The Iowa debate took place Nov. 14, and the Las Vegas debate happened on Oct. 13. Really? Were 3,000 people were killed by guns in just one month? We decided to check it out. When we reached out to the Clinton campaign for evidence, they directed us to the Centers for Disease Control. In 2013 -- the most recent CDC tally -- 33,636 people died in gun incidents. If you divide that by 12, it comes out to 2,803 -- or nearly 3,000 people a month. But Clinton was talking about 2015, not 2013. More recent data doesn’t seem to exist. We surveyed a number of experts, and they all said the CDC is the best source on this topic. A CDC spokesman told us that 2014 data will come out in December. The only alternative we could find is the Gun Violence Archive, which is a nonprofit organization that keeps a running tally of gun deaths by combing through police blotters and news media, among other sources, daily. The Gun Violence Archive’s numbers aren’t comprehensive, though. In 2014, the group counted 12,500 gun deaths in 2014 and 11,500 so far in 2015 -- both less than half of what the CDC counted in 2013. This is largely because the count doesn't include suicides, which make up more than half of all gun deaths. The archive will receive 2015 suicide data in about six months, said Mark Bryant, the archive's executive director. He said that their total number of gun deaths could triple when that data is added in. So Clinton is wrong to suggest we can know how many people died from gun injuries since the Democrats debated in Las Vegas. Still, we wanted to know if it was possible Clinton’s claim is accurate for this year, so we ran her number by some experts. ""My call is that Clinton’s claim is not necessarily proven, but it is well in the range of possibility,"" said Jay Corzine, a sociology professor who studies violent crime at the University of Central Florida. In fact, the total for 2015 might be higher than 2013, as gun suicides are up, said Garen Wintemute, an expert in gun violence at the University of California Davis. Homicides are up, too, which would contribute to a higher number of gun deaths this year, Corzine noted. One final note on Clinton’s phrasing: Some could interpret her description of gun deaths -- ""killed by guns"" -- as violence inflicted upon one person by another. However, more than 60 percent of all gun deaths in 2013 were intentional suicides, according to the CDC. Our ruling Clinton said, ""Since we last debated in Las Vegas, nearly 3,000 people have been killed by guns."" We found a few problems with her statement. First, we don’t actually know how many people have died in the last month. Clinton’s statement is based on 2013 data from the CDC, which tallied nearly 3,000 gun deaths per month that year. There’s not more recent data available. Experts say the number of gun deaths this year is likely to be similar to or higher than 2013, so Clinton’s claim is probably not too far off. But we can’t know for sure. Also, it’s likely that at roughly half of these deaths are due to suicide. It could be even higher. Clinton’s phrasing obscures that point. Clinton used very specific language even though she’s actually extrapolating from old data. Editor's note: The Gun Violence Archive got back to us after publication, and we've updated the piece to include their comments."
|
3993
|
Coldilocks, the oldest captive polar bear in the US, dies.
|
The oldest captive polar bear in the U.S. has died.
|
true
|
Polar bears, Animals, Bears, Philadelphia, Animal health, North America, Health, U.S. News
|
The Philadelphia Zoo on Tuesday said that the 37-year-old bear, Coldilocks, was in declining health and was euthanized. Zoo officials said Coldilocks had a variety of age-related medical issues, including problems with her kidneys and eyesight, but that visitors wouldn’t have been able to tell as the bear pounced playfully on toys, pulling them deep into her pool during early morning dips. “She was really a great animal,” said Dr. Keith Hinshaw, director of animal health at the zoo. It was “spectacular” for Coldilocks to far surpass the average 23-year lifespan of a polar bear, he said. The bear took “a sudden change for the worse” about a week ago when her appetite waned and her activity level decreased, Hinshaw said. Medical tests performed before Coldilocks was euthanized turned up potential liver and spinal problems as well, he said. Dr. Andy Baker, the zoo’s chief operating officer, said Coldilocks brought attention to how climate change affects polar bears. She will be greatly missed, he said Coldilocks was born Dec. 13, 1980 at Seneca Park Zoo in New York and arrived at the Philadelphia Zoo about a year later. Her final birthday last year was celebrated with a party at the zoo. She was served a cake of peanut butter, honey, raisins and fish.
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39476
|
A television reporter in Detroit investigated the costs of generic drugs. He accused some pharmacies of price-gouging, with mark ups of as much at 3,000 percent. Generic drugs cost less than name brands of the same medications, but the reporter says the lower price may still represent a high mark-up. He also found that Costco prices were consistently more reasonable
|
High mark-ups on prices of generic drugs
|
true
|
Household
|
There seems to have been a rash of TV reports on this subject in various cities. The report in Detroit was in July, 2002 by Steve Wilson of channel 7, the ABC affiliate. He went from store to store to check on prices of a drug that cost the pharmacy $2. Prices ranged up to $100. He says the blood pressure medication Vasotec can cost about $76 per month. The generic version often sells for $60. But he says it costs the pharmacy less than $6. One pharmacist admitted that the mark-up was “unconscionable.” Wilson reports that the widly-used drug Prozac sells for about $100 per month in Detroit. The generic version sells for only $10 or so less, but costs the pharmacy only $2.16 or less. He found that the prices at Costco were consistently cheaper. In Florida, the same investigation was conducted by WFTV channel 9’s reporter Barbara West in October, 2002. She too found high mark-ups on generic drugs. Prozac was selling for 3,000 to 5,000 percent profit. She compared that with if a grocer who bought an orange for 20-cents would sell it at the same mark-up, the orange would cost $10. She quotes a spokesperson for Walgreens as saying that the pharmacies don’t make much profit on the brand name drugs and need to charge higher profit on the generics, which they can do while still giving the consumer a better deal than the brand name price. She also found that Costco consistently had the best prices with mark-ups between 86 and 423 percent, not 3,000 to 5,000. Philadelphia’s KYW-TV did the same story in November, 2002. KYW’s consumer specialist Paul Moriarty says Rite Aid, Walgreens, Eckerd, and CVS all declined to be interviewed about high mark-ups on generic drugs. He too found that Enalapril, the generic version of Vasotec, selling for $60 at Walgreens and $68 at Eckerd Drugs, even though it costs them about $5, a 1,300 percent mark up. He, too, found Costco to be the cheapest with a cost for Enalapril, for example, of $12.97. He also found lower prices at Wal-Mart and K-Mart, but not as low as Costco. A 3/11/03 article by Wall Street Journal reporter Francesco Fiondella reflected some of the same findings. That article found prices for generic Prozac ranged from $2 per pill at various pharmacies around New York to 15 cents at, once again, Costco. Comments
|
4319
|
State: Proposed deal with company would reduce air pollution.
|
An Alabama chemical plant has been emitting sulfur dioxide and sulfuric acid mist into the atmosphere, state and federal authorities say in court documents.
|
true
|
Technology, General News, Air pollution, Environment, Mobile, Alabama, Air quality, Pollution
|
A complaint recently filed in federal court accuses Nouryon Functional Chemicals of polluting the air from its sulfuric acid plant in the Axis community, north of Mobile. The company did a major modification of its sulfuric acid unit without obtaining the proper permits or installing required technology, among other things, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said in a statement. The EPA and the state are proposing a settlement with the company — part of a process that will include a 30-day public comment period. The EPA says the proposed consent decree would substantially reduce chemical emissions and improve the air quality in communities near the plant. The agency says the plant’s sulfuric acid unit was constructed in 1956, and is one of the oldest areas of the facility. The company did a major modification on the unit without obtaining the proper permits before that project or using the best available technology to control emissions of sulfur dioxide and sulfuric acid mist, the EPA said. Sulfur dioxide can affect the respiratory system and lead to such health problems as emphysema and increased asthma symptoms. It is “a major precursor of acid rain, which has acidified soil, lakes and streams, damaged vegetation and accelerated corrosion of buildings and monuments,” the EPA said in the statement. Sulfuric acid mist can cause irritation of the skin, eyes, nose and throat, and lungs. However, compliance measures proposed in the settlement agreement would reduce both types of emissions and improve the air quality for people in the area of the plant, the agency said. “It is important that facilities comply with Clean Air Act requirements to ensure that people in the surrounding communities are able to enjoy healthy air quality,” Mary Walker, an EPA executive, said in the statement. The company did not immediately respond to calls and emails requesting comment. The proposed agreement between the state and federal governments and the company would not be finalized until a 30-day public comment period. That begins on the date the notice of the agreement is published in the Federal Register.
|
2656
|
"Fitness-Buffet"" serves up a smorgasbord of sports."
|
Turned off by the treadmill and bored by the bike, but know you need to get in shape?
|
true
|
Health News
|
Instructor Alvaro Ramirez from Uruguay relaxes in a circus studio in Athens January 16, 2008. REUTERS/Yiorgos Karahalis A start-up firm may have the answer: an array of coupons for fitness and sports programs, at bargain prices, to tempt aspiring athletes into trying a little of everything to see what really works for them. “Everyone knows they should be doing more fitness,” said Callum Laing, a 36-year-old New Zealander and the founder of “Fitness-Buffet.” “And most people assume the answer is to head to the local gym and spend half an hour on a treadmill. So many people have become turned off by that experience, it’s no wonder they lose motivation so quickly.” Far better is trying new things and reintroducing vitality to your life by signing up to Zumba dancing, kick-boxing, dragon boat racing or touch rugby, he said. “On your way to the gym, you probably pass three or four places that are offering great services that you’re just not aware of. Fitness-Buffet gives you an easy, low risk way to sample them,” he told Reuters. The company (www.fitness-buffet.com/) sells sets of downloadable fitness offers for a one-time fee of $99 that contain, Fitness-Buffet says, over $1,000 worth of deals on anything from yoga to kettlebells to Aussie Rules football classes. Customers have two months to try as many of them as they want, and all offers are included at no extra cost. One such customer was Cathy Fuggle, a British teacher who, prior to her move to Singapore, had never been to a nutritionist nor possessed the courage to attend a fitness “boot camp.” But after buying coupons from Fitness-Buffet, she has tried both these and more. “If you’ve got something in your hand, and you’ve got a time limit, it motivates you and encourages you to go for it - especially in the New Year,” Fuggle said. Though opened only in June 2011, Fitness-Buffet’s sales figures have been “brisk,” according to Laing, with the biggest growth area coming from companies using the product for employee wellness schemes. Employers, under pressure to boost the overall health of their staff, can accomplish two goals at once by improving the fitness of their employees, and by so doing, stave off rising medical insurance costs. Such programs are finally taking hold in Asia, said Joan Collar, Employee Benefits regional leader-Asia for insurance broker Marsh. “This trend will continue as companies recognize the value of the programs... as a way to fight absenteeism or staff sickness rates,” she added. With employee insurance costs one of the fastest growing expenses in many businesses, maintaining overall health has become a critical business issue, Laing said. “A fundamental shift in lifestyle for hundreds of millions of employees worldwide is the only long term solution,” he added. Not only that, keeping workers fit is a good way to raise productivity, said Sarah Schubert, director of New Voice, a Singapore-based HR consultancy and training business. “Employee wellness is no longer a management fad but actually a very sensible business practice,” she said. “Research has shown that keeping the body active and fit aids brain function and cognitive thinking, so giving staff the opportunity to participate in active exercise programs through the day and week will result in a more productive and engaged workforce.” Laing says Fitness-Buffet is learning fast from corporate clients, with HR directors demanding customized versions of the product which allows them to run weekly team-building activities. Currently available in Bangkok, Singapore and Chicago, Fitness-Buffet will open in 25 more cities in the United States this year, as well as in several cities in Asia and Europe. The company will also be rolling out a marketplace offering, which will target business travelers who wish to pick and choose one-off classes in Asia and beyond.
|
9109
|
Breakthrough device heals organs with a single touch
|
Researchers at The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center and Ohio State’s College of Engineering have published a research letter in Nature Nanotechnology showing that a new technology, called Tissue Nanotransfection (TNT), is able to reprogram skin cells to become vascular cells in mice who had badly injured legs that lacked blood flow. While this highly experimental approach is exciting, there is far too much speculation, particularly in the headline, that the results of this research can be applied to humans. If a simple, safe, effective and non-invasive technology can reprogram cells so as to repair injured tissue or help a person recover from stroke, then it would be a major medical advance. As an experiment, the study shows some promise in animals but with so many missing pieces and the needed caveats to give context to this “proof-of-concept,” it’s not clear that this is relevant to humans.
|
false
|
Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center,regenerative medicine
|
There are no discussions of cost, but because this is a technology already being touted as a “breakthrough” with wide applications costs should have been broached as part of the description. We are told that “..it is achievable, successfully working about 98 percent of the time,” yet there’s no accompanying description of what ‘works’ really means, how the technology benefit is measured, or how it would compare to a similar technology. While we are told that the “procedure is non-invasive,” and that “the cargo is delivered by zapping the device with a small electrical charge that’s barely felt by the patient,” this implies a safety that may not exist. The release should have described how well the “patients” (in this case pigs and mice) tolerated the treatment and what types of problems they might have developed. More importantly, it should also have warned that this experiment in a small number of animals might not uncover problems that would occur when used in a large number of people. Appropriate caveats about the very preliminary, murine (rodent-related) nature of this evidence was missing. Curing crippled rodents? Curing mice from strokes? Those are interesting first steps but they are a long way from what any human patient would consider a breakthrough. We need some proof here. There is no disease mongering here. The release names the funders. The published research letter states researchers have no financial conflicts of interest. The release doesn’t mention any alternatives or reference previous experimental attempts to use this technology. However, the release claims that multiple conditions could be treated with the technology, so it would be difficult to mention the array of alternatives that might be applicable. If this technology becomes a realistic alternative in people then alternatives would be important to describe. From the final sentence we get a hint that applicability in humans is a long way off: “Researchers plan to start clinical trials next year to test this technology in humans.” It’s important to note that potential treatments in mice fail to materialize as a treatment in humans about 95 percent of the time. The release should have been a lot more cautious and pointed out that this concept will require many years of study. A study co-leader states in the release: “With this technology, we can convert skin cells into elements of any organ with just one touch.” We’ll grant that this claim is novel, though we thought it needed more explanation. More description of what exactly makes the nanochip novel — borrowed from the description in the study summary — would have helped readers understand what’s new about the technology. Use of the word “breakthrough” in the release is unjustifiable. The breakthrough status in treating humans hasn’t been established (or tested) and so the headline is misleading. The title of the letter from which the news release is drawn is more restrained but very technical: “Topical tissue nano-transfection mediates non-viral stroma reprogramming and rescue.” The release should have been headlined with something between the two extremes that also highlights that this was animal research.
|
29955
|
"The newly-formed Muslim Community Patrol Services group in Brooklyn, New York, is enforcing ""Sharia law."
|
During the ceremony, Adams called for additional funding to be offered to community patrol groups.
|
false
|
Politics, sharia law
|
The appearance of a new volunteer patrol group in New York City spurred familiar but false accusations. Vehicles bearing the Muslim Community Patrol Service’s name (MCPS) and emblem were first spotted in parts of Brooklyn in December 2018, prompting media personality Laura Loomer to post a photograph of one of the vehicles above the caption “The job of the people driving the cars is to enforce Sharia law. In case you never thought Sharia would be in America, well, it’s here. I HAVE BEEN WARNING ALL OF YOU!!! Time to wake up people. #NoSharia #911 #Neverforget”: While Sharia, a faith-based code of conduct, does exist, Loomer’s post was among a cascade of falsehoods claiming that Muslims are intent on staging a takeover of the U.S. MCPS Vice President Noor Rabah dismissed the accusation that the group’s purpose was to “enforce Sharia law”: It’s not about “Sharia Law.” It’s about Muslims taking care of people in our community. But it’s not just Muslims. If we’re driving or we’re patrolling and we see a guy attacking a woman we don’t ask “What’s your religion? What do you believe in? Who’s your God?” We’re there for preventative measures and it doesn’t matter who’s going through what — white, black, orange, green, nun, hijabi, we’re there to help our community. Like other local community patrol groups, MCPS members do not have the authority to arrest people. Rabah said the group had around 30 regular members, with 30 others volunteering services on a more limited basis. The photographs seen online, he maintained, captured the group’s patrol vehicle on what he called a “dry run” before the MCPS program’s formal launch in 2019. “Most of our patrolling is going to be motor patrol,” Rabah said. “We will be driving. The goal is that with our presence, there will be a preventative measure for people who are inclined toward crime — that seeing the car would stop the average criminal. That’s one thing. Two, if we were to see something we would say something; if we see suspicious activity, if we see someone’s driving drunk [or] causing a disturbance, just by being in these areas we can contact 911 a lot quicker than someone who is in trouble before things get out of proportion.” Besides acting as “eyes and ears” for police, he added, MCPS members are already connected to their communities enough to defuse situations while avoiding potential cultural misunderstandings. “We’re not here to arrest people,” he said. “Rather, if we see for example a young man smoking weed — we know him, we can come up to him, greet him and say, ‘You might not care if a cop came to you right now and stopped you but you probably would care if your mom or dad found out that you were smoking weed. '” While more than 30 members had already received certification in New York City’s Community Emergency Response Teams (CERT) program and each member must pass a background check, Rabah said, the MCPS had already won the support of officials in the New York Police Department’s 72nd District and planned to work with them to receive further training. However a department spokesperson, Sgt. Jessica McRorie, seemingly offered a negative reaction toward MCPS’ vehicles in an interview with the website PJ Media, saying “This is not an NYPD vehicle. The NYPD did not outfit or label this vehicle. This group is not officially sanctioned by the NYPD and they are subject to the law.” By comparison, the website reported, the department endorsed another civilian patrol group, the Brooklyn Asian Safety Patrol (BASP), going so far as to allow it to use an official logo. PJ Media offered nothing that demonstrated the MCPS could, or planned to, “enforce Sharia law,” beyond engaging in the speculative hypothetical that the MCPS might somehow “apply … Sharia in its community monitoring”: Given this background, the NYPD’s full-throated insistence that there is no link between the Big Apple’s police and the MCP suggests that the Islamic group does not enjoy the same status and training as [the Jewish patrol group] Shomrim or BASP. If the Muslim Community Patrol is off-book and does not coordinate with the NYPD, it may apply specific readings of Sharia (Islamic law) in its community monitoring. Since some forms of Sharia advocate honor killings, child brides, and other abuses, they may directly violate some American or New York City laws. Rabah asserted that his group’s vehicles were approved by the 72nd Precinct before the test run. “We’re not looking for someone to ‘outfit’ our car,” he said. “We’re looking for equal respect.” Ibrahim Hooper, spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations, said McRorie’s remark “deserves further clarification by the NYPD.” We asked the NYPD whether they shared the site’s concern regarding “Sharia Law” and whether any officials had met with members of the Muslim patrol, but the department did not respond prior to publication. Both MCPS and BASP, along with Shomrim, were honored by Brooklyn Borough President Erik Adams and Kings County District Attorney Eric Sanchez at a ceremony on 2 January 2019.
