Datasets:

health_fact

like 22

16471

"Children who witness domestic violence are ""twice as likely to commit it themselves."

September 16, 2014

"Klobuchar, arguing that the NFL has a responsibility to hold its ""role models"" accountable to a ""different culture,"" said that kids who witness domestic violence in their households are ""twice as likely to commit it themselves."" There are legitimate, peer-reviewed studies that bear Klobuchar’s claim out. But overall, even though there’s a consensus that witnessing domestic violence puts kids at a greater risk for perpetrating it themselves, the precise figures differ. Measuring domestic violence is very difficult for a variety of reasons, and there hasn’t been a recent, comprehensive study. So saying these kids are ""twice as likely to commit"" domestic violence is a little too precise."

Derek Tsang

"The release of a video showing NFL running back Ray Rice striking his now-wife in an Atlantic City, N.J., casino elevator revived conversations about domestic violence on the Sunday shows. On the Sept. 14, 2014, edition of CNN’s State of the Union, Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., shared an anecdote from her time as a prosecutor to illustrate the ills of domestic violence. ""We had a poster outside the door so everyone would see it when they came in. It was a picture of a woman beaten up with a Band-Aid over her nose, holding a little baby boy,"" Klobuchar said. ""And the words read, ‘Beat your wife, and it’s your son that goes to jail.’ "" ""Kids … that have seen it happen,"" Klobuchar said, are ""twice as likely to commit it themselves."" Klobuchar concluded that because the NFL puts ""out their players as role models,"" they have ""to set a different culture."" We were interested in checking Klobuchar’s claim that kids who witness domestic violence are ""twice as likely to commit it themselves."" 90's kids We want to be clear upfront that witnessing domestic violence means witnessing it in a child’s household -- not watching the TMZ.com Rice video. That said, the ""twice as likely"" talking point is fairly popular among advocates against domestic abuse, and suffice to say has been around for a while. The domestic violence literature we’ve seen often cited that claim with a 1990 book called ""Physical Violence in American Families: Risk Factors and Adaptations to Violence in 8,145 Families."" This book compiled the results of the landmark National Family Violence Surveys of 1975 and 1985, which constituted 60-minute face-to-face interviews and 30-minute phone interviews, respectively, with thousands of American families. Based on those interviews, the book’s authors illustrated how a variety of factors influenced the incidence of domestic violence. Most of the book is about gender differences and roles in domestic violence, but the section on the effects on children crunches the surveys’ numbers on whether abusers said they witnessed abuse as children. That produced the ""twice as likely"" estimate. The experts we talked to told us there hasn’t been any study as definitive or comprehensive since, although other studies have taken stabs at the issue of intergenerational transmission of domestic violence. ""We’ve known for such a long time that the biggest risk factor for being abusive against wives and children is witnessing domestic violence at home or being abused,"" said Jacquelyn Campbell, a professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Nursing who studies domestic violence. So ""people haven’t repeated the research for a while,"" Campbell said, and ""a lot of stuff is old and mostly cross-sectional."" What the existing literature says Campbell pointed us to a 2010 study about intimate partner violence -- a subset of domestic violence -- which found that children who witnessed any intimate partner violence were 2.6 times as likely to perpetrate it themselves. Children who witnessed any violence were 1.6 times as likely, according to the study, to become abusers as adults. Klobuchar’s claim, then, has grounds in literature both old and new. There are literally dozens of studies on this issue, though, and different studies tell different stories. A 2000 meta-analysis of 39 different studies on this issue found a ""small-to-medium"" correlation between witnessing and perpetrating. The studies in that survey, while a couple decades old, ranged from showing a causal relationship between witnessing and perpetrating to showing no relationship at all. That corroborates Klobuchar’s larger point that parents’ domestic violence has negative outcomes for their children, but that’s not the same as these kids being ""twice as likely to commit it themselves."" Difficulties with measurements Putting numbers on domestic violence is particularly hard, and perhaps even inappropriate, said Ruth Glenn, executive director of the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence. ""I wouldn’t say twice as likely,"" said Glenn. ""So I would say that it is an additional risk factor. I get nervous when we start to assign data, because there’s not enough data to support it. Domestic violence happens in families, and each of those families are individual units."" In other words, there’s enough out there to suggest that children who witness domestic violence are more likely to perpetrate it, but saying something as precise as ""twice as likely"" is difficult. Domestic violence is ""hard to measure for various and sundry reasons,"" said Glenn, from the lack of ""good data"" on who’s charged and convicted of domestic violence to confidentiality issues with its victims. And even when researchers can get affirmative data, there are methodological concerns. The studies about children who witness domestic violence often surveyed clinical populations -- meaning those with family issues, so a non-representative sample -- and ask respondents to self-report and to retroactively report. Extricating domestic violence from other family issues -- like mental health and substance abuse -- is also difficult, according to the studies Campbell referred us to. Our ruling Klobuchar, arguing that the NFL has a responsibility to hold its ""role models"" accountable to a ""different culture,"" said that kids who witness domestic violence in their households are ""twice as likely to commit it themselves."" There are legitimate, peer-reviewed studies that bear Klobuchar’s claim out. But overall, even though there’s a consensus that witnessing domestic violence puts kids at a greater risk for perpetrating it themselves, the precise figures differ. Measuring domestic violence is very difficult for a variety of reasons, and there hasn’t been a recent, comprehensive study. So saying these kids are ""twice as likely to commit"" domestic violence is a little too precise."

https://www.jstor.org/stable/1566786?seq=10, http://www.cdfohio.org/research-library/documents/resources/children-who-witness-domestic-violence-ohio.pdf, https://www.amazon.com/Physical-Violence-American-Families-Adaptations/dp/1560008288, http://www.who.int/violence_injury_prevention/publications/violence/intervening/en/, https://mail-attachment.googleusercontent.com/attachment/u/0/?ui=2&ik=7e7596ec27&view=att&th=14875c618a57c445&attid=0.1&disp=inline&safe=1&zw&saduie=AG9B_P9vEy6eN42i3Fa-ZVCeQ1_k&sadet=1410802777192&sads=chTLOgnI7iD2hiu5SDyz7aev0Cw, https://mail-attachment.googleusercontent.com/attachment/u/0/?ui=2&ik=7e7596ec27&view=att&th=14875c618a57c445&attid=0.2&disp=inline&safe=1&zw&saduie=AG9B_P9vEy6eN42i3Fa-ZVCeQ1_k&sadet=1410802778895&sads=e8ElS3hOjQH-W2qBMyVjsDX7-98, https://mail-attachment.googleusercontent.com/attachment/u/0/?ui=2&ik=7e7596ec27&view=att&th=14875c618a57c445&attid=0.4&disp=inline&safe=1&zw&sadnir=1&saduie=AG9B_P9vEy6eN42i3Fa-ZVCeQ1_k&sadet=1410810122462&sads=jpf4bWWfAL_XCS1rbdH4TC0Npwo, https://mail-attachment.googleusercontent.com/attachment/u/0/?ui=2&ik=7e7596ec27&view=att&th=14875c618a57c445&attid=0.3&disp=inline&safe=1&zw&saduie=AG9B_P9vEy6eN42i3Fa-ZVCeQ1_k&sadet=1410802779671&sads=99zM_VZkCFn5VrC82hMqSTa9GAY, http://www.politico.com/blogs/politico-live/2014/09/klobuchar-says-nfl-players-have-obligation-as-role-195422.html, https://www.jstor.org/stable/3340687?seq=1&uid=3739600&uid=2129&uid=2&uid=70&uid=4&uid=3739256&sid=21104168172801, https://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/releases/ccp-714741.pdf

2true

National, Criminal Justice, Crime, Women, Amy Klobuchar,

5977

George Michael died of natural causes, British coroner says.

George Michael died of natural causes as the result of heart disease and a fatty liver, a British coroner said Tuesday.

Jill Lawless

Darren Salter, senior coroner for the county of Oxfordshire in southern England, said a post-mortem has found that the singer died of “dilated cardiomyopathy with myocarditis and fatty liver.” Dilated cardiomyopathy is a condition in which the left ventricle of the heart becomes stretched and weakened, limiting the heart’s ability to pump blood. Myocarditis is inflammation of the heart muscle. The former Wham! singer-songwriter was found dead at his country home in Oxfordshire on Dec. 25. He was 53. An initial autopsy failed to determine the cause of death for the star, who had battled health problems and drug addiction. Salter said that because Michael died of natural causes, there will be no coroner’s inquest or further inquiries. In Britain, inquests are held to determine the facts of unexplained deaths. Police initially investigated and took witness statements in order to establish the facts surrounding Michael’s death, which they called “unexplained but non-suspicious.” Wham!, formed by Michael and his friend Andrew Ridgeley, topped charts in the 1980s with exuberant pop hits including “Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go,” ″Young Guns (Go For It)” and “Freedom.” Michael went on to a solo career studded with major hits including “Careless Whisper” and “Faith” and sold more than 100 million albums around the world. He suffered problems with drugs and alcohol, however, and in 2010 was briefly jailed after crashing his Range Rover into a shop front near his London home while high on prescription drugs and marijuana. Michael had experienced health problems including a bout of pneumonia in 2011 that saw him hospitalized in intensive care. He said later it had been “touch and go” whether he would survive. Michael’s former partner, Kenny Goss, has said he thinks the musician’s body “just gave up.” Dilated cardiomyopathy can be an inherited condition, or can be caused by factors such as viral infections and high blood pressure. Myocarditis is usually caused by a viral, bacterial or fungal infection, while fatty liver disease can be caused by alcohol, or by other factors that cause a buildup of fat in the liver. Michael’s death prompted an outpouring of recognition for his musical gifts as well as his charitable work in support of causes including AIDS groups, cancer charities and Childline, which offers confidential phone counseling for young people. Paying tribute to Michael at the Brit Awards last month, Ridgeley said that with his death, “a supernova in a firmament of shining stars has been extinguished.” At the Grammys, Adele performed Michael’s song “Fastlove” — restarting the rendition because she said the tribute was “too important” to mess up.

2true

AP Top News, International News, Entertainment, Music, George Michael, Health, Europe

26787

Facebook post Says the CEO of Camping World told Trump supporters “Frankly, don’t shop at my business.”

February 29, 2020

A California jury on Wednesday awarded $29 million to a woman who said that asbestos in Johnson & Johnson’s talcum-powder-based products caused her cancer.

Katie Sanders

The verdict, in California Superior Court in Oakland, marks the latest defeat for the healthcare conglomerate facing more than 13,000 talc-related lawsuits nationwide. J&J said it would appeal, citing “serious procedural and evidentiary errors” in the course of the trial, saying lawyers for the woman had fundamentally failed to show its baby powder contains asbestos. The company did not provide further details of the alleged errors during the trial. “We respect the legal process and reiterate that jury verdicts are not medical, scientific or regulatory conclusions about a product,” J&J said in a statement on Wednesday. The New Brunswick, New Jersey-based company denies that its talc causes cancer, saying numerous studies and tests by regulators worldwide have shown that its talc is safe and asbestos-free. The lawsuit was brought by Terry Leavitt, who said she used Johnson’s Baby Powder and Shower to Shower - another powder containing talc sold by J&J in the past - in the 1960s and 1970s and was diagnosed with mesothelioma in 2017. It was the first of more than a dozen J&J talc cases scheduled for trial in 2019. The nine-week trial began on Jan. 7 and included testimony from nearly a dozen experts on both sides. The jury deliberated for two days before delivering its verdict, which was broadcast online by Courtroom View Network. Jurors found that J&J’s talc-based products used by Leavitt were defective and that the company had failed to warn consumers of the health risks, awarding $29.4 million in damages to Leavitt and her husband. The jury declined to award punitive damages. “Yet another jury has rejected J&J’s misleading claims that its talc was free of asbestos,” said Moshe Maimon, a lawyer for Leavitt, in a statement on Wednesday. “The internal J&J documents that the jury saw, once more laid bare the shocking truth of decades of cover- up, deception and concealment by J&J.”  Leavitt’s was the first talc case to go to trial since Reuters on Dec. 14 published a report detailing that J&J knew that the talc in its raw and finished powders sometimes tested positive for small amounts of asbestos from the 1970s into the early 2000s - test results it did not disclose to regulators or consumers. Leavitt’s trial originally included J&J’s talc supplier, Imerys Talc America, a unit of Imerys SE, as a co-defendant. California Superior Court Judge Brad Seligman, who oversaw the trial, told jurors in February that the company was no longer part of the case after it filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection under the weight of the talc litigation, which stayed lawsuits against it. While earlier talc lawsuits alleged talc itself causes ovarian cancer, plaintiffs’ lawyers have more recently focused on arguing asbestos contamination in talc caused ovarian cancer and mesothelioma, a form of cancer linked to asbestos exposure. In 11 cases so far alleging asbestos contamination in talc, three have resulted in wins for plaintiffs, awarding damages as high as $4.69 billion in a July 2018 multi-plaintiff ovarian cancer verdict. J&J won three other cases and another five ended in hung juries. J&J has appealed all of the plaintiff verdicts, and the company said it is confident the verdicts would be overturned on appeal. (Read the documents that sparked the investigation - here)

https://twitter.com/hashtag/boycottcampingworld?lang=en, https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10157260440099779&set=a.78212004778&type=3&theater, https://www.cnbc.com/2017/08/25/camping-world-ceo-lemonis-apologizes-for-charlottesville-remarks.html, https://www.politifact.com/article/2019/apr/26/context-trumps-very-fine-people-both-sides-remarks/, https://www.cnbc.com/2017/08/16/marcus-lemonis-if-youre-ok-with-what-trump-said-dont-shop-at-my-business.html, https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/camping-world-ceo-trump/

0false

Facebook Fact-checks, Facebook posts,

5081

Vehicle search prompted by marijuana smell ruled illegal.

An eastern Pennsylvania judge has ruled that state police troopers who said they smelled marijuana in a car weren’t allowed to search it once they were shown a passenger’s medical marijuana card.

A Lehigh County judge tossed out evidence cited in support of drug and firearms counts stemming from the Nov. 7 search in Allentown, The (Allentown) Morning Call reported . “The smell of marijuana is no longer per se indicative of a crime,” Judge Maria Dantos wrote in her opinion filed earlier this month. Authorities said Timothy Barr, 27, was a passenger in the car driven by his wife that was stopped by state troopers on a traffic violation. Troopers said they smelled a strong odor of marijuana and told Barr that gave them the legal right to search the vehicle even after he showed them his card authorizing the use of medical marijuana. Officers found small amounts of marijuana and residue and also found a loaded handgun under the driver’s seat. Court records indicate that Barr cannot legally possess a firearm due to a prior conviction. In her ruling, Dantos said it was “illogical, impractical and unreasonable” for the troopers to suspect illegal activity once Barr showed them his medical marijuana card. She said Pennsylvania lawmakers never contemplated people with such cards being arrested and prosecuted for possession of marijuana in a package not clearly marked with a dispensary name. “Such actions are merely means of hampering the legalization of marijuana for medical purposes,” Dantos wrote. Prosecutors must now decide whether to appeal to state Superior Court or try to move forward without the evidence. District Attorney Jim Martin said his office is reviewing the opinion and transcripts from a July 17 hearing and had made no decision on an appeal. Defense attorney Joshua Karoly said the ruling could be the first step in changing a procedural rule that allows police to search a vehicle based on the smell of drugs alone. “This case will put a spotlight on the plain smell doctrine in Pennsylvania which police use far too often to invade citizens’ privacy,” he said. Dantos wrote in the opinion that officers’ confusion over medical marijuana exemplified a “clear disconnect between the medical community and the law enforcement community.” One trooper testified that he believed medical marijuana had no smell and the other said she mistakenly thought dried marijuana was illegal and not used for medical purposes. Marijuana in flower and dry leaf form has been offered at dispensaries since August 2018. ___ This story has been corrected to show that the medical marijuana card belonged to the passenger, not the driver, and decision came earlier this month rather than Friday. ___ Information from: The Morning Call, http://www.mcall.com

https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/6246965/Commonwealth-of-PA-vs-Timothy-O-Barr.pdf,https://www.mcall.com/news/police/mc-nws-lehigh-county-judge-medical-marijuana-traffic-stop-opinion-20190807-qgyapkqk6ndltf4yzr7uak4ujy-story.html,http://www.mcall.com

2true

Medical marijuana, Pennsylvania, Allentown, General News, Marijuana, Crime

8111

Austria bets on mass testing to manage coronavirus spread.

March 24, 2020

Austria will massively expand coronavirus testing in coming days to locate and isolate infected people and avoid an Italian-like overload of its health system, Chancellor Sebastian Kurz said on Tuesday.

Kirsti Knolle

The Alpine republic with a population of 8.8 million has tested around 28,400 people so far with nearly 4,900 cases and 28 deaths confirmed. It was one of the first European countries to put severe restrictions on movement and close shops and schools in response to the developments in neighboring Italy and a strong increase in coronavirus infections in its western regions. In coming weeks, Austria plans to test up to 15,000 people per day, the chancellor said. “We will also launch rapid tests, to test hundreds of thousands of people, as quickly as possible,” Kurz told a news conference. He referred to brand new tests that are comparably cheap but take longer than laboratory tests used up until now. Broad testing is key to getting a clear picture of the real infection rate and an idea of how many people have developed immunity against the virus, the chancellor said. Top priority was to delay the peak of infections as long as possible to avoid a situation like in Italy or Spain, where the health systems are overwhelmed. “Our goal is that the number of infections doubles only every 14 days and not every two, three or five days and that we will set the right measures to keep it that way once we ramp up social life again,” Kurz said. Austria’s strict measures are in place until April 13, and Kurz said there was hope that a gradual withdrawal could start the day after. A government task force developing scenarios for the “ramp up” was currently dealing with questions such as in which order schools, businesses and production should restart. Lessons from other countries showed that it was crucial to remain disciplined and to make use of “big data”. Asked what he meant by “big data”, Kurz said: “We are currently working with the Red Cross and other enterprises on ideas that could be implemented in Austria and in Europe, and which are suitable for our system and our democracy.” Austria’s Red Cross is promoting a so-called “Stop Corona” app, which enables a user to digitally store who he meets and when. If a person shows symptoms of corona disease, these contact persons can be notified. Austria’s mobile carrier A1 Telekom Austria is already sharing results from a motion analysis application that visualizes the movement flows of groups of people with the health authority.

2true

Health News

7204

Democrats unveil new policies before gubernatorial primary.

Democrats vying for Michigan governor head into the final two months of their primary fight with a number of new policy initiatives in hand, including a single-payer system of universal health care, a college scholarship program and a plan to offset child care costs so women can work.

David Eggert

The first Democrat-only televised debate is Wednesday, a natural forum for the three candidates to tout their agendas to a broader audience after several weeks of unveiling fresh items. Gretchen Whitmer, Shri Thanedar and Abdul El-Sayed agree on many issues, like raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour, spending much more on roads and other infrastructure, shutting down twin oil pipelines in a waterway linking two of the Great Lakes and repealing the state’s emergency manager law. But there are some differences that are being emphasized more in the stretch to the Aug. 7 election. El-Sayed, Detroit’s former health director, has proposed a plan to provide all Michigan residents with government-financed “Michicare” until they reach Medicare age, including 600,000 who have no insurance. He hopes to make it a “wedge issue,” especially with Whitmer, who has not embraced the single-payer concept and whom he has criticized for accepting campaign donations from the political action committee of Blue Cross Blue Shield, the state’s dominant insurer. “Health care is a human right,” he said, contending that raising taxes to fund the Medicare-for-all-style system while eliminating premiums, deductibles and copays would save both residents and businesses overall. Whitmer is expected to announce her own health care plan before the primary and most recently has rolled out education and economic proposals while also focusing on her mantra to “fix the damn roads.” The former Senate minority leader frequently points to her role in the bipartisan expansion of Medicaid to more than 600,000 adults, including in a TV ad that is airing. “She’s the only candidate in the race who has actually expanded coverage for Michiganders,” said spokesman Zack Pohl. El-Sayed, who is courting the party’s liberal wing and in recent days outlined a plan to address high auto insurance premiums, proposes paying for Michicare with a 2 percent or 2.25 percent gross receipts tax on businesses, depending on their size, with the first $2 million exempt from taxation. He also would effectively raise the state’s 4.25 percent personal income tax to between 5 percent and 8 percent, via a graduated payroll tax. Thanedar, a multimillionaire businessman, also supports a universal, single-payer system but has not elaborated. He is recommending tax increases to fund signature facets of his economic plan — expanding child care subsidies to cover 345,000 additional low-income children, ten times more than now, and paying for 78,000 more 3- and 4-year-olds to attend preschool. He says the moves would allow thousands of women to re-enter the workforce and improve students’ educational outcomes. He wants to boost the 6 percent corporate income tax to 7.5 percent for businesses with at least $350,000 in gross receipts and assess a 10 percent tax on the portion of receipts exceeding $1 million. He also would assess an 8.85 percent personal income tax for individuals earning at least $200,000 and a 10 percent rate for millionaires. Households with less than $50,000 income would pay no income tax. “We are one big family. We need to chip in to make it helpful to the ones who need help,” Thanedar said during a recent joint Democratic-Republican debate on Mackinac Island. Both he and El-Sayed, if elected, would face steep obstacles, including a Republican-led Legislature — unless power shifts — and the constitutional requirement that voters approve a graduated income tax. Whitmer, with an eye toward the general election, has been more pragmatic — focusing on what her camp says is actually achievable in the current budget and political environment. While not ruling anything out, she has not called for changes to business or income taxes and has proposed repealing the taxation of retirement income that was enacted as part of a GOP-written tax overhaul. She pledges to work with lawmakers to fund an infrastructure bank to upgrade roads through user fees such as higher fuel taxes or, if that is unsuccessful, to ask voters to approve bonding. Thanedar wants to borrow money, while El-Sayed also proposes an infrastructure bank funded with increased fuel taxes and other revenue-raising mechanisms. The centerpiece of Whitmer’s jobs plan is providing a two-year maximum $3,040 annual scholarship to high school graduates who attend an in-state university, community college or receive technical training, as long as they do community service, maintain a certain grade point average and have a good attendance record. The estimated cost is $100 million a year. “It’s about creating a path for everyone in to a high-wage skill,” she said. ___ Online: Policy plans for — El-Sayed: https://abdulformichigan.com/issues — Thanedar: https://www.shri2018.com/ — Whitmer: https://www.gretchenwhitmer.com/issues/ ___ Follow David Eggert on Twitter at https://twitter.com/DavidEggert00 . His work can be found at https://apnews.com/search/David%20Eggert

/search/David Eggert,https://www.gretchenwhitmer.com/issues/,https://abdulformichigan.com/issues,https://www.shri2018.com/,https://twitter.com/DavidEggert00

2true

Universal health care, Scholarships, Michigan, Gretchen Whitmer, Elections, Child care

7250

Jerry Lewis, Hollywood survivor, showman, dies at 91.