|
22684
|
Veterans can now download their electronic medical records with a click of the mouse.
|
President Obama says veterans can now access their electronic medical records online
|
false
|
National, Health Care, Technology, Veterans, Barack Obama,
|
"State of the Union addresses often seem interminably long. But with so much ground to cover and so many members of the public tuned in -- not to mention intense media scrutiny -- economic use of words is crucial. And so, after interest groups hear what's in the speech for them, they are often left to parse the meaning and import of just a few sentences. There is often a balancing act between brevity and full accuracy. We'll deal with just such a conflict here. In his State of the Union address on Jan. 25, 2011, President Barack Obama boasted that his administration has made ""great strides over the last two years in using technology and getting rid of waste."" And he used the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs as a prime example. ""Veterans can now download their electronic medical records with a click of the mouse,"" Obama said. Two days later, the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America (IAVA) posted a response on their website accusing Obama of ""mischaracterizing"" the VA electronic medical records system. ""This is not true,"" stated IAVA Founder and Executive Director Paul Rieckhoff. ""Contrary to the president’s comment, the only thing a veteran can download from the VA’s system are pharmaceutical records and personal health information that he or she has self-entered. This is a critical distinction. ""The president’s comments are misleading to service members, veterans and the American public, who now think that this system is in place and functional, while it is clearly not. In the last 24 hours, IAVA has heard from hundreds of members, who have expressed surprise and outrage that the president could get something so wrong in arguably the most important speech of the year."" In October, the administration formally launched something called the ""VA Blue Button"" which allows veterans to download and view some medical information online. Primarily, it allows veterans to access self-entered health metrics such as blood pressure, weight and heart rate as well as emergency contact information, test results, family health history, military health history and other health-related information. Using data from the patient’s Veterans Health Administration’s Electronic Health Records (VistA), it also allows vets to access information about their VA prescription histories, wellness reminders and VA appointments (both past and future). Can a vet get all of his or her medical records via the Blue Button? No. You still can't yet get medical records such as doctors' notes or X-rays. But more and more medical information will become available via the Blue Button over time, said Peter L. Levin, chief technology officer at the Department of Veterans Affairs and the co-creator of the Blue Button. ""The things they can download today are generally the kinds of things you'd fill in on a clipboard when you go to see a specialist,"" Levin said. In March, the VA plans to add information on allergies, he said. And soon, the Blue Button will offer access to lab results, including chemistry and hematology. ""We are on a steady path, capturing more and more information from VistA and putting it into MyHealthyVet,"" Levin said. And vets' requests will drive the information that will be added in the future, he said. ""This is actually a monumental VA initiative,"" said Paul Sullivan, executive director of Veterans for Common Sense. ""You have to give the VA some credit."" Perhaps, he said, President Obama should have said medical ""information"" rather than ""medical records"" are now available to vets online, because the phrase implies things like doctors' notes and medical test results are online. ""Maybe he didn't get it exactly right,"" Sullivan said. ""It could come down to word choice. Some of your medical records are online. Some, but not all."" Joe Davis, a spokesman for Veterans of Foreign Wars, also praised the VA's Blue Button as a ""unique"" feature that puts the VA out front on technology. But when Obama said, ""Veterans can now download their electronic medical records with a click of the mouse,"" was he accurate? ""Yes, kinda, sorta,"" Davis said. ""They can download a part. 'Some' would have been more accurate. It all depends on your interpretation."" Davis also said the VFW hasn't gotten any calls from veterans confused by the president's statement. Probably, he said, most realize that in a State of the Union address, every word takes up time, and so the president used a bit of short-hand. In rating this comment, we weighed the fact that many veterans groups have praised the Blue Button as a major step forward. The medical information now available to veterans is an undeniably valuable technological tool and a praiseworthy advance. But Obama's claim that vets ""can now download their electronic medical records with a click of the mouse"" suggests much more availability than exists. One could reasonably assume he meant a vet could access all of his or her medical records online. In fact, most of the information now available to vets is information they self-entered. Vets can't yet get a lot of medical records though the Blue Button (though more and more information is being added in the near future)."
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6627
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Court issues temporary stay on flavored vaping ban in Oregon.
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Oregon’s Court of Appeals on Thursday put a halt to the state’s ban on flavored vaping products two days after it took effect.
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true
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Kate Brown, Health, General News, Oregon, Courts, Vaping
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The Oregonian/OregonLive reports the temporary stay issued appears to apply only to tobacco-based vaping products, sold under the oversight of the Oregon Health Authority. It leaves the ban in place on marijuana vaping products regulated by the Oregon Liquor Control Commission. On Oct.4, Gov. Kate Brown ordered a six-month ban on flavored vape products in Oregon in response to an epidemic of vaping-related illnesses across the country. The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says there have been nearly 1,500 illnesses and 33 deaths nationwide. Oregon has reported nine illnesses and two deaths. “The court’s decision to enter a temporary stay today is unfortunate due to the ongoing public health threat posed by vaping-related illness,” the governor’s spokesman, Charles Boyle, said in statement Thursday. He said that absent federal regulation, Brown will work with public health organizations, state agencies and the Legislature in search of a long-term solution to vaping illnesses. “Governor Brown continues to urge Oregonians to heed the public health warning of the Oregon Health Authority and to stop vaping immediately,” Boyle said. Earlier this month, a state court blocked a similar flavored vaping ban in New York. In a challenge filed Wednesday with the Oregon Court of Appeals, vape businesses and an industry group called the Vapor Technology Association said they would “suffer severe and irreparable harm long before the (ban) can be subjected to full judicial review.” Two businesses, Smokeless Solutions and Vape Crusaders, said that if the governor’s order remained in place it would “force the permanent closure of their businesses within the next two weeks.” Their court challenge argued that Oregon regulators lack the legal standing to enforce the governor’s ban. The Oregon Health Authority issued a statement defending the ban, calling it “an evidence-based strategy to prevent youth, as well as adults attracted to flavors, from becoming exposed to the health risks from vaping products and from becoming addicted to nicotine.”
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8160
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Malaysia expects coronavirus cases to spike as more worshippers traced.
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Malaysia’s coronavirus cases jumped to 1,183 on Saturday with eight deaths, and officials warned of a spike next week as they track down people who attended a large religious gathering linked to most of the cases.
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true
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Health News
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The Health Ministry reported five more deaths and 153 new infections on Saturday, 90 of which were connected to the event at a mosque late last month that was attended by people from more than two dozen countries. The four-day religious “tabligh” event near the capital, Kuala Lumpur, has now been linked to 714 cases in Malaysia - 60% of the total - and at least 840 across Southeast Asia. Malaysia has the highest number of confirmed cases in Southeast Asia, though Indonesia has more deaths at 38. “We expect the number of cases to rise next week and urge the tabligh members involved to come for screening,” Health Malaysia Director General Noor Hisham Abdullah said. He told a news conference the government was trying to secure more ventilators to prepare for the expected spike in cases over this week and next week. The gathering of Islamic missionaries and followers was attended by 16,000 people, 14,500 of them residents of Malaysia, including hundreds of Rohingya and other refugees. The Health Ministry said it was working closely with the U.N. refugee agency to ensure refugees and asylum-seekers were included in preventive and containment activities to contain any potential communal spread. To trace those from this group that had participated in the tabligh gathering, the Health Ministry said it would deploy officers from its district departments. The government has also been sending bulk text messages for attendees to come forward for testing. The police chief warned on Saturday those who refuse to be screened “may immediately be brought to the station”. Malaysia’s total cases are now only behind that of China and South Korea in Asia. Japan has recorded 1,016 cases of domestically transmitted cases, though its tally jumps ahead of Malaysia if 712 cases from a cruise ship moored near Tokyo last month are included.
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7407
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Lab-made “mini organs” helping doctors treat cystic fibrosis.
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Els van der Heijden, who has cystic fibrosis, was finding it ever harder to breathe as her lungs filled with thick, sticky mucus. Despite taking more than a dozen pills and inhalers a day, the 53-year-old had to stop working and scale back doing the thing she loved best, horseback riding.
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true
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Health, Netherlands, Europe, Genetic Frontiers, Cystic fibrosis
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Doctors saw no sense in trying an expensive new drug because it hasn’t been proven to work in people with the rare type of cystic fibrosis that van der Heijden had. Instead, they scraped a few cells from van der Heijden and used them to grow a mini version of her large intestine in a petri dish. When van der Heijden’s “mini gut” responded to treatment, doctors knew it would help her too. “I really felt, physically, like a different person,” van der Heijden said after taking a drug — and getting back in the saddle. This experiment to help people with rare forms of cystic fibrosis in the Netherlands aims to grow mini intestines for every Dutch patient with the disease to figure out, in part, what treatment might work for them. It’s an early application of a technique now being worked on in labs all over the world, as researchers learn to grow organs outside of the body for treatment — and maybe someday for transplants. So far, doctors have grown mini guts — just the size of a pencil point — for 450 of the Netherlands’ roughly 1,500 cystic fibrosis patients. “The mini guts are small, but they are complete,” said Dr. Hans Clevers of the Hubrecht Institute, who pioneered the technique. Except for muscles and blood vessels, the tiny organs “have everything you would expect to see in a real gut, only on a really small scale.” These so-called organoids mimic features of full-size organs, but don’t function the same way. Although many of the tiny replicas are closer to undeveloped organs found in an embryo than adult ones, they are helping scientists unravel how organs mature and providing clues on how certain diseases might be treated. In Australia, mini kidneys are being grown that could be used to test drugs. Researchers in the U.S. are experimenting with tiny bits of livers that might be used to boost failing organs. At Cambridge University in England, scientists have created hundreds of mini brains to study how neurons form and better understand disorders like autism. During the height of the Zika epidemic last year, mini brains were used to show the virus causes malformed brains in babies. In the Netherlands, the mini guts are used as a stand-in for cystic fibrosis patients to see if those with rare mutations might benefit from a number of pricey drugs, including Orkambi. Made by Vertex Pharmaceuticals, Orkambi costs about 100,000 euros per patient every year in some parts of Europe, and it’s more than double that in the U.S., which approved the drug in 2015. Despite being initially rejected by the Dutch government for being too expensive, negotiations with Vertex were reopened in July. Making a single mini gut and testing whether the patient would benefit from certain drugs costs a couple of thousand euros. The program is paid for by groups including health insurance companies, patient foundations and the government. The idea is to find a possible treatment for patients, and avoid putting them on expensive drugs that wouldn’t work for them. About 50 to 60 patients across the Netherlands have been treated after drugs were tested on organoids using their cells, said Dr. Kors van der Ent, a cystic fibrosis specialist at the Wilhelmina Children’s Hospital, who leads the research. Clevers made a discovery about a decade ago that got researchers on their way. They found pockets of stem cells, which can turn into many types of other cells, in the gut. They then homed in a growing environment in the lab that spurred these cells to reproduce rapidly and develop. “To our surprise, the stem cells started building a mini version of the gut,” Clevers recalled. Cystic fibrosis is caused by mutations in a single gene that produces a protein called CFTR, responsible for balancing the salt content of cells lining the lungs and other organs. To see if certain drugs might help cystic fibrosis patients, the medicines are given to their custom-made organoids in the lab. If the mini organs puff up, it’s a sign the cells are now correctly balancing salt and water. That means the drugs are working, and could help the patient from whom the mini gut was made. Researchers are also using the mini guts to try another approach they hope will someday work in people — using a gene editing technique to repair the faulty cystic fibrosis gene in the organoid cells. Other experiments are underway in the Netherlands and the U.S. to test whether organoids might help pinpoint treatments for cancers involving lungs, ovaries and pancreas. While the idea sounds promising, some scientists said there are obstacles to using mini organs to study cancer. Growing a mini cancer tumor, for example, would be far more challenging because scientists have found it difficult to make tumors in the lab that behave like in real life, said Mathew Garnett of the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, who has studied cancer in mini organs but is not connected to Clevers’ research. Also, growing the cells and testing them must happen faster for cancer patients who might not have much time to live, he said. Meanwhile, Clevers wants to one day make organs that are not so mini. “My dream would be to be able to custom-make organs,” he said, imagining a future where doctors might have a “freezer full of livers” to choose from when sick patients arrive. Others said while such a vision is theoretically possible, huge hurdles remain. “There are still enormous challenges in tissue engineering with regards to the size of the structure we’re able to grow,” said Jim Wells, a pediatrics professor at the Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center. He said the mini organs are far smaller than what would be needed to transplant into people and it’s unclear if scientists can make a working, life-sized organ in the lab. There are other limitations to growing miniature organs in a dish, said Madeline Lancaster at Cambridge University. “We can study physical changes and try to generate drugs that could prevent detrimental effects of disease, but we can’t look at the complex interplay between organs and the body,” she said. For patients like van der Heijden, who was diagnosed with cystic fibrosis as a toddler, the research has helped her regain her strength. Vertex agreed to supply her with the drug. “It was like somebody opened the curtains and said, ‘Sunshine, here I am, please come out and play.’” she said. “It’s strange to think this is all linked to some of my cells in a lab.” ___ This Associated Press series was produced in partnership with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
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FDA panel says Avandia should stay on the market
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"This broadcast segment presents a fundamentally accurate report of a federal panel’s recommendation to keep the diabetes drug Avandia on the market. It does a good job describing the controversy surrounding it. The piece falls short in two ways. First, the segment in places uses language that, given the panel’s decision to recommend keeping the drug on the market, may generate excessive anxiety. The journal findings are described as ""stunning""; most media reports described them as ""surprising."" The report ends with the unusually explicit advice ""You have to call your doctor tomorrow."" Most reports simply recommended people call their doctors. Second, news reports on topics that question treatment safety should try to mention benefits, alternatives and price. If producers decide that their broadcast time constraints prevent them from including such information, a mention of a Web site where viewers can get more information would be useful."
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The broadcast reports total annual sales of the drug, but does not say how much a patient pays–around $1,600 per year for Avandia, according to prices on drugstore.com, compared to about $500/year for the older drug metformin. (A recent study of 10 diabetes drugs, published in Annals of Internal Medicine prior to the Avandia hearing, found that that older drugs like metformin are equally effective with a better safety profile. An AP report of that study was published on NBC News partner MSNBC’s Web site.) The report fails to mention the benefits of the drug, or of diabetes drugs generally, in controlling blood sugar. It also did not mention how important it is for patients to control their blood sugar to avoid serious disease and complications. The story correctly indicates the increased risk of heart attacks that may be associated with Avandia, and includes the clip from David Graham estimating the potential impact on the population in terms of number of additional heart attacks. Given Graham’s crediblity, and the specificity of the statement, this is an example of good broadcast reporting and editing. The broadcast correctly reports the most important finding from the New England Journal study that triggered the hearing–the 43 percent higher risk of heart attack for those taking Avandia. The story fails to indicate, however, that the hearing was based on an analysis of all relevant studies on the topic. Diabetes is a serious and widespread condition the media must follow closely. But the report risks creating an unnecessary sense of urgency by using the 4,100 new cases/day formulation. Reporting the percent of adult population affected would have provided more useful perspective. The report identifies the GSK spokesman as an interested party, and correctly identifies David Graham as one FDA panelist but not the sole government authority. Again, the report based on a federal hearing, which has high credibility as an information source. Despite emphasizing the potential dangers of Avandia, the report fails to mention any treatment alternatives to the drug. The physician-journalist makes clear that Avandia is widely prescribed and available. The segment does not imply the treatment is novel. The report clearly draws from the hearings themselves, not a press release issued about the hearings.
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3205
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Shutdown of nuke plant has a surprising stinging consequence.
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The shutdown of one of the nation’s oldest nuclear power plants last year is having a surprising, stinging consequence for a New Jersey bay considered one of the nation’s most fragile.
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true
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New Jersey, General News, Jellyfish, Environment, Nuclear power, U.S. News, Fish, Science
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The environmental group Save Barnegat Bay held a conference Wednesday where scientists noted the increase of tiny jellyfish near the Oyster Creek nuclear power plant. The stinging sea nettles that had been sucked into the plant and killed by heated water are now thriving and multiplying. The influx has some worrying about swimming conditions in the area, while other say the plant closure should begin to restore conditions to where they were before the plant became operational in 1969. “This is one of the unintended consequences” of the plant’s shutdown, said Paul Bologna, a professor at Montclair State University known for his research on jellyfish. “There are huge numbers of them out there now, substantially more than we had been seeing in 2018.” Bologna and others presented their findings at a three-day conference on Barnegat Bay organized by the environmental group. “When I was a kid, we played in the bay all day long, so long that our skin was all pruned up,” said Britta Wenzel, Save Barnegat Bay’s executive director. “My kids had their first swimming experiences in the bay, and in a lot of places, you can’t do that anymore.” The nuclear plant, which closed in Sept. 2018, had been altering conditions in the bay for decades, discharging water that was 10 degrees hotter than normal. Joe Bilinski, research scientist with the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection, said the immediate effect of the plant shutdown is the beginning of a return to conditions in the bay that existed before the plant went online. “Conditions are going back to what they were 50 years ago,” he said. “It’s starting to restore an equilibrium.” Environmentalists had long sought the closure of the plant, arguing that its heated discharge water harmed the bay. They also cited the large numbers of fish and turtles that got pinned against suction grates at the plant’s water intake pipes, and the millions of fish and crab eggs that were killed by traveling through the water as it surged around the radioactive parts of the plant, picking up heat. But that same heat that killed the fish and crab eggs also did an effective job of killing tiny jellyfish polyps, Bologna said. Now, in the absence of heated water, those tiny jellyfish are surviving and thriving. The plant’s heated water played a role in its shutdown. New Jersey environmental officials had wanted it to build closed-system cooling towers to eliminate the need to draw water from the creek to cool the plant, but its former owners balked, saying that would cost too much. Instead, they reached an agreement with the state to shut the plant down earlier than they had intended. So far the increased numbers of jellyfish are being found mainly in two locations near the former plant, in the Forked River section of Lacey Township, and in Toms River. But scientists say they expect the sea nettles to expand into parts of the bay and into other waterways. Fish and crab populations could benefit from the shutdown, even as species that were drawn to the warmer waters now leave the area. The plant used an almost unfathomable amount of water each day to cool its reactors: 1.4 billion gallons, Bilinski said. Now, only 5% of that amount circulates through the plant, and the artificial channel connecting the Forked River and the Oyster Creek is almost stagnant, “like a lagoon,” Bilinski said. That means fish and turtles are no longer being trapped up against intake grates. But is also means that some species of fish that had been drawn to the warmer waters of the bay have now largely disappeared. Several long-term studies are underway measuring changes in and around the bay after the plant’s shutdown. ___ Follow Wayne Parry at http://twitter.com/WayneParryAC
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We're worse than a Third World country in terms of water quality and the way we treat our sewage.
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Cleveland Councilman Mike Polensek rails that sewage treatment system amounts to mistreatment of Lake Erie
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Environment, Ohio, Infrastructure, Mike Polensek,
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"Industrial pollution made national news and made Cleveland the butt of jokes in 1969 after the Cuyahoga River caught fire -- not for the first time -- and did $50,000 damage to bridges. The fire helped focus attention on environmental problems and contributed to passage of the Clean Water Act in 1972. Water pollution from sanitary sewer and storm runoff has had a lower profile. But the issue has been important to Cleveland City Councilman Mike Polensek ""for more years than I care to recall,"" he says. There are almost two miles of lakefront in his ward and a good portion of that is public beach. Polensek spoke at a meeting of the Northeast Ohio Regional Sewer District in November to support its $3 billion settlement with EPA that could triple sewer rates in Cleveland and about 60 suburbs, but will pay for mandated construction work to deal with combined sanitary and storm sewer overflows. ""Let's face it, this is the year 2010 and we're worse than a Third World country in terms of water quality and the way we treat our sewage,"" Polensek told sewer district trustees. ""What we're paying for now is really an indictment of the 40-year delay in living up to the Clean Water Act."" PolitiFact Ohio decided to take a look to see if there is any truth to his comparison. Polensek is notably outspoken, and ""Third World"" sounded like dramatic hyperbole. But the councilman told PolitiFact Ohio he was not exaggerating and would not water down his remarks. ""It's outrageous in America in 2010 that we have tributaries as polluted as the Tigris and Euphrates,"" he said. ""It's unconscionable when you see the filth that comes down that creek after a rainstorm. We have the technology to prevent it. What we haven't got is elected officials with the (guts) to make the tough decisions. They have deferred and deferred and passed the proverbial bleeping buck. You pay now or pay later."" Two side-by-side beaches, Euclid Beach and Villa Angela, are a particular concern. Both are close to Euclid Creek, which drains a 24-square-mile section of eastern Cuyahoga County into Lake Erie. Both beaches were too unhealthy for swimming on 48 percent of the days last summer, according to the Northeast Ohio Regional Sewer District. From May 2 to Sept. 6, average bacterial levels sampled daily exceeded the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's maximum E. coli standard by 40 percent. (The standard is a density of 235 parts per 100 ml of water, indicating the presence of human or animal waste that could make swimmers sick.) ""It should be a national embarrassment,"" Polensek said. ""It's a sin that we have those types of bacterial levels."" He sees improving Great Lakes water quality as an economic development issue and a strategic defense issue, because ""We don't have to worry about trying to get water across a border."" He is angriest about health issues. ""Where do they think our drinking water comes from?"" he asked, noting he's had complaints about respiratory, eye and ear infections blamed on contact with lake water. Women have reported vaginal infections, he said. PolitiFact Ohio found support for Polensek's anger. The National Resources Defense Council found Cleveland the worst urban area on the Great Lakes in bacterial samples, with the highest risk of gastrointestinal illness on Great Lakes beaches. East Side beaches get 55 percent of the nearly 5 billion gallons of raw sewage dumped into the lake in Greater Cleveland per year. Euclid Creek is the most polluted tributary in the region. But is it Third World? ""Third World"" once designated countries not aligned politically with the West or the East. Now it generally refers to underdeveloped and developing countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America, but it has no single definition. ""There is no established convention for the designation of 'developed' and 'developing' countries or areas in the United Nations system,"" says the UN Statistics Division. ""An estimated 90 percent of all wastewater in developing countries is discharged untreated directly into rivers, lakes or the oceans,"" according to the United Nations Environment Programme, but we could find no benchmark characterizing recreational or bathing water of developing nations or ""Third World"" quality. We turned for perspective to an expert not involved in local politics or government: scientist Sandra L. McLellan of the Great Lakes Water Institute at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Her specialty is environmental toxicology, and her laboratory's major focus is investigating connections between environmental processes and human health. Her current projects involve sewage pollution in rivers and at beaches. She did not dispute Polensek, though she preferred more careful wording. ""I think the accurate statement would be that during the time of a combined sewage overflow we're no better than a developing country,"" she said. She found it particularly startling and significant that the regional sewer district reports more than 80 sewage overflows in a typical season on just the East Side beaches near Euclid Creek. ""It's a pretty bad situation and not up to what other cities have done,"" McLellan said. ""That's like the 1970s or '80s for most cities. They should have only two or three (overflows) a year."" In Milwaukee, she said, construction in 1993 of a deep tunnel system reduced overflows from 50-60 per year to 2.5. That's also the specific goal of the Euclid Creek Tunnel, the first part of the sewer district's Project Clean Lake, on which construction will begin in March. The bottom line, she said, is what happens during overflows: ""It's a completely open sewer going directly to the rivers and streams. It is like Third World."" So where does that leave Polensek’s statement? So we find Polensek’s statement has some elements of truth, but that also you need to know some important details to completely evaluate its accuracy. On the Truth-O-Meter that scores a rating of ."
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11047
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For pregnant women with flu, the earlier the better for antiviral treatment
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This news release focuses on an observational study, published in The Journal of Infectious Diseases which reports that treating pregnant women hospitalized with severe influenza in the early stages of illness with oseltamivir (sold under the brand name Tamiflu) appears to significantly reduce the patient’s time in the hospital. The study also found that pregnant women who were hospitalized with severe flu were less likely to have been vaccinated, compared to women hospitalized with milder flu. The release covers some of the bases when explaining the study and benefits, but neglected to address potential harms that were noted in the published study and to provide needed context on the absolute risk of contracting serious influenza during early pregnancy and absolute rates of risk reductions. Influenza, or “the flu,” is a widespread disease in the United States. The CDC reports that about 40 million people in the U.S. got the flu during the 2014-15 flu season, of which 970,000 required hospitalization. And the health risks associated with flu are significant for pregnant women and their unborn children. As the CDC notes: “Changes in the immune system, heart, and lungs during pregnancy make pregnant women (and women up to two weeks postpartum) more prone to severe illness from flu, as well as to hospitalizations and even death. Pregnant women with flu also have a greater chance for serious problems for their unborn baby, including premature labor and delivery.” The research findings inform treatment and preventative care of an at-risk population — pregnant women — for a widespread and dangerous disease. That deserves our attention. At the same time, we expect experts to inform us about the true nature of the risks to pregnant women and their unborn children. The safety and effectiveness of oseltamivir in treating influenza remains a controversial topic within the medical community. Following an exhaustive review of the oseltamivir clinical trials (which it had to fight for years to obtain), the Cochrane Collaboration along with the British Medical Journal (BMJ) issued a report in 2014 that strongly questioned oseltamivir’s safety and effectiveness in combating influenza. “Initially thought to reduce hospitalisations and serious complications from influenza, the review highlights that Tamiflu is not proven to do this, and it also seems to lead to harmful effects that were not fully reported in the original publications,” wrote Cochrane editor-in-chief Dr. David Tovey, “This shows the importance of ensuring that trial data are transparent and accessible.”
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mixture
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Association/Society news release
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The release focuses primarily on using the antiviral drug oseltamivir to treat pregnant flu patients who have been hospitalized. A course of oseltamivir often costs more than $100. For patients with limited resources, or without good insurance coverage, cost could be a factor. And because the drug is on the market, the release could have addressed this with a sentence or two. The release also discusses the importance of vaccination, without addressing cost. The release is a mixed bag here. The release adequately describes some aspects of the benefits. For example, pregnant women hospitalized with severe flu that were given oseltamivir within two days of exhibiting flu symptoms spent a median of 2.2 days in the hospital; as compared to 7.8 days for pregnant women hospitalized with severe flu that were given oseltamivir more than two days after exhibiting flu symptoms. In addition, the release addresses the benefit of vaccination by saying: “pregnant women hospitalized with severe flu illness were half as likely to have been vaccinated as women hospitalized with milder illness (14 percent vs. 26 percent).” But the release would have been stronger if it had done a couple additional things. First, the release notes that “Pregnant women hospitalized with less severe illness who were treated early also had a shorter hospital stay than those treated later, but the difference was not as great.” If you’re going to mention this benefit at all, even using modest language, it would be better to put a number to it. (Was it a difference of a day? 0.2 days?) Also, the release specifically mentions “serious illness and complications, including death” in its opening paragraph — but never tells readers whether the study found any potential connection between early antiviral treatment and reduced risk of complications for mother or child. Even if the study didn’t find any such relationship, the release could have said that. The release does not address potential harms at all and that is an important omission considering the strong disagreement over the drug’s side effects and effectiveness. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Mayo Clinic both stress that the risks associated with oseltamivir are far outweighed by the benefits of using it to treat flu during pregnancy. And studies (like this one from 2010 or this one from 2013) have found no evidence that oseltamivir hurts the pregnancy or the unborn child. However, the Cochrane Collaboration, which reviewed numerous trial data found “The use of oseltamivir increases the risk of adverse effects, such as nausea, vomiting, psychiatric effects and renal events in adults and vomiting in children.” The study itself even acknowledged that the health risk to fetuses is unknown. “…the study does not answer the question as to whether early treatment is associated with lower rates of important adverse outcomes such as stillbirths and maternal deaths,” the study states in a section describing limitations. The medical society was remiss in not acknowledging the unknown safety issues and that health experts are in disagreement over oseltamivir’s safety and effectiveness. There is no discussion of the study’s limitations. To start with, it is observational study, not an experimental one which seeks to show cause and effect. The study doesn’t describe whether the antiviral was provided before or after the hospitalization or differentiate the outcomes when the drug was administered at 49 hours or at 72 hours or more. These are details that should have been noted and explained. While the release does make the distinction that the number of women in the “severe” group was a very small percentage of the overall cohort (64 out of 865, or 7 percent) it omitted an explanation of what “severe” flu meant, relative to “less severe” flu — particularly given that all of the women in the study were hospitalized. It would also have been good to explain why the researchers split the women into two groups. From an outside perspective, it could look like an arbitrary decision to split the cohort into different groups in order to get a robust statistical result. Some explanation would help here. Influenza can be a serious illness during pregnancy and the release treats it accordingly. However, the absolute rates of complications among pregnant women with influenza are missing so it’s hard to gauge the true seriousness and rates of hospitalization without this context. The release doesn’t articulate funding sources or conflicts of interest. We have to assume the study was sponsored by the CDC because the lead author quoted works there. We are sometimes surprised when a news release fails to mention that there were no conflicts of interest. This is important information, and can only improve one’s perception of the research. Why not mention it? When we looked at the published study we read that the study authors have no conflicts to declare. Oseltamivir is one of two FDA approved antivirals for treating influenza. The other is zanamivir. The FDA has taken a very murky approach to recommending these drugs during pregnancy. The FDA website states, “Both drugs are designated “Pregnancy Category C,” which means that they have not been studied in pregnant women. However, Pregnancy Category C does NOT mean the drug cannot be used in pregnant women. Pregnant women can and should receive a category C drug when the possible benefits of using the drug are more likely than the possible risk of harm to the woman or her baby.” The release could have acknowledged the existence of zanamivir and whether similar observations were made about its effectiveness. Readers can infer that oseltamivir is available, since it was used in hospitals to treat patients. The release establishes that previous studies have suggested antiviral therapy is beneficial in this patient group, and that this study supports the CDC’s recommendation that symptomatic influenza in those with high risk of complications should be treated within the first 48 hours. The journal article itself notes that “This is the first and largest study to report on clinical characteristics and outcomes of pregnant women hospitalized with laboratory-confirmed influenza since the 2009 pandemic;” and that “our study is the first to assess the impact of early vs. late antiviral treatment on [length of hospital stay] among pregnant women hospitalized with severe and non-severe influenza.” The release doesn’t go overboard with unjustifiable language.
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29074
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U.S. Olympic medal winners have to pay taxes of up to $9,000 for each gold medal they earn.
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What's true: U.S. winners at the Olympic Games are required to pay taxes on their prize money and medals. What's false: All such winners are obligated to pay thousands of dollars in taxes.