Jerry Lewis epitomized what it meant to be a survivor in Hollywood.

Christy Lemire

Through ups and downs in popularity, health troubles and weight fluctuations and the sorts of seismic shifts that take place over decades in the entertainment industry, Lewis always figured out a way to battle back, to reinvent himself, to stay relevant. It’s what enduring stars know how to do instinctively; perhaps it’s that very drive that makes them stars in the first place. Through it all, Lewis remained the consummate showman, and his distinctive comic legacy surely will continue to survive for decades to come. The manic, rubber-faced performer who jumped and hollered to fame in a stage, radio, TV and film partnership with Dean Martin, settled to become a self-conscious auteur in movies he wrote, produced and directed, and found new fame as the tireless, teary host of the annual muscular dystrophy telethons, died Sunday at home in Las Vegas surrounded by family. He was 91. Lewis, who had battled the lung disease pulmonary fibrosis, heart issues, a debilitating back problem and addiction to pain killers, died of natural causes, according to his publicist. His career spanned the history of show business in the 20th century, beginning in his parents’ vaudeville act at the age of 5. He was just 20 when his pairing with Martin made them international stars. After their cold parting in 1956, Lewis made such favorites as “The Bellboy” and “The Nutty Professor,” was featured in Martin Scorsese’s “The King of Comedy” and appeared as himself in Billy Crystal’s “Mr. Saturday Night.” In the 1990s, he scored a stage comeback as the devil in the Broadway revival of “Damn Yankees.” In his 80s, he was still traveling the world, planning to remake some of his earlier movies and working on a stage version of “The Nutty Professor.” He was so active he would sometimes forget the basics, like eating, his associates would recall. In 2012, Lewis missed an awards ceremony thrown by his beloved Friars Club because his blood sugar dropped from lack of food and he had to spend the night in the hospital. In an interview with The Associated Press from 2016, Lewis, at 90 and promoting the film “Max Rose,” said he still woke up every day at 4:30 or 5 in the morning to write, and he had a handful of standup shows on the schedule. Although a clear influence on Jim Carrey and other slapstick performers, later generations knew Lewis primarily as the ringmaster of the Labor Day Muscular Dystrophy Association, joking and reminiscing and introducing guests, sharing stories about ailing kids and concluding with his personal anthem, the ballad “You’ll Never Walk Alone.” From the 1960s onward, the telethons raised about $1.5 billion. He announced in 2011 that he would step down as host, but he would remain chairman of the association he joined some 60 years ago. His fundraising efforts won him the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award at the 2009 Oscar telecast, an honor he said “touches my heart and the very depth of my soul.” But the telethon was also criticized for being mawkish and exploitative of children, known as “Jerry’s Kids.” A 1960s muscular dystrophy poster boy, Mike Ervin, later made a documentary called “The Kids Are All Alright,” in which he alleged that Lewis and the Muscular Dystrophy Association had treated him and others as objects of pity rather than real people. Responded Lewis: “You don’t want to be pitied because you’re a cripple in a wheelchair, stay in your house!” He was the classic funnyman who longed to play “Hamlet.” He cried as hard as he laughed. He sassed and snarled at critics and interviewers who displeased him. He pontificated on talk shows, lectured to college students and compiled his thoughts in the 1971 book “The Total Film-Maker.” “I believe, in my own way, that I say something on film. I’m getting to those who probably don’t have the mentality to understand what ... ‘A Man for All Seasons’ is all about, plus many who did understand it,” he wrote. “I am not ashamed or embarrassed at how seemingly trite or saccharine something in my films will sound. I really do make films for my great-great-grandchildren and not for my fellows at the Screen Directors Guild or for the critics.” In his early movies, he played the kind of fellows who would have had no idea what the elder Lewis was talking about: loose-limbed, buck-toothed, overgrown adolescents, trouble-prone and inclined to wail when beset by enemies. American critics recognized the comedian’s popular appeal but not his pretensions of higher art. Not the French. Writing in Paris’ Le Monde newspaper, Jacques Siclier praised Lewis’ “apish allure, his conduct of a child, his grimaces, his contortions, his maladjustment to the world, his morbid fear of women, his way of disturbing order everywhere he appeared.” The French government awarded Lewis the Chevalier of the Legion of Honor in 1983 and Commander of Arts and Letters the following year. Film critic Andrew Sarris observed: “The fact that Lewis lacks verbal wit on the screen doesn’t particularly bother the French.” Lewis had teamed up with Martin after World War II, and their radio and stage antics delighted audiences, although not immediately. Their debut, in 1946 at Atlantic City’s 500 Club, was a bust. Warned by owner “Skinny” D’Amato that they might be fired, Martin and Lewis tossed the script and improvised their way into history. New York columnists Walter Winchell and Ed Sullivan raved over the sexy singer and the berserk clown. Hollywood producer Hal Wallis saw them at New York’s Copacabana and signed them to a film contract. Martin and Lewis first appeared in supporting roles in, then they began a hit series of starring vehicles: “At War With the Army,” ″That’s My Boy,” ″Sailor Beware,” ″Jumping Jacks,” ″The Stooge,” ″The Caddy,” ″Money From Home,” ″Living It Up,” ″Three Ring Circus,” ″You’re Never Too Young,” ″Artists and Models,” ″Pardners,” ″Hollywood or Bust.” But in the mid-1950s, their partnership began to wear. Lewis longed for more than laughs. Martin had tired of playing straight man and of Lewis’ attempts to inject Chaplinesque pathos into their movies. He also wearied of the pace of films, television, nightclub and theater appearances, benefits and publicity junkets on which Lewis thrived. The rift became increasingly public as the two camps sparred verbally. “I knew we were in trouble the day someone gave Jerry a book about Charlie Chaplin,” Martin cracked. On July 24, 1956, Martin and Lewis closed shop, at the Copa, and remained estranged for years. Martin, who died in 1995, did make a dramatic, surprise appearance on Lewis’ telethon in 1976 (a reunion brokered by mutual pal Frank Sinatra). After Martin’s death, Lewis said the two had again become friendly during his former partner’s final years and he would repeatedly express his admiration for Martin above all others. Lewis distinguished himself after the break, revealing a serious side as unexpected as Martin’s gift for comedy. He brought in comedy director Frank Tashlin for “Rock-a-bye Baby,” ″Cinderfella,” ″The Disorderly Orderly,” ″The Geisha Boy” and “Who’s Minding the Store?” With “The Bellboy,” though, Lewis assumed the posts of producer, director, writer and star, like his idol Chaplin. Among his hits under his own direction was the 1963 “The Nutty Professor,” playing a dual Jekyll and Hyde role, transforming himself from a nerdy college teacher to a sexy (and conceited) lounge singer, Buddy Love, regarded as a spoof of his old partner Martin. Lewis’ more recent film credits included such low-budget releases as “Arizona Dream,” co-starring Johnny Depp, “Funny Bones,” and “Max Rose,” from 2016. He was seen briefly in Eddie Murphy’s remake of “The Nutty Professor.” He was born Joseph Levitch in Newark, New Jersey, on March 16, 1926. His father, billed as Danny Lewis, was a singer on the borscht and burlesque circuits. His mother played piano for Danny’s act. Their only child was often left alone in hotel rooms, or lived in Brooklyn with his paternal grandparents, Russian Jewish immigrants, or his aunts in New Jersey. “All my life I’ve been afraid of being alone,” Lewis once said. In his later years the solitude haunted him, and he surrounded himself with an entourage at work and at home. Joey Levitch made his professional debut at age 5, singing the Depression tearjerker “Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?” to great applause. By 16, Jerry Lewis had dropped out of school and was earning as much as $150 a week as a solo performer. Rejected by the Army because of a heart murmur and punctured eardrum, Lewis entertained troops in World War II and toured with his lip-sync act. In 1944 he married Patti Palmer, a band vocalist. The following year he met Martin, on a March day in 1945 in Manhattan. Fame brought him women and Lewis wrote openly of his many partners. After 36 years of marriage and six sons, Patti Lewis sued her husband for divorce in 1982. She later wrote a book claiming that he was an adulterer and drug addict who abused their children. In his late 50s, Lewis married Sandra Pitnick, 32, a former airline stewardess. They had a daughter, Dani, named for Jerry’s father. “When the truth comes down to the truth, I am so grateful that I’m on that stage or in front of that camera,” Lewis told The Associated Press in 2016. “To have a career that I had in film, I’m the luckiest Jew that ever lived. I’m so grateful for it. I don’t take advantage of it. I don’t use it improperly. And I love the fact that there’s nowhere I can go where people don’t know me.” ___ Lemire is a former Associated Press writer. Associated Press writer Bob Thomas and AP Film Writer Lindsey Bahr in Los Angeles and AP National Writer Hillel Italie in New York contributed to this report.

2true

Muscular dystrophy, Los Angeles, Health, Entertainment, Movies, Jerry Lewis, North America, AP Top News, Celebrities, Hollywood, Dean Martin

7300

Opponents of Georgia abortion ban promise court challenge.

Opponents of a Georgia law banning abortions once a fetal heartbeat can be detected vow to take their fight from the state Capitol to the courthouse.

Ben Nadler

Signed Tuesday by Republican Gov. Brian Kemp, the measure is one of the nation’s most restrictive abortion laws and would effectively ban the procedure around six weeks of pregnancy, before many women know they are pregnant. Staci Fox, the president and CEO of Planned Parenthood Southeast, said at a news conference that she had one message for Kemp: “We will see you, sir, in court.” The organization also planned to campaign to unseat lawmakers who supported it, saying they would “be held accountable for playing politics with women’s health.” The legal director of the ACLU of Georgia, Sean Young, has said the measure is unconstitutional, and the group plans to challenge it in court. “Under 50 years of Supreme Court precedent, this abortion ban is clearly unconstitutional,” Young said in a recent interview with The Associated Press. “Every federal court that has heard a challenge to a similar ban has ruled that it’s unconstitutional.” Kemp said he approved the bill “to ensure that all Georgians have the opportunity to live, grow, learn and prosper in our great state.” The signing caps weeks of tension and protests at the state Capitol and begins what could be a lengthy and costly legal battle. “We will not back down,” Kemp said, acknowledging the likelihood of a legal challenge. “We will always continue to fight for life.” Anti-abortion activists and lawmakers across the country have been energized by the new conservative majority on the U.S. Supreme Court that includes President Donald Trump appointees Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh. They are pushing abortion bans in an attack on the high court’s 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling, which legalized abortion nationwide until a fetus is developed enough to live outside a woman’s uterus. Current law allows women in Georgia to seek an abortion during the first 20 weeks of pregnancy. If it’s not blocked in court, the new ban would take effect Jan. 1. The measure makes exceptions in the case of rape and incest — if the woman files a police report first — and to save the life of the mother. It also would allow for abortions when a fetus is determined not to be viable because of serious medical issues. In addition, the bill includes provisions for alimony, child support and even income tax deductions for fetuses, declaring that “the full value of a child begins at the point when a detectable human heartbeat exists.” The legislation will result in $10 million to $20 million in lost tax revenue for the state each year, according to its author, Republican Rep. Ed Setzler. Setzler called the bill a “common sense” measure that seeks to “balance the difficult circumstances women find themselves in with the basic right to life of a child.” But Democratic Sen. Jen Jordan said “there’s nothing balanced about it: It’s an all-out abortion ban.” Jordan said she is particularly worried that the new law will push obstetricians away from practicing in Georgia, worsening health care outcomes for women in a state that already has one of the nation’s worst maternal mortality rates. “It’s about the unintended consequences,” Jordan said. “They’re making policy choices that are going to end up causing women to die, and they’re preventable deaths.” Georgia has at least 11 abortion providers, according to the National Abortion Federation, a group that advocates for access to abortion. Some providers have already faced negative effects from the bill, according to Wula Dawson, director of development and communications for the Feminist Women’s Health Center, an abortion clinic in Georgia. Dawson said anti-abortion protesters outside their clinic have become “bolder and more aggressive” toward patients. In the first few months of 2019, “heartbeat” abortion bans have been signed into law in four states: Mississippi, Kentucky, Ohio, and now Georgia. Lawmakers in other states including Tennessee, Missouri, South Carolina, Florida, Texas, Louisiana and West Virginia, are considering similar proposals. A bill that recently passed the Alabama House would outlaw abortions at any stage of pregnancy, with a few narrow exceptions. Kentucky’s law was immediately challenged by the ACLU after it was signed in March, and a federal judge temporarily blocked it. Earlier versions of the law passed in North Dakota and Iowa have also been struck down in court. According to the Guttmacher Institute, a research group that supports abortion rights, about 33,000 abortions were provided in Georgia in 2014. ___ Associated Press Writer Sanya Mansoor in Atlanta contributed to this report.

2true

U.S. News, Georgia, Supreme courts, Planned Parenthood, Health, Abortion, U.S. Supreme Court, Courts, Womens health, U.S. News, Laws

2376

Japan's tsunami survivors suffer in silence three years after disaster.

March 5, 2014

Hatsuko Ishikawa never got a final look at her 36-year-old son, a firefighter, before he was swept away by the tsunami that devastated Japan’s northeast coast three years ago.

Mari Saito

Ishikawa only heard his voice, bellowing from his fire engine as he sped towards the sea to try to evacuate people before the wave struck. As the truck raced past, Ishikawa heard her son call out to her grandson, telling the boy to evacuate to higher ground. Then he was gone. She is haunted by what happened and tormented by what might have been. “I blame myself over and over again, asking myself why I didn’t stop him,” said Ishikawa, 65, as she sat in the spartan shelter where she has lived since that day. Small towns across Japan’s northeastern coast are rebuilding but far from healing three years since a massive earthquake set off a tsunami that killed nearly 20,000 people. In Rikuzentakata, where one in 10 residents died, nearly everyone lost a friend or family member on March 11, 2011. The resilience of Rikuzentakata’s tsunami survivors was embodied by a lone surviving tree, dubbed the “miracle pine”. But the tree died last year and a replica stands in its place. Around 5,000 people, a quarter of the town’s population, are still in temporary shelters with their lives on hold. Many like Ishikawa have chosen to suffer alone rather than seek support. Ishikawa’s voice cracked as she described how her husband placed a scarf around their son’s neck when they found him in a makeshift morgue. “He looked so cold,” she said. After finding him, she went back to the rubble to search for the bodies of her mother and younger brother. There were days in the wake of the disaster when her mind was completely blank, Ishikawa said. Then her blood pressure spiked and she was taken to a hospital. Her doctor urged her to see a counselor but she declined. “No stranger can understand what is in my heart. I must bear this alone,” she said, tears running down her face. Survivors can find it especially difficult to seek help in a country that still stigmatizes mental illness and prizes stoicism, experts say. “Japanese hesitate to use mental health support - not only mental health support, but support in general,” said Tsuyoshi Akiyama, the chairman of the disaster support committee set up by the Japanese Society of Psychiatry and Neurology. Most of the debris has been cleared in Rikuzentakata, leaving only an overgrown field where the town once stood. Dump trucks and bulldozers barrel down the town’s few paved roads, sending clouds of yellow dust into the air. After sunset, there is only silence. Some residents say they believe in ghosts and a few taxi drivers say they refuse to pick up passengers after dark after some claimed to have seen apparitions. The sound of the ocean is faint, and many survivors say they avoid the seaside at night. Mental health professionals say resentment has also built among the survivors because some have managed to get their lives back on track faster than others. “In the first year, there is a collective feeling of working together, of overcoming this together,” said Ayako Sato, a psychologist hired by the Rikuzentakata city board. “In the second year, everyone wants to help each other because everyone suffered a loss in the disaster. But by the third year, you start to see a rift in living standards. People drift apart,” Sato said. Takeshi Kanno, 63, is a pillar of the Rikuzentakata village of Kesencho, which lost all of its homes to the disaster. While Kanno built a relief camp at the Buddhist temple above the town, his youngest son, a volunteer firefighter, searched for bodies in the debris below. “He was young and reliable and everyone depended on him. This became a massive burden,” said Kanno. “He didn’t sleep and collapsed from exhaustion.” Kanno’s son has since been hospitalized and has not spoken or left his room in nearly a year, he said. A photo of his 28-year-old son hangs on the wall of the log cabin Kanno built after the disaster. The photo, taken in 2012, shows a young, slender man smiling as villagers line up before a drum performance. Some of that sense of community has disappeared, Kanno said. There are no comprehensive statistics on the depth of the tsunami’s psychological impact on survivors. Rikuzentakata’s city hall so far counts three disaster-related suicides. A study funded by Japan’s health ministry found that more than a quarter of children aged between 3 and 5 in the disaster zone exhibited signs of distress that needed professional help. Some daycare centers don’t celebrate Mother’s Day or Father’s Day anymore because so many children lost at least one parent. Rikuzentakata mayor Futoshi Toba lost his wife in the tsunami. He says the city must do what it can to help its residents heal as it rebuilds. “There are people who feel better when they speak to someone, and then there are those who feel more traumatized when they remember the past,” Toba said. “What we have to do is to keep rebuilding and share the town’s progress with the residents to keep up hope.”

2true

Environment

13952

As Bernie Sanders said, Hillary Clinton ‘voted for virtually every trade agreement that has cost the workers of this country millions, millions of jobs.’

June 29, 2016

"Trump said, ""As Bernie Sanders said, Hillary Clinton ‘for virtually every trade agreement that has cost the workers of this country millions, millions of jobs.’ "" He accurately recasted Sanders’ words, but that doesn’t make the attack any more correct. Out of the 10 trade deals Clinton could have voted on, she voted in favor of six and against two. On two other deals (with Peru and Jordan), she didn’t vote but did vouch for them. As for subsequent job losses, independent research has shown the impact of NAFTA, for example, to not be significant one way or the other for jobs. Trump’s claim is partially accurate and needs additional information."

Linda Qiu

"Donald Trump made a grab for blue collar Democrats by citing the anti-trade, anti-Hillary Clinton rhetoric of Clinton’s Democratic rival Bernie Sanders. For his latest attack, he borrowed Sanders’ own words. ""As Bernie Sanders said, Hillary Clinton ‘voted for virtually every trade agreement that has cost the workers of this country millions, millions of jobs,’ "" Trump said in a speech about the economy delivered outside a recycling plant in western Pennsylvania. The presumptive Republican nominee quoted Sanders accurately (barring the Trumpian flourish emphasizing ""millions""). But Sanders’ original claim, which we investigated, wasn’t without faults. Clinton has largely supported free trade, though her position is more nuanced than Trump and Sanders suggest, she  The notion that ""millions, millions of jobs"" have been lost because of trade, however, is more debatable. Clinton’s position on free trade Sanders is consistently anti-free trade, and Trump has been outspoken in disapproval of deals like the North American Free Trade Agreement and the Trans Pacific Partnership. Clinton’s views, however, seem to depend on the content of each agreement. Overall, Trump and Sanders have a point that she’s supported more trade deals than she’s opposed. As first lady, Clinton spoke favorably of the NAFTA, signed by President Bill Clinton. The deal, she wrote in her 2003 memoir Living History, ""would expand U.S. exports, create jobs and ensure that our economy was reaping the benefits, not the burdens, of globalization."" During her 2000 Senate bid to represent New York, Clinton supported normalizing trade relations with China. Out of the 10 trade deals that came up for a vote when she was in the Senate, Clinton said yes to six, no to two, and skipped the votes on two (though she had given her vocal support). She also voted for legislation that included an amendment granting Vietnam normalized trade status. She was in favor of a deal with Jordan because of its ""internationally recognized enforceable labor standards,"" she explained in 2005, but she considered the Dominican Republic-Central America Free Trade Agreement ""a step backward."" As a presidential candidate in 2008, Clinton had varying opinions on several trade deals, and she changed her position on NAFTA. She called NAFTA ""a mistake"" and opposed pending deals with South Korea (out of concern for American carmakers), Colombia (because of labor rights abuses) and Panama (whose National Assembly president was a U.S. fugitive). She reiterated her support for free trade with Peru on the campaign trail, praising the country for its ""very strong labor and environmental protections."" As secretary of state in the pro-trade administration of President Barack Obama, Clinton walked back her opposition to three deals from her 2008 run and helped negotiate them. As a presidential candidate in 2016, she flip-flopped on her support for the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Year Trade deal Clinton’s position 1993 North American Free Trade Agreement Supported in 1990s, against in 2007 2002 Trade Act of 2002* Voted against** 2003 Chile-United States Voted for 2003 Singapore-United States Voted for 2004 Australia-United States Voted for 2004 Morocco-United States Voted for 2005 Dominican Republic-Central America Free Trade Agreement Voted against 2005 Bahrain-United States Voted for*** 2006 Oman-United States Voted for 2007 Peru-United States Didn’t vote, supported in 2007 2007 Jordan-United States Didn’t vote, supported in 2005 2011 Panama-United States Against in 2007, supported in 2010 2011 Colombia-United States Against in 2007, supported in 2010 2011 South Korea-United States Against in 2007, supported in 2010 2015 Trans-Pacific Partnership Supported in 2010, against in 2015 * This deal is not included in the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative’s list of free trade agreements, but contains many free trade provisions. ** This is a vote for ""fast track authority"" — allowing trade agreement to move through Congress without amendments or filibusters. *** The free trade agreement with Bahrain passed by unanimous consent, not a recorded roll call vote. Employment impact unclear The jury is still out on the impact of trade deals on employment, even after decades of debate. On one side, unions and some left-leaning think tanks often link American job losses to expanded trade. Labor advocates opposed the Chile and Singapore agreements, which they said in a 2003 report would kill an unspecified number of jobs. The liberal Economic Policy Institute, which Trump cited, has found that NAFTA has cost the United States over 800,000 jobs, and the South Korean deal cost about 60,000. In a 2014 report, the think tank reported that the United States has lost 3.2 million jobs between 2001 and 2013 to trade with China. Business groups, on the other hand, argue that trade deals actually boost employment. For example, a 2010 report by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce found that the 14 trade deals in place in 2008 supported 5.4 million jobs. Meanwhile, the U.S-China Business Council and the Financial Times contend that the loss in manufacturing jobs were not due to trade with China so much as gains in technology and productivity, as well as the result of a more sophisticated economy. And in a recent fact-check, we found several nonpartisan reports demonstrating that NAFTA produced no significant job losses nor job gains. Analysis by economists at Tufts University and the University of Michigan projected no net impact on employment from the Chile, Singapore and South Korea deals. Our ruling Trump said, ""As Bernie Sanders said, Hillary Clinton ‘for virtually every trade agreement that has cost the workers of this country millions, millions of jobs.’ "" He accurately recasted Sanders’ words, but that doesn’t make the attack any more correct. Out of the 10 trade deals Clinton could have voted on, she voted in favor of six and against two. On two other deals (with Peru and Jordan), she didn’t vote but did vouch for them. As for subsequent job losses, independent research has shown the impact of NAFTA, for example, to not be significant one way or the other for jobs. Trump’s claim is partially accurate and needs additional information."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4A55goJJKYE, https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2016/apr/10/bernie-s/clinton-voted-virtually-every-trade-agreement-kill/

1mixture

National, Jobs, Trade, Donald Trump,

7590

NBA players’ union hires director of mental health.