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mixture
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Uncategorized, ASP Article, olympic medals, olympics
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One aspect of the Olympic Games many U.S. viewers remain unaware of is the fact that U.S. medalists (like those from many other countries) receive cash prizes along with their medals: $25,000 for gold, $15,000 for silver, and $10,000 for bronze. These rewards are not paid by the International Olympic Committee (which furnishes the medals), but by the U.S. Olympic Committee. Similarly, participants from some other countries receive monetary prizes put up by their home countries’ Olympic committees. Forbes reported on the issue of medal bonuses in July 2012, noting that: The biggest medal bonus is offered by Italy, which will pay more than $182,000 for a gold medal. Russia’s medal rewards are also quite rich, and the nation’s gold medal winners will collect $135,000. Even Russian bronze medalists will take home $54,400, more than double the payout for American gold. Neighboring Ukraine has been considering an increase to its already rich payout scale: $100,000 for gold, $75,000 for silver and $50,000 for bronze. Even Ghana promised its gold medal winners a payout of $20,000, not far behind the American reward. Perhaps surprisingly, the worst medal bonus is paid by Great Britain. Or rather, not paid. The host nation does not pay a performance bonus to medal-winning athletes. In July 2012, a blog post alerted many American readers to these prize winnings, noting that the monies earned by Olympic athletes (along with the value of their medals) were considered taxable income and could require gold medal winners to shell out up to $9,000 to the IRS. While it is true that prize winnings (including cash awards obtained through the attainment of Olympic medals) are considered taxable income in the U.S., it’s unlikely any U.S. gold medal winner would incur a tax liability of anything close $9,000 per gold medal. For starters, that estimation was based upon the assumption that the winner would be paying a 35% tax rate, which (in 2012) only applied to persons earning more than $388,350 per year. While some athletes may end up realizing incomes that put them into the higher tax brackets through endorsement deals or participation in professional versions of their sports, many athletes earn their medals in lower-profile events that don’t afford them such lucrative money-making opportunities. Additionally, many athletes could probably write off their Olympic prize winnings against the cost of their training and other related expenses, to the point that their tax liability for those winnings would be significantly lowered (if not completely eliminated). That $9,000 figure was also based on the assumption that medal-winning athletes would be paying taxes on the monetary value of the medals themselves (based on the types and amounts of metal the medals contain), which as CBS News calculated ranged from about $5 to $644: The gold medal consists of just over 1 percent actual gold. The rest is made up of 92.5 percent silver and 6.16 percent copper — and is only worth about $644. The silver medal is a modification of the gold medal. The gold is replaced with more copper, making the medal worth around $330. The bronze medal is made of 97 percent copper, 2.5 percent zinc and 0.5 percent tin — and is only worth about $4.70. The question of whether the value of Olympic medals is a form of taxable income in the U.S. is still somewhat open. The Financial Post tackled the issue of whether Canadian athletes were responsible for paying taxes on their winnings from the 2010 Winter Olympics, stating that: As for an Olympics prize, the CRA [Canada Revenue Agency] responded that although winning an Olympic medal may be an internationally recognized achievement and could “indirectly promote a sense of nationalism,” the prize is not awarded in recognition of public service and therefore cannot be considered a prescribed prize that would be tax exempt. This is consistent with the tax treatment of Olympic prizes in the United States. There is even some precedent in the U.S. for taxing the actual value of the medal itself. The U.S. case involved legendary shortstop Maury Wills, who played for the L.A. Dodgers. In January 1963, Wills received the S. Rae Hickok belt, awarded annually to the outstanding professional athlete of the prior year. The value of the alligator-skin belt with a solid gold buckle and an encrusted four-carat diamond, worth more than $6,000 at the time, was found to be fully taxable. The judge, concluding that this was an inequitable result, predicted that absent a change in the U.S. tax law, “the next step would be for the Internal Revenue Service to tax the gold and silver in the medals awarded to Olympic Games’ winners.” Even if the IRS did consider the value of Olympic medals to be a form of taxable income in the U.S., it’s probably unlikely that agency would come after any athletes who didn’t declare that income on their returns, as Reuters observed in an article on that topic: Even the medals themselves could be seen as something of value, a gift of a commodity metal, and therefore taxable by the U.S. government, says [Alex Knight, a tax partner at Atlanta’s Habif, Arogeti & Wynne]. Still, Knight doesn’t expect to see the IRS chasing after athletes for a slice of their gold. “I have to imagine that would be a public relations nightmare,” says Knight. Over the years, members of Congress have offered various proposals to exempt U.S. Olympic medalists from being required to pay taxes on their winnings, without success so far. But they’re still trying, and on 12 July 2016 the U.S. Senate passed a bill (SB 2650) sponsored by Senator John Thune of South Dakota titled “United States Appreciation for Olympians and Paralympians Act” that seeks to exclude as taxable income prize money and medals won through competition in the Olympic Games or Paralympic Games: Gross income shall not include the value of any medal awarded in, or any prize money received from the United States Olympic Committee on account of, competition in the Olympic Games or Paralympic Games. This bill still has to be passed by the U.S. House of Representatives and signed by the President before becoming law.
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6171
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China closes live poultry markets amid deadly flu outbreak.
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China is ordering the closure of live poultry markets in its south-central regions as it grapples with the worst outbreak of bird flu in years that has killed at least 87 people.
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true
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Health, Asia Pacific, Bird flu, China, Flu
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State media reported Friday that the National Health and Family Planning Commission ordered closures anywhere with cases of the H7N9 strain. Most reported cases have been found in the densely populated Yangtze and Pearl river deltas from Shanghai to Hong Kong. Those areas generally experience mild, wet winters that are ideal for the virus transmission. In all, more than 250 cases have been reported from 16 provinces and regions, including as far away as the southwestern province of Yunnan. The death toll since the start of the year has been unmatched since at least 2013. In addition to the market closures, the commission is training health workers in the screening, early diagnosis and treatment of the disease, while urging people to avoid contact with live birds. H7N9 is considered to be less virulent than the H5N1 strain that the World Health Organization has linked to hundreds of deaths worldwide over the last decade. H7N9 is not believed to be transmitted between humans, but rather by infected poultry. China has gained extensive experience in dealing with such crises since being hit by the 2003 SARS outbreak that was believed to have originated among animals in southern China. A preference among Chinese for live-bought, freshly-slaughtered poultry complicates the government’s efforts to eradicate such diseases. The official Xinhua News Agency said the market closures this time have “greatly reduced the number of new infections in many regions,” citing Ni Daxin, deputy director of the emergency response center at the Center for Disease Control and Prevention. ___ This story corrects virus strain.
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3301
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Cargill says 25K pounds of ground beef may be tainted.
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U.S. agricultural officials say Fort Morgan, Colorado-based Cargill Meat Solutions is recalling nearly 25,300 pounds (11,400 kilograms) of ground beef that might be contaminated with E. coli.
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true
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U.S. Department of Agriculture, Health, Fort Morgan, Agriculture, Meat processing, Colorado
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The recall notice by the U.S. Department of Agriculture says the meat was shipped to warehouses in California and Colorado. It’s labeled “Excel 93/7 Fine Ground Beef” and was produced Aug. 16 with a Sept. 5 expiration date. The notice says the meat processing plant discovered the problem Aug. 22 after a records review found the beef might be associated with a product that is presumed positive for the E. coli bacteria. There have been no reports of illness due to eating the meat. E. coli can cause dehydration, diarrhea and abdominal cramps, and it can cause a life-threatening form of kidney failure in young children and the elderly.
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33552
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A man in China has sued his wife for bearing him ugly children.
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We’d guess that someone originally created this tale as a moral lesson on the follies of excessive vanity, and in typical urban legend fashion it quickly made the transition from being an instructive fable to a “this really happened” news story.
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false
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Media Matters, Not Necessarily The News
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This item about a Chinese man named Jian Feng who supposedly sued his wife for bearing him ugly children has been kicking around the Internet since at least 2004. Example: A Chinese man divorced and then sued his ex-wife for giving birth to what he called an extremely ugly baby girl, the Irish Times reported. Initially, Jian Feng accused his wife of infidelity, so sure that he could never father an unattractive child. When a DNA test proved that the baby was his, Feng’s wife came clean on a little secret — before they met, she had undergone about $100,000 worth of cosmetic surgery in South Korea. Feng sued his ex-wife on the grounds of false pretenses, for not telling him about the plastic surgery and duping him into thinking she was beautiful, The Huffington Post reported. The kicker? He won. A judge agreed with Feng’s argument and ordered his ex-wife to fork over $120,000. “I married my wife out of love, but as soon as we had our first daughter, we began having marital issues,” he told the Irish Times. “Our daughter was incredibly ugly, to the point where it horrified me.” An account published in the Heilongjiang Morning Post back in that year maintained that Feng’s wife had undergone extensive cosmetic surgery prior to meeting him to disguise her less-than-desirable looks but had not disclosed that fact to him, and her secret was given away when she gave birth to an “ugly baby daughter” and confessed. Feng thereupon successfully sued his wife both for divorce and monetary damages over her “deceit”: A Chinese man has divorced and sued his wife for £55,000 after discovering she’d had plastic surgery before they met. Jian Feng, 38, was said to have been “horrified” when she gave birth to an ugly baby daughter. He suspected her of having an affair. His wife then confessed to having plastic surgery costing £70,000 in South Korea before they met and showed him a picture of how she used to look. He filed for divorce two years after marrying her following a whirlwind romance. The Heilongjiang Morning Post said Jian successfully sued for deceit. This item really picked up steam in 2012 when someone finally attached a picture to the story, and it has now been circulating on the Internet for over a decade, periodically resurfacing when some news outlet unaware of its background picks it up and runs it as a current and true news story. More recent outbreaks of this tale typically reference “children” rather than a single daughter and are accompanied by the purported photograph of the family in question, comprising three children: Clearly this photograph could have nothing to do with the story to which later became attached, as in that narrative the Fengs supposedly divorced after the birth of their first child, a daughter, but this family portrait includes three children, the eldest of which is a boy. Indeed, this image is completely unrelated to the infamous news story about a man suing his wife over ugly children and actually originated with a 2012 advertisement for a Taiwanese plastic surgery center featuring Taiwanese model Heidi Yeh (Ye Wan Cheng). Yeh posed for a “family” shot with children whose appearances were later digitally altered in the finished photograph, which was used in an ad for the plastic surgery clinic with a caption reading “The only thing you’ll ever have to worry about is how to explain it to the kids”: What do you think of this picture? A handsome father and pretty mother surrounded by three children who very much resemble each other all smiling in front of the camera — it looks like a happy picture of the perfect family, doesn’t it? But wait, is there something about this family that doesn’t quite look right? Well, this picture is an ad for a plastic surgery center in Taiwan, and you can see that the children in the picture don’t look like their parents at all. The ad features the line, “The only thing you have to worry you about after plastic surgery is the explaining you’ll have to do to your children.” Yeh has since reportedly filed a lawsuit over the misappropriation of her image: Regardless of the provenance of the unrelated photograph, no aspect of the underlying divorce story is true. It apparently originated as a single-source item printed in a Chinese newspaper (the Heilongjiang Morning Post) known for publishing urban-legend like tales without verification, such as its fictitious story about a man who arranged to meet his online girlfriend for their first “real” date only to discover that she was his son’s wife: The Heilongjiang Morning Post apologised for publishing a false story without verifying the facts. The newspaper published the story “Man’s online date is daughter-in-law,” saying that a 57-year-old man in Muleng, Heilongjiang province, asked his online girlfriend out for a date only to find out that she was his own daughter-in-law. The story became a web hit after it was published. The newspaper published an apology, saying that the police of Muleng had confirmed that the story was false and was fabricated by Wei Hongji, a reporter with Muleng Television. The newspaper said it had asked Wei to help provide photos but did not verify the facts any further.
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9771
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Here's new evidence that widespread breast cancer screening isn't effective
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This story reports on a new study looking at breast cancer screening rates across hundreds of counties in the United States. It found that while higher breast cancer screening rates were associated with increased rates of breast cancer detection, more screening was not associated with reduced breast cancer mortality. The explanation for this finding, according to both the study and the story, is that higher levels of screening lead to overdiagnosis of breast cancer — that is, finding small. early-stage breast cancers that probably would never need treatment. The story overall is solid and notably features some very helpful visuals — including a figure from the study that demonstrates the main study outcomes (click on the image for a closer look), as well as a risk communication tool that outlines the benefits and harms of mammography. But the story fell short when it came to discussing the many limitations of this study design and their possible impact on the results. Those limitations were discussed in the study itself, or perhaps would have come to light through inclusion of an additional expert perspective. A growing body of evidence suggests that screening mammography is not as beneficial as once thought. But information questioning the benefits of screening mammography usually receives widespread criticism from screening advocates, which adds to confusion for many women on whether mammography is beneficial and necessary. Stories that clearly explain the findings of new research, and place the results in context with other research and expert guidelines, are therefore valuable to women who are contemplating whether to be screened and at what age.
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true
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mammography,overdiagnosis,overscreening
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There was no discussion of costs in this story or of insurance coverage for mammography. While many readers may understand that screening mammography is generally covered by insurance, it would have been helpful to state explicitly that mammograms in the U.S. are covered by the Affordable Care Act. More broadly, given that this study questions the effectiveness of mass breast screening, it’s worth at least asking what such screening is costing the health care system. The story satisfactorily reports the main results of the study and describes the benefits of mammography as seen across a large body of research. It explains that in the study, “The number of diagnosed breast cancers rose with more screening, yet the number of deaths from breast cancer 10 years later remained stubbornly stable.” It doesn’t quantify the increase in breast cancer detection in the text (the study reported a 16% increase in breast cancer diagnoses for every 10 percentage point increase in screening), but it does include a figure from the study which clearly demonstrates that while more cancers were found, mortality from breast cancer remained stable. The story also includes a risk communication illustration, based on a systematic review of available evidence, that presents the absolute mortality benefits (as well as harms) for women over 50 who participate in screening for at least 10 years. The story mentions that screening may be more effective in women with a family history of breast cancer. It does not discuss whether the study found any significant results among demographic subgroups for whom screening mammography may be more effective, but it doesn’t appear that the authors were capable of making such distinctions based on the data available (see Evidence section below). The story is mainly about harms and the fact that increased breast cancer screening was not associated with lower mortality rates in the study — suggesting that there is a high rate of overdiagnosis of breast cancer. “The trouble with overdiagnosis is that while the cancers doctors find wouldn’t have harmed their patients, the treatment and stress that result from the diagnosis probably will,” the story says. The story adds that estimates of the scope of the problem are “frustratingly broad — from less than 10 percent to 50 percent or more of women who get screened. In other words, we don’t actually know how bad the problem is.” The story does not discuss the limitations to the study design, which were substantial and were explained in some detail in the paper that’s the basis for the story. The research study used ecological observations of large groups (not individuals) that are subject to inherent biases. In addition, the study authors explained that 10 years (the length of follow up in the study) might not be long enough to demonstrate mortality differences, especially for early stage breast cancer, and that detailed information such as tumor sub-type and information regarding treatment with adjuvant therapy are not available for review and consideration. There’s potential for confounding as well, as some of the factors associated with an increased risk of developing breast cancer such as income and (late) age at first birth are also factors associated with a higher likelihood of undergoing screening mammography. Lastly, the study authors noted that there is no way to tell if the women who died of breast cancer during the 10 years were actually the ones diagnosed during that time period. The article did not engage in disease mongering. The story cites independent commentary from an accompanying editorial that provides useful context. Inclusion of a second independent voice might have drawn attention to some of the study’s limitations as discussed above. The story doesn’t discuss potential conflicts of interest among the study authors, but the only conflict disclosed with the manuscript was related to a company that makes thermometers. Overall, this seems Satisfactory to us. The alternative to mammography is not getting screened. The story suggests this is an option, especially for women who are under the age of 50. “Women with no risk factors for breast cancer should also know that they can wait until age 50 for their first screening,” the story says. It’s obvious from the story that mammography is widely available. The story notes that “this isn’t the first study to call into question the benefits of mammography and whether women are too often the victims of overdiagnosis — that is, being diagnosed with cancers that would not have been fatal or even harmful.” The story brings in context from an accompanying editorial, risk communication tools, independent guidelines, and other studies of overdiagnosis. It clearly went beyond any news release.
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23852
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Oil companies showered regulators (at the Minerals Management Service) with gifts and favors, and were essentially allowed to conduct their own safety inspections and write their own regulations.
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Obama blames MMS for being captive to oil industry
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true
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National, Corporations, Energy, Environment, Ethics, Oil Spill, Regulation, Barack Obama,
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"In his June 15, 2010, Oval Office address responding to the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, President Barack Obama touched on the dysfunctional record of the Minerals Management Service, the Interior Department office responsible for both collecting revenues from resource extraction on federal property and regulating drilling companies on those lands. ""One place we’ve already begun to take action is at the agency in charge of regulating drilling and issuing permits, known as the Minerals Management Service,"" Obama said. ""Over the last decade, this agency has become emblematic of a failed philosophy that views all regulation with hostility -- a philosophy that says corporations should be allowed to play by their own rules and police themselves. At this agency, industry insiders were put in charge of industry oversight. Oil companies showered regulators with gifts and favors, and were essentially allowed to conduct their own safety inspections and write their own regulations. ""We decided to focus on Obama's claim that ""oil companies showered regulators with gifts and favors, and were essentially allowed to conduct their own safety inspections and write their own regulations. ""To analyze this statement, we decided to break it down into three parts.• Did oil companies offer ""gifts and favors"" to regulators? There's ample evidence that they did, at least in one Gulf coast office that was investigated. The most recent report of the Interior Department's Inspector General, released on May 25, 2010, found that employees of oil companies regulated by MMS footed the bill for a wide range of perks for employees of MMS' Lake Charles, La., district office. These included hunting and fishing trips; football games; and lunches. In a number of cases, the IG report named specific employees who acknowledged receiving gifts. This year's report followed a series of other IG reports that found a pattern of ethical violations -- including MMS employees' acceptance of free travel, sports tickets and ski outings -- in the agency's royalty-in-kind office. That office oversaw the collection of royalties from oil companies but did not do the kind of industry safety and environmental regulation that Obama was referring to in his Oval Office speech.Either way, this claim by the president seems to be based on solid evidence.• Were oil companies ""essentially allowed to conduct their own safety inspections""? There's also evidence that this happened, from testimony before a joint hearing conducted by the U.S. Coast Guard and the MMS after the spill began.In an account of the hearings, the Washington Post reported that the Deepwater Horizon oil rig that caught fire and sunk ""was registered in the Marshall Islands, a Pacific archipelago that like many jurisdictions, authorizes private organizations such as ... Det Norske Veritas to inspect vessels that operate under its flag. The owners of the oil rigs decide which of those organizations to hire, and they pay for the services. ""The Post reported that when Thomas F. Heinan, deputy commissioner of maritime affairs for the Marshall Islands, was asked whether that arrangement presented a conflict of interest, he answered, ""In some persons' minds it might, but it's been a long-standing facility that's been in place for years. ""The Post also reported that Coast Guard Capt. Verne B. Gifford testified that while the U.S. Coast Guard inspects oil rigs, ""it relies on the private inspectors to do the bulk of the work"" when those rigs are foreign-flagged. For those platforms, Gifford testified, the Coast Guard ""goes onboard the vessel just to verify,"" a process that ""usually takes maybe four to eight hours,"" the Post reported.This addresses inspections overseen by the Coast Guard, but there's also evidence -- somewhat less solid -- that something similar may have been happening with MMS, which was the main target of the president's comments.The IG report on MMS' Lake Charles, La., district office said that a confidential source ""told investigators that some MMS inspectors had allowed oil and gas production company personnel located on the platform to fill out inspection forms. The forms would then be completed or signed by the inspector and turned in for review. According to the source, operating company personnel completed the inspection forms using pencils, and MMS inspectors would write on top of the pencil in ink and turn in the completed form. ""But while the confidential source's allegation was credible enough to include in the report, the IG's office stopped short of confirming the allegation, saying that their investigation of the original forms failed to assure them that the over-writing they found stemmed from fraudulent actions.• Were oil companies allowed to write their own regulations? This one is the murkiest of the three.In a May 10, 2010, article for McClatchy Newspapers, reporters Les Blumenthal and Erika Bolstad wrote that nearly 100 standards put together by the American Petroleum Institute -- the oil industry's trade group -- have made their way into federal offshore operating regulations. When we asked Blumenthal and Bolstad for their original source, they pointed us to a Jan 11, 2010, issue of the Federal Register.The Register -- the official daily listing of notices from federal agencies -- reported that the MMS ""is incorporating by reference the Eleventh Edition of the American Petroleum Institute's Specification for Subsurface Safety Valve Equipment (API Spec 14A) into its regulations."" It went on to explain that ""we currently incorporate by reference 97 private sector consensus standards into the offshore operating regulations. ""We asked experts in federal regulation whether this sort of industry-agency collaboration was unusual, and whether it supported the president's assertion that the petroleum industry was writing its own regulations.James Gattuso, a senior research fellow in regulatory policy at the conservative Heritage Foundation, said that this sort of technical standards-writing ""happens all the time."" ""It is quite common for regulatory agencies to adopt standards drafted, or already in use, in the private sector,"" he said. ""It is especially common in very technical areas where specific expertise in the technologies involved is needed. Agencies, of course, should be wary of self-serving or anti-competitive provisions in such standards, and should use their own judgment in adopting them. But that doesn’t make the use of such standards generally inappropriate. ""Cynthia R. Farina, a Cornell University law professor and the principal investigator for the Cornell eRulemaking Initiative, agreed, saying, ""It's not unheard of for agencies to adopt voluntary consensus standards for the content of federal regulation. ""It's also worth noting that the API's standards weren't slipped into federal rules at midnight in some smoke-filled room. The proposed rule was published on June 12, 2008, and for the next two months, the public had an opportunity to comment. Farina added that the regulation in question was put into place using a process that requires the Interior Department to consult with a variety of other government entities.As it turns out, only two entities did offer comments on this rule -- Baker Oil Tools and the Offshore Operators Committee. Farina calls this ""a huge problem with rulemaking in general. Certainly the absence of comments from environmentalists and neutral researchers in the area would exacerbate concerns about industry 'writing its own regulations. '""Still, MMS can't be blamed for poor response to its call for comments. That's why we think that while Obama was on solid ground with his accusations that MMS regulators were ""showered ... with gifts and favors"" and that oil companies ""were essentially allowed to conduct their own safety inspections,"" the notion that industry wrote its own regulations is not a slam-dunk. While Obama is technically correct that the oil industry did in several dozen cases ""write their own regulations,"" our experts agreed that industry/regulator collaboration is common across federal agencies, at least for technical matters, and that it was done in an open way that included the opportunity for public comment."
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28717
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Coverage under Obamacare can costs more than $1,200 a month for a family of four.
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What's true: A variety of coverage options are available, and monthly costs vary according to plans selected. Consumers at certain income levels are not eligible for subsidies and pay more. What's false: The majority of consumers won't be affected by the hike due to a tax credit, and most people covered by Obamacare get the tax credit which offsets costs.
|
mixture
|
Politics, aca, affordable care act, american health care system
|
On 24 October 2016, health insurance broker Tyler McClosky created a phenomenon on Facebook when he posted a screen shot of what it would cost for a family of four with a total household income of $98,000 in Lee County, Florida, to buy insurance on the Affordable Care Act’s marketplace: We were able to recreate McClosky’s viral post using the shopping tool at healthcare.gov and the same data he entered (two non-smoking parents with a combined income of $98,000 and two 8-year-old children in Lee County, Florida): But data sent by a Department of Health and Human Services official pointed out that 81 percent of families of that size on an Obamacare plan have household incomes of less than $48,000. So the average family currently subscribing to Obamacare would not be paying nearly as much as the image above depicts in their out-of-pocket premium costs. We entered the same data but changed the income to $48,000 here: McClosky created the post on 24 October 2016, the same day a report by the Department of Health and Human Services was released detailing an average 25 percent increase in costs to the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) customers: Across states using the HealthCare.gov platform, the median increase in the second-lowest cost silver plan premium is 16 percent, while the average increase is 25 percent. This figure varies based on locale. For instance, a table compiled by the Kaiser Family Foundation shows that people in Phoenix, Arizona will have a 145 percent premium increase, but a tax subsidy will mean a 40-year-old, non-smoking Phoenix resident with a $30,000 annual income will not have to pay any more than last year (which is roughly $207 a month, depending on the plan selected). According to data sent by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), a majority of consumers covered by the ACA (85 percent) qualify for tax credits that keep pace with premium increases, so many won’t see much of an impact on their out-of-pocket costs. But McClosky was addressing people whose income disqualifies them from that assistance. He told us he used the $98,000 annual income as an example because that is the threshold at which households of four with two children do not qualify for tax credit assistance (you qualify if you make up to 400 percent of the federal poverty line). He said he created the post because he wanted to raise awareness about what it costs to insure a family in which each adult is making an annual salary of $44,000, and neither has access to employer-based health care — a fairly common situation in the United States. His concern, he said, is that only consumers who qualify for a tax subsidy can afford insurance under ACA. If their incomes are too high to qualify for assistance, they may simply go without. While the number of uninsured Americans dropped under ACA, as of 2015, 28.5 million people still lack coverage. Per the Kaiser Family Foundation: Even under the ACA, many uninsured people cite the high cost of insurance as the main reason they lack coverage. In 2015, 46% of uninsured adults said that they tried to get coverage but did not because it was too expensive. Many people do not have access to coverage through a job, and some people, particularly poor adults in states that did not expand Medicaid, remain ineligible for financial assistance for coverage. Some people who are eligible for financial assistance under the ACA may not know they can get help, and others may still find the cost of coverage prohibitive. In addition, undocumented immigrants are ineligible for Medicaid or Marketplace coverage. Eric Seiber, associate professor of health services management and policy at Ohio State, said that the health care system in the United States is the most expensive in the world, and costs have steadily increased over the years. Despite its name, the Affordable Care Act doesn’t actually address the cost of health care itself: The ACA is not health care reform. It’s health insurance reform. It really doesn’t do that much about affordable care or patient protection beyond the subsidies and Medicaid. People’s perception that their wages have been flat is an effect of compensation increases going to cover rising healthcare costs instead of into their paychecks, Seiber said. McClosky, who sells health and life insurance plans in Florida, said that the Affordable Care Act has had the effect of diminishing competition among carriers. For instance, Lee County residents can only purchase Blue Cross Blue Shield. Prices in Miami-Dade are lower than in Lee County, because there are more carriers competing with each other. McClosky says insurance carriers have been squeezed by part of the mandate which requires them to spend 80 to 85 percent on claim payouts and health care quality improvement. He pointed to Assurant, a 123-yea-old insurer that specialized in individual and small business plans. They could not survive under the ACA and filed for bankruptcy in 2015. Health care is a source of roiling political debate for years. While the cost of health plans under Obamacare will go up an average 25 percent as of 1 November 2016, the majority of consumers won’t experience much change in their out-of-pocket costs when open enrollment starts for 2017, because the tax credits will buffer that increase. Further, as the New York Times pointed out, many Americans are shielded from the immediate costs of health care by employer-based insurance or the public programs: These increases really matter only for those who buy their own insurance. Most people are unaffected by the rate increases because they get their insurance through an employer or are covered through government programs like Medicare, Medicaid or the Department of Veterans Affairs. Only a small fraction of Americans who have insurance buy individual policies. There are about 10 million people in the Obamacare markets and around an additional seven million who buy health plans outside the marketplace, according to Obama administration estimates. The published rate increases apply only to people who shop in the markets, but premiums are expected to go up sharply for the other plans as well. However, as McClosky’s post makes clear, whether people notice it or not, American health care costs are high — and not everyone can qualify for available assistance.
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36049
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Lyft requires that matters related to sexual harassment or sexual assault be settled through arbitration as part of its terms of service.
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Lyft’s Unclear Terms of Service for Sexual Assault Survivors
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unproven
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Fact Checks, Viral Content
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Ride-sharing company Lyft came under increased scrutiny online in November 2019 as social media users spotted an apparent discrepancy in its policies regarding its treatment of sexual assault victims.“I think what we saw happen in the last 24, 36 hours is you see what happens when someone like myself or other survivors share their stories and trauma becomes humanized,” said Alison Turkos, whose story as a survivor of rape was brought back into the public eye again as part of the criticism against Lyft.The discussion began on November 4 2019, when Amelia Bonow, co-founder of the advocacy group Shout Your Abortion, shared Turkos’ September 2019 first-person account of the attack against her two years earlier.Turkos wrote:My Lyft driver kidnapped me at gunpoint, drove me across state lines, and, along with at least two other men, gang raped me.Within 24 hours, I reported my kidnapping to Lyft. Lyft “apologized for the inconvenience that I’d been through” and informed me they “appreciated the voice of their customers and were committed to doing their best in giving me the support that I needed”. However, to my utter shock, Lyft informed me that I would still be expected to pay for the original estimated cost of my ride and I would be “unpaired” from the driver in the future — I’d later learn he remained a Lyft driver.Turkos subsequently sued Lyft, arguing that Lyft actually continued to let the driver who raped her drive for the company. As of October 2019, at least 34 women have reportedly either sued or joined lawsuits against Lyft related to sexual assault at the hands of its drivers.Her story gained more traction online when journalist Christine Grimaldi highlighted a clause in Lyft’s terms of service limiting survivors’ options after an attack.“Under Lyft’s new terms of service, customers must waive their right to a bench or jury trial,” she wrote:They’re forced into individual arbitration with the company instead, and class arbitrations are banned. Is this how Lyft plans to evade sexual assault lawsuits? What the fuck?Lyft’s terms of service, last updated in August 2019, state:YOU AND LYFT MUTUALLY AGREE TO WAIVE OUR RESPECTIVE RIGHTS TO RESOLUTION OF DISPUTES IN A COURT OF LAW BY A JUDGE OR JURY AND AGREE TO RESOLVE ANY DISPUTE BY ARBITRATION, as set forth below. This agreement to arbitrate (“Arbitration Agreement”) is governed by the Federal Arbitration Act and survives after the Agreement terminates or your relationship with Lyft ends. ANY ARBITRATION UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL TAKE PLACE ON AN INDIVIDUAL BASIS; CLASS ARBITRATIONS AND CLASS ACTIONS ARE NOT PERMITTED.The company, along with its competitor Uber, had announced in 2018 that they would stop requiring arbitration in cases involving sexual assault or harassment. A Lyft spokesperson, Dana Davis, told us that the company has not changed its terms of service. But the document’s section on exceptions to the arbitration requirement does not mention harassment or assault. Instead it reads:This Arbitration Agreement shall not require arbitration of the following types of claims: (1) small claims actions brought on an individual basis that are within the scope of such small claims court’s jurisdiction; (2) a representative action brought on behalf of others under PAGA [the Private Attorneys General Act of 2004] or other private attorneys general acts, to the extent the representative PAGA Waiver in Section 17(c) of such action is deemed unenforceable by a court of competent jurisdiction under applicable law not preempted by the FAA; (3) claims for workers’ compensation, state disability insurance and unemployment insurance benefits; and (4) claims that may not be subject to arbitration as a matter of generally applicable law not preempted by the FAA.The terms of service also apparently contradict a statement in the company’s page covering safety policies:Lyft drivers, riders, and team members are free to resolve individual claims of sexual harassment or assault however they prefer.We won’t require arbitration for individual claims of sexual assault or sexual harassment. Survivors can choose to resolve their claims through arbitration, through mediation, or in court.Survivors are free to speak out if they choose.Lyft will not require a confidentiality provision that would prevent survivors from speaking about the facts of the sexual assault or harassment they suffered. Someone who’s survived sexual assault or harassment may ask for a confidentiality provision in a settlement agreement, or they may decide to tell their story publicly to help end the stigma of silence for others. Whatever they decide, it will be their choice.Turkos told us she was confused by that discrepancy.“It, to me, reads as if there’s nothing binding or contractual,” she said. “It’s only a public statement which obviously is nothing but false promises and smoke and mirrors.”The story spread further when a tweet from writer Lauren Rankin supporting Turkos was turned into a graphic for a feminist Facebook group and shared more than 3,000 times.Turkos said that she did not plan for the increased attention to her story. But as more social media users began using the hashtag “#CancelLyft” to discuss the issue, she said she would continue to push for systemic change within the ride-share industry.“I will use any form possible and I will ask everyone to join with me,” she said. “It’s not just one person. I am not the only person who has been harmed.”
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36577
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A barber mistakenly shaved a play button into a client's hair because he was shown a paused video as an example.
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Did a Barber Mistakenly Shave a ‘Play’ Button on a Client’s Head Because of a Paused Video?
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unproven
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Fact Checks, Viral Content
|
In January 2019, 9Gag shared a post titled “Barber Mistakenly Shaves A Play Button Into Client’s Hair After Being Shown A Paused Video.” It was light on details and included several amusing images:9Gag had very little to say about the circumstance purportedly shown in the photographs and didn’t include any links to substantiate its claims:The man paused the video to show barber what he wanted to look like. The barber thought the triangle was part of the style and shave two triangles onto his head.The barber allegedly asked the customer if he wanted to keep the triangle.Not sure what this meant, the client said yes.The photographs appeared on another English-speaking site that publishes stories of questionable veracity, Britain’s Daily Mail. That version also relied heavily on terms like “allegedly” and “it is said,” claiming that the story came from Chinese social media site Weibo:The fashion-conscious customer was allegedly left with two massive bald triangular patches on his head after showing his hairdresser a video of a model he wanted to look like without realising the picture had a ‘play’ button icon on it.As a result, the diligent hairdresser shaved one triangle onto each side of his head to mimic the ‘trendy’ hairstyle he thought his client had desired, according to a trending social media post … It is said when he saw a man sporting a haircut he wanted in the video, he paused the clip to show the hairdo to the hairdresser.The hairdresser allegedly glanced at the screenshot, and even asked the customer if he would want to keep the triangle.Oblivious to what the hairdresser meant, the client apparently said ‘yes’ – not realising that the hairdresser would later cut the triangular ‘play’ button icon onto his head in the exact manner.However, a line in the story suggested that the “play button” might not have been accidental:The [uploader] also shared a footage which is claimed to be of the customer, who is seen satisfied with his new look and strutting across a room.A linked post on Weibo featured the images, but it didn’t include any indications we could see that the image showed a hairstyle resulting from a misunderstanding between a barber and a client.Although the claim is not necessarily implausible, there was also good reason to take a pause before sharing it as legitimate. As an exhaustive 2014 item from BuzzFeed explained, photographs from China often exist in a market where fabricated or otherwise tinkered-with back stories thrive.The piece concerned an outfit known as Central European News (CEN), described as “one of the Western media’s primary sources of tantalising and attention-grabbing stories… often bizarre, salacious, gruesome, or ideally all three: If you’ve read a story about someone in a strange country cutting off their own penis, the chances are it came from CEN.”BuzzFeed provided numerous examples of how photographs were distributed in tabloids with either a willful or negligent approach to determining whether or not they were real and unaltered:New York Times technology columnist Farhad Manjoo also took note of a CEN story that made its way into the New York Post[. ]“I see this happen often in tabloids like the Post or Daily Mail or Yahoo or other news sites – references to foreign news services (often in the developing world) whose credibility we have no way of assessing,” he said. “It’s just sort of an obvious signifier of the publication thinking that the story is too good to check, that it doesn’t really matter if it’s true because it’s so strange.”This might be a comforting argument. But the consequence is that real people – an Argentinian teacher, a Russian photo model – are having their lives distorted and paraded before the world. And it also blurs the line between truth and fiction in a way that undermines the integrity of the news media as a whole.Indeed, the blame for the fact that CEN has been able to circulate such dubious stories does not rest with Michael Leidig alone: He was able to build his business because larger news organisations were so eager to buy what CEN had to sell, knowing that their readers would lap up these lurid tales of faraway people and places.It is entirely possible that a barber in China (or somewhere else in the world) mistook a paused video for a still photograph of a client’s desired haircut and subsequently created the style in error. But sites carrying the story had a long-documented history of purposely or inadvertently spreading nonsense stories alongside images from non-English speaking countries, precisely because an amusing and wholly false story could be easily tacked on to those photographs with little consequence.