The National Basketball Players Association has hired its first director of mental health and wellness.

Dr. William D. Parham will oversee the union’s new program designed to help members with mental health issues. The program will be headquartered in Los Angeles. NBPA Executive Director Michele Roberts says the union has “heard our players’ stories and are making mental health a priority now.” Earlier this season, NBA stars Kevin Love of the Cleveland Cavaliers and DeMar DeRozan of the Toronto Raptors revealed issues they’ve struggle with on and off the court. Love detailed his experience with panic attacks and anxiety. DeRozan talked about battles with depression.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y82iFW1fzpY

2true

Toronto, NBA basketball, DeMar DeRozan, Anxiety, Mental health, Health, Kevin Love, Basketball, National Basketball Players Association

8034

China readies stimulus measures as local virus cases dwindle.

March 28, 2020

China plans stronger steps to revive an economy hit by coronavirus, as the nation on Saturday reported no new locally transmitted infections for the previous day.

Andrew Galbraith, Luoyan Liu

The ruling Communist Party’s Politburo said on Friday it would step up macroeconomic policy adjustments and pursue more proactive fiscal policy, state media reported. With the world’s second-biggest economy expected to shrink for the first time in four decades this quarter, China is set to unleash hundreds of billions of dollars in stimulus. The Politburo called for expanding the budget deficit, issuing more local and national bonds, guiding interest rates lower, delaying loan repayments, reducing supply-chain bottlenecks and boosting consumption. “We expect government ministries to roll out more tangible measures in the coming weeks as this Politburo meeting gave them no choice but to do more,” Goldman Sachs analysts said. The Politburo did not elaborate on plans for the central government to issue special treasury bonds, which would be the first such issuance since 2007. China should issue at least 2 trillion yuan ($282 billion) of such bonds to aid the economy, Morgan Stanley Chief China Economist Robin Xing said. Restrictions on foreigners entering the country went into effect on Saturday, as China reported no new locally transmitted infections and a small drop in so-called imported cases. Airlines have been ordered to sharply cut international flights from Sunday. Beijing has in recent days emphasized the risk posed by imported virus cases after widespread lockdowns within China helped to sharply reduce domestic transmissions. The Politburo said it would shift its focus to prevent more imported cases and a rebound in locally transmitted infections. “We must be extremely vigilant and cautious, and we must prevent the post-epidemic relaxation from coming too soon, leading to the loss of all our achievements,” the Communist Party’s official People’s Daily newspaper said in a front-page editorial. The authorities also reversed planned reopenings of movie theaters, the state-owned China Securities Journal reported, citing sources. With local transmission of the virus basically under control, China shifts focus toward rebooting paused businesses. China’s Ministry of Commerce said on Saturday nearly all of the country’s major supermarkets, convenience stores, shopping malls and farm produce retail markets have reopened, while all e-commerce platforms are operating. Meanwhile, 80% of restaurants and 60% of hotels are back in business, ministry official Wang Bin told a news conference. In a sign of businesses getting back to normal, wholesale prices of vegetables have dropped 16.5% from end-February, while pork prices have fallen 7.4% from a mid-February high. However, many street shops such as beauty salons are not yet open as “sentiment is reviving slowly, while people remain cautious about going out shopping”, Wang said. In China’s central Hubei Province, authorities had removed all highway checkpoints except those in its capital city Wuhan - the virus epicenter - and allowed traffic to leave the province as of Friday, the official Xinhua News Agency reported on Saturday. Hubei officials vowed to help businesses re-open and people get back to work. Gong Dingrong, mayor of Hubei’s Qianjiang, dubbed “lobster city”, said the government would promote sales across the country both online and offline, adding “there’s nothing to fear” eating lobsters from the city. China’s National Health Commission said on Saturday that 54 new coronavirus cases were reported on the mainland on Friday, all imported cases. There were 55 new cases a day earlier, one of which was transmitted locally. The number of infections for mainland China stands at 81,394, with the death toll rising by three to 3,295, the commission said. Hubei province reported no new cases, and three new deaths. The province of 60 million, where the virus was first detected, has recorded 67,801 coronavirus cases and 3,177 deaths. Shanghai reported the highest number of new cases, with 17. An additional 11 cases were reported in Guangdong, six in Fujian, five in Tianjin, four in Zhejiang, three each in Beijing and Liaoning, two each in Inner Mongolia and Jilin, and one in Shandong. Chinese President Xi Jinping told U.S. President Donald Trump on Friday that China would support U.S. efforts to fight the coronavirus. The number of confirmed cases of coronavirus in the United States rose by at least 16,000 on Friday to nearly 102,000, the most of any country. George Gao, the director-general of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, urged people to wear masks to control the virus’s spread overseas. Gao told the journal Science in an interview published on Friday that the “big mistake in the United States and Europe has been the failure to wear masks, which “can prevent droplets that carry the virus from escaping and infecting others”.

/article/us-health-coronavirus-latest-factbox/factbox-latest-on-the-spread-of-the-coronavirus-around-the-world-idUKKBN21F0B1,/article/us-health-coronavirus-wuhan/chinas-wuhan-where-the-coronavirus-emerged-begins-to-lift-its-lockdown-idUKKBN21F0B9

2true

Health News

33852

Dihydrogen monoxide is a dangerous chemical that should be banned.

June 22, 1999

The dihydrogen monoxide hoax shows that even the most innocuous of substances can be made to sound like a dangerous threat to human life.

David Mikkelson

On April Fool’s Day in 2013, a pair of Florida disc jockeys got themselves into a bit of hot water with station management for prankishly warning their listeners that “dihydrogen monoxide” — another name for that life-giving substance we identify as H2O, or more commonly, “water” — was coming out of local residents’ taps: The radio station’s joke involved that “dihydrogen monoxide” was coming out of county residents’ taps.The joke immediately got the attention of Patty DiPiero from Lee County Utilities. She said Lee County residents began calling the utility saying they heard on the station that county water was unsafe and should not be used for drinking, showering or for any use. DiPiero stressed in an email to media outlets that the utility was not having any issues with the water supply and the water is safe to use. However, some people believed the hoax, at least for a short time. One woman wrote in saying she worked in the food service industry and was trying to figure out how to serve customers and prepare food without requiring water.https://www.snopes.com/wp-admin/post.php?post=30094&action=edit# Lee County residents were far from the first people to fall for this venerable jape. Back in September 2007, for example, news media reported that a New Zealand MP was tricked by a letter from a constituent asking her to raise the issue of “dihydrogen monoxide” (DHMO): National MP Jacqui Dean has been caught out by a long-running hoax that seeks to trick gullible MPs into calling for a ban on “dihydrogen monoxide” — or water. A letter, signed by Ms Dean and sent to Associate Health Minister Jim Anderton, the minister in charge of drug policy, asked if the Expert Advisory Committee on Drugs had a view on banning the “drug”. Mr Anderton yesterday took the opportunity to rub Ms Dean’s nose in the embarrassing blunder. He said dihydrogen monoxide “may have been described to her as colourless, odourless, tasteless and causing the death of uncounted thousands of people every year, and withdrawal from which, for those who become dependent on it, means certain death. “I had to respond that the experts had no intention of doing so.” In 1997, Nathan Zohner, a 14-year-old student at Eagle Rock Junior High School in Idaho Falls, made the news when he based his science fair project on a warning similar to the one reproduced in the “Example” box above. Zohner’s project, titled “How Gullible Are We?”, involved presenting that warning about “the dangers of dihydrogen monoxide” to fifty ninth-grade students and asking them what (if anything) should be done about the chemical: Dihydrogen monoxide is colorless, odorless, tasteless, and kills uncounted thousands of people every year. Most of these deaths are caused by accidental inhalation of DHMO, but the dangers of dihydrogen monoxide do not end there. Prolonged exposure to its solid form causes severe tissue damage. Symptoms of DHMO ingestion can include excessive sweating and urination, and possibly a bloated feeling, nausea, vomiting and body electrolyte imbalance. For those who have become dependent, DHMO withdrawal means certain death.Dihydrogen monoxide: Contamination is reaching epidemic proportions! Quantities of dihydrogen monoxide have been found in almost every stream, lake, and reservoir in America today. But the pollution is global, and the contaminant has even been found in Antarctic ice. DHMO has caused millions of dollars of property damage in the midwest, and recently California. Despite the danger, dihydrogen monoxide is often used: Companies dump waste DHMO into rivers and the ocean, and nothing can be done to stop them because this practice is still legal. The impact on wildlife is extreme, and we cannot afford to ignore it any longer! The American government has refused to ban the production, distribution, or use of this damaging chemical due to its “importance to the economic health of this nation.” In fact, the navy and other military organizations are conducting experiments with DHMO, and designing multi-billion dollar devices to control and utilize it during warfare situations. Hundreds of military research facilities receive tons of it through a highly sophisticated underground distribution network. Many store large quantities for later use. Forty-three students favored banning DHMO, six were undecided, and only one correctly recognized that ‘dihydrogen monoxide’ was actually plain old water. Zohner’s analysis of the results he obtained won him first prize in the Greater Idaho Falls Science Fair; garnered him scads of attention from newspapers, magazines, radio and TV stations, universities, and congresspeople; and prompted the usual round of outcries about how our ignorant citizenry doesn’t read critically and can be easily misled. Even back then Nathan Zohner’s project wasn’t original, as spoof petitions about dihydrogen monoxide and other innocuous “dangers” had been circulating for years, and Nathan based his project on a bogus report that was already making the rounds of the Internet. Moreover, his target audience was ninth-graders, a group highly susceptible to allowing peer pressure to overwhelm critical thinking. Thrust any piece of paper at the average high school student with a suggestion about what the “correct” response to it should be, and peer pressure pretty much assures you’ll get the answer you’re looking for. Someone that age isn’t very likely to read a friend’s petition calling for the banning of whale hunting and critically evaluate the socio-economic and environmental impact of such a regulation; instead, he’s probably going to say to himself, “This issue is obviously important to my friend, and he must have some good reasons for circulating the petition, so I’ll sign it.” That said, this example does aptly demonstrate the kind of fallacious reasoning that’s thrust at us every day under the guise of “important information”: how with a little effort, even the most innocuous of substances can be made to sound like a dangerous threat to human life. In March 2004 the California municipality of Aliso Viejo (a suburb in Orange County) came within a cat’s whisker of falling for this hoax after a paralegal there convinced city officials of the danger posed by this chemical. The leg-pull got so far as a vote’s having been scheduled for the City Council on a proposed law that would have banned the use of foam containers at city-sponsored events because (among other things) they were made with DHMO, a substance that could “threaten human health and safety.”

0false

Science, april fool's day

4072

Texas records 1st death linked to e-cigarette use.

Health officials in Texas say the state has recorded its first death associated with vaping-related lung illnesses.

The Texas Department of State Health Services confirmed Wednesday that an older woman in north Texas died last week from a lung disease associated with using electronic cigarettes. The agency says the state has also identified 95 confirmed or probable cases of lung illnesses linked to vaping. The agency says those illnesses affect patients as young as 13, with a median age of 22. The department also says that among the illnesses, nearly 90% of patients reported vaping marijuana or THC, the high-producing ingredient in marijuana. According to the Centers for Disease Control, more than 1,000 confirmed or probable vaping illnesses have been reported nationwide as of last week.

/995d728fb263409ca5f474409bdd164f

2true

Health, General News, Lung disease, Vaping, Texas

15117

When (Ronald) Reagan came in, from 1978 to 1982, economic growth averaged less than 1 percent a year. There’s only one other four-year period where that’s true. That’s true from 2008 to 2012.

September 25, 2015

"Cruz said that ""when (Ronald) Reagan came in, from 1978 to 1982, economic growth averaged less than 1 percent a year. There’s only one other four-year period where that’s true. That’s true from 2008 to 2012."" Cruz missed two other four-year periods that fit the criteria. In addition, his implication -- that Democrats are largely to blame for those conditions -- doesn’t stand up to logical consistency, particularly when he excluded the period beginning in 2006 (which included three years solely under Bush) and 2007 (which included two years solely under Bush). This goes on top of general uncertainty about how much blame to assign presidents for poor economic conditions."

Louis Jacobson

"Newly installed CBS late-night host Stephen Colbert tangled, politely, with Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, on his Sept. 21 show regarding the legacy of President Ronald Reagan. Colbert asked Cruz, who’s running for the Republican presidential nomination, whether he could agree with Reagan’s support of ""amnesty"" for undocumented immigrants and the late president’s willingness to raise some taxes amid budget shortfalls. Cruz said ""of course not"" before pivoting to Reagan’s most conservative accomplishments, one being that he ""signed the largest tax cut in history"" and spurred economic growth. ""When (Ronald) Reagan came in, from 1978 to 1982, economic growth averaged less than 1 percent a year,"" Cruz said. ""There’s only one other four-year period where that’s true. That’s true from 2008 to 2012."" His point was that Reagan rescued the U.S. economy from the ravages it suffered under his Democratic predecessor, President Jimmy Carter, and that the only other equivalent economic distress occurred under Carter’s fellow Democrat, Barack Obama. Colbert responded, ""But when conditions changed in the country, he reversed his world’s ‘largest tax cut’ and raised taxes when revenues did not match the expectations. So it’s a matter of compromising."" We wondered if Cruz was correct about the periods of low GDP growth. (In a separate fact-check, we explore Colbert’s rejoinder.) Excepting the unusual post-World War II period of 1945 through 1949 -- when the nation was demobilizing from an all-encompassing war -- Cruz has put his finger correctly on the two general periods in which the annual average growth of gross domestic product over four-year periods has sunk below 1 percent. They are the late 1970s era of ""stagflation"" (that is, stagnant growth combined with rapid inflation) and the aftermath of the Great Recession. The full annual data can be found here. But there were actually three distinct four-year periods during and after the Great Recession that fit Cruz’s criteria, rather than one -- that is, the four-year periods starting with 2006, 2007 and 2008. (With every four-year period beginning after 2009, average annual GDP growth has exceeded 1 percent.) Here’s the rundown of the four post-World War II periods that fit Cruz’s criteria: First year Second year Third year Fourth year Average annual GDP growth 1979 1980 1981 1982 0.2 percent 2006 2007 2008 2009 0.3 percent 2007 2008 2009 2010 0.4 percent 2008 2009 2010 2011 0.4 percent So Cruz overlooked two additional four-year periods. Also, the implication of his comment -- that Democrats bear the primary responsibility for these periods of poor economic growth -- is not so clear. For starters, as we’ve discussed previously, economists say it’s hard to determine how much credit or blame a president deserves for successes or shortcomings in the economy at large on their watch. Factors outside their control, from energy-price shocks to technological changes to pure luck, can have a significant impact on the nation’s economic record. In addition, Cruz’s groupings suggest some contradictory standard-setting. For the 1979-1982 period, Carter was in office for the first two years and Reagan was in office for the third and fourth years. But in the next two periods -- 2006-2009 and  2007-2010 -- George W. Bush, a Republican, was president for at least half of the time. In fact, Bush was in charge for the first three years in 2006-2009, and the first two years in 2007-2010. If Carter, Democrat, is to take blame for the slow growth in the first period, then logically Bush, a Republican, should shoulder the same blame in the next two four-year periods. By the same token, if Reagan, a Republican, escapes blame in the first example, then so too should Obama in the second and third four-year periods. And the 2005-2008 period -- which occurred entirely on Bush’s watch -- barely escapes inclusion on this list, with an average annual growth rate of 1.13 percent. (During the 2008-2011 period, Obama was president for the final three of those years.) Gary Burtless, an economist with the Brookings Institution, said he doesn’t blame either Reagan or Obama for the economic shortcomings early in their tenures that fall under Cruz’s statistical claim. Still, he sees a logical inconsistency in Cruz’s comparison as stated on Colbert’s show. ""It seems doubtful whether poor economic performance early in any president's term can be attributed to the impact of his administration's policies,"" Burtless said. ""If you take office when economic output is plunging, it does not seem legitimate to attribute the economic plunge to the person who just took office."" He added a footnote: Unlike Obama, who unquestionably inherited a recession already under way, the economy actually grew through the first couple of months of Reagan’s first term. GDP grew in the third and fourth quarters of 1980, right before he was elected, and continued to grow during the first quarter of 1981 after he was in office, before a ""double-dip"" recession hit. Cruz spokesman Phil Novack told PolitiFact that our analysis misses the point. ""The focus on who exactly held office in each of those individual time periods is not as important as the contrast between the two periods in terms of how quickly the economy was growing before and after those identified time periods, which is the point Cruz was making,"" Novack said. ""His point was obviously referring to policy results, and we know the results of the policies that followed those slow-growth years of below 1 percent growth that Sen. Cruz identified. Reagan's policies brought us a boom, and Obama's policies have been a bust."" For what it’s worth, we also compared Carter and Reagan on their economic records and found them more similar than one might expect. During Carter’s four years in office, the growth rate averaged 3.23 percent a year. If you take the first four years of Reagan’s presidency, it averaged 3.34 percent. Essentially, each president had two good years and two bad years, which more or less averaged out. Our ruling Cruz said that ""when (Ronald) Reagan came in, from 1978 to 1982, economic growth averaged less than 1 percent a year. There’s only one other four-year period where that’s true. That’s true from 2008 to 2012."" Cruz missed two other four-year periods that fit the criteria. In addition, his implication -- that Democrats are largely to blame for those conditions -- doesn’t stand up to logical consistency, particularly when he excluded the period beginning in 2006 (which included three years solely under Bush) and 2007 (which included two years solely under Bush). This goes on top of general uncertainty about how much blame to assign presidents for poor economic conditions."

https://www.vox.com/2015/9/22/9371061/stephen-colbert-ted-cruz-reagan, https://www.cbs.com/shows/the-late-show-with-stephen-colbert/video/lWnNNK_rPFACFQeSoqFwD4lu2g0V2w8B/the-late-show-9-21-2015-stephen-curry-ted-cruz-don-henley-/, http://www.multpl.com/us-real-gdp-growth-rate/table/by-year

0false

National, Economy, History, Jobs, Ted Cruz,

35479

A saltwater solution will force insect pests out of infested strawberries.

July 10, 2020

What's true: The agricultural industry tests for an invasive insect known as spotted wing drosophila using a solution of water and salt or sugar to force bugs out of potentially infested fruit. What's false: Experts note that while this method is used by agriculturalists to test for the flying pests, there is no conclusive or published scientific evidence that proves its legitimacy.

Madison Dapcevich

Several now-viral videos posted to Twitter, Facebook, and TikTok in May 2020 showed small insects crawling along the outside of strawberries after the fruit had been soaked in a saltwater solution. Collectively, the videos received hundreds of thousands of views and sparked many questions about the methodology. Social media users filled a bowl with water and table salt. Once the salt had dissolved, strawberries were said to have been submerged in the solution for “about 30 minutes” after which point small “worms” could be seen crawling around the outside of the berry. WAIT FOR IT… Still trying to think happy thoughts today. #fyp #foryou #strawberrieswithbugs #bugsinstrawberries #rednoseday #got2bhome ♬ original sound – callmekristatorres Though it is true that strawberries and other fruit may house small insects and the saltwater method is largely used by the agricultural industry as a way to detect such infestations, entomological experts at Oregon State University told Snopes that there is no scientific evidence that suggests a saltwater solution can, in fact, force pests out from infested berries. The insect in question is an invasive flying pest called spotted wing drosophila (SWD), or Drosophila suzukii. Endemic to Asia, SWD was first detected in North America in California in 2008 and has since spread to many regions of the United States where the insects are known to infect fruit crops and berries, according to Michigan State University (MSU). Female flies lay their eggs in fruit where they will ultimately hatch into a delectable habitat prime for larval feeding. If the pest is not controlled through mitigation measures, MSU adds that it is possible fruit may be harvested with larvae inside. Despite a lack of published scientific evidence, the saltwater method is one most often employed by commercial growers in order to determine whether an SWD infestation has occurred, but berry lovers of any sort can also use it to detect creepy crawlies.

1mixture

Critter Country

10496

Advances in treatments for enlarged prostates

May 12, 2008

While this story provides a lot of potentially interesting information about means for managing problems associated with benign prostate hyperplasia, it falls short of best journalistic practice on a number of counts. It engages in disease mongering with the underlying thought that all enlarged prostates seemingly need to be treated. It failed to provide a framework for the results presented. It didn’t mention side effects associated with the treatments. It did not distinguish between those treatments which have been used now for a several years and those which are experimental. While acknowledging that the medications might be prescribed for ‘the rest of their lives’, it didn’t provide much insight about the length of time the treatments discussed had been studied and whether their effectiveness or benefit/harm ratio changes over time. It also did not provide much quantitative information about the magnitude of benefit that might be expected or the proportion of men that could be anticipated to reap those benefits. The story did not fully describe the various clinical and quality-of-life outcomes measured in the treatment trials. Another omission was that the newer medications–PD5 inhibitors and Botox–are uNPRoven (based on clinically meaningful, long-term outcomes), quite expensive, and associated with important complications.

There was no mentioned of costs – and that’s a big issue. The costs of 5-alpha reductase inhibitors ($3/pill) and PD5-inhibitors (> $10/pill) are rather high compared to alpha blocker such as terazosin and doxazosin ($0.5 to 1.5). Avodart and Tamsulosin are not more effective than finasteride (now a generic) and terazosin/doxazosin, just newer and more expensive. While discussing the symptoms associated with benign prostate hyperplasia, it provide little quantitative information either about how common the various types of symptoms are or the extent to which the various medications and medication combinations relieved these symptoms. The story also did not provide data on the proportion of men who benefit, the magnitude of treatment benefit for symptom relief, quality of life, or preventing complications from BPH progression. The only other evidence was that Botox reduces prostate volume by 15%–a finding of uncertain clinical significance. The story did not explicitly note the most clinically important benefits of preventing BPH progression–reducing the risks for surgery, renal insufficiency, and urinary retention. The story did not mention any harms that might be associated with the use of 8 of the 9 medications discussed (though the description of the tolterodine study does note the potential for urinary retention); nor any possible harms associated with combined use of the various medications mentioned. The story mentioned a number of studies and extrapolated results from studies with one drug to others using a different drug, albeit of the same class. It is incorrect to assume that all drugs within a class will have the same magnitude of benefit, or even the same harms associated with their use. This story engaged in disease mongering. It leads with the concern that with increasing age, men experience a steady enlargement of the prostate gland. While this may be the case, it is not always a condition that mandates intervention. The story then goes on to explain about the symptoms of benign prostate hyperplasia explaining that there are bothersome symptoms and serious symptoms. Yet the reader is not given any information that would enable them to gauge how often the more serious symptoms arise. The story referred to the results of several previously published stories. It included a comment from one of the authors of a high quality study published in a peer reviewed  It also made reference to the results to be presented at an upcoming meeting that are from a drug company funded trial. It included a comment from one of the authors of that yet to be presented study. The story mentioned that surgery used to be the gold standard of care for benign prostate hyperplasia but that it is now commonplace for medications to be used to treat symptoms and prevent progression of benign prostate hyperplasia. The story did not mention that it is not always necessary for benign prostate hyperplasia to be actively treated. This is a significant oversight. The story mentioned 9 different medications, included the scientific name for most but not all along with a trade name. However, although there are direct to consumer advertisements for many of the medications mentioned, the story did not explicitly state whether these medications were approved and whether they were prescription or over-the-counter preparations. The story was informative about noninvasive approaches for treatment of the symptoms of benign prostate hyperplasia. However, most of the story focused on drugs that have been in use for years and cited studies 2 – 5 years old. Does not appear to rely on a press release.