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1830
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WHO urges China to tackle state tobacco monopoly in battle on smoking.
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China must separate the conflicting promotion and prevention roles of its state tobacco monopoly to reduce smoking-related deaths, which number as much as 1 million a year, the head of the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Wednesday.
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true
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Health News
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With more than 300 million smokers, China is the world’s largest producer and consumer of tobacco. The government has pledged to curb smoking but its efforts have had little success. The country’s State Tobacco Monopoly Administration controls the world’s single largest manufacturer of tobacco products, China National Tobacco Corporation, but also wields power over policymaking on tobacco control and enforcement. Anti-smoking campaigners say this dynamic has long undermined their efforts to curb the habit. WHO’s director-general, Dr Margaret Chan, said she had advised China’s tobacco monopoly to separate the government agency functions from the state tobacco firm, and expected the Chinese government would take her advice. “I believe the Chinese government will implement (this change) step by step, according to their procedure,” Chan, speaking in Cantonese, told a news conference concluding her official visit to China. Chan, a bird flu expert and former Hong Kong health director, said the government had shown “commitment and understanding” of the conflict of interest stemming from the dual promotion and control roles of the state tobacco monopoly. The government’s heavy dependence on tobacco taxes also impedes anti-smoking efforts. Last year the tobacco industry contributed more than 816 billion yuan ($131.70 billion) to government coffers, an annual rise of nearly 14 percent. Chan said about a third of the world’s smokers live in China. The government has run half-hearted campaigns for years to curb the habit. Many Chinese cities ban smoking in public places, but no-smoking signs are often ignored. Although Beijing banned smoking by government officials in public last year, the habit is viewed as an important element in socializing and Chinese cigarettes are among the cheapest in the world, at less than a dollar a pack. Smoking and other high-risk habits, such as eating too much junk food high in salt, sugar and trans fats, can lead to significant increases in non-communicable diseases, including cancer and diabetes, and risk wiping out the economic gains China has built up in the past three decades, Chan said. “If we don’t see very strong actions to tackle tobacco and other preventable health risks, the burden of these diseases will be simply devastating,” she said. Chan said she met Chinese Premier Li Keqiang, together with World Bank President Jim Yong Kim, on Tuesday to discuss healthcare reforms, but tobacco control was not mentioned. Li’s younger brother, Li Keming, has served as deputy head of the State Tobacco Monopoly Administration since 2003. ($1=6.1957 Chinese yuan)
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25687
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"Police are ""20.8 times more likely to kill than be killed by a criminal."
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Statistics from the Federal Bureau of Investigation show that 89 U.S. law enforcement officials were killed on the job in 2019, 48 of them stemming from criminal acts. Also in 2019, police killed 999 Americans, according to a database from the Washington Post. Black Americans were more than twice as likely to be shot and killed by police than their white counterparts If 48 police officers were killed, and 999 deaths occured at the hands of police, that puts Larson’s claim on track.
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true
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National, Legal Issues, Wisconsin, Chris Larson,
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"Widespread condemnation of police brutality has picked up once again after Kenosha police shot Jacob Blake, a 29-year-old Black man, seven times at close range as he attempted to get into his SUV late in the afternoon of Aug. 23, 2020. As Blake remained at a Milwaukee hospital, where his family’s attorneys say he is paralyzed from the waist down, protests developed in Kenosha and across the state. Politicians from both sides of the aisle have weighed in, including state Sen. Chris Larson, D-Milwaukee, who wrote this in an Aug. 24, 2020, Facebook post: ""In 2019, 89 officers died in the line of duty. While every death is tragic, almost half (41) were accidental. That same year, officers shot and killed 999 people. Police are 20.8 times more likely to kill than be killed by a criminal. We must drastically reduce the use of deadly force in this country."" Is he correct that in 2019, police were ""20.8 times more likely to kill than be killed by a criminal."" Is he correct? 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). Let’s break down the numbers. Police officer deaths vs. deaths caused by police, by the numbers To back up his claim, Larson’s office cited statistics from the Federal Bureau of Investigation on the number of law enforcement officers who died in the line of duty during 2019. According to those statistics, 89 officers were killed in such incidents last year. Forty-one of those officers were killed accidentally, the FBI says, most often in car accidents. That leaves 48 of what the FBI calls ""felonious"" deaths, which are deaths caused by criminal acts. Turning to the number of people killed by police last year, Larson’s office pointed to the Washington Post’s ""Fatal Force"" database, which since 2015 has been logging fatal shootings by on-duty police officers throughout the U.S. The Post tracks such cases by following local news, law enforcement websites and social media, submitting open records requests and verifying incidents with the police department in question. In 2019, 999 people were shot and killed by police, according to the database. In his Facebook post, Larson does the math: If criminal acts led to 48 officer deaths in 2019, and officers killed 999 people in the same year, that would make police approximately 20.8 times more likely to kill someone than be killed in a criminal act. The Post database breaks down another important data point: Black Americans are more likely to be shot and killed by police than white Americans. Black people account for less than 13% of the U.S. population but are killed by police at more than double the rate of white people Black people are killed by police at a rate of 32 deaths per million people, Hispanic people at a rate of 24 per million, and white people at a rate of 13 per million, according to the database. Larson said police are ""20.8 times more likely to kill than be killed by a criminal."" FBI statistics and a national database show that checks out: In 2019, police killed 999 people, and 48 officers were killed by a criminal act in the line of duty."
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11312
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Robotic assist eases less-invasive hysterectomies
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It’s complicated for journalists who have to explain data from a systematic review of eight studies comparing three different surgical approaches to endometrial cancer. This story gave an adequate overview. But we would have hoped for a stricter evaluation of the quality of the evidence. And more details on costs. About 600,000 women will undergo surgical removal of their uterus for a variety of medical reasons. The proliferation of robotic surgery facilities is a trend that demands an analysis of the evidence. Unfortunately there is little chance that we will ever see a randomized controlled trial comparing robot assisted to laparoscopic to open surgery. So we are left with assessing the value of robotic surgery via observational studies. The story speaks to a meta anaylsis of 8 such observational studies of women undergoing surgery for uterine cancer. The study conclusions need to be taken with an understanding of the inherent difficulties associated with observational studies and the statistical methods used. The two independent experts quoted leave somewhat different impressions: one predicting that robotic surgery’s benefits will offset its higher costs; the other commenting on how the surgery wlll be easier but that the outcomes may be similar with or without the robot. Important caveats were used about a surgeon’s learning curve and about finding someone who’s experienced in “minimally-invasive” surgery.
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true
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Reuters Health,women's health
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The story only cites the researchers’ statement that the robotic approach adds “a few thousand more dollars to the procedure’s price tag.” But why not give an estimate of actual costs? One surgeon’s definition of a “few thousand” may differ greatly from a patient’s definition. There was also no discusison of whether insurers pay for robotic procedures – another key consideration for readers/consumers. The story summarized the findings succinctly: the robotic and laparascopic surgeries: “took around the same time and resulted in similarly long stays in the hospital. However, about half as much blood was lost when robots were enlisted than with standard laparoscopy. Both minimally invasive techniques resulted in longer-duration operations than open surgery. But both also led to shorter hospital stays and, in the case of robotic surgery, less blood-loss. Further, the average number of lymph nodes removed was about the same in the robotic and open procedures, suggesting that both approaches result in about equal surgeon accuracy in staging endometrial cancer.” However, we would have liked to have seen a bit more discussion on the issue of blood loss. Although the amount of blood loss seen in the patients who underwent a robot-assisted procedure was statistically lower, there was no difference in the patients’ need for a transfusion. The 8 studies also had dramatically different blood loss in all three groups. The range of blood loss in patients undergoing a robot-assisted procedure was almost 3 fold (66.6ml in the Veljovich study as compared to 166 in the Bell study). The story states that “No differences between the three methods were seen in the numbers of complications, report the researchers in the journal Obstetrics & Gynecology.” The researchers reported a very complete breakdown of intraoperative and post-operative complications – including what differences were statistically significant or not. We’ll give the story the benefit of the doubt on this criterion. The story does include several important provisos in its assessment of the study results. However, we don’t think that it adeqautely describes the methodologic issues associated with the meta analysis. In reality the 8 previous studies were conducted elsewhere with diverse patient populations. Since the studies were observational, it is unclear just how comparable the patiet populations were. For example, patients undergoing an open procedure were older. Age and chronic diseases could have led to the differences seen. An important distinction should have been made concerning blood loss. Although the patients who underwent robot-assisted surgery did, on average, have less blood loss, there was no increase in blood transfusions among the three patient groups. Simply noting less blood loss without speaking to the need for transfusion provides readers with a potentially incomplete view. There was no disease-mongering of endometrial cancer. The story quoted two physicians who were not involved in the study. The entire story was based on a systematic review of studies of three surgical approaches to endometrial cancer. The story did a nice job briefly explaining the differences in the surgical techniques and the differences seen in the study. The story didn’t include – and it wouldn’t have taken much to do so – any estimate of the number of robotic surgery facilities in the US. And it didn’t give any estimate of how often the open, laparoscopic or robotic procedures are done. The story states: “Robotic surgery equipment only received U.S. Food and Drug Administration approval in 2005. More research is needed to be able to compare long-term outcomes, wrote the researchers.” It concludes: “Robotic-assisted surgery is in its infancy, and it definitely has a future,” quoting one physician observer. We’ll give it the benefit of the doubt, although, as we stated in the “Availability” criterion above, we wish it had given more precise estimates of how widespread this “surgery in its infancy” is or is not. It’s clear that the story did not rely solely on a news release, as it turned to two independent experts.
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5095
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Schools reckon with social stress: ‘I’m on my phone so much’.
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High school biology teacher Kelly Chavis knew smartphones were a distraction in her class. But not even her students realized the psychological toll of their devices until an in-class experiment that, of course, was then spreading on social media.
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true
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Stress, Smartphones, Health, Media, General News, Social media, Buffalo
|
For one class period, students used a whiteboard to tally every Snapchat, Instagram, text, call or other notification that popped up. Teachers around the country have run similar experiments, typically recording dozens of trips to the board. “One girl, just during the one hour, got close to 150 Snapchat notifications. 150!” marveled Chavis, who teaches honors-level courses at Rock Hill Schools in South Carolina. She’s among a growing number of teachers, parents, medical professionals and researchers convinced that smartphones are now playing a major role in accelerating student anxiety — a trend so pervasive that a National Education Association newsletter labelled anxiety a ”mental health tsunami .” Testing, extracurricular-packed schedules, and perpetual stressors like poverty can all weigh on students. But research now points to smartphone-driven social media as one of the biggest drivers of stress. After all, that’s where college acceptance letters fill Instagram, everyone knows where everyone else is going for spring break, and athletic failures and awkward social moments can live forever. Jean Twenge, a psychology professor at San Diego State who has studied the issue, said it’s no coincidence that youth mental health issues have risen with the number of phones. “What a lot of teens told me is that social media and their phones feel mandatory,” she said. Last year, an editorial in the American Academy of Pediatrics’ flagship journal recommended that doctors ask adolescent patients about their social media use as part of routine screening, alongside older questions about home life and drug and sexual activity. “Aberrant and/or excessive social media usage” could contribute to teenage “feelings of isolation, depressive symptoms, and anxiety,” three researchers wrote in the journal Pediatrics. Researchers are still arguing whether phones drive student depression or depression drives phone use. But 70 percent of teens view anxiety and depression as major problems among their peers , according to a February Pew Research Center report. Nearly 60 percent of parents said they worry about the influence of social media on their child’s physical and mental health in the American Psychological Association’s 2017 Stress in America survey . Schools are starting to react. Many districts now hire outside companies to monitor students’ social media postings for signs of distress. Others invite in yoga instructors and comfort dogs to teach even the youngest kids to keep technology from putting them on edge. Belfast Area High School in Maine even staged an #unplugged event day in April — but it served to underline the technology’s pull when less than 20 percent of students and staff took part. When she first got a smartphone around seventh grade, all the posting, messaging and liking pushed Nia Coates’ anxiety level to “probably a 10,” she said. Now a high school junior, the Buffalo, New York, teen has figured out to manage the distractions. She’ll completely log out of her Snapchat, Instagram and Twitter, and sometimes will delete an app altogether for a while. Anxiety has taken over as the most significant obstacle to learning among Chris Doyle’s high school students at Avon Old Farms School in Connecticut. Some rack up absences because they feel overwhelmed by the day ahead, Doyle said. A teacher for 30 years, he has seen a profound shift toward constant self-evaluation that he associates with social media, YouTube, and even school grade portals sometimes checked dozens of times a day — things students have never before had to manage. Awareness of other people’s lives, even their private lives, is “kind of hyper right now,” Doyle said. “And I don’t think that usually leaves most people feeling good, because nobody’s perfect and most kids feel very imperfect.” But putting the genie back in the bottle isn’t easy. In Illinois, Glenbrook High Schools District 225 experimented with limiting teens’ access to their grades on a digital portal. But for every student who said the grade book caused them anxiety, there was another who said losing regular access created even more stress, said instructional innovation director Ryan Bretag. “I definitely feel stress with online profiles, social media, to keep up, maintain my profiles and stuff,” said Emily Mogavero, a 17-year-old student in Buffalo, New York. “It kind of worries me that I’m on my phone so much.” Mogavero said she sometimes puts her phone out of reach or powers it down so she doesn’t hear notifications. Teaching limits at an earlier age might help. Deirdre Birmingham of Montclair, New Jersey, signed onto a campaign called ”Wait Until Eighth ” because she didn’t think her video game-loving 10-year-old son was ready to manage a smartphone’s pull. The idea, which got its start in Texas two years ago, is to lessen the peer pressure of being the only kid without a phone by enlisting parents of classmates to agree to hold off until at least eighth grade. So far, almost 20,000 people have signed on, founder Brooke Shannon said. “I had a gut level that it would be difficult for my child to manage,” Birmingham said. “As a grown-up, I find it difficult sometimes to manage.”
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36196
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"Sean Taggart was ""euthanized"" in August 2019 after living with ALS and failing to receive enough funding to maintain his standard of living."
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Was a Canadian Man ‘Euthanized’ After Not Receiving Enough Home Care Funding?
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mixture
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Disinformation, Fact Checks, Health / Medical
|
A 41-year-old Canadian man’s choice to undergo assisted suicide in August 2019 was used as blog fodder by an anti-abortion group based out of England.Sean Tagert first drew media coverage in September 2018, when he spoke to the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation about the trouble he faced maintaining his standard of living. Tagert, who lived with Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALC, aka Lou Gehrig’s Disease), had put together a system enabling him to remain at home as well as communicate with others and continue sharing custody of his 11-year-old son.However, his health care provider Vancouver Coastal Health was only willing to pay for 15 hours of independent care for him per day. While the company later increased its offer to 20 hours of care a day, it also recommended moving Tagert to live in a separate residential care facility in that city. Tagert’s doctor rejected the suggestion, calling it a “death sentence.”On August 6, 2019, Tagert underwent a medically-assisted death. According to a Facebook post confirming his passing:Ensuring consistent care was a constant struggle and source of stress for Sean as a patient. While he succeeded, with the help of many, in piecing together a suitable care facility in his own home (including an expensive saliva-suction machine, needed to prevent him from choking, obtained with the help of donations raised online), gaining the 24-hour care he required was extremely difficult, especially as the provincial government refused to fully fund home care. The few institutional options on hand, Sean pointed out, would have offered vastly inferior care while separating him from his family, and likely would have hastened his death. We would ask, on Sean’s behalf, that the government recognize the serious problems in its treatment of ALS patients and their families, and find real solutions for those already suffering unimaginably.But in writing about Tagert’s case, the British advocacy group the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children focused more on its own opposition to assisted-suicide laws, claiming that if they were enacted in England that “it could lead to a reduction in the quality of healthcare and risks promoting death as an alternative to medical treatment.”The Canadian Supreme Court struck down laws against medically-assisted suicide in 2015. In 2016, the country’s parliament passed Bill C-14, which allowed patients who meet specific medical guidelines and are capable of informed consent to undergo the procedure.According to a report published by the Canadian government in April 2019, 6,749 people chose a medically-assisted death between December 2015 and October 2018, which accounts for 1.12 percent of total deaths in the country during that period. The majority of people undergoing the procedure range between 56 and 90 years of age. Between June 2016 and October 2018, around 500 patients who received medically-assisted deaths were dealing with neurodegenerative diseases like ALS at the time of their passing.
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34814
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A photograph published in December 2019 showed a boy forced to sleep on a hospital floor in Leeds, England, due to overcrowding.
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Two waves of social media posts cast doubt in the minds of some over the authenticity of a story that proved a major moment in the 2019 U.K. general election.
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true
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Politics
|
"In the final days of the U.K. general election campaign in December 2019, controversy erupted over a photograph taken at Leeds General Infirmary, in the northern county of Yorkshire, which appeared to show a young boy sleeping on the floor due to a lack of available beds. However, a wave of Facebook and Twitter posts later appeared to undermine the authenticity of the image, claiming insider information that cast the episode as a stunt designed to damage the Conservative Party government, and boost the main opposition Labour Party. As a result of that uncertainty, we received multiple inquiries from Snopes readers about the authenticity of, and context surrounding, the photograph. In reality, the photograph was authentic, and the context and account provided by the boy’s mother — that he was forced to sleep on the floor due to the unavailability of beds — was confirmed by hospital authorities who have since apologized. Viral social media posts claiming to have proof that the photograph was staged “propaganda” were in fact themselves bogus, and part of a wave of misinformation, likely coordinated, and potentially with sinister intent. On Dec. 8, The Yorkshire Evening Post was the first to report on the experience of 4-year-old Jack Williment-Barr after he was brought by ambulance on Dec. 3 to the infirmary with suspected pneumonia. That article included the now-famous photograph of the boy lying on coats on the floor of the hospital, covered in a blanket and with an oxygen mask. The boy’s mother, Sarah Williment, told the Post he had been forced to wait in a clinical treatment room for four hours, and went 13 hours without access to a bed, such was the overcrowding at the hospital on that day. Hospital authorities confirmed Williment’s account and offered a personal apology to her and Jack, as the Post reported: Dr Yvette Oade, Chief Medical Officer at Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust said: “Our hospitals are extremely busy at the moment and we are very sorry that Jack’s family had a long wait in our Emergency Department. Our Chief Executive Julian Hartley has spoken to Jack’s mum and offered a personal apology. We have seen a significant increase in the number of people visiting our Paediatric Emergency Department, and this week we saw the highest attendances we have seen since April 2016. Despite this, our staff are working tirelessly to provide the best possible care under these extreme pressures. “Jack was quickly assessed upon arrival and seen in two different clinical treatment rooms in the Paediatric Emergency Department.Within four hours a decision was made to admit Jack to our Children’s Assessment and Treatment (CAT) Unit for further monitoring overnight. Unfortunately, the unit was also experiencing exceptionally high levels of demand which meant that Jack was required to wait in the clinical treatment room in the Paediatric Emergency Department until a bed became available. Jack was admitted to the CAT Unit later that evening and was discharged home the following morning after a medical review. “We are extremely sorry that there were only chairs available in the treatment room, and no bed. This falls below our usual high standards, and for this we would like to sincerely apologise to Jack and his family.” The article, and in particular the photograph, quickly developed into a major national news story in the U.K., and the widely read national tabloid newspaper the Daily Mirror ran the story, with the photograph, on its front page, the following morning, along with the headline “DESPERATE — Picture that shames Tories”: Tomorrow's front page: Desperate #tomorrowspaperstoday https://t.co/euESgRQseX pic.twitter.com/vmt6MX5hUv — Daily Mirror (@DailyMirror) December 8, 2019 Williment-Barr’s experience also became a significant moment in the general election campaign. The opposition Labour Party had already made the National Health Service (NHS), and the ruling Conservatives’ management of it, a central plank in its election messaging. When the Leeds story broke, the party and its leader, Jeremy Corbyn, seized upon it: Be in no doubt: Boris Johnson’s Conservatives caused this crisis by depriving our NHS of the funding it needs. No wonder he can’t bring himself to look at the photo.https://t.co/SEZhk4p1Zw — Jeremy Corbyn (@jeremycorbyn) December 9, 2019 Jack's mum said: ""The hospital staff were all as helpful as they could be but there simply aren't enough beds to cope with the high level of demand."" This is the shameful result of a decade of the Conservatives. Vote to save our NHS this Thursday.https://t.co/bKuLiMup0Y — Jeremy Corbyn (@jeremycorbyn) December 8, 2019 The damage to the Conservative Party government was exacerbated when Prime Minister Boris Johnson initially refused to look at the photograph of Williment-Barr, when presented it by a journalist, and even took the journalist’s phone and put it in his own pocket. He later looked at the photograph and apologized for taking the phone, and offered an apology to the boy’s family: Tried to show @BorisJohnson the picture of Jack Williment-Barr. The 4-year-old with suspected pneumonia forced to lie on a pile of coats on the floor of a Leeds hospital. The PM grabbed my phone and put it in his pocket: @itvcalendar | #GE19 pic.twitter.com/hv9mk4xrNJ — Joe Pike (@joepike) December 9, 2019 Then, something strange happened. Within a day of the story’s first breaking, Facebook and Twitter were populated with a wave of posts attacking the credibility of the photograph, and claiming to have inside information from Leeds General Infirmary that showed that the image of Williment-Barr was no more than a stunt and “Momentum propaganda,” a reference to the left-wing movement within Labour, which is regarded as a reliable and vocal source of support for Corbyn’s leadership of the party. The posts were identical, meaning they could not have been authentic. They read as follows: “Very interesting. A good friend of mine is a senior nursing sister at Leeds Hospital – the boy shown on the floor by the media was in fact put there by his mother who then took photos on her mobile phone and uploaded it to media outlets before he climbed back onto his trolley. He was on a hospital trolley in the paediatric [accident and emergency] having been seen within 20 minutes. I am a nurse myself and am so pissed off with fake news, yes the NHS is a mess mainly caused by people misusing it and lack of elderly care. Think of the nurses and Doctors who are doing their jobs instead of constantly slagging them off. another Momentum Propaganda story. Disgraceful.” Seems like that senior nursing sister at ""Leeds Hospital"" is good friends with every Tory in the UK #asyoudo 🤖🤖🤖 https://t.co/IqPPhPF1bw — Steve Peers (@StevePeers) December 10, 2019 On Dec. 9 and 10, a second wave of identical posts spread on Facebook and Twitter, again seeking to undermine the credibility of Sarah Williment’s account of her son’s experience. This time, each of the posters claimed — using the exact same wording — that they themselves were “a former paediatric A&E [accident and emergency] and PICU [pediatric intensive care unit] nurse.” This second bogus post read as follows: “I’m a former paediatric A&E and PICU nurse and that child has a style of O2 mask in front of him that requires 6-8l/min to inflate like that. If a child needed that amount of O2 they’d be in resus for proper monitoring. He’d also have a cannula and be propped head up.” I’m a former paediatric A&E and PICU nurse and that child has a style of O2 mask in front of him that requires 6-8l/min to inflate like that. If a child needed that amount of O2 they’d be in resus for proper monitoring. He’d also have a cannula and be propped head up. — Mike Edwards (@medwar93) December 9, 2019 I’m a former paediatric A&E and PICU nurse and that child has a style of O2 mask in front of him that requires 6-8l/min to inflate like that. If a child needed that amount of O2 they’d be in resus for proper monitoring. He’d also have a cannula and be propped head up. pic.twitter.com/yUlV7L61Yb — Nima (@DrStrangetwit) December 10, 2019"
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24595
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"Ezekiel Emanuel, one of President Obama's key health care advisers, ""says medical care should be reserved for the nondisabled. So watch out if you're disabled."
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Bachmann says Obama health adviser thinks health care ought not to be extended to the disabled
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false
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National, Health Care, Michele Bachmann,
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"Update: After we published this item, Ezekiel Emanuel responded at length to these claims in an interview with ABC News. See the interview here . You know Rahm Emanuel, President Barack Obama's intense chief of staff. And maybe you've heard of his brother, Ari Emanuel, a Hollywood talent agent who provided the inspiration for the Ari Gold character on HBO's Entourage . Now a third Emanuel brother, Ezekiel Emanuel, has been thrust into the spotlight. Ezekiel Emanuel is a health policy adviser at the White House Office of Management and Budget, and is a member of the Federal Council on Comparative Effectiveness Research, but until last week, he had largely flown under radar of the national political media. That changed when Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., made a statement from the floor of the House on July 27 in which she said the American public needed to know what the people who advise Obama about health care reform think. Specifically, she said, Dr. Emanuel ""says medical care should be reserved for the nondisabled. So watch out if you're disabled."" Emanuel is a well-known oncologist and bioethicist, which means he ponders such moral questions as ""You have three people who need a liver, but you've got just one liver, who gets it?"" Like other academics (see our article on claims about science czar John Holdren ), Emanuel has found that highbrow articles for academic journals make great fodder for opponents trying to score political points. Academics often write theoretically about ideas that are being kicked around. And they repeat and explore those ideas, without necessarily endorsing them. Bachmann's comments from the House floor substantially repeat claims made in a July 24, 2009, New York Post op-ed piece written by Betsy McCaughey, former lieutenant governor of New York. Under the headline, ""Deadly Doctors: O Advisers Want to Ration Care,"" McCaughey argues that ""Emanuel wants doctors to look beyond the needs of their patients and consider social justice, such as whether the money could be better spent on somebody else. ""Many doctors are horrified by this notion; they'll tell you that a doctor's job is to achieve social justice one patient at a time. ""Emanuel, however, believes that 'communitarianism' should guide decisions on who gets care. He says medical care should be reserved for the nondisabled, not given to those 'who are irreversibly prevented from being or becoming participating citizens. . . . An obvious example is not guaranteeing health services to patients with dementia.' (Hastings Center Report, Nov.-Dec. '96). ""Translation: Don't give much care to a grandmother with Parkinson's or a child with cerebral palsy."" Bachmann quoted heavily from McCaughey's op-ed in her floor statement, and sprinkled in her own two cents. Here's what Bachmann said: ""The president's adviser, Dr. Emanuel, believes communitarianism should guide decisions on who gets care. He says medical care should be reserved for the nondisabled. So watch out if you're disabled."" She noted, ""We just lost my father-in-law to dementia two months ago. I thank God that the doctors were able to alleviate my poor father-in-law's symptoms at the end of his life at age 85. Apparently, under the Democrats' health care plan, my father-in-law would not have received the high quality of care that he received in his last two months of life. Or if you're a grandmother with Parkinson's or a child with cerebral palsy, watch out."" The quote in question comes from an essay Emanuel wrote for the Hastings Center Report in the November-December 1996 issue. It ran under the title, ""Where Civic Republicanism and Deliberative Democracy Meet."" The title alone should give you an idea of the kind of academic, philosophical discussion that will ensue. In the article, he addresses the idea of what's good for society at large when it comes to allocating health care resources, and that it ""suggests the need for public forums to deliberate about which health services should be considered basic and should be guaranteed."" Under that philosophy, he writes, health services would be guaranteed to ensure the health of future generations as well as for ""full and active participation by citizens in public deliberations."" That's the lead-in to the part that contains the stuff McCaughey cited: ""Conversely, services provided to individuals who are irreversibly prevented from being or becoming participating citizens are not basic and should not be guaranteed. An obvious example is not guaranteeing health services to patients with dementia. A less obvious example is guaranteeing neuropsychological services to ensure children with learning disabilities can read and learn to reason."" So the question is, is Emanuel saying that he thinks health services ought not to be guaranteed to patients with dementia? No, said Kenneth Baer, a spokesman for the White House Office of Budget and Management. ""He just unequivocally doesn't believe that."" In fact, he said, one need look only as far as the next paragraph: ""Clearly more needs to be done to elucidate what specific health care services are basic; however, the overlap between liberalism and communitarianism points to a way of introducing the good back into medical ethics and devising a principled way of distinguishing basic from discretionary health care services."" Yeah, we sorta got lost there too. What it means, Baer said, is that Emanuel was exploring different views of political theory as they apply to health care decisions and following one school of thought through to the point where he notes that it would lead to ""potentially disturbing types of policy ramifications."" Furthermore, he said, you need to balance McCaughey's claim against Emanuel's 25-year record of caring for very sick people, and specifically providing quality care to very ill patients at the end of their life. ""He's a little surprised at how his record is being twisted and turned,"" Baer said. ""It is preposterous that Ezekiel Emanuel would deny care to someone who needed it, or that he believes we should be making the sort of horrific medical decisions he's been accused of."" Some of Emanuel's academic writing is confusing for nonacademics. But Emanuel has also written extensively in more mainstream media — the Atlantic and Wall Street Journal , for example — about his opposition to euthanasia and his belief in appropriate end-of-life care. Here's a quote from a Jan. 7, 1997, commentary written by Emanuel for the Wall Street Journal : ""For the millions of others, legalizing euthanasia or physician-assisted suicide would be of no benefit. To the contrary, it would be a way of avoiding the complex and arduous efforts required of doctors and other health-care providers to ensure that dying patients receive humane, dignified care."" There's no question Emanuel has written some things that some would consider controversial. For example, in another paper cited by McCaughey, a June 18, 2008 commentary for the Journal of the American Medical Association , Emanuel talks about how overutilization of health care is the most important contributor to the cost of health care in America. He takes aim at a medical culture that rewards ""meticulousness, not effectiveness"" and leads to a mindset in which doctors view it as ""imperative to do everything for the patient regardless of cost or effect on others."" He concludes that in order to rein in costs, we ought to ""devise financial incentives for physicians and patients that result in greater health care value."" Those kinds of opinions are fair game for political debate. And we certainly think it's fair to question where such ideas might lead in a practical sense. Emanuel is a key health care adviser. But to make the sensational claim that Emanuel says health care should not be extended to the disabled is a gross distortion of his position, lifted out of context from an academic paper in which he poses philosophical ideas but doesn't necessary endorse them. Emanuel's hefty medical record also counts for something, as well his unequivocal public position against euthanasia and doctor-assisted suicide. We rule Bachmann's statement ."
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6970
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A look at Children’s Museum set for New Orleans’ City Park.
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Even before families step inside the huge new Louisiana Children’s Museum building slated to open in New Orleans City Park this summer, they’ll already have encountered some of the whimsical and playful exhibits that museum leaders hope will inspire and educate visitors of all ages.
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true
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Museums, New Orleans, Louisiana, Parks, Environment, Childrens museums, Sculpture
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A carved stone labyrinth will stand on one side of the museum. In front of that entrance, families will step on a footbridge and wade through fog and mist generated by an interactive sculpture created by Japanese artist Fujiko Nakaya. Both the footbridge and a parking lot overlooking the New Orleans Museum of Art’s sculpture garden will open to a broad, 7,770-square-foot front porch, the first of many play areas in a two-story, two-wing building that takes advantage of the natural environment of City Park surrounding it. The new Children’s Museum is the five-gallery, 58,000-square-foot centerpiece of a $47.5 million, 8.5-acre campus that will soon replace the 33-year-old museum on Julia Street in the Warehouse District. Museum leaders have been working for over a decade to relocate to City Park, and the new building will triple the available exhibit space. It will also add outdoor play areas, exhibits to improve cognitive skills, and displays that will teach kids about cultures and landscapes unique to south Louisiana. Children’s Museum CEO Julia Bland said the building incorporates exhibits and play areas in ways that researchers say will help children reach their full potential. “If we as a community believe that every child has tremendous capacity, capability, and can reach their potential, then however they learn, wherever they’re born, we ... (should) start them on a positive trajectory early in ways that research shows us” are most effective, Bland said. Bland hopes the museum can help in bringing Louisiana children’s literacy and health rates up to national averages. She noted that Louisiana ranks 48th overall in well-being indicators and that about 40 percent of the state’s kids start kindergarten already behind where they should be academically. The museum hired the exhibit designers with a California firm, Mithun, which partnered with local architects Waggonner & Ball. They created spaces using the Reggio Emilia educational philosophy, which encourages kids to play with each other with minimal prompting from adults. Museum officials also partnered with Tulane University School of Medicine’s Department of Pediatrics, Tulane’s Institute of Infant and Early Childhood Mental Health, the LSU AgCenter and the Grow Dat Youth Farm. Most visitors will enter through the front porch, which will be decorated with Mardi Gras-like beads on the railing, and then blue glass doors — a nod to the blue doors on the Julia Street building — that lead to a south wing that’s open free to the public. That space features a literacy center and a parent resource center where experts from the museum’s partners will offer free lectures and information sessions. Acorn, a 165-seat Dickie Brennan & Co. cafe, will serve family-friendly dishes. In the north wing, accessible through a glass-walled atrium called Julia Street, a paid-entrance museum will house galleries featuring up to eight exhibits each. One feature will be a 100-foot Mississippi River model, and the museum will bring over a beloved bubble exhibit from Julia Street. Immediately to the right of the atrium on the bottom floor is a “Play With Me” gallery, designed for infants and toddlers (and their parents). Featured exhibits there include a sensory lagoon with rainsticks, a peek-a-boo puppet theater and reading nooks, with a backdrop designed by muralist Alex Beard, depicting wildlife found in the park. To the left of the glass walkway entrance is a gallery called “Follow That Food,” which shows the route some local produce and seafood travel from farms and coastal waters, to trucks and ships with play gears, onto scales at the Port of New Orleans, stopping at a toy food market before ending up on family tables. A mini “Mr. Okra” truck, painted by New Orleans artist Dr. Bob to resemble the truck of the famed local food vendor, maps the truck’s route through local neighborhoods, play-delivering ingredients used in the recipes of Louisiana grandparents interviewed by museum staff. Next to the food gallery is “Dig Into Nature,” which highlights natural resources unique to the Gulf Coast region. There, “caring” and “sharing” stations will allow children to bring their own shells, rocks and other outdoor treasures to examine under microscopes and projectors, and to learn more about wildlife by playing with toy X-rays and other tools. Upstairs is the “Make Your Mark” gallery, a cultural center that explores New Orleans’ rich artistic, architectural and musical heritage while allowing kids to make their own creations. Besides the bubble exhibit, there will be a design studio to allow kids to map out their own cities, a Shotgun House painted by another local artist, Terrance Osborne, and a Jammin’ House with a variety of instruments. A chessboard-like game will have 64 squares, each featuring a sound from a New Orleans neighborhood, including chants from fans in the Mercedes-Benz Superdome, the rumble of a streetcar and sounds of bubbling water from a burst New Orleans Sewerage & Water Board pipe. And finally, the most popular exhibit is expected to be the “Move With the River” gallery, which will explore the role the Mississippi River plays from Minnesota all the way down to the Gulf of Mexico. The “wet, winding journey” will teach children about coastal erosion and Louisiana’s attempts to slow it down through dredging and other projects, using a sedimentation table to explain how land builds. “It’s fun, it’s messy, it’s hands-on and it’s geared toward kids, but it also shows the key to our salvation,” Bland said. Together, the exhibits and open play areas are designed to increase children’s literacy, environmental knowledge, health and wellness, and to provide access to arts, culture and STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) education. Interspersed throughout the building’s galleries and 47,000 square feet of outdoor exhibits are nooks and crannies for kids to explore. They include edible gardens, play areas around the 22 live oak trees on the site, and 12 “kindows,” or kid-size windows, on exterior walls that children can climb into and then peer out to see the park outside. “The intent is a natural progression through the building that takes you through various landscapes,” said Richard Franko, a partner at Mithun who oversaw the design. “It makes it unique from any other museum throughout the country.” ___ Information from: The New Orleans Advocate, http://www.neworleansadvocate.com
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30805
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The world's most-pierced person, Gerard Rogers, was killed while passing through a metal detector at LAX airport.