0false

16807

"Newt Gingrich Says Hillary Clinton's health care plan from the 1990s ""had a broader provision in favor of corporate right to back out"" of providing contraceptive coverage than the one created by the Hobby Lobby Supreme Court decision."

July 8, 2014

"Gingrich said Hillary Clinton's health care plan from the 1990s ""had a broader provision in favor of corporate right to back out"" of providing contraceptive coverage than the one created by the Hobby Lobby Supreme Court decision. We found that Sen. Moynihan did produce a health care bill, as part of widespread reform efforts, that included a religious exemption for employers that was broader than the provisions created by the court’s decision. However, Gingrich was wrong to connect that back to the Clintons. The Clintons’ health care plans did not include such a provision, and they did not back Moynihan’s bill. In fact, Moynihan was critical of the administration throughout the health care debate. Additionally, his proposal came up near the end of the reform efforts and didn’t generate much discussion."

Lauren Carroll

"Republicans have been getting a lot of mileage out of the recent Supreme Court decision that brought a blow to the Affordable Care Act -- with the court citing a law enacted by Bill Clinton as part of its rationale. In Burwell vs. Hobby Lobby, the court said the 1993 Religious Freedom Restoration Act allows certain corporations to opt out of providing employees with certain contraception coverage -- which were mandated by the ACA -- because of the owners’ religious beliefs. Now, former Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich is saying Bill and Hillary Clinton’s health care reform plan from the 1990s also would have supported the court’s decision. In fact, Hillary Clinton’s plan -- which he calls Hillarycare -- would have been more favorable to corporations wanting to evade certain parts of Obama’s health care law. ""Hillarycare, 20 years ago, had a broader provision. The bill that (former Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, D-N.Y.) introduced for Hillary had a broader provision in favor of corporate right to back out,"" of providing contraceptives based on religious beliefs, Gingrich said on Sunday’s ABC This Week. We showed Gingrich's statement to Sara Rosenbaum, a health policy professor at George Washington University, who played a role in drafting health care legislation for the Clinton administration. ""I have absolutely no idea what he is talking about,"" she said. So what is Gingrich talking about? The Clintons' proposed Health Security Act, proposed in 1993, would have required all employers to contribute to employees' health insurance. All benefits packages would have included coverage for ""family planning,"" including birth control. But the original proposal doesn't say anything about religious exemptions for employers. We weren't able to get a hold of Gingrich, but we think he's referring to this provision, included in a 1994 bill that Moynihan sponsored during the health care reform debate. (This bill was, however, separate from the Clintons’ plan.) Moynihan’s bill said, in part, ""Nothing in this title shall be construed to prevent any employer from contributing to the purchase of a standard benefits package which excludes coverage of abortion or other services, if the employer objects to such services on the basis of a religious belief or moral conviction."" In plain English, the law would not require an employer to utilize a benefits package that provided benefits that went against their religious or moral beliefs. Gingrich is right that this would be less restrictive than the provisions laid out by the Supreme Court in the Hobby Lobby decision, experts said. The court decision established fairly narrow restrictions for corporations looking to claim religious exemption from parts of the Affordable Care Act (though some say it creates a slippery slope). The decision said closely held corporations with strong religious convictions don’t have to offer insurance that covers four kinds of ACA-mandated contraceptives. Moynihan’s provision was less restrictive because it said employers don’t have to purchase plans that include ""abortion and other services,"" but it does not specify the other services, said Timothy Jost, a Washington and Lee University law professor. Additionally, it includes ""moral conviction"" in addition to ""religious beliefs,"" Jost added. The Religious Freedom and Restoration Act on which the court based its decision only applies to religious beliefs. But was creating an exemption for employers based on religious beliefs a primary tenant of the Clintons' health care plan? No, it wasn’t. The Clintons’ proposal Moynihan’s bill was not put forth on the Clintons’ behalf. Their plan did not include a religious exemption for employers clause, said Chris Jennings, former health care adviser to both Clinton and President Barack Obama, in an interview. ""That was not related to the plan,"" Jennings said. In fact, Moynihan was routinely critical of the Clintons’ proposal, once calling the administration’s financing estimates ""fantasy."" Moynihan's proposal was one of several health care reform bills coming out of the 103rd Congress, and it certainly was not the one the Clintons wanted. It saw little floor time because it came up in August 1994, when the health care reform debate was winding down. No other version of the Health Security Act included a religious exemption provision for employers -- including another earlier version also sponsored by Moynihan. The primary health care bill -- sponsored by former Rep. Richard Gephardt, D-Mo. and backed by the Clintons -- included a provision that allowed health care providers to refuse to offer or perform services that went against their moral or religious beliefs, such as abortions. But the exemption did not extend to the employers contributing to health insurance costs. The congressional briefing book on the Clintons' proposed plan does not include the provision, either. Additionally, we spoke with experts who said they do not recall birth control as a major source of debate during the Clintons’ health care reform efforts. News coverage at the time seems to back that up. Contraception coverage ""hadn't emerged as a goal of reformers at that point,"" said Paul Starr, a public affairs professor at Princeton University. ""So the idea of a ‘corporate right to back out’ also hadn't come up."" Abortion coverage was the primary point of contention, in terms of family planning, rather than birth control, Rosenbaum said. It’s possible that Moynihan added a religious exemption for employers in order to appease those who didn’t want comprehensive abortion coverage. But even so, it seems unlikely that the Clintons would have budged on providing universal abortion coverage. Around that time, Lorrie McHugh, a Clinton administration spokeswoman on health, told the New York Times that the administration stood by its original position that abortion should be covered ""where a doctor deemed it medically necessary or appropriate. … We’ll fight for it."" Our ruling Gingrich said Hillary Clinton's health care plan from the 1990s ""had a broader provision in favor of corporate right to back out"" of providing contraceptive coverage than the one created by the Hobby Lobby Supreme Court decision. We found that Sen. Moynihan did produce a health care bill, as part of widespread reform efforts, that included a religious exemption for employers that was broader than the provisions created by the court’s decision. However, Gingrich was wrong to connect that back to the Clintons. The Clintons’ health care plans did not include such a provision, and they did not back Moynihan’s bill. In fact, Moynihan was critical of the administration throughout the health care debate. Additionally, his proposal came up near the end of the reform efforts and didn’t generate much discussion."

https://www.nytimes.com/1994/07/14/us/health-care-debate-abortion-issue-house-democrats-support-abortion-health-plans.html, https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/BILLS-103hr3600ih/pdf/BILLS-103hr3600ih.pdf, https://www.nytimes.com/1994/08/29/us/health-care-debate-what-went-wrong-health-care-campaign-collapsed-special-report.html?pagewanted=all, http://clinton6.nara.gov/1993/09/1993-09-20-health-care-security-act.html, https://www.nytimes.com/1994/06/16/us/moynihan-health-bill-a-political-enigma.html, https://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/tgr/07/2/gr070206.html, https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015029962415;view=1up;seq=1, https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/103/s2351/text

0false

Abortion, Congress, Corporations, Health Care, Religion, Sexuality, Supreme Court, PunditFact, Newt Gingrich,

36654

"Bovine tuberculosis"" has appeared in a herd of cattle in Michigan."

October 10, 2018

‘Bovine Tuberculosis’ Appearing in Michigan?

Brooke Binkowski

In October 2018, a warning appeared and made its way around the usual internet circles to warn against eating meat from deer afflicted with “bovine tuberculosis.” The warning was accompanied by a rather unappetizing photograph of a lesion-studded hunk of meat that showed what people should avoid:Since 1995, Michigan has been testing white-tailed deer for bovine tuberculosis year-round. Michigan has the longest- running continuous wildlife TB surveillance program in the world.“Most Michiganders, and even most policymakers, don’t realize how much we’ve learned about bTB in the last 20 years”, said Dan O’Brien, veterinary specialist with DNR’s wildlife disease lab. “The research we’ve done here in Michigan is respected around the world.“Other countries dealing with similar outbreaks of bTB continue to watch our situation with great interest. At this point, we know what it will take to get rid of bTB. Whether we as a state will choose to make that happen though is still an open question.”The original warning was belched back into the public consciousness in October 2018 because a large cattle herd in Alcona County was found to be infected with bovine tuberculosis, the 73rd herd so infected since 1998:Bovine TB is a bacterial disease that also has infected free-ranging whitetail deer in parts of the northeastern Lower Peninsula.Cattle in Alcona, Alpena, Montmorency and Oscoda counties must be tested before they are moved off the farm, which can help prevent the illness from spreading.Assistant State Veterinarian Nancy Barr says farmers in that area should do all they can to prevent deer from having contact with cattle feeding and watering areas.The original warning simply urges hunters to get the wild deer they kill tested free of charge before consumption, even if it looks healthy. Humans as well as cattle can potentially contract bovine tuberculosis, which is relatively rare, but potentially fatal if left untreated.

http://www.michigan.gov/bovinetb, https://www.truthorfiction.com/submerged-planes-in-florida/, https://www.cdc.gov/tb/publications/factsheets/general/mbovis.pdf, https://apnews.com/7e56e6ba20cd4ed3a728712e43ed10d7, https://www.truthorfiction.com/taylor-swifts-political-endorsements-rumors-reality/, https://www.michigan.gov/dnr/0,4570,7-350-79137_79770_79873_80003-425908--,00.html, https://www.reddit.com/submit?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.truthorfiction.com%2Fbovine-tuberculosis-appearing-michigan%2F, https://api.whatsapp.com/send?text=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.truthorfiction.com%2Fbovine-tuberculosis-appearing-michigan%2F, https://www.linkedin.com/cws/share?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.truthorfiction.com%2Fbovine-tuberculosis-appearing-michigan%2F, https://www.truthorfiction.com/author/brooke/, https://twitter.com/intent/tweet?text=%27Bovine+Tuberculosis%27+Appearing+in+Michigan%3F&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.truthorfiction.com%2Fbovine-tuberculosis-appearing-michigan%2F&via=erumors, https://www.truthorfiction.com/category/fact-checks/, https://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/2018/10/10/bovine-tuberculosis-deer-cattle/1588107002/, https://www.truthorfiction.com/category/fact-checks/viral-content/, https://www.facebook.com/share.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.truthorfiction.com%2Fbovine-tuberculosis-appearing-michigan%2F

2true

Fact Checks, Viral Content

38992

  A Germanwings airbus crash in the French Alps that killed 150 people was an act of terror because Germanwings co-pilot Andreas Lubitz had converted to a radical form of Islam before the crash.

March 30, 2015

Germanwings Pilot Had Converted to Islam-Investigation Pending!

Rich Buhler & Staff

There has been a lot of speculation about why Germanwings co-pilot Andrea Lubitz intentionally flew an airplane into a mountain, but there’s no clear answer yet. The Germanwings airbus crashed into the French Alps on March 24, 2015. Two days later, Germanwings said in a statement that the crash “appeared” to be a deliberate act by co-pilot Andrea Lubitz: “We are horrified to discover today that the aircraft that crashed in the south of France appears to have been crashed deliberately – probably by the co-pilot of flight 4U9525. Based on audio taken from the voice recorder, the French authorities have come to the conclusion that after the aircraft had reached cruising altitude, the captain left the cockpit for a short time and was then unable to re-enter. It appears that the co-pilot, who had stayed in the cockpit, prevented the captain from re-entering by fully locking the cockpit door in order to then initiate the fatal descent. All Germanwings and Lufthansa employees are deeply shocked. We could never have imagined that a tragedy like this could occur within our company.” It’s not yet known why Andreas Lubitz would deliberately fly the plane into the side of a mountain. Early reports indicated that Lubitz had been treated for mental illness in the past and had previously attempted suicide. French authorities found a torn up sick note from a doctor that would have excused Andreas Lubitz from work on the day of the crash, but the reason for the note hasn’t been revealed. Germanwings said that Lubitz didn’t submit the sick note to them. German officials said that Andreas Lubitz had hid “an unspecified medical condition” from his employers, the Telegraph reports: “The fact there are sick notes saying he was unable to work, among other things, that were found torn up, which were recent and even from the day of the crime, support the assumption based on the preliminary examination that the deceased hid his illness from his employer and his professional colleagues. “The prosecutors said in a statement that the documents were found in searches of Lubitz’s homes in Duesseldorf and in the town of Montabaur in the state of Rhineland-Palatinate. “The Uniklinik hospital in Dusseldorf confirmed that it had treated Lubitz in recent weeks but said it was not for depression. “Meanwhile Bild, the German newspaper, reported that ‘Lubitz had a serious relationship crisis with his girlfriend before the disaster and the resulting heartbreak is thought to have led to this.’” Just before the crash, Andreas Lubitz’s pregnant girlfriend broke up with him. Her friends said Lubitz was a “tormented and erratic man” who suffered from unpredictable behavior and mood swings. He had also been having an affair with a Germanwings flight attendant in the months leading up to the crash, the Daily Mail reports. Early indicators suggest that Andreas Lubitz suffered from mental illness and that led him to deliberately crash the airplane. Sill, other theories claim that it was an act of terrorism and that Lubitz had converted to a radical form of Islam. One of those claims comes from the German blog site Pi-News: “All evidence indicates that the copilot of Airbus machine in his six-months break during his training as a pilot in Germanwings, converted to Islam and subsequently either by the order of ‘radical,’ ie. devout Muslim , or received the order from the book of terror, the Quran, on his own accord decided to carry out this mass murder. As a radical mosque in Bremen is in the center of the investigation, in which the convert was staying often, it can be assumed that he — as Mohammed Atta, in the attack against New York — received his instructions directly from the immediate vicinity of the mosque.” That report has been repeated by a number of blog sites across the web. However, Pi-News isn’t a trustworthy news source. The website describes itself as against “the mainstream, America, Israel, basic and human laws and the fight against the Islamisation of Europe.” Officials in France and Germany have not said that the crash could have been an act of terrorism, but the investigation is ongoing. Comments

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/france/11496066/Andreas-Lubitz-Everything-we-know-on-Monday-about-Germanwings-plane-crash-co-pilot.html, https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3016420/Killer-pilot-Andreas-Lubitz-planned-marry-teacher-girlfriend-broke-relationship-just-weeks-Alps-crash-police-small-mountain-anti-depressants-flat.html, https://www.linkedin.com/cws/share?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.truthorfiction.com%2Fgermanwings-pilot-had-converted-to-islam%2F, https://www.truthorfiction.com/legochurch/, https://www.reddit.com/submit?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.truthorfiction.com%2Fgermanwings-pilot-had-converted-to-islam%2F, https://www.germanwings.com/en/information/current-information.html, https://twitter.com/intent/tweet?text=Germanwings+Pilot+Had+Converted+to+Islam-Investigation+Pending%21&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.truthorfiction.com%2Fgermanwings-pilot-had-converted-to-islam%2F&via=erumors, http://www.pi-news.org/about-us/, https://www.truthorfiction.com/category/space-aviation/, https://api.whatsapp.com/send?text=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.truthorfiction.com%2Fgermanwings-pilot-had-converted-to-islam%2F, https://www.facebook.com/share.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.truthorfiction.com%2Fgermanwings-pilot-had-converted-to-islam%2F, https://www.truthorfiction.com/category/religious/, http://speisa.com/modules/articles/index.php/item.1086/the-co-pilot-of-the-germanwings-airbus-was-a-convert-to-islam.html, https://www.truthorfiction.com/pepsi-cuts-under-god-from-pledge-of-allegiance-on-cans/, https://www.truthorfiction.com/author/truthorfiction/

3unproven

Religious, Space / Aviation

6586

Indianapolis 500 officials to offer measles vaccine at race.

Some fans attending Sunday’s Indianapolis 500 can get measles vaccines at the track’s infield medical center.

IndyCar medical director Geoffrey Billows said Thursday a “very limited supply” of vaccines will be available at the medical building near the Indianapolis Motor Speedway museum. He says most insurance companies will cover the cost. Billows encourages concerned fans to get vaccinated before coming to a race expected to attract in excess of 275,000. Measles was once common in the U.S. but gradually became rare after vaccination campaigns that started in the 1960s. The nation is struggling with a high number of cases this year as some families choose not to get vaccinated despite the recommendations of public health experts. At least 20 confirmed cases of mumps also were reported at Indiana University in Bloomington, about 50 miles southwest of Indianapolis. ___ More AP auto racing: https://apnews.com/apf-AutoRacing and https://twitter.com/AP_Sports

https://twitter.com/AP_Sports,/apf-AutoRacing

2true

Indianapolis, IndyCar, Health, Measles, North America, Indianapolis 500, Indiana, Public health

26134

“Infection rates in Allegany, Cattaraugus and Chautauqua counties have consistently been among the lowest in the state.”

June 12, 2020

A look at the data from the end of March to mid-May confirms that the per capita infection rate in Allegany, Cattaraugus and Chautauqua counties was typically in the bottom one-third of counties in the state. By contrast, the other two counties in western New York, Erie and Niagara, were consistently in the top half of counties for infections per capita.

Michael Hogan

"As New York state began implementing a regional approach to reopening after coronavirus-related shutdowns, a lawmaker from western New York complained that many of his constituents faced a longer wait to reopen because they were geographically linked to more hard-hit counties. State Sen. George Borrello, who made the comments in a statement on May 11, represents New York’s 57th district, which includes three less-populated counties — Allegany, Cattaraugus and Chautauqua — south of more heavily populated regions near Buffalo (Erie County) and Niagara Falls (Niagara County). ""While infection rates in Allegany, Cattaraugus and Chautauqua counties have consistently been among the lowest in the state throughout the COVID-19 crisis, our linkage with Erie County and its higher infection rates means that we don’t meet the metrics for reopening, and our hurting, rural economies must remain shut down for at least another two weeks,"" Borrello said in the statement. The state’s reopening plan allowed regions to begin Phase 1 of the reopening process on May 15 as long as they met seven metrics established by the state. The Western New York Region subsequently met all seven metrics on May 18 and entered Phase 1 the following day. But we wondered whether Borrello was correct in his May 11 statement that the infection rates in the three rural counties was substantially lower than those of the more urbanized counties to the north, and consistently among the state's lowest. We used the county-by-county infection tallies posted on Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s pressroom page and converted them to a rate per 10,000 residents. We ranked the counties from the highest to the lowest for each week from March 30 to mid-May, when Borrello made his statement. We found that, as Borrello had said, Allegany, Cattaraugus and Chautauqua counties ranked low in infection rates consistently over that period, while Erie and Niagara started higher and continued to rise: Our analysis found that Chautauqua never ranked higher than sixth from the bottom for infection rates among the 58 New York counties for which data was available, and Chautauqua had the lowest rate of any county for much of the period. Allegany and Cattaraugus ranked marginally higher than Chautauqua, but well below Erie and Niagara. Overall, the three small counties usually ranked in the bottom one-third of counties in the state, and by the time Borrello made his statement, they were all in the bottom one-fifth of counties. By contrast, Erie and Niagara were consistently in the top half of counties as measured by infections per capita. New York City (including all five boroughs) ranked at or near the top for the entire period. The state reopening plan mirrored what many other states are doing, with certain types of non-essential businesses opening in phases in each of 10 regions, as long as certain health measurements are met in the region. Borrello said in an interview that he just wants sensible reopening policies that are implemented ""fairly and equitably."" ""Even though the infection rates are higher in Erie County than the rest of the region, we’re still talking about keeping those same precautions and ensuring that they’re being adhered to,"" he said. Borrello said that ""infection rates in Allegany, Cattaraugus and Chautauqua counties have consistently been among the lowest in the state."" A look at the data from the end of March to mid-May confirms that the infection rate in each of the three counties was usually in the bottom one-third of counties in the state, and by the time Borello made his statement, they were all in the bottom one-fifth of counties. By contrast, Erie and Niagara were consistently in the top half of counties as measured by infections per capita."

https://www.governor.ny.gov/news/amid-ongoing-covid-19-pandemic-governor-cuomo-outlines-additional-guidelines-when-regions-can, https://www.governor.ny.gov/news/amid-ongoing-covid-19-pandemic-governor-cuomo-announces-nys-pause-functions-extended-additional, https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/nyregion/new-york-city-coronavirus-cases.html, https://forward.ny.gov/regional-monitoring-dashboard, https://www.governor.ny.gov/news/amid-ongoing-covid-19-pandemic-governor-cuomo-issues-executive-order-requiring-all-people-new, https://www.governor.ny.gov/news/amid-ongoing-covid-19-pandemic-governor-cuomo-calls-federal-government-provide-hazard-pay, https://www.governor.ny.gov/news/amid-ongoing-covid-19-pandemic-governor-cuomo-announces-three-regions-new-york-state-ready, https://www.governor.ny.gov/news/amid-ongoing-covid-19-pandemic-governor-cuomo-announces-phase-ii-results-antibody-testing-study, https://covid19tracker.health.ny.gov/views/NYS-COVID19-Tracker/NYSDOHCOVID-19Tracker-Map?%3Aembed=yes&%3Atoolbar=no&%3Atabs=n, https://www.nysenate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/george-m-borrello/statement-senator-george-borrello-new-yorks-reopening, https://www.tapinto.net/towns/greater-olean/sections/health-and-wellness/articles/cattaraugus-county-health-director-provides-additional-details-on-covid-19-cases

2true

Public Health, New York, Coronavirus, George Borrello,

41092

US patents 7897744 and 8506968 are for SARS.

February 24, 2020

The first number is the US patent number for the SARS virus. The patent application was made by the CDC, but after the outbreak in 2002. The second number is a patent for a SARS vaccine which has now expired.

Grace Rahman

US-Patent 8835624 is for the H1N1 virus. The patent with this number was for a strand of DNA that binds to the H1N1 virus, not the virus itself. US patent number 20120251502 is for Ebola. This application number was for a strain of the Ebola virus but the application has now been abandoned. The virus was not created by those who filed the patent. US patent number CA2741523 is for swine flu. This is the application number for a patent for the Ebola virus made to the Canadian Intellectual Property Office. This patent has not been granted, and doesn’t mean the Ebola virus was created by someone. 0070031450 A1 is a US patent for BSE (mad cow disease). There is a patent application number one digit away from this that mentions BSE, but is not a patent for BSE itself. ATTC VR-84 is a patent for Zika virus that comes from the Rockefeller Foundation. This is the name of a certain strain of Zika virus, which was first isolated in the 1940s in a lab funded by the Rockefeller Foundation. This strain was not patented. US patents 7897744 and 8506968 are for SARS. The first number is the US patent number for the SARS virus. The patent application was made by the CDC, but after the outbreak in 2002. The second number is a patent for a SARS vaccine which has now expired. US patent 10130701 is for coronavirus. This number is not a patent for the new Wuhan virus, Covid-19. It’s a patent for a weakened version of a virus in the same family as Covid-19, a family which includes the common cold and SARS. Claim 1 of 8

https://www.facebook.com/theundergroundresistancenetwork/photos/a.1601471479892145/2768939656478649/?type=3&__tn__=-R, https://patents.google.com/patent/US5676977A/en, https://patents.google.com/patent/US8835624B1/en, https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/pharmacology-toxicology-and-pharmaceutical-science/aptamer, http://patft1.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsrchnum.htm&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=8,835,624.PN.&OS=PN/8,835,624&RS=PN/8,835,624, https://patents.google.com/patent/US20120251502A1/en, https://www.cdc.gov/vhf/ebola/pdf/key-messages.pdf#page=6, https://patents.google.com/patent/CA2741523A1/en?oq=CA2741523, https://www.ic.gc.ca/opic-cipo/cpd/eng/patent/2741523/summary.html?type=number_search&tabs1Index=tabs1_1, https://patents.google.com/patent/US20070031450A1/en, https://www.lgcstandards-atcc.org/products/all/VR-84.aspx?geo_country=gb, https://www.lgcstandards-atcc.org/About/About_ATCC/Who_We_Are.aspx, https://www.lgcstandards-atcc.org/Global/FAQs/9/7/Source%20of%20VR-84.aspx?geo_country=gb, https://www.rockefellerfoundation.org/zika-statement/, https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/71/8a/e4/9ddf2dccfa4554/US7897744.pdf, https://www.cdc.gov/media/transcripts/t030508.htm, http://www.nbcnews.com/id/3076748/ns/health-infectious_diseases/t/scientists-race-patent-sars-virus/#.Xk0fByj7SUm, https://www.who.int/bulletin/volumes/83/9/707.pdf, https://patents.google.com/patent/US8506968B2/en, https://patents.justia.com/patent/10130701, https://www.pirbright.ac.uk/news/2020/01/pirbright%E2%80%99s-livestock-coronavirus-research-%E2%80%93-your-questions-answered, https://www.facebook.com/help/publisher/182222309230722

2true

online

7419

Groups sow doubt about COVID vaccine before one even exists.

A coronavirus vaccine is still months or years away, but groups that peddle misinformation about immunizations are already taking aim, potentially eroding confidence in what could be humanity’s best chance to defeat the virus.

David Klepper And Beatrice Dupuy

In recent weeks, vaccine opponents have made several unsubstantiated claims, including allegations that vaccine trials will be dangerously rushed or that Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious diseases expert, is blocking cures to enrich vaccine makers. They’ve also falsely claimed that Microsoft founder Bill Gates wants to use a vaccine to inject microchips into people — or to cull 15% of the world’s population. Vaccine opponents in the U.S. have been around for a long time. Their claims range from relatively modest safety concerns about specific vaccines or the risk of side effects to conspiracy theories that border on the bizarre. The movement is receiving renewed attention, especially as it aligns itself with groups loudly protesting restrictions on daily life aimed at controlling the spread of the virus. Health professionals say vaccine misinformation could have lethal consequences if it leads people to opt for bogus cures instead. “Only a coronavirus vaccine can truly protect us from future outbreaks,” said Dr. Scott Ratzan, a physician and medical misinformation expert at the City University of New York and Columbia University. “But what if the effort succeeds and large numbers of people decide not to vaccinate themselves or their children?” While vaccines for diseases such as polio, smallpox and measles have benefited millions, some skeptics reject the science, citing a distrust of modern medicine and government. Others say mandatory vaccine requirements violate their religious freedom. Rita Palma, the leader of the anti-vaccine group in Long Island called My Kids, My Choice, is among those who say their families won’t get the coronavirus vaccine. “Many of us are anxiety stricken at the thought of being forced to get a vaccine,” Palma said. “I will never choose to have a COVID-19 vaccine. I don’t want the government forcing it on my community or my family.” From the outset of the coronavirus pandemic, vaccine skeptics have tailored several long-standing claims about vaccine safety to fit the current outbreak. When the first U.S. case was announced in January, some alleged the coronavirus was manufactured and that patents for it could be found online. Thousands of deaths later, vaccine opponents are endorsing unapproved treatments, second-guessing medical experts and pushing fears about mandatory vaccinations. They’ve also latched onto protests against stay-at-home orders in the U.S. “The coronavirus has created this perfect storm of misinformation,” remarked David A. Broniatowski, an associate professor at George Washington University’s school of engineering and applied science who has published several studies on vaccine misinformation. Last week, an anti-vaccine activist was arrested in Idaho after repeatedly refusing police orders to leave a playground closed because of the pandemic. The woman, who was there with other families, is affiliated with two groups that protested at the Idaho Statehouse against stay-at-home orders. Facebook groups formed to organize the protests have been peppered with vaccine hoaxes and myths. Perhaps no one plays a bigger role in the conspiracy theories than Gates, who is funding vaccine research. The online movement has centered concerns around a COVID-19 vaccine on false claims that Gates is planning to microchip people with the vaccine or use it to reduce the world’s population. Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a vaccine critic who helped popularize unsubstantiated claims that vaccines can cause autism, said Gates’ work gives him “dictatorial control of global health policy.” Roger Stone, a former adviser to President Donald Trump, went further on a New York City radio show, saying Gates “and other globalists” are using the coronavirus “for mandatory vaccinations and microchipping people.” Such wild theories can have real-world effects. False rumors that Gates hoped to test an experimental vaccine in South Africa became mainstream after a news site erroneously reported the claim. One of the country’s political parties then sent a letter to President Cyril Rampahosa demanding answers about “deals” struck with Gates. In fact, Gates and his wife are financing a vaccine trial in Philadelphia and Kansas City, Missouri, not South Africa. He also suggested creating a database of people immune to the virus, not implanting microchips. On Monday, during remarks recognizing World Immunization Week, World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus criticized vaccine skeptics for spreading misinformation at a time when many families are delaying or skipping routine childhood immunizations because they’re afraid of COVID-19 exposure in doctors’ offices. “Myths and misinformation about vaccines are adding fuel to the fire,” he said. Health experts have repeatedly said there is no evidence the coronavirus was intentionally created or spread. They also insist that vaccines are not only safe, but essential to global health. “Vaccine researchers and anyone who is a vaccine advocate cares deeply about vaccine safety,” said Dr. Paul Offit, a Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia physician and co-inventor of a vaccine for rotavirus, which kills hundreds of thousands of children annually. For most people, the coronavirus causes mild or moderate symptoms, such as fever and cough, that clear up in two to three weeks. But it can cause more severe illness, including pneumonia, and death for some people, especially older adults and people with existing health problems. The vaccine debate is fertile ground for groups looking to sow discord in the United States. Russia seized on it to create divisions before the 2016 U.S. election, and appears to be at it again. A report from a European Union disinformation task force found numerous conspiracy theories in English-language Russian media, including state-run RT, claiming an eventual vaccine will be used to inject nanoparticles into people. “When pro-Kremlin disinformation outlets spread anti-vaccine tropes, they become responsible for those who will hesitate to seek professional medical care,” the EU report said.

/4bf6910fe0e3b7085f35daaada9608b1,/tag/VirusOutbreak,/facb231a22256488f1dc07644e78601a,/923e7fe01b35888ff5562ca577a26aa4,/de28fbec7829b4152a9f22a3d0800d07

2true

Bill Gates, Anthony Fauci, AP Top News, Immunizations, Understanding the Outbreak, Health, General News, AP Fact Check, Latin America, Africa, Asia Pacific, Infectious diseases, Virus Outbreak, Europe, U.S. News

9950

Heart drug riddle solved: Beta blockers’ ability to combat chronic failure linked to genetics

July 11, 2006

From the research done as part of the Human Genome Project over the past 10 years, patients, physicians and policymakers will increasingly see scientific studies exploring the relationship between genes, diseases and drugs. This particular article refers to a study of an experimental beta blocker drug called bucindolol that was originally published in 2001 for patients with symptoms from heart failure at rest or with less than ordinary activity. Over about 2 years, 30% of the patients receiving bucindolol died and 33% of those receiving placebo died, so the drug did not provide any statistically significant advantage. Using genetic material samples from a subset of the original patients, Dr Liggett and colleagues found that a particular genetic marker identified a group of patients who appeared to benefit from bucindolol. Neither the genetic test nor the drug is currently available. Moreover, there are many other drugs known to be effective in heart failure. Thus, this article is an attempt to highlight the future potential of genetic sequencing individuals and using that information to identify drugs that may be beneficial as in this case or harmful in other cases for a particular person. In general, because of the many genes being tested, some of these relationships may occur just by chance alone. So these may be falsely positive tests. In addition, in some cases, genes may identify diseases or potential harms that may never occur or may never become apparent – “false diagnoses” that could lead to additional tests, harms from treatment or worry. While genetic sequencing holds great promise, patients, physicians and policymakers will need to evaluate carefully the risks and benefits of such tests in the future and the science upon which the rationale for the test rests. These are some of the issues that a story like this could have explored, rather than merely relying on researchers’ hopes for FDA approval of an experimental drug and researchers’ predictions that a genetic test will be approved soon.

There was no mention of cost. The article reports that “patients with two copies of the arginine variant lived an average 38 percent longer than patients with the glycine variant. Patients with glycine variant didn’t respond to the beta blocker.” Did they live longer whether or not they received bucindolol or not? It is not possible to tell whether the increased mortality in the glycine variant group is due to the effect of having two copies of this allele or whether having two copies of this allele renders a person resistant to the benefits (if any) conferred by bucindolol. And 38% longer is only a relative term. What was the absolute time lived longer? Although side effects of beta-blockers (depression, fatigue, and asthma-related lung problems) were mentioned, it is not clear what the list of side effects found specifically with bucindolol might be. Since the article also discussed an imminent genetic test that might suggest greater risk of death, it could have also discussed the possible impact this sort of information might have on an individual or family. Other than mentioning where the study is published, the article does not provide any information about the nature of the clinical evidence supporting the claims reported. The story says “… heart failure can kill quickly. One in five chronic heart failure patients is dead within a year of being diagnosed and less than half live for more than five years, researchers say. ‘You have a very narrow window before the progression of the disease gets out of hand,’ Liggett said.” The choice of words provides a negative frame: “kill quickly” and “narrow window” convey a sense of urgency that does NOT apply to all patients with heart failure. Some patients with heart failure are asymptomatic and have a much much better prognosis. These numbers really apply only to those with severe symptomatic heart failure. Although the article included a comment from Dr. Blumenthal who was mentioned as “not involved in the study”, he was an investigator on the “Beta-blocker evaluation in survival trial” from which data were reportedly used for the current study. Another clinician, Dr. Mehra, cited as not involved in the current study, is the chairman of the department from which the work originated. Thus it appears that the article does not include comments from researchers who did not have a stake in the findings. The story failed to put the new idea into the context of other currently approved beta-blocker drugs for heart failure, or of other drugs of other classes. The article discusses two unapproved medical interventions: a genetic test and a particular drug for heart failure. The genetic test needed to determine whether bucindolol might be effective is reported as not approved by the FDA but that such approval could be obtained in the next year or two. In reality, it is not possible to predict whether this test will be approved or when. Secondly, the article mentions that researchers hope that drug, bucindolol, will be approved by the FDA. The application for FDA approval has not even been filed yet. The story promotes researchers’ hopes that the FDA will approve the experimental beta blocker (bucindolol) and promotes researchers predictions that a genetic test could be approved by the FDA in the next year or two without any justification for that prediction. The true novelty of either idea is still uNPRoven. There is no evidence that the story relied solely or largely on a news release. However no truly independent sources were interviewed in the story.

0false

30557

Delta Air Lines gives members of Planned Parenthood discounted rates on air travel.

March 1, 2018

Regardless of Delta Air Lines’ relationships with the Susan G. Komen Foundation, the Breast Cancer Research Foundation, or anyone else, these groups have little to do with the senator’s original claim, which is that Delta Air Lines provided discounts to Planned Parenthood members. Our examination of this rumor resulted in a chain of unfounded social media posts, but absolutely no supporting evidence.

Dan Evon

Calls to boycott the National Rifle Association intensified in the days following a school shooting in Parkland, Florida that left seventeen people dead on 14 February 2018. In response, a number of companies responded by ending partnership programs that provided discounts to NRA members: Shortly after Delta announced that it would stop offering discounts to NRA members, some argued that Planned Parenthood should be the actual subject of nationwide boycotts, despite not being involved directly or indirectly with the Parkland, Florida shooting in any way. One meme summed up that argument by stating without attribution that Planned Parenthood kills hundreds of babies a day, while the NRA has never directly killed anyone: This number appears to be derived from figures provided by the organization in 2015, which said that Planned Parenthood offices had performed 323,999 abortions in total the year before. However, that interpretation is dependent on subjective interpretations of when life supposedly begins; abortions are not counted as a “cause of death” by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Georgia State Senator Michael Williams took issue with Delta’s decision (the company is headquartered in Atlanta) and during an appearance on CNN said that the airline should also rescind its discounts for other organizations: If they’re going to pull the discount for NRA members, why not pull it for Planned Parenthood or some of the left organizations out there? When CNN host Brianna Keilar asked Williams what evidence he had that Delta Air Lines offered discounted rates to Planned Parenthood members, adding that the network had examined these allegations and found no information to verify the claim, Williams explained that he “looked it up on Google” and did not know of the exact source — but that he would provide it at a later date: We searched for any credible sources to back the claim that Delta Air Lines offers a discount to members of Planned Parenthood (along with the official definition of what a member of Planned Parenthood might be: Did he mean donors to the nonprofit? Patients who do not donate? Some combination of the above? Is there a membership card?) but all we found were unverified claims in the comment sections of various articles and in random social media messages: Shortly after Williams appeared on CNN, Planned Parenthood denied his claims: Being a Planned Parenthood supporter doesn’t come with corporate perks and discounts. People stand with Planned Parenthood because they support reproductive health and rights. https://t.co/RcHKSxI9As — Planned Parenthood Action (@PPact) February 28, 2018 On 28 February 2018, Williams released a statement on Twitter: This statement offers no supporting evidence and, in fact, does nothing to address the original claim Williams made during his CNN appearance. Instead, it moves the goalposts completely by saying that while Delta does not contribute directly to Planned Parenthood, it indirectly supports the organization instead, by donating to groups such as the Susan G. Komen Foundation. However, we found some holes in this argument too. For example, American Airlines, not Delta Air Lines, is the official partner of the Susan G. Komen Foundation. Delta does host an annual fundraiser for breast cancer research, but the airline donates the proceeds to the Breast Cancer Research Foundation, not Susan G. Komen: Last month, Delta celebrated its 12th anniversary of the “Breast Cancer One” survivor flight, kicking off the airline’s Breast Cancer Awareness month throughout October and continuing the tradition of building awareness and raising funds for the Breast Cancer Research Foundation. This year’s flight honored 140 breast cancer survivors who flew from New York to Los Angeles. Festivities began with an event at the gate in JFK before the pink plane made its way to LAX, where survivors and attendees enjoyed another gatehouse event and an overnight stay, including dinner, hotel accommodations and a meet-and-greet with one of BCRF’s world-renowned researchers, Dr. Sofia Merajver from the University of Michigan. It is entirely possible that Delta has contributed to the Susan G. Komen Foundation, but this group is not a “Delta partner,” nor is it the main benefactor of their cancer research fundraiser. Williams doubled down on his claim that Delta was partnered with the Susan G. Komen Foundation when he shared a photograph of a Delta plane painted with pink ribbons and linked to a set of images on the web site FlashPointAgency: FlashPointAgency does say that this plane was designed as part of Delta’s work with the Susan G. Komen Foundation. However, these images appear to be mislabeled. Another image in this set of photographs shows two women standing in front of a wall of logos for the Breast Cancer Research Foundation. As we noted above, Delta does frequently host fundraisers to support BCRF:

0false

Politics, delta air lines, Delta Airlines, georgia

7898

Europe grapples with 'socio-economic tsunami' of coronavirus crisis.

March 17, 2020

Italy’s prime minister on Tuesday declared coronavirus was causing a “socio-economic tsunami” as European leaders agreed to seal off external borders, but many countries thwarted solidarity by imposing frontier curbs of their own.

Gabriela Baczynska, John Chalmers

“The enemy is the virus and now we have to do our utmost to protect our people and to protect our economies,” European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said after the second videoconference in a week of the European Union’s 27 leaders. “We are ready to do everything that is required. We will not hesitate to take additional measures as the situation evolves.” Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte, whose country has been hardest hit by a global health crisis now centered in Europe, said no nation would be left untouched by the “tsunami”. He called for special “coronavirus bonds”, or a European guarantee fund, to help member states finance urgent health and economic policies, an Italian government source said. Rome has issued similar calls for joint EU funding during previous crises, usually running into opposition from the bloc’s most powerful economy and paymaster, Germany. Asked about Conte’s proposal, Chancellor Angela Merkel said euro zone finance ministers would continue discussing ways to help their economies cushion the impact, but no decision has been made. “These are initial discussions and there have been no decisions by the finance ministers,” said Merkel. “I will talk to (Finance Minister) Olaf Scholz so that Germany continues to take part (in the discussions). But there are no results regarding this.” The EU has scrambled to find a coherent response to the outbreak, with countries imposing their own border checks in what is normally a zone of control-free travel, limiting exports of medical equipment or failing to share key data swiftly. The national leaders agreed on Tuesday to close the external borders of most European countries for 30 days and establish fast-track lanes at their countries’ frontiers to keep medicines and food moving. Ireland will not join the travel ban on Europe’s borders, von der Leyen said, because the United Kingdom - which left the EU in January - was not either. Despite Brexit, the two have an obligation to preserve an open border on the island of Ireland. Should Ireland go with the majority of European countries while the UK stays away, it would mean erecting controls on the sensitive border with Northern Ireland, something sides sought to avoid at all cost in three years of tortuous Brexit divorce talks. France went into lockdown on Tuesday to contain the spread of the highly contagious new coronavirus and Belgium announced it would follow suit, as the death toll in Italy jumped above 2,000, European banks warned of falling incomes and pummeled airlines pleaded for government aid. The EU’s executive European Commission warned member states that this was just the beginning of the crisis and Germany said it would run for “months rather than weeks”, diplomats said. Alarmed by the unilateral border restrictions being imposed in a bloc that prizes the free movement of people, French President Emmanuel Macron had pressed for the decision to close Europe’s external borders to foreigners. “That was meant to convince European countries to drop internal and unilateral border moves. But it’s hard to see anyone doing it,” an EU diplomat said, adding the move was largely symbolic as the virus was already within. Indeed, tensions over borders still abounded across the EU, with three Baltic countries - Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia - criticizing Poland for blocking their citizens in transit from returning home. Portugal and Spain on Tuesday notified Brussels that they have introduced controls on Europe’s internal borders, bringing the total taking such measures to at least 12 countries. Slovakia, Slovenia and Hungary have not formally informed the EU about such moves despite pursuing them, meaning the real number is likely higher. The EU has also moved to repatriate Europeans stranded abroad as airlines cut flights. Von der Leyen said nearly 300 Austrian and other European nationals were flown back from Morocco to Vienna on Tuesday. Their border control steps aside, the EU leaders have come together on a “whatever it takes” approach to cushioning the economic blow from the pandemic, including by relaxing limitations on state aid. The bloc’s antitrust chief proposed allowing governments to offer grants or tax advantages of up to 500,000 euros ($550,000) to ailing companies, though some EU countries want Brussels to go further. (GRAPHIC-Tracking the spread of the novel coronavirus link: here)

/article/us-health-coronavirus-eu-summit/eu-agrees-to-close-external-borders-but-fast-tracks-for-goods-idUKKBN2143SI,/article/us-health-coronavirus-eu-elysee/france-warns-coronavirus-border-curbs-cannot-hit-internal-market-source-idUKKBN2143S4,https://graphics.reuters.com/CHINA-HEALTH-MAP/0100B59S39E/index.html

2true

Health News

17269

"John Morgan Says Cathy Jordan was ""arrested"" and dragged out of her home by ""a SWAT team of hooligans"" for using medical marijuana."

March 13, 2014

John Morgan says 'a SWAT team of hooligans' arrested medical marijuana activist Cathy Jordan

Joshua Gillin

"Outspoken Orlando attorney John Morgan doesn’t mince words when it comes to his support of Florida’s proposed medical marijuana amendment. He does tend to paint his cause in broad strokes, however. During a University of Tampa debate on medicinal use of the drug on Feb. 24, Morgan argued that it’s misguided to enforce marijuana laws, using the example of Cathy Jordan, a 64-year-old Parrish resident who smokes to combat amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease. ""The issue for this year is very simple,"" Morgan said. ""Should about 350,000 to 400,000 people, including Cathy Jordan, who’s here tonight, who was arrested last year, drug out of her home, because she suffers from ALS, and marijuana is the only thing that will help her, the only question this year for us is the legalization of medical marijuana."" Later, he added this: ""There was an arrest of Cathy Jordan a year ago. An ALS patient who’s sitting right here ... this afternoon, and guess what? The agricultural commissioner sent a SWAT team of hooligans out to her house to drag her and her husband out because it's the only relief that she could get."" Jordan is now the president of the Florida Cannabis Action Network, while Morgan has spent $4 million of his own money on a petition drive for a constitutional amendment for marijuana. Some of the details Morgan mentioned about Jordan’s encounter with law enforcement, though, didn’t sound right, so we decided to check it out. Acting on a tip The Tampa Bay Times wrote about Jordan’s plight last year, confirming that her marijuana usage did in fact attract the attention of Manatee County sheriff’s deputies on Feb. 25, 2013. A Realtor noticed an extension cord running from a shed on Jordan’s property to an empty home’s garage next door, then saw a mature marijuana plant growing in Jordan’s garden. The Realtor called the authorities. According to an incident report, two deputies responded to the call, originally for burglary and theft of service for the extension cord, and confirmed the plant was there. The responding deputies’ reports noted that two men harassed them and recorded their arrival and subsequent investigation. One of the men (neither are named in those reports, although Robert Jordan and his son were home) reportedly bumped one of the deputies several times and attempted to prevent the pair of officers from entering their property, saying the marijuana was theirs and they wanted the deputies to leave. One deputy called his sergeant, who responded and then requested the department’s Special Investigations Division, an undercover vice and narcotics unit that responds to drug calls. Three detectives responded to the call and spoke to Robert Jordan, who let the police enter his house and explained his wife used marijuana to deal with her ALS symptoms, according to the division’s report. Police confirmed no marijuana being grown inside the house, then went outside to find three large plants in a plastic container and two smaller plants in another. Robert Jordan then opened the shed that used the extension cord to reveal 18 smaller seedlings, ""a lighting system, an air conditioner, a thermometer and a white erase board to track planting dates."" The authorities explained to Robert Jordan that growing marijuana was illegal under federal law and they could either take all the marijuana ""observed in plain view"" or they would go get a warrant and forcibly remove the plants. The report states neither he nor his wife were ever threatened with arrest, but reluctantly agreed to let the department confiscate 23 plants. No one was arrested or dragged out of their house by a SWAT team. The Jordans sued the Sheriff’s Office for the return of their plants last year. Sheriff’s Office public information officer Dave Bristow did verify that none of the officers responding drew their guns and only entered the Jordans’ property with permission. No warrants were necessary. The Manatee County Sheriff’s Office wouldn’t comment on the incident other than to confirm details in the report, citing pending civil litigation. Robert Jordan confirmed the incident happened the way the sheriff’s reports says it did, although he said the deputies who first arrived did rush up his driveway with their hands on their sidearms. He described them as ""very, very aggressive,"" although he said he was aggressive, too, arguing about whether probable cause allowed them on his property. He noted he told his wife to go across the street with friends after the deputies arrived, and no one touched her. He had a different opinion about the Special Investigations Division detectives. ""The actual narcotics officers, they were gentlemen,"" Jordan said. ""They were embarrassed, because I told them they were taking my wife’s medicine."" Two of the trio wore ski masks, Jordan said, which the Sheriff’s Office said is procedure to conceal their identities for undercover work. The unmasked detective told Jordan he had two choices: They could wait outside a couple of hours while they got a warrant. Jordan said the detective told him they would then come back and ""tear your house apart. And we don’t put nothing back."" Or the Jordans could walk them through the house and allow the unit to confiscate his plants, then wait for word on official charges. The officer then told Jordan they had a right to take anything in the shed, but opted to only remove the light bulb from the grow lamp and smash it. The same week, State Sen. Jeff Clemens, D-Lake Worth, introduced a medical marijuana bill called the Cathy Jordan Medical Cannabis Act. The bill died, but he filed another bill under the same name in February, ostensibly to set a framework should the amendment pass in November. Robert Jordan was in the process of buying the property next door, and the utilities were in his name, so the burglary and theft of service charges were never brought, and the Realtor’s company declined to press any trespassing charges. The Manatee County state attorney’s later reviewed the case and declined to press growing and possession charges because ""the state lacks a good-faith belief it can overcome a medical necessity defense in this matter,"" according to the office’s report. Robert Jordan could have faced a felony count of possession and manufacturing of a Schedule I drug. We asked the United for Care campaign for a response. Manager Ben Pollara said Morgan’s comments were off the cuff. ""I think it’s just a case of something that happened a year ago … and he was talking from memory,"" Pollara said. A story about officers in ski masks with guns probably made it sound like a SWAT team, he said. Robert Jordan said he figured Morgan may have gotten his account from any of the numerous outlets that layered on the hyperbole about machine guns and police brutality -- he named this story by the Huffington Post as being particularly loose with the facts. ""No one asked me, or I would have told them the truth,"" Jordan said. He also said he had only met John Morgan and didn’t know him, but liked the man for his devotion to getting medical marijuana legislation passed, and how Morgan treated his wife. Having a legal supply of cannabis available would certainly make his life easier, he added. Meanwhile, the Jordans continue to cultivate their own plants, thanks to having the charges dropped. The ruling Morgan said ""a SWAT team of hooligans"" dragged Cathy Jordan out of her home and arrested her after authorities discovered her family’s tiny growing operation in their Parrish backyard. Officers obtained consent to search the property and removed mature plants and seedlings, and Robert Jordan faced charges of growing and possessing marijuana, which were later dropped. No one was arrested. No one was dragged anywhere. It seems Morgan may have read a report of the incident awash in hyperbole and recalled that. There was an incident at the Jordans’ home, but the police reaction was not nearly as drastic as Morgan described."

http://www.bradenton.com/2013/04/05/4467710/another-strong-point-for-medical.html, http://www.abcactionnews.com/news/region-sarasota-manatee/couple-sues-to-get-pot-plants-back-from-sheriffs-office, http://www.nwfdailynews.com/local/supreme-court-oks-medical-marijuana-bill-for-november-ballot-1.268587, http://www.heraldtribune.com/article/20130402/ARTICLE/130409931/2416/NEWS?p=1&tc=pg, http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/02/25/3253273/poll-7-in-10-back-fl-medical-marijuana.html, http://blogs.browardpalmbeach.com/pulp/2013/05/cathy_jordan_florida_medical_m.php, http://www.bradenton.com/2013/02/26/4409996/manatee-deputies-raid-disabled.html, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/26/raid-of-the-day-florida-c_n_2765920.html, http://www.tampabay.com/news/politics/medical-marijuana-takes-center-stage-at-ut-debate/2167206, http://tbtpics.tampabay.com/news/politics/stateroundup/trial-attorney-morgan-says-medical-marijuana-will-pass-in-november/2166748, http://www.tampabay.com/news/politics/florida-prepares-for-medical-marijuana-petition-drive/2128052

0false

Drugs, Health Care, Crime, Florida, Marijuana, John Morgan,

12943

"Imitation dairy products often differ nutritionally from those they mimic, and labeling them ""milk"" or ""cheese"" or ""yogurt"" is ""against the law."

January 27, 2017

"Baldwin claimed that imitation dairy products made from plants often differ nutritionally from the real thing, and labeling them ""milk"" or ""cheese"" or ""yogurt"" is ""against the law."" The nutrition point is accurate, and the legal point is partially so. "

Dave Umhoefer

"Hostilities between the dairy industry and its competitors are flaring anew as alternatives to cow’s milk take up more space in the dairy case. That means the politicians can’t be far behind. U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin, a Wisconsin Democrat, spoke up Jan. 12, 2017 in a news release lauding herself as somebody who ""stands up for Wisconsin dairy farmers."" Baldwin wants Congress to pass the Dairy PRIDE Act -- officially known (at least to a few) as the ""Defending Against Imitations and Replacements of Yogurt, milk, and cheese to Promote Regular Intake of Dairy Everyday Act."" After two years of falling milk prices, she and other federal lawmakers want the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to enforce consumer regulations defining ""milk."" Is Baldwin right that imitation dairy products -- for instance, soy milk -- often differ nutritionally from dairy item? And is labeling them ""milk"" or ""cheese"" or ""yogurt"" against the law? To back that up, Baldwin’s office pointed us to nutritional labels, and to FDA regulations that plainly state: ""Milk is the lacteal secretion, practically free from colostrum, obtained by the complete milking of one or more healthy cows."" 'Against the law' To dairy officials, inclusion of the word ""milk"" on non-dairy products is a misappropriation of the popularity of cow’s milk. But competitors say coconut milk and soy milk have long histories and aren’t confused with dairy. What’s more, they note, the FDA doesn’t punish ""peanut butter"" for using the dairy term ""butter."" But the FDA in 2008 and 2012 did tell two makers of drinks labeled ""soy milk"" that under its regulations, such labeling was inappropriate because the products did not contain ""milk"" as defined by the agency. ""Soy drink"" or ""Soy beverage"" would be better, the agency said at the time. That -- and regulatory language allowing the FDA to declare a product misbranded and try to block its sale -- help Baldwin’s case. Federal regulations are part of the United States Code that is the law of the land. But to the frustration of the dairy industry, the agency has not consistently enforced that line of reasoning, allowing use of ""soy milk"" and ""almond milk"" and many others. Rebecca Cross, a San Francisco-based regulatory lawyer for food product companies, said the FDA may be viewing labels on a case-by-case basis and allowing use of dairy terms on plant-based products so long as the use is not misleading. Nathan Beaver, a food and drug lawyer with Foley & Lardner in Washington, D.C., explained that foods such as soy milk that have no FDA-written ""standard of identity"" must choose a ""common or usual"" name for their products. Courts, though, have jurisdiction over disputes on the issue and therefore get final say on the meaning of the FDA rules. On milk, courts so far have found that cow’s milk competitors are not misbranded if their names don’t confuse consumers, said Cross. The nutrition comparison Dairy alternatives, Baldwin said, ""contain a range of ingredients and nutrients that are often not equivalent to the nutrition content of dairy products."" This is a bit tricky to evaluate given that beverages labeled as some kind of ""milk"" now come from such diverse sources as soy, almonds, cashews, hemp, rice, oats, coconut and sunflowers. For help, we turned to Vandana Sheth, a registered dietician and spokesperson for the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, a leading organization of food and nutrition professionals. For starters, Sheth noted that dairy products can be a good source of calcium, vitamin D, protein and other essential nutrients. Soy milk provides close to the same amount of protein as cow’s milk. Rice milk typically provides minimal protein and is higher in carbohydrates. Almond milk is usually quite low in protein and also less calorically dense, she said. Plant protein tends to be of a lower quality than dairy proteins, though soy is close, said John Lucey, a food scientist who directs the Center for Dairy Research at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Our own review of labels found that soy and almond beverages, like cow’s milk, are all relatively low calorie, low carbohydrate, low sodium drinks. They are all heavy with calcium. But they feature a different mix of vitamins and minerals, and fat content. Examples: soy milk has a lot of folate, while cow’s milk typically has none; cow’s milk contains some Vitamin C, but the soy, almond and hemp drinks we examined have none. Almond and soy milks feature some iron and fiber -- nutrients typically not found in cow’s milk. ""All the products profile differently,"" said Susan Levin, a registered dietitian and director of nutrition education for the Washington, D.C.-based Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine. Bottom line: Baldwin’s nutrition observation is on target, based on a comparison of milk products. Our rating Baldwin claimed that imitation dairy products made from plants often differ nutritionally from the real thing, and labeling them ""milk"" or ""cheese"" or ""yogurt"" is ""against the law."" The nutrition point is accurate, and the legal point is partially so."

https://www.baldwin.senate.gov/press-releases/dairy-pride-act, http://www.ecfr.gov/cgi-bin/text-idx?SID=b22a68a27a372cf330796646d8c68ae9&mc=true&node=se21.2.133_13&rgn=div8

2true

Agriculture, Food, Government Regulation, Wisconsin, Tammy Baldwin,

12135

Hurricane Irma could be a Category 6 by the time it hits East Coast.

September 6, 2017

Hurricane Irma can't be a Category 6 storm

Louis Jacobson

"A hurricane with winds in excess of 180 miles per hour is scary enough. But some corners of the Internet are stirring additional panic -- and attracting additional clicks -- by referring to an extreme hurricane category that doesn’t even exist. The web post appeared as Hurricane Irma was powering through the Caribbean, days ahead of an expected landfall somewhere in Florida. The storm was one of the most powerful to form in the Atlantic Ocean in decades, with sustained winds as high as 185 miles per hour. Into this maelstrom came a website posing as an arm of CNN (spoiler, it’s not) posting a page headlined, ""HURRICANE IRMA could be a Category 6 by the time it hits East Coast."" The advertising-filled page has almost no content of its own -- just an audio recording of a folksy, older-sounding woman rambling, stream-of-consciousness style, about the approach of Irma. At one point, she says, ""The wind speeds are way up there into the category 6 territory."" A flurry of other questionable websites also played with the idea of Irma becoming a Category 6 storm. There is no such thing. The scale used by the National Hurricane Center only goes as high as 5. The Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale was developed by Herbert Saffir, an engineer in Coral Gables, Fla., and Robert Simpson, who headed the National Hurricane Center from 1967 to 1973. The scale used wind speeds as a guide to predict the extent of structural damage. ""Saffir, an engineer and expert on wind damage who helped write the Dade County, Fla., building code, developed the first version of the scale in 1971 for a United Nations report on construction that could stand up to high winds,"" wrote Jack Williams the founding weather editor of USA Today and co-author of Hurricane Watch: Forecasting the Deadliest Storms on Earth. As for Simpson, Williams wrote, one of his formative experiences at the National Hurricane Center came with the approach of Hurricane Camille to the Mississippi coast on Aug. 16, 1969. The storm was shaping up to be extremely dangerous, but Simpson grappled with the best way to communicate this to residents in the storm’s path. ""Simpson broke the Weather Bureau's rule against using specific wind speed or surge figures in forecasts -- they were supposed to say things such as ‘strong winds and dangerously high water are expected,’ "" Williams wrote. ""After it was all over, despite the success of the evacuations, Simpson felt he needed a better way to communicate what a storm is capable of doing. He correlated Saffir's wind damage rankings with the surge potential to create the scale used today."" While officials at the National Hurricane Center began using Simpson’s new scale internally, it only began releasing it to the public in 1975, amid clamor by the media for an easily understandable metric. Officially, the Saffir-Simpson scale is based on a hurricane's sustained wind speed. ""Hurricanes reaching Category 3 and higher are considered major hurricanes because of their potential for significant loss of life and damage,"" according to the National Hurricane Center. ""Category 1 and 2 storms are still dangerous, however, and require preventative measures."" The now-familiar scale of 1 to 5 breaks down as follows: Category Sustained winds (mph) Types of damage 1 74-95 Very dangerous winds will produce some damage 2 96-110 Extremely dangerous winds will cause extensive damage 3 111-129 Devastating damage will occur 4 130-156 Catastrophic damage will occur 5 157+ Catastrophic damage will occur The scale has changed in one significant way over the years. In 2010, the federal agency removed references to storm surge from the scale after some surge expectations proved to be off-base. (Storm surge refers to how far open waters reach beyond their normal levels on coastal land.) Instead, the center directs people to more specific forecasts about storm surge. Unlike the Fujita scale for tornadoes, which runs from 0 to 5, the Saffir-Simpson scale uses measurements taken before a storm hits land. The Fujita ratings are assigned after a storm has hit and the damage is investigated. From time to time, there has been discussion of whether a new category -- Category 6 -- should be added to the scale. That decision would likely fall to the National Hurricane Center after discussions with scientists in the field, said Jill Trepanier, a hurricane specialist in the Louisiana State University department of geography and anthropology. A simple extrapolation from the existing categories would probably set the threshold for a new Category 6 around 180 mph, making Irma a good candidate for that category if it existed, said James B. Elsner, the chair of geography at Florida State University who also runs a business called Climatek that develops software for hurricane and tornado risk models. The idea of creating a Category 6 is often met with skepticism, however. The most frequently cited reason is that Category 6 would add nothing to the understanding of how destructive the storm would be for buildings and other structures. ""Almost no structures can withstand sustained winds over 155 mph,"" said Michael M. Bell, an associate professor in atmospheric science at Colorado State University. ""At those wind speeds, significant damage or even total destruction of most buildings is expected. By this definition, adding a Category 6 would not add any new information, since the strongest criteria for expected wind damage has already been met."" Bill Read, the former director of the National Hurricane Center, agreed in an email with PolitiFact. And the scale’s co-creator, Simpson, agreed as well, in a 1991 interview. Asked whether the scale should be modified to include categories above 5, he said that above 155 mph, ""it's going to cause rupturing damages (to buildings) that are serious no matter how well it's engineered. … That's the reason why we didn't try to go any higher than that anyway."" In fact, several scientists said that a more useful change, if one had to be made, would be to focus less on wind speed specifically, either by modifying the Saffir-Simpson scale to include other factors or by giving added attention to other measurements. ""I personally believe that we need to work on effectively communicating the other hazards that tropical cyclones bring, including heavy rainfall and storm surge,"" Bell said. Hurricane Harvey, which hit coastal Texas, ""did cause significant wind damage as a Category 4, but much of the devastation in Houston and the surrounding areas was caused by inland flooding from sustained rainfall while Harvey was a tropical storm."" Similarly, ""much of the damage from Hurricane Katrina was caused by storm surge when the winds were Category 3,"" Bell said. ""These multiple hazards may not be well-correlated with the Saffir-Simpson Category at landfall, and therefore it is an incomplete description of the storm's destructive potential."" Trepanier said there’s no reason why a Category 6 is needed to communicate how fearsome Irma is. ""Irma is a beast,"" she said. ""It is safe to say the wind speeds are rare, but I see no benefit in calling it a Category 6. It should be considered catastrophic. And that is how people should refer to it."" So, as of now, there is no such thing as a Category 6 storm. The web post suggesting that Irma is one rates ."

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-intersect/wp/2017/09/06/irma-is-not-a-category-6-hurricane-a-running-list-of-viral-hoaxes-about-the-storm/?utm_term=.f414e5bec894, http://cnn-business-news.ga/l5PVlyYTqs0/news-update-hurricane-irma-september-rd.html, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2017/09/06/evacuations-begin-in-florida-as-hurricane-irma-bears-down-on-puerto-rico-virgin-islands/?hpid=hp_hp-top-table-main_irma-9a%3Ahomepage%2Fstory&utm_term=.37d93066d433, http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/aboutsshws.php, http://www.spc.noaa.gov/faq/tornado/ef-scale.html, http://www.sun-sentinel.com/sfl-mtblog-2010-02-hurricane_center_revises_saffi-story.html, https://www.snopes.com/hurricane-irma-track-become-category-6-storm/, https://usatoday30.usatoday.com/weather/hurricane/whscale.htm, https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/capital-weather-gang/post/why-were-hurricane-categories-established-behind-the-saffir-simpson-scale/2012/09/07/a05512aa-f8fd-11e1-8398-0327ab83ab91_blog.html?utm_term=.4b3036b214ce, http://novalynx.com/store/pc/Simpson-Interview-d53.htm

0false

Environment, Fake news, Science, Weather, PunditFact, Bloggers,

18371

A 0.05 standard for drunken driving means having a glass of wine at dinner could make a person drunk.

May 17, 2013

The Tavern League of Wisconsin said a proposal to make 0.05 the standard for drunken driving would mean that having a glass of wine at dinner could make a person drunk. The statement is accurate, in that it’s possible an individual could reach 0.05 after one drink. But it needs additional information, namely that the situation would apply only in a small number of instances and would depend on other factors, such as drinking on an empty stomach.

Tom Kertscher

"On May 14, 2013, a federal agency recommended reducing the threshold for evidence of drunken driving from a blood-alcohol concentration of 0.08 to 0.05. That means having a glass of wine at dinner might make a person drunk, a spokesman for the Tavern League of Wisconsin told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel the same day. Under a BAC standard of 0.05, a person could get nailed for DUI after one drink? Tavern League’s evidence The statement was made by Scott Stenger, a Madison lobbyist whose clients include the tavern league. He told us he based his claim on news articles about the 0.05 recommendation, including a report from the Journal Sentinel and The Associated Press, and a chart on blood-alcohol concentration from the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission. The news covered the recommendation by the National Transportation Safety Board, which investigates transportation accidents and makes recommendations based on its findings. The board said states should cut the current blood-alcohol level for evidence of intoxication as part of a series of ideas aimed at reducing alcohol-related highway deaths. In its report, the Associated Press said 0.05 is ""about one drink for a woman weighing less than 120 pounds,"" and that a drink is defined as 12 ounces of beer, 4 ounces of wine, or 1 ounce of 80-proof alcohol ""in most studies."" Meanwhile, the Texas agency chart that Stenger cited says its BAC data comes from another federal body, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, which works to prevent highway crashes. That data says essentially what Stenger and AP did: A 100-pound woman could reach 0.05 after one drink. (Incidentally, both the AP and the chart used by the Texas agency said a 160-pound man could reach 0.05 after consuming two drinks in one hour.) So, there’s evidence that a limited group of drinkers -- women weighing under 120 pounds -- could be legally drunk after one drink, if the standard for drunken driving were reduced to a blood-alcohol level of 0.05. What other evidence is out there? BAC calculators We checked three online calculators that provide blood-alcohol concentration estimates based on various factors, including gender and weight. They generally found a BAC of less than 0.05 for a 100-pound woman consuming one drink. The calculator at the Wisconsin Department of Transportation (which also has a smartphone app), says the BAC would be 0.03. A more detailed calculator from the University of Notre Dame’s Office of Alcohol and Drug Education says the BAC would be 0.04 for a 5-ounce glass of wine, if the wine is red and 12.5 percent alcohol. And the calculator at Central Connecticut State University’s Office of Alcohol and Drug Education says the BAC would be 0.05 after a 5-ounce glass of table wine. So, why do the blood-alcohol concentration figures vary? Well, as we noted, all of the figures are estimates. The Wisconsin DOT also points out that besides gender, weight and the amount of alcohol consumed, other factors are in play. Your BAC will be higher if you drink faster or drink on an empty stomach. Women reach higher BACs faster because they have less water in their bodies and more adipose tissue (fat), which is not easily penetrated by alcohol. Jan Grebel, a chemical test supervisor for the DOT, told us about another factor: If you drink frequently, your liver can break down alcohol more efficiently, but if you don’t, your BAC would be higher after even one drink. Grebel quoted to us from a chart she utilizes when testifying in court in drunken driving cases. She said the chart estimates the BAC at 0.047 -- nearly 0.05 -- for a 100-pound woman after one drink. But Grebel said that would be the maximum BAC in that instance. Most people would not reach 0.05 after one drink, she said. Our rating The Tavern League of Wisconsin said a proposal to make 0.05 the standard for drunken driving would mean that having a glass of wine at dinner could make a person drunk. The statement is accurate, in that it’s possible an individual could reach 0.05 after one drink. But it needs additional information, namely that the situation would apply only in a small number of instances and would depend on other factors, such as drinking on an empty stomach."

http://www.jsonline.com/news/wisconsin/us-agency-backs-lower-bloodalcohol-limit-for-drivers-qv9usje-207464501.html, https://bigstory.ap.org/article/progress-sought-drunken-driving-deaths, https://www.ou.edu/oupd/bac.htm, http://www.ndaa.org/pdf/toxicology_final.pdf, http://www.tabc.state.tx.us/enforcement/blood_alcohol_percentage_chart.asp, http://oade.nd.edu/educate-yourself-alcohol/blood-alcohol-concentration/bac-calculator/

2true

Alcohol, Criminal Justice, Crime, Public Safety, Transportation, Wisconsin, Tavern League of Wisconsin,

5239

Delaware doc accused of trading drugs for sex loses license.

Delaware has permanently revoked the license of a doctor accused of prescribing opioids in exchange for sexual favors from a female patient undergoing treatment for long-term drug addiction.

The News Journal of Wilmington reports the state Board of Medical Licensure and Discipline this week revoked the license of Nihar B. Gala, who oversaw the pain management and addiction treatment center Alpha Care Medical. State prosecutors say Gala took the woman off Suboxone and prescribed her large amounts of Oxycodone and Fentanyl. Gala denies the allegations, which his lawyer has said are part of a conspiracy to hurt Gala’s career. The state is asking for any of Gala’s patients who sought treatment for substance abuse to contact the Division of Substance Abuse and Mental Health’s crisis helpline at 800-345-6785. ___ Information from: The News Journal of Wilmington, Del., http://www.delawareonline.com

http://www.delawareonline.com,https://www.delawareonline.com/story/news/health/2019/05/09/millsboro-doctors-license-revoked-after-allegations-prescribing-drugs-sexual-favors/1153187001/

2true

Health, Drug addiction, Delaware, U.S. News, Addiction treatment

40077

A prayer request for a 4-year old girl who has been diagnosed with “non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, stage 4.”  The email says her father works for a temp service, the mom works part time at a family-owned business, and that they do not have insurance.

March 17, 2015

Pray for 4-year old Madison who is cancer

Rich Buhler & Staff

TruthOrFiction.com contacted Madison’s great-aunt, Jan Kuhn, who confirmed that this story was true. Madison is Madison Lehman. Her parents are Keith and Ty Lehman. They live near Mansfield, Ohio. She said Madison has been diagnosed with Berkets non-Hodgkin lymphoma, stage 4 and that she had large abdominal tumors and cancer in the bone marrow. Madison was being given chemo therapy and as of 5/31/08 her tumors were shrinking. Jan asked for continued prayer for Madison whom she described as “Adorable with long blonde spiral curls and huge bright blue eyes.” Updated 5/41/08 Comments

https://twitter.com/intent/tweet?text=Pray+for+4-year+old+Madison+who+is+cancer-Truth%21&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.truthorfiction.com%2Fmadison%2F&via=erumors, https://www.truthorfiction.com/category/prayers/, https://www.truthorfiction.com/category/pleas/, https://www.reddit.com/submit?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.truthorfiction.com%2Fmadison%2F, https://www.truthorfiction.com/ms-explorer-bug-warning/, https://www.facebook.com/share.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.truthorfiction.com%2Fmadison%2F, https://www.linkedin.com/cws/share?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.truthorfiction.com%2Fmadison%2F, https://www.truthorfiction.com/listerine/, https://api.whatsapp.com/send?text=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.truthorfiction.com%2Fmadison%2F, https://www.truthorfiction.com/author/truthorfiction/

2true

Pleas, Prayers

8973

Association of radiation therapy plus lumpectomy in reduced risk of dying in women with DCIS

August 14, 2018

This news release summarizes an association study comparing 140,000 women with a diagnosis of ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS) who received three different treatments. The study utilized the National Cancer Institute’s Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) Program database to evaluate outcomes. DCIS is a noninvasive form of breast cancer, sometimes referred to as stage 0 breast cancer. There is debate as to whether it should be called cancer at all. The study reported outcomes in three groups of patients:  1) patients who underwent lumpectomy (surgery to remove the tumor) plus radiation versus lumpectomy alone; 2) patients who underwent lumpectomy without radiation versus mastectomy (surgery to remove the breast); and 3) patients who underwent lumpectomy plus radiation versus mastectomy. Women who received radiation had a slightly lower (0.27% reduction) risk of death from breast cancer at 15 years compared to women with lumpectomy alone. The release mentions some limitations of the research but missing is a broader discussion of the potential for over treatment of DCIS, whether DCIS needs to be treated at all, and whether women with low-risk forms of the disease can be safely monitored without treatment. We’ve written about this previously. Over treatment is a widely discussed issue in many areas of cancer, including DCIS, a noninvasive early form of breast cancer that some physicians believe should not be strictly labeled “cancer,” primarily when it’s low grade, or grade 1 DCIS. Exposing women to radiation in addition to lumpectomy has the potential for unnecessary harms. This brief release does not provide that context. The published study itself includes this comment: “It is doubtful whether a benefit of this size is large enough to warrant radiotherapy.”

Sally James,Deanna Attai, MD, FACS,Kathlyn Stone

The release does not include any cost information. The summary gives an absolute risk reduction percentage of 0.27% for patients who received radiation compared to those who did not. It also includes the number needed to treat (370) to save one patient. This is good detail, but we would also have liked more context on the controversies of DCIS treatment. A HealthNewsReview.org podcast provides a deeper look here. The release briefly discusses harms. The release says patients who received radiation and lumpectomy had more “local” recurrences of the cancer, but their overall survival was modestly better than patients who did not have radiation (a 0.27% reduction over 15 years). The release should have given some mention to the harms of radiation treatment, particularly since the potential benefit of radiotherapy was very small. The release provides details on the association study, which reviewed records from thousands of patients. The release also includes limitations of the study. There is no disease mongering. The release provides context on the prevalence of DCIS in the U.S. The style of this news release was to punt the question of funders and “conflicts” into a web link where the reader has to chase it down. It would better serve readers to have funders and any conflicts of interest spelled out in the release. Here is what the release states: Editor’s Note: The article contains conflict of interest disclosures. Please see the article for additional information, including other authors, author contributions and affiliations, financial disclosures, funding and support, etc. The study notes that researchers received funding from Canadian government agencies. The release let readers down in providing the broader context about controversies over appropriate treatment — if any — for women diagnosed with DCIS. It’s common knowledge that radiation and surgery are widely available treatments. There was no claim of novelty. The release stated that results are based on an association study of a national database containing more than 140,000 patient records. It’s unclear if similar studies have been completed. We found no unjustifiable language.

https://www.healthnewsreview.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/GettyImages-531314800.jpg,https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2696506,https://www.healthnewsreview.org/2015/08/new-dcis-study-news-release-leadmixed-messages-wonder-patients-get-confused/

1mixture

DCIS,The JAMA Network

23925

"Mexican government officials ""hand out brochures showing individuals how they can avoid our Border Patrol, how they can get into our country."

May 29, 2010

Smith says Mexico hands out brochures showing migrants how to avoid Border Patrol, enter U.S.

Meghan Ashford-Grooms

"U.S. Rep. Lamar Smith told Fox News on May 20 that the United States needs Mexico's help in stopping their citizens from entering the United States illegally but that ""we get just the opposite. """"They hand out brochures showing individuals how they can avoid our Border Patrol, how they can get into our country,"" Smith said May 20, referring to the Mexican government. His statement came to our attention from Lainey Melnick of Austin, the Democratic nominee challenging Smith in November.Smith backed off his statement slightly when the Fox News interviewer, Bill Hemmer, asked: ""You are saying that the Mexican government is passing out leaflets on how to cross the border?"" Smith's reply: ""They have done that in the past, on how to, of course how to be safe, and maybe how to get food and water, but also how to avoid detection. ""Has Mexico really been giving its citizens advice on how to sneak into the United States without running into the Border Patrol? We looked into it.In response to our inquiry, Jamie Zuieback, who works for Smith as an aide to the House Judiciary Committee, pointed us to an opinion piece that aired on National Public Radio on Jan. 27, 2005. In it, commentator Gustavo Arellano reacts to a pamphlet produced by the Mexican foreign ministry called ""Guia del Migrante Mexicano,"" or ""Guide for the Mexican Migrant."" Earlier that month, The New York Times reported that about 1.5 million copies of the guide had been distributed across Mexico in December 2004.In his commentary, Arellano said the 32-page booklet ""advises Mexicans who are thinking of leaving their homeland on the best ways to do it."" Arrellano noted that the publication riled some American lawmakers, who described it as a manual on how to enter the country illegally -- a position aired at the time by then-U.S. Rep. J.D. Hayworth, R-Ariz., in an opinion article published in the Jan. 9, 2005, Austin American-Statesman. (Hayworth is challenging U.S. Sen. John McCain in Arizona's 2010 Republican primary. )Several weeks later, Francisco Alejo, who was then the Austin-based Mexican consul general, responded to Hayworth with an opinion piece in the Statesman. He wrote: ""In no way does the guide promote undocumented immigration into the United States. As it is clearly stated in the guide’s introduction and on the back cover, the safe and appropriate way to enter any country -- including the United States -- is with a valid passport and visa. ""Alejo said the guide was produced to advise ""people of the risks involved in, as well as the legal consequences of, crossing into the United States."" His article also said the Mexican government had produced similar guides in the past. Marc Rosenblum, senior policy analyst at the Washington-based Migration Policy Institute, a think tank that studies international migration, said his reading was that the purpose of the brochure was humanitarian, to prevent migrants from being stranded in the desert or dying.In the January 2005 Times article, Geronimo Gutierrez, then Mexico’s undersecretary for North American affairs, said that the year before, ""over 300 Mexicans died in their attempt to enter the United States, the vast majority if not all of them in search of a job. ... The Mexican government obviously has an obligation to take all actions possible in order to avoid the loss of life.’’ Let's recap. Smith first said that the Mexican government is currently handing out leaflets telling people how to avoid the U.S. Border Patrol and ""get into the country."" He amended that to say that Mexico has handed out such leaflets in the past and that they included information on how to ""be safe."" And the Mexican government acknowledged a few years ago that it was distributing information about safely crossing the border.That leaves two significant questions. Are the leaflets still being distributed? And do they -- or did they ever -- advise border-crossers how to get into the country while avoiding detection?Seeking answers, we tried to find a current copy of the handout, which is no longer available on the Mexican government's website. However, we resurrected the pamphlet using an Internet archiving tool. We then matched the Spanish text of the document with an English translation of excerpts published in the Times in 2005, supplemented with translation by Spanish-speaking colleagues at the American-Statesman.The introduction to the brochure we found -- it's undated -- says it was designed to dispense ""practical advice"" and notes that the safe way to enter another country is to do so legally, by acquiring a passport in Mexico and a visa from the destination country. It is illustrated with comics-like drawings.It warns migrants of the perils of crossing over. For instance, they are told that crossing the river -- unnamed in the brochure, but presumably the Rio Grande -- can be perilous and that wet, heavy clothing makes floating or swimming difficult. For desert crossers, this section advises migrants ""to walk during hours when the heat is not too intense. ""It also describes the dangers of getting involved with human smugglers and advises migrants not to use false documents or carry packages for someone else. If detained, they are told not to resist arrest or try to escape, and that they have certain rights while in custody. And there are tips for migrants to keep a low profile once they are settled in the U.S.: Avoid noisy parties, fighting, domestic violence, carrying weapons, illegal activities, driving while drinking or driving without a license or insurance.There is no information on where to cross the border or how to avoid the Border Patrol or U.S. authorities when doing so.When we noted the lack of such specific advice, Zuieback, Smith's committee aide, pointed out illustrations that she said show ""illegal immigrants watching the border for an opening to enter and, later, running from the Border Patrol."" She also said the advice to cross the desert when the heat is less severe is ""a clear message to cross at night. ""Zuieback also interpreted the tips on keeping a low profile as information on ""how to avoid detection by law enforcement while in the United States. ""As for showing migrants how to ""get into our country"" -- per Smith's statement to Fox News -- the closest such reference we spotted was a sentence urging people to ""use power lines, train tracks or dirt roads as guides"" if they get lost.Next, we tried to find out whether the migrant guide was still being distributed. Zuieback said Smith was not aware of ""additional publications"" since the guide prompted a flurry of news articles in 2005. However, we came across 2005 reports of similar publications by at least one Mexican state, Yucatan.Using Google Scholar, we found an academic article on the ""Guide for the Mexican Migrant"" published in 2009 by Bruno Lutz, a professor at the Metropolitan Autonomous University in Xochimilco, on the outskirts of Mexico City. Lutz wrote that the brochure was published and distributed from 2004 to 2006; that was confirmed by Ricardo Alday, a spokesman for the Mexican Embassy in Washington. When President Felipe Calderon came to power in 2006, the paper says, the guide was substituted on the government's website with a guide for the ""Mexican traveler,"" which Lutz describes as ""limited to giving very general indications about required visas and tourist attractions in each country. ""We then read the ""Guia del Viajero Mexicano"" on the website of Mexico's foreign ministry and found information on travel alerts, consular services and visa requirements, but nothing on illegally crossing the U.S.-Mexico border.So where does that leave us? Smith was right when he told Fox News that the Mexican government handed out brochures offering advice to people planning to immigrate to the United States without authorization. And there is an element of truth in Smith’s statement that the information in the pamphlet shows people, as Smith says, ""how they can get into our country,"" but the part of the publication that deals with crossing the border focuses on safety.Significantly, Smith incorrectly declared, initially, that Mexico currently gives out the guide. We found no evidence to support that statement.Also, the congressman's description of the ""Guia del Migrante Mexicano"" -- that it tells how to avoid the Border Patrol -- was misleading. While two illustrations appear to show migrants in flight from law officers, the text does not contain information on how to avoid law enforcement while crossing over. In fact, it advises cooperation if apprehended."

http://www.statesman.com/republish/foxs-guide-for-aliens-undermines-bushs-plan-714606.html, http://www.npr.org/templates/player/mediaPlayer.html?action=1&t=1&islist=false&id=4468334&m=4468335, https://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/06/international/americas/06mexico.html, http://www.statesman.com/republish/the-facts-on-mexicos-guide-for-immigrants-714568.html, https://web.archive.org/web/20050427010219/www.sre.gob.mx/tramites/consulares/guiamigrante/default.htm, https://alt.coxnewsweb.com/statesman/politifact/052810_zuiebackemail.pdf, https://alt.coxnewsweb.com/statesman/politifact/052810_nytimesimmigstory.pdf, https://alt.coxnewsweb.com/statesman/politifact/052810_lutzstory.pdf, http://sre.gob.mx/guiaviajero/vContenidosview.php?IDContenido=40

0false

Immigration, Texas, Lamar Smith,

23373

"Rhode Island gives undocumented pregnant women health insurance, plus a cash card ""with $400 a month on it"" and ""$250 a month or $275 a month to spend on food."

September 19, 2010

Palumbo says R.I. gives undocumented pregnant women free health insurance and hundreds of dollars for food and other expenses

Cynthia Needham

"On the hot-button issue of immigration, there are few figures as outspoken about Rhode Island's policies as state Rep. Peter Palumbo, a Democrat from Cranston. Two years ago, Palumbo released a set of figures he compiled estimating what undocumented immigrants cost the state each year, how many murders they commit and the strain they put on our health care system. The report was never substantiated, but Palumbo continues to cite these and other similar  figures. Palumbo and Republican state Rep. Joseph Trillo, of Warwick -- who also supports stricter enforcement of immigration laws -- went to Arizona earlier this month to see for themselves the problems that the state is having with illegal immigration. While there, they appeared together on Fox News' ""On the Record With Greta Van Susteren"" to discuss Rhode Island immigration policy. Criticizing the state's social service programs, Palumbo said: ""We have something called the anchor embryos. We have such liberal programs where we take care of you. If you're an illegal woman you get to Rhode Island, you go to the Department of Human Services, they give you either Neighborhood Health [Plan], United[Health] or Blue Cross. They give you a card with $400 a month on it and allow you to spend it on anything but food because, sit tight, we're going to give you another $250 a month or $275 a month to spend on food."" We asked Palumbo about his source for such exact dollar figures. He said he got each piece of information from Gary Alexander, the head of Rhode Island's Office of Health and Human Services, in a lengthy conversation they had about two years ago when Palumbo first became interested in the issue. Alexander told us he recalls briefly discussing the topic of benefits for undocumented pregnant women with Palumbo at some point, but he said he never cited any of the specific figures that Palumbo lists, nor would he, because they're just not accurate. ""I don't even know how he would get totals like $400 or $250,"" Alexander said. Health care policy for undocumented pregnant women So what do state and federal policies say about benefits for pregnant women who are in Rhode Island illegally? First, they are eligible for health insurance under RIte Care, the state's health insurance program for low-income families, according to state officials. And federal law dictates that they must be given a choice between providers, Alexander said. Until just a few weeks ago, those choices included Neighborhood Health Plan, UnitedHealthCare, or Blue Cross & Blue Shield. In August, Blue Cross announced it would no longer participate in the program. Women who are pregnant are not required to declare their immigration status when enrolling in RIte Care, assuming they meet the income eligibility requirements. The way Alexander and federal officials explain it, the rationale is this: because the child will be born in the United States, he or she will be an American citizen and therefore eligible for health benefits. Prenatal care is considered an extension of those benefits. ""It's not based on the mother, it's based on the child who will soon be a citizen. If we don't give [the mother] prenatal care, something could happen to the child,"" leading to even greater costs for the state, said Alexander, who was appointed by Governor Donald Carcieri, a Republican. Even if the DHS did not offer health benefits, state law would still require hospitals to provide emergency care to anyone, Alexander added. The mother's health benefits end three months after delivery. Palumbo is therefore correct on what he says about free health care. Cash assistance policy Next Palumbo says undocumented pregnant women get ""a card with $400 a month on it"" that they are ""allow[ed] to spend [on] anything but food."" Sounds a bit like a state gift certificate to us, but Palumbo says he was referring to cash assistance welfare benefits. Again, he said Alexander told him that every undocumented pregnant woman who seeks state help gets $400 a month. Not so, said the DHS secretary, who said he couldn't imagine where Palumbo could  have gotten such specific figures. Pregnant women who are in Rhode Island illegally are not eligible for welfare benefits and even if they were, how much they get would depend on their income, said OHHS Associate Director David Burnett. Under the Bush-administration's Deficit Reduction Act of 2005, anyone seeking cash benefits or other federal assistance must provide identifying documentation proving their legal status, according to the federal Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. It's important to note that, as with healthcare benefits, once the child is born, as a citizen, he or she will be eligible for welfare benefits, which would presumably be delivered to the mother on behalf of the child. But the mother herself does not qualify for any subsidy. So Palumbo is incorrect to say pregnant women get welfare benefits. Food stamps policy The same is true for the federal Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program, more commonly known as the food stamp program. Despite the figures Palumbo cites, undocumented pregnant women are not eligible for ""$250 a month or $275 a month,"" or any other amount. Under the federal Deficit Reduction Act, without proof of citizenship, they can't receive the benefit. Once born, their children will qualify to enroll in the SNAP program. According to the University of Rhode Island's Feinstein Center for a Hunger Free America, the maximum is $200 a month per qualifying member. But the subsidy will not cover the mother. Again, Palumbo is wrong. Finally, there is a clear implication in Palumbo's statement that Rhode Island's benefits are more generous than those in other states. At one point in the Van Susteren interview, Palumbo suggested that undocumented pregnant women from elsewhere are ""headed to our state"" to take advantage of these programs. Federal law now dictates that undocumented people -- pregnant or otherwise -- are not eligible for either welfare assistance or food stamps here, or anywhere. By the same token, undocumented pregnant women in Rhode Island are eligible to receive health care benefits, but that is also true in some other states. While federal law won't cover undocumented people, in general, it gives states the option to use federal CHIP (Children's Health Insurance Program) to cover prenatal benefits. To imply that Rhode Island is the only state where this is the case is not correct. In all, two of the three facts Palumbo offered to Van Susteren were wrong. Worse, he cited as his source an official -- Gary Alexander -- who said he never said any of those specifics, in part because they are not true. Palumbo used very exact numbers on national television and he stated them with the kind of confidence that could lead viewers to believe he had done his homework and knew what he was talking about. He didn't and he doesn't, at least in two of three counts."

http://www.statehealthfacts.org, http://www.commonwealthfund.org/Content/Publications/Fund-Reports/2006/Oct/The-Deficit-Reduction-Act-of-2005--An-Overview-of-Key-Medicaid-Provisions-and-Their-Implications-for.aspx, http://www.foxnews.com/on-air/on-the-record/index.html#/v/4333727/meeting-of-the-minds-in-arizona/?playlist_id=86925, http://www.kff.org/medicaid/upload/7534.pdf

0false

Immigration, Rhode Island, Health Care, Poverty, Peter Palumbo,

5776

Nursing residency program to tackle rural health care needs.

One of the state’s largest health care providers is partnering with the University of New Mexico’s nursing college to expand access to health care in rural communities by creating a new residency program.

The program will be paid for by a $3.2 million grant awarded to Presbyterian Healthcare Services by the federal Health Resources and Services Administration. The program will focus on providing care in medically underserved areas. The clinics that will be part of the residency are in Capitan, Carrizozo, Corona, Ruidoso, southwest Albuquerque, Socorro, Belen, Los Lunas and Tucumcari. Officials say all but one of the communities served through the grant also have higher than average poverty rates. The priorities for the residents who will participate in the program include combating the opioid crisis and addressing mental health issues.

2true

Access to health care, Albuquerque, New Mexico

17404

Dana Milbank Says Bill O’Reilly spoke 40 percent of the words in an interview with President Barack Obama.

February 6, 2014

Milbank said O’Reilly said 40 percent of the words during his interview with the president. That was a little high. By our count, 35 percent would be more accurate. O’Reilly spoke decidedly more than Tapper did in his time with Obama.

Jon Greenberg

"At least among Fox News viewers, nothing boosts audience like taking President Barack Obama to task. The day after Fox News host Bill O’Reilly had an interview with Obama, O’Reilly picked up an additional 1 million viewers for his show The O’Reilly Factor. The president sat down with O’Reilly right before the Super Bowl, and the tone of the conversation itself stirred up a flurry of reactions. Here’s a small example from a moment when O’Reilly pressed Obama on the administration’s response to the attack on the American compound in Benghazi, Libya. O’Reilly: If (Ambassador to the United Nations) Susan Rice goes out and tells the world that it was a spontaneous demonstration... Obama:  Bill... O’Reilly:  -- off a videotape but your... Obama:  Bill... O’Reilly:  -- your commanders and the secretary of Defense know it's a terror attack... Obama:  Now, Bill... O’Reilly:  Just... Obama:  -- Bill... O’Reilly:  -- as an American... Obama:  -- Bill -- Bill... O’Reilly:  -- I'm just confused. Obama:  And I'm -- and I'm trying to explain it to (you), if you want to listen. No wonder that many observers described the interview as testy. Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank called it ""the roughest and nastiest exchange"" of the three times that O’Reilly has interviewed Obama. ""He interrupted the president 42 times in 10 minutes,"" Milbank said on MSNBC’s Politics Nation. Of all the words uttered in this 10-minute interview, 40 percent were uttered by O’Reilly."" We wanted to check Milbank’s numbers. Not on the interruptions, but on the word count. We pulled out our digital centrifuge and separated the O’Reilly and Obama utterances. According to our research, O’Reilly delivered 787 words to Obama’s 1,484. This gave O’Reilly 35 percent of the conversation. That’s a little lower than Milbank said but more or less in the same ballpark. We reached out to Milbank and did not hear back. To satisfy our own curiosity, we decided to compare this with another one-on-one interview between the president and a journalist. A couple of days before Obama sat down with O’Reilly, he did the same with CNN’s Jake Tapper. We subjected that transcript to the same rigorous methods and found that Tapper spoke 23 percent of the time, leaving the president the other 77 percent. The precise word counts were Tapper -- 849 and Obama -- 2,886. Milbank’s point was that O’Reilly’s interview was almost as much about O’Reilly as it was about the president. We don’t know about that, but we can say that O’Reilly spoke about 50 percent more than Tapper did in his interview. The topics in the two interviews differed greatly. O’Reilly brought up Obamacare, the Benghazi attack and the IRS scrutiny of conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status. Tapper focused on issues like immigration reform, legalization of marijuana, spying by the National Security Agency, and security at the Winter Olympics in Sochi. O’Reilly had a second installment of his time with Obama that aired the night after the Super Bowl. Milbank’s comment came on the same night, so we’re counting only the segment that had aired publicly at that point. For the record, in the second installment, O’Reilly asked the president about African-American children raised in single-parent households, school vouchers, the Keystone pipeline, a contraceptive coverage exemption for Little Sisters of the Poor, and veterans benefits. Our ruling Milbank said O’Reilly said 40 percent of the words during his interview with the president. That was a little high. By our count, 35 percent would be more accurate. O’Reilly spoke decidedly more than Tapper did in his time with Obama."

http://variety.com/2014/tv/news/obama-interview-lifts-fox-news-oreilly-factor-to-largest-audience-in-10-months-1201086586/, http://cnnpressroom.blogs.cnn.com/2014/01/30/just-released-cnns-jake-tapper-exclusive-interview-with-president-obama/, https://www.nbcnews.com/id/54269638/ns/msnbc-politicsnation/#.UvKLSmJdVI4, http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2014/02/02/transcript-bill-oreilly-interviews-president-obama/, http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2014/02/03/transcript-full-interview-between-president-obama-and-bill-oreilly/

2true

Pundits, PunditFact, Dana Milbank,

2798

Pfizer lung cancer drug fails in two large studies.

January 27, 2014

Pfizer Inc on Monday said one of its experimental drugs had failed to meet its goals in two late-stage studies among patients who had received prior treatment for advanced non-small cell lung cancer, the most common form of the disease.

Ransdell Pierson

Although Pfizer continues to test the drug, called dacomitinib, in another Phase III study, hopes for its success have now largely faded, according to ISI Group analyst Mark Schoenebaum. “We believe consensus expectations (for the drug) will be close to zero given today’s readout” of unsuccessful trial results, Schoenebaum said in a research note. In one of the failed trials, called ARCHER 1009, patients given Pfizer’s once-daily pill did not show improved survival without the cancer worsening, compared with Roche Holding AG’s widely used Tarceva (erlotinib). Tarceva is the current standard of care in patients with mutated forms of a protein called Epidermal Growth Factor Receptor (EGFR). The protein plays a role in normal regulation of cell growth, but when mutated is believed to cause cells to proliferate and thereby help spur various types of cancer. Dacomitinib is designed to block several types of Epidermal Growth Factor receptors, while Tarceva and similar treatments for lung cancer target only one type of receptor. Cowen and Co had forecast annual sales of $500 million by 2020 for dacomitinib, if it were approved for lung cancer. That would make it a moderate-sized product for Pfizer, the largest U.S. drugmaker, which has annual revenue of $50 billion. Schoenebaum said there has been little investor interest in the drug and that Wall Street had expected it to generate annual sales of only $300 million by 2018. The second failed trial, named BR.26, involved patients that previously had failed to benefit from chemotherapy as well as from treatment with an EGFR inhibitor. Overall survival of patients taking the Pfizer drug was not prolonged in the study, compared with patients given a placebo. Pfizer said adverse events seen with dacomitinib were consistent with those seen in smaller earlier studies. In the meantime, Pfizer said dacomitinib is also being tested in a third late-stage trial, called ARCHER 1050, among patients with advanced non-small cell lung cancer who have not received prior treatment. The study will compare dacomitinib with Iressa (gefitinib), an EGFR inhibitor sold by AstraZeneca Plc. Results from that study are expected in 2015. Pfizer shares were little changed in morning trading on the New York Stock Exchange.

2true

Health News

9765

Prenatal testing can detect cancer in pregnant mothers

July 19, 2015

This CBS story is about the detection of maternal cancers during analysis of DNA blood tests designed to identify chromosomal abnormalities in the fetus. Understandably, the story focuses on the story of a mother who feels her unborn fetus may have “saved her life” because of the unexpected cancer finding. It packs a significant emotional punch for such a very short story and very likely collected a lot of eyeballs. But it missed an opportunity to offer viewers some context and background about the potential risks as well as benefits from wider use of DNA blood tests that reveal incidental findings that suggest disease. The competing WSJ story was longer and provided more of the details we were looking for. There is increasing demand by physicians and pregnant women to perform noninvasive prenatal blood tests as a safer means of establishing fetal risk for Down Syndrome and other serious genetic abnormalities. Although professional guidelines suggest that only women at high risk of carrying fetuses with serious genetic abnormalities get these tests, they are already widely used because other procedures, such as amniocentesis, can occasionally lead to miscarriage. The discovery that in a few rare cases, the abnormalities detected in the tests have nothing to do with the fetus, but with a mother’s undiagnosed cancer instead, will likely lead to even more demand for use of these tests. That poses not only the ethical problem of whether and when to divulge incidental genetic risks also uncovered in maternal DNA (say, of breast cancer), but also a potential explosion of costs related to use of the blood tests to screen every pregnant woman to find a very small number of cancers.

Joann Rodgers, MS,Karen Carlson, MD,Kevin Lomangino

In such a short piece, discussions of cost are almost always missing, but they were missing as well in the competing WSJ article. The CBS story says that the study “looked” at eight women. But this is an incomplete description. The study involved 125,426 samples from which abnormal results (typically indicating a chromosomal disorder in the fetus) were detected in 3757 (3%). Ten cancers were subsequently identified in women whose babies were found to be normal despite an abnormal test result, with further analysis done on the eight women mentioned in the story. Without this quantitative data, readers have no sense of the rarity of the eight cases described or of the scope of the benefit that might be realized if such testing were offered more widely. Unlike the WSJ article, there was not even a hint that widespread use of these tests might pose harms as well as benefits, as well as higher costs and ethical dilemmas. The story focuses on the serious impact of the test on a woman’s life and on her ability to “be there” for her child as she battles her cancer. In the sense that this story was more about the potential life-saving aspect of the study for women with hidden cancers, it provides useful information. But so much copy spent on telling the woman’s story meant less space to provide all-important context. Nothing on the study’s strengths or limitations or what the research means more broadly. For example:  Non-invasive prenatal testing is a new kind of screening test that is sometimes offered to women over 35 or at risk for a child with Down syndrome. About 3% of women screened have an abnormal result suggesting a fetal abnormality. This was the first large-scale study to confirm that in a small number of such cases, the abnormal test result is caused instead by an undiagnosed cancer in the mother. The story focuses on an individual woman’s story, and provides no perspective on the rarity of her case. Although it may be an underestimate, cancer was reported in only 0.008% of the samples analyzed. The story needed some acknowledgment that this is an exceedingly rare occurrence. The story noted that the study was funded by the manufacturer of the test and that the study author quoted has a relationship with the company. That’s useful context, but we require an independent voice to meet our standard on this criterion. No one was quoted except one of the study’s authors. No alternatives to the blood tests were mentioned in any context. The WSJ story, by contrast, notes that the blood tests are now used in place of more invasive amniocentesis or chorionic villus sampling to identify fetuses at risk. The WSJ also underscores the importance of having a positive blood test confirmed with one of these more invasive tests. Not undergoing testing at all might also be an option, but the story does not address this. Although the availability of these new tests is not specifically addressed, the story does note that “prenatal testing is widely used for pregnant women at risk of having babies with chromosome disorders” — implying that the new tests are one such option. We’ll award a Satisfactory on that basis. The story could also have noted that the new test are recommended by the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology for some women. Usually they are offered for women over 35 or with other risk factors for a fetus with Down syndrome or certain other chromosomal abnormalities. The story establishes what is new here and made reference to the research done at Tufts and reported in JAMA. The story may have been suggested by a release, but clearly focused almost entirely on interviews with a mother and the principal investigator.

https://www.healthnewsreview.org/?p=35297

0false

prenatal testing

4642

Man who inspired ice bucket challenge is back in hospital.

The man who inspired people around the world to dump buckets of ice water over their heads to raise millions of dollars for Lou Gehrig’s disease research is back in the hospital and is keeping his sense of humor.

A Facebook post from the family of 32-year-old Pete Frates said he is resting comfortably at Massachusetts General Hospital and that “doctors, medicine, prayers and love continue to help him get stronger.” After some news outlets erroneously reported Monday that he had died, Frates responded by posting a 45-second video on Twitter showing him lying in a hospital bed while the song “Alive” by Pearl Jam plays in the background. Frates’ family said Sunday that he had returned to the hospital and was “battling this beast ALS like a Superhero.” He was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis in 2012. The disease weakens muscles and impairs physical functioning. There is no known cure. The ALS Ice Bucket Challenge raised more than $220 million when it took off worldwide on social media in 2014. Frates is a native of Beverly, Massachusetts, and played baseball at Boston College. He played professionally in Germany after graduation and in amateur leagues upon his return to the U.S. He received his diagnosis after getting hit on the wrist by a pitch and noticing it wasn’t healing properly.

https://twitter.com/PeteFrates3/status/881874734190919680

2true

Health, Lou Gehrigs disease, North America, Lifestyle, Massachusetts

11431

Fat Hormone May Trick the Body to Help It Keep Extra Pounds Off

December 6, 2005

This piece reported that use of twice daily injections of a synthesized version of the hormone leptin helped maintain weight loss in a small group of individuals who lost 10% of their body weight in the preceding 5-10 weeks by following a very low-calorie diet. There was no comparison group of people who did not receive the twice-daily injections fed a comparable number of calories following weight loss. No context was given, providing no mention of any other weight loss maintenance methods. The conclusion that this study (of an injected hormone) “suggests that the weight loss solution may eventually be a pill” is totally unsupported by anything in the original research. And it conflicts with a line that appeared just three sentences earlier in the story, which explained, “the lead investigator said the 10-week study was too short and too small to determine whether continuous leptin treatments could allow dieters to keep off their weight permanently and effortlessly.” Finally, the story did not reveal that in the study, subjects were fed a meager 800 calories a day, which is more akin to starvation than to dieting. So it makes the conclusion of the story even less relevant to dieters trying to keep weight off, which was the way the story was framed.

No mention of possible costs for leptin; no mention of costs of other methods of weight maintenance. The story presented as a benefit that leptin increased number of calories used during low level activity. But it fails to mention that at higher levels of energy expenditure, this effect was not observed. No mention of any possible harms. What, if anything, happened after the study subjects stopped receiving leptin injections? The piece does inform the reader that this was a study that examined too few people and that the 10 weeks was too short a time period to determine whether continuous leptin injection was a feasible way to keep weight off. Weight loss is framed as starvation. The study this piece was based on fed the study subjects 800 kcal/day which is more akin to starvation than dieting. It makes the piece less relevant to the dieting process. The story provided a quote only from the lead investigator of the study; the story includes no input from any other independent source. No mention of any other weight loss maintenance methods. Doesn’t mention that there is no FDA approval for the use of leptin in maintenance of weight loss. Doesn’t mention that leptin is a purely experimental treatment – a hormone discovered in 1969.

0false

91

Procter & Gamble, rivals take refills into beauty aisle.

September 4, 2016

Under pressure to reduce environmental waste from single-use containers, major consumer companies including Procter & Gamble Co (PG.N), Unilever Plc (ULVR.L) and The Body Shop are rolling out more products in refillable form.

Siddharth Cavale, Richa Naidu

P&G, with roughly $68 billion in annual revenue, said it has invested millions in creating and testing refills for detergents over the years and is now trying to push in to mainstream beauty and body care refills – which are virtually unheard of. It recently began offering some Olay face-cream jars with refill pouches on Olay.com, telling Reuters it has plans to expand the sales of the pouches in Europe early next year. “We’re learning on our legs so I don’t know that we’re in a position to say, ‘Hey, here’s the magic to selling refills,’” P&G spokesman Damon Jones said. Beauty products retailer The Body Shop, owned by Brazil’s Natura Cosmeticos SA NATU3.SA, says it plans to roll out “refill stations” in its stores globally next year, allowing shoppers to buy reusable metal containers to fill with Body Shop shower gels or creams. The company had offered refills at its stores in the early 1990s, but discontinued them in 2003, citing a lack of consumer demand. Unilever, which has set targets for reducing and recycling plastic by 2025, in October announced the planned launch of “refill sticks” of deodorants under its Dove line of personal care products on Loopstore.com. The website, operated by recycling company TerraCycle, offers consumers the chance to buy some household products in ultra-durable packaging with refills delivered to their doors, milkman-style. Across the consumer goods industry, results for refillable products have been mixed so far as many shoppers are far too set in their ways to be easily weaned from living in a throwaway culture. While refills are less expensive to purchase - generally priced at 20% to 30% less per item than the containers they are aimed to replenish, according to Unilever - shoppers have so far, for the most part, failed to snap them up, the companies said. SC Johnson & Son Inc, marketer of Windex and Pledge, said refills and concentrates so far have not played well with either Americans or Europeans over the decade they have been offered, with unit sales of such products pretty much flat. It pulled concentrated refills for Shout stain remover off the shelves because they were not selling very well. In 2010, Unilever put 20-liter tanks to dispense detergents in Walmart Inc’s (WMT.N) British supermarket chain Asda, and provided flexible pouches for customers to refill. But with leaky machines, safety and maintenance problems and the high costs of upkeep, Unilever said the tests fell short of expectations. Asda was also unhappy because the tanks occupied a lot of space. “None of them sell very well – it is a convenience issue,” SC Johnson CEO Fisk Johnson told Reuters. Johnson said some people find it painstaking to wash and refill bottles themselves while others worry that smaller bottles filled with concentrates are less “bang-for-your-buck” than the larger ones they have used for years. Still, the privately held company said it was expanding its refill offerings this year to address concerns surrounding plastic waste and is also testing refill stations for cleaning products with UK retailer Waitrose, owned by Britain’s John Lewis [JLPLC.UL]. The Waitrose tests are showing the first signs of progress in refill sales, Johnson said, and the company is now thinking of expanding the project. Even if consumers are comfortable using refills for some household goods, it is more complicated to sell them for products like Pantene shampoo and Olay creams, P&G spokesman Jones said. For instance, with beauty products, the look and feel of packaging is a big factor in creating and maintaining customer loyalty, while delivering an environmental benefit, he said. Some shoppers say they want to buy refillable products, but that the offerings are not available at many stores. Earlier this year, dozens of consumers took to social media to urge The Body Shop to bring back its refill counters. “Refill, refill, refill!” Twitter user @JaiChipperfield said on July 22, joining a thread in which several other shoppers demanded the return of refills. “Seems to me that judging by these comments your customers want to see the return of refills,” @JaiChipperfield added. “Me too, it would be brilliant to see that return.” The Body Shop eventually responded to those pleas. “Now with the renewed focus on sustainability, we believe it is the right time to return with it,” Body Shop spokeswoman Lucy Muircroft told Reuters this week.

uk.reuters.com/companies/WMT.N,uk.reuters.com/companies/PG.N,uk.reuters.com/companies/ULVR.L

2true

Environment

10863

Retinal implant trial helps blind people see shapes

November 3, 2010

There was too much gee whiz and not enough hard analysis of the evidence in this piece about a journal article showing that a new eye implant has improved the vision of three people, at least temporarily. While the piece was well written and did a good job explaining the mechanics of the device, there were dozens of unanswered questions about the study itself and about the implant’s broad application. Retinitis pigmentosa and macular degeneration are two of the major causes of loss of vision in the world today. Given the failure of any drug therapy to halt the progression of either and the lack of progress of gene based treatments, the promise of artificial devices holds a great deal of appeal for the average reader. Researchers have been working on several fronts to improve vision impairments, and the public has seen a series of stories about “breakthroughs” that promise the hope of restoring people’s vision. Wired Magazine in 2002 featured a story with the headline, “A half century of artificial-sight research has succeeded. And now the blind can see.” Yet, where are all the people walking around with bionic eyes eight years later? Stories about devices like the one described in this case and other methods being tested need to take the hype down a notch and make it clear to readers how difficult it is to translate these technologies into an effective, commonly used clinical application. Unfortunately, this story uses a time honored approach of hyperbole in its reporting of this early stage research.

The story makes no mention of costs. Instead by saying, “could be on the market and available for thousands of patients in about five years’ time” it leaves readers with the impression that cost is not an issue. This is exactly the kind of device that an insurance company might put on its “ineligible” list. A quick review of the business media suggests the cost of the device will exceed $75,000 if it becomes commercially available. according to this Medical Device Technology Alert. It is hard to imagine why this important fact was overlooked in the story. Beyond saying in the lead that three people were able to “see shapes and objects,” there is not much else in the story to help readers understand the levels of vision improvements that were seen and how those should be compared to the preexisting conditions or other treatments. Then, confusingly, the story narrows its focus to just one patient saying, “one blind patient who had the device implanted was able to identify and find objects placed on a table in front of him, and was able to walk around a room independently. He could even read a clock face and differentiate between seven shades of grey, the researchers said. Tests were conducted starting from seven to nine days after the device was implanted.” It’s tough when writing a story about a study this small to put hard numbers to the benefits, but even some acknowledgment of this limitation would have been better than some of the overly optimistic sentiments expressed. The study itself and the press released provided more ways for the story to quantify the benefits. The story provides absolutely no information on the implant requirements for the device nor the potential downsides associated with this surgical procedure. There are some caveats tossed into this story, but they can’t overcome the hype. The story says in the lead that the implant “allowed three blind patients to see shapes and objects within days of treatment”. The next sentence says, “Experts described the study results as phenomenal”. The story does deserve credit for saying in the lead that only “three blind patients” saw vision improvement, but the story does little else to describe the limitations of the study or to place it in any context. The story engages in disease mongering by throwing in some sketchy numbers about the frequency of the disease. It says the device “could eventually change the lives of up to 200,000 people worldwide who suffer from blindness due to a degenerative eye disease called retinitis pigmentosa.” Later it says, “Retinitis pigmentosa in a genetic eye condition that leads to blindness and affects about 1 in 4,000 people worldwide.” By our math, 200,000 out of 6.8 billion people worldwide means that 1 out of every 34,500 people is affected. And if we’re just talking about adults, that number drops to 1 out of every 22,105 people, a far cry from 1 out of every 4,000. If it were truly one out of every 4,000 people worldwide, that would mean that 1.1 million people have the disease. The story does quote one presumed independent source, Robert Maclaren, a professor of Ophthalmology at Britain’s Oxford University. In the above mentioned Medical Technology Alert, the manufacturer announced that Dr. Maclaren will be the lead investigator on a clinical study expected to enroll six subjects to advance this same retinal implant technology. As a result, Dr. Maclaren can hardly be described as an independent expert. Overall, we felt that the story was missing a strong, independent analysis. Had the reporter talked with more researchers in the field or more clinicians, perhaps the story would have had a more thoughtful tone. The story mentions that there are other implants, saying, “Other types of retinal implants, known as epiretinal implants, sit outside the retina and because they bypass the intact light-sensitive structures in the eyes they require the patient to wear an external camera and processor unit.” But that’s not a true comparison, nor does it provide readers with the true picture of how much R&D is happening right now in this field. As is often the case in medicine, surgical options and devices are not the only solution. Lowly old Vitamin A is often the first step for treating retinitis pigmentosa. The story does a credible job noting that the device is under study and not commercially available. Unfortunately it also suggests, based on the manufacturer’s statement, that the device in a very early stage of development will be available in 5 years. The hyperbole used is indefensible – “the device could become routine for some kinds of blindness in five years” and “could eventually change the lives of up to 200,000 people worldwide.”  This comes after a test in 3 people. The novelty of the device is established. The story does not rely on a news release, and, in fact, this news release from the University of Tubingen contains more interesting information about the study than the story.

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/10.09/vision.html

0false

Reuters Health

26607

“Putin has stated: Russian citizens (have) 2 options: Stay home for 15 days or in jail for 5 years.”

March 24, 2020

Russian President Vladimir Putin has implemented some policies to cancel large gatherings and keep people at home during the coronavirus pandemic. But we could not find any evidence that he has threatened jail time for people who don’t comply. The claim about a Putin policy to jail those who don’t stay at home appears to come from a post by the Twitter account of an Indian comedian, who later labeled his assertion a “joke.”

Louis Jacobson

"As many Americans grapple with the new reality of sheltering in place, social media posts have pointed to a purportedly stark choice in Russia. A March 23 Instagram post said, ""Putin has stated: Russian citizens (have) 2 options: Stay home for 15 days or in jail for 5 years."" I love that A post shared by Val (@itsvalos) on Mar 22, 2020 at 11:27am PDT The post was flagged as part of Facebook’s efforts to combat news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Facebook.) Is this something Putin said, or did? No. The idea appears to stem from a tweet by an Indian comedian whose account goes by the name Nasir Chinioti. The tweet says, ""#Covid_19 #StayAtHome Vladimir Putin has given Russians two options. You stay at home for 2 weeks or you go to jail for 5 years. No middle ground."" Two days later, the author of the original post tweeted, ""Just joke,"" with three emojis. (Oddly, many social media posts circulating didn’t include the second part of the tweet, even though it’s even more eye-catching: ""RUSSIA: Vladimir Putin has Dropped 800 tigers and Lions all over the Country to push people to stay home.. Stay Safe Everyone!!"") Just joke 😜😎😷 Looking through credible media reports, we found no evidence that Putin had given Russians the draconian choice between lockdown or jail. ""Schools, sports facilities, and other gathering places are closed, and it seems Moscow asked residents over 65 to stay home, from March 26 to April 14, but they offered them the equivalent of $50 in two payments, one at the beginning and one at the end,"" said Yoshiko M. Herrera, a political scientist at the University Wisconsin-Madison who specializes in Russia. ""He also ordered that phone and internet not be shut off and that other housing-related fines not be collected."" Herrera said that these measures, plus earlier measures to close its long border with China, seem appropriate, but she added that ""there are some big caveats."" ""There is a lot of skepticism and criticism of the statistics,"" she said, citing allegations of undercounting and misreporting coronavirus deaths in other categories. In recent days, the BBC reported, the infection rate in Russia ""has begun to escalate even according to official figures."" Social media posts have said ""Putin has stated: Russian citizens (have) 2 options: Stay home for 15 days or in jail for 5 years."" Credible news accounts and experts on the region see no evidence