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In other words, everything they publish — include the grisly death of poor “Gerard Rogers” — is fake.
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false
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Junk News, deaths, empire news, fake news
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What happens when someone with body piercings goes through a metal detector? Generally nothing. Most body jewelry is made of a type of metal that doesn’t even set off metal detectors, but some jewelry does, occasionally causing inconvenience. Does magnetic attraction between the piercings and the detector cause rings and studs to ‘peel entire faces off’? The answer there is a resounding no. Despite this fact, a fabricated article resurfaced online in November 2017, claiming — in unpleasant detail — that the world’s most-pierced person had died in exactly such circumstances at Los Angeles International Airport. On 16 December 2015, the “entertainment” and parody web site Empire News reported: In one of the most bizarre deaths, the Guinness Book of World Record’s [sic] ‘most pierced person,’ Gerard M. Rogers, was killed as he attempted to go through a metal detector in Los Angeles’ LAX airport. According to reports, Rogers’ face was completely ripped from his body as soon as he entered the machine. Almost every factual detail in this article is false. First off, the world’s most-pierced person is a woman. According to the Guinness Book of World Records, Brazilian Elaine Davidson was recorded as having 462 piercings on her body in May 2000. The most-pierced man is German Rolf Buccholz, who has held that distinction since 2010, and has 453 body piercings. The only record we could find of “Gerard M. Rogers” was in different versions of the fake story published by Empire News. Secondly, there is no spokesperson for LAX airport named “Joey Goldsmith.” Finally, and perhaps most obviously, airport metal detectors don’t attract certain metal objects like a magnet, they simply detect them. In non-airport settings, one medical procedure could pose a hazard to people with piercings: an MRI scan. People with piercings are encouraged to disclose them to doctors and technicians before undergoing an MRI scan (magnetic resonance imaging), because the effect of the magnetic fields involved can, in fact, cause piercings to be displaced or heat up. But that technology differs from what is found in airports. Empire News has a history of publishing fabricated stories and describes itself as being “intended for entertainment purposes only,” in a disclaimer on the web site. Our website and social media content uses only fictional names, except in cases of public figure and celebrity parody or satirization. Any other use of real names is accidental and coincidental.
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9808
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New Drug Treats Fibroids With Fewer Side Effects
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Both stories had overall strengths, but both missed the cost question and could have done more to explain both harms and benefits. In all, though, they took a dispassionate look at studies that easily could have been hyped. Whenever you have a drugmaker moving into the naming phase on a product line, you know the marketing machine is getting revved up. That’s what is happening with Esmya. This story attempts to explain both the science behind the drug and the marketing push. With a little harder look at the science and a little better explanation of the studies’ ties to the drugmakers, the story could have been stronger.
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mixture
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WebMD,women's health
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No mention of costs. If the drug is awaiting marketing approval in Europe, some estimate could have been obtained. And, since the drug has the active chemical of the Ella contraceptive drug – only in smaller doses – at least the cost of Ella could have been cited. Adequate discussion of benefits as seen in the two published studies. This story at least mentioned potential harms and that “it remains to be seen if the drug is safe for long-term, intermittent use.” But we think it is inadequate to simply state that those on the drug had “significantly fewer side effects.” What does “significantly fewer” mean? And what were they? Both stories we reviewed could have talked a bit more about the experimental nature of this drug and the problems seen in the past with hormone-regulating drugs. The competing Associated Press story did a better job explaining the specifics behind the study and actually providing the number of patients studied. This story did a decent job, though, summarizing the evidence and bringing in the researcher who wrote an accompanying editorial to say that “it remains to be seen if the drug is safe for long-term, intermittent use.” No disease mongering. This story provided a few more facts than the AP story and made it clear why these findings may be hugely important for women with fibroids. It said, “Uterine fibroids are the most common indication for the close to 600,000 hysterectomies performed each year in the U.S. About 1 in 4 women in their childbearing years have symptoms related to fibroids, such as heavy periods and related iron deficiency, abdominal pain, and fertility problems, according to figures from the National Institutes of Health.” We were happy to see this story explain which drugmakers were interested in Esmya as a product line, but the story failed to make the same connection made in the AP story. The AP pointed out that the study was funded by these drug companies and that the researchers had worked as advisers for the companies. This is a big omission. The independent commentary from the researcher who wrote the accompanying editorial was welcome. The story ended with an important message about patient decision-making and with an expert quote that there are good alternatives to hysterectomy but many patients never hear about them. But then the story missed the golden opportunity of outlining what those alternatives are. The story makes it clear that the drug is a variation of a drug already on the market but that it is not yet approved for use. Neither story was very clear on this point, but the WebMD story did not make a claim of novelty the way the AP story did. Contrast the two leads: WebMD: “A new drug appears to be effective for shrinking uterine fibroids and controlling the heavy menstrual bleeding they often cause, according to new research from Europe.” AP: “New research offers hope for the first pill to treat a common problem in young women: fibroids in the uterus. The growths can cause pain, heavy bleeding and fertility problems, and they are the leading cause of hysterectomies.” We’ll give a lukewarm “satisfactory” grade. Neither story relied on a press release.
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30349
|
President Trump is signing a law legalizing marijuana across the United States.
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We contacted NORML — the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws — for further clarification and interpretation on what effect, if any, the Right to Try Act of 2017 would have on the use of medical marijuana “in all 50 states,” but have not yet received a response. However, the claim as presented is false; the act itself was unrelated to medical marijuana, and solely pertained to those diagnosed with terminal illnesses. Even under the most flexible interpretations, there was no truth to the statement that President Donald Trump was signing a law legalizing medical marijuana at a federal level.
|
false
|
Medical, herb.co, marijuana, medical marijuana
|
On 27 May 2018, the web site Your News Wire published an item appearing to report that President Trump planned to sign a law legalizing medical marijuana in all 50 states: President Trump is set to sign legislation which will make medical marijuana federally legal for terminally ill patients. The bill, known as the “Right to Try Act,” will prohibit the FDA from banning natural cures, and allow patients to try medications that have not been approved by the FDA, but are currently under clinical trial. The claim had a single source: the cannabis industry site Herb.co. However, that site’s 24 May 2018 article was markedly more reserved in its speculative premise: Trump To Sign Bill Which Could Make Cannabis Federally Legal For The Terminally Ill President Trump is set to sign legislation which could make medical marijuana federally legal for terminally ill patients. The bill, known as the “Right to Try Act,” would allow patients with potentially fatal conditions to try medications that have not yet been approved by the FDA, but are undergoing the approval process and have already passed the first phase of clinical studies. […] What’s not clear is what illnesses qualify as life-threatening. Post-traumatic stress disorder, for example, could be argued to be life-threatening given the high rates of suicide among those who are diagnosed, but it’s up for debate. It’s likely that those details will be hammered out on a state by state basis in jurisdictions that have already passed their own version of Right to Try. The full title of the bill suggests as much stating, “in accordance with State law…” … Under the broad wording of the federal bill, no specific illnesses are mentioned. Instead, an ‘eligible patient’ is defined as, “Diseases or conditions where the likelihood of death is high unless the course of the disease is interrupted; and Diseases or conditions with potentially fatal outcomes, where the endpoint of clinical trial analysis is survival.” While Your News Wire claimed that President Trump was to sign legislation “which will make medical marijuana federally legal for terminally ill patients,” Herb.co originally reported that the Right to Try act could have that effect. The actual bill, of course, made no mention of marijuana specifically. Introduced in February 2017, it read: SEC. 2. USE OF UNAPPROVED MEDICAL PRODUCTS BY PATIENTS DIAGNOSED WITH A TERMINAL ILLNESS. (a) In General.–Notwithstanding the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act (21 U.S.C. 301 et seq. ), the Controlled Substances Act (21 U.S.C. 801 et seq. ), and any other provision of Federal law, the Federal Government shall not take any action to prohibit or restrict– (1) the production, manufacture, distribution, prescribing, or dispensing of an experimental drug, biological product, or device that– (A) is intended to treat a patient who has been diagnosed with a terminal illness; and (B) is authorized by, and in accordance with, State law; and (2) the possession or use of an experimental drug, biological product, or device– (A) that is described in subparagraphs (A) and (B) of paragraph (1); and (B) for which the patient has received a certification from a physician, who is in good standing with the physician’s certifying organization or board, that the patient has exhausted, or otherwise does not meet qualifying criteria to receive, any other available treatment options. As noted by Herb.co, broad language was used in the law’s text regarding conditions qualifying as a “terminal illness,” substances or devices in its purview, and even the relationship between state and federal law. Critics of the law maintained that it allowed drug companies too wide a berth to market experimental treatments while weakening the Food and Drug Administration’s regulatory ability. Proponents argued that legislation of its type enabled terminally ill patients with little left to lose a chance to outlive drug trial phases.
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9651
|
Aggressive 'mini-stroke' therapy may cut serious stroke risk by half
|
The story reports on a study, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, which reported that patients who had transient ischemic attacks (TIAs or mini-strokes) subsequently had a “lower-than-expected” incidence of serious strokes if they were treated at a hospital with a specialized TIA unit. The study itself had significant limitations: There were a variety of interventions used at a large number of TIA units in many countries, but no control group or randomization. The TIA units were cherry-picked based on high volume of patients. All of the patients in the study received the best possible care–meaning that there was no comparable group of patients who could serve as a control. That’s good for the patients, but makes it difficult to judge what role the overall care played in limiting stroke risk and producing the “lower-than-expected” outcomes. And that’s perhaps the biggest weakness of the study: Its broad conclusion about typical outcomes versus what the study saw at TIA units. This comparison was made by looking at decade-old numbers on how many TIA patients typically go on to have serious strokes, but those numbers are outdated, since many treatments have evolved since then. And this was just one part of the study–it also looked at things like long-term medication adherence in patients treated at a TIA unit. For a study as complicated as this, this brief story does a good job of describing the basics of the study, as well as some its limitations. Stroke is the fifth leading cause of death in the United States, with one American dying of stroke every four minutes, according to the CDC. In addition to this human cost, stroke is also estimated to cost the U.S. economy $34 billion each year. Given that broad impact, it makes sense to track research that informs the public–and health care providers–about developments related to stroke prevention, diagnosis and treatment. Even studies like this one, which offer limited evidence in support of more aggressive treatments offered by specialists, can have value in that context–as long as the related news stories recognize the limitations of the study and its findings.
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mixture
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mini-strokes,NEJM,TIA
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Cost isn’t addressed. Emergency room costs can be expensive, particularly for uninsured patients. And the costs associated with TIA treatment can vary widely, because treatment options can vary depending on the diagnosis. For example, a patient may be given drugs to “bust” a blood clot, or the patient may need to perform a surgical procedure. A 2014 study found that the average hospitalization for stroke in the U.S. cost approximately $20,396 ± $23,256. That’s a lot of variability, and covers all types of stroke — not TIAs per se. In other words, it’s tricky to nail down any firm numbers for a relatively concise news story. But the costs associated with treatment in a TIA unit could still be discussed (or at least mentioned). The story satisfactorily quantified the benefits, by including relative and absolute reductions in stroke risks when patients are treated at a TIA unit. It also makes it clear that the measured benefits seen weren’t obtained via a comparative trial, but by looking at older data on stroke risks from TIA and comparing it to this newer set of data. (See quality of evidence criteria for why these benefits are shaky, though.) The study doesn’t appear to discuss harms or side effects from this newer type of specialized stroke care for TIA patients, nor does the story. However, that doesn’t mean any exist. Aggressively treating TIAs carries risks and side effects. This is a strong point for the story. It does an adequate job of describing the study, but what sets it apart is how it addresses some of the limitations of the study. First, the story notes that “[the study] didn’t include a comparison group, which would offer the best evidence.” Later, the story quotes an editorial that accompanied the paper in NEJM: “…this was not a randomized trial and there was no comparison group to assess whether specialized units performed better than nonspecialized (stroke) units…”. We are always happy to see stories that highlight a study’s weaknesses as well as its key findings. They also could have stressed how the numerous possible interventions given to patients at these TIA units also make it hard to draw conclusions about what actually helped. However, we do want to note the story overlooked one important limitation: None of the hospitals in the study were actually in the U.S., calling into question the applicability of these study results for Americans. The story certainly could have raised this issue, especially since an American Heart Association spokesperson was quoted in the story. No disease mongering here. The story cites an independent expert source, as well as drawing on the third-party editorial published in NEJM. However, the story does not tell readers that the study was supported by pharmaceutical companies Sanofi and Bristol-Myers Squibb, which is an important oversight. The intervention in this story is sending patients to hospitals with specialized TIA units. The alternative–presumably being treated at a hospital without a TIA unit–wasn’t directly studied here, and this is made clear in the story. However, we do wish the story had discussed if receiving care at one of these specialized units is really necessary, i.e., if similar care can be received at a regular hospital. As the study noted, it appears so: The researchers stated that these results “may be achievable in a large range of settings as long as patients are evaluated and treated for acute TIA and minor stroke on an urgent basis.” The story quotes from the NEJM editorial, which says “the widespread, systematic implementation of specialized TIA units across multiple sites, countries, and continents can make a difference in the care of these patients.” However, it’s not clear how common these specialized TIA units are. Can they be found in any major hospital? Only in big cities or especially large medical centers? Only in a few of those medical centers? And is the “aggressive” treatment mentioned in the headline only available at these specialized TIA units, or can it be found in most emergency rooms? Readers are left in the dark on this one. As with availability, we do wish the story had better explained to readers how novel a TIA unit is. Because of the inclusion of independent sources, this story doesn’t appear to rely on a news release.
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33117
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"A teenager named Hector Cruz contracted herpes by participating in the ""condom challenge"" social media trend."
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Earlier Huzlers hoaxes included claims that semen was found in Starbucks drinks nationally, that McDonald’s used “human meat” in their food, that Chipotle was busted serving cat and dog meat, and that an Ebola victim rose from the dead as a zombie. Satire notwithstanding, the likelihood of contracting herpes from contact with a surface or object is infinitesimally low.
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false
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Junk News, condom challenge, hector cruz, huzlers
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On or around 3 December 2015, the web site Huzlers published an article titled “17 Year-old Does ‘Condom Challenge’ With Used Condom Gets Herpes,” saying: The “Condom Challenge” craze has claimed another victim. 17 year-old Hector Cruz contracted herpes after using a used condom he found in his fathers bedroom. Most recently 17 year-old Emily Stone died while doing the “Condom Challenge”. So the question is why are teens and college kids still doing the “Condom Challenge”? Part of it is because they don’t believe that anything bad will happen to them. “In adolescence, there’s a feeling of invincibility,” Michelle Tyson, Ph.D., clinical professor of psychology at the Dallas M&P institute and clinical psychologist in private practice in Dallas, Says. “Because this generation is full of f*cking idiots who anything to be cool. They don’t think about the consequences look at Hector he looks like a walking ebola infected monster”. For unknown reasons, the weeks-old claim shot to the top of Facebook’s “What’s Trending” list on 22 December 2015: The “condom challenge” involves filling condoms with water, and then dropping them, or having them dropped, on your head. The “Hector Cruz” claim wasn’t Huzlers‘ first attempt to capitalize on the briefly socially viral trend. The web site also published a fabricated tale of a teen who died engaging in the activity. Huzlers is well-known as a fake news site, and at the bottom of every page a disclaimer reads: Huzlers.com is the most notorious urban satirical entertainment website in the world with the most shocking headlines and articles shared by trillions around the world.
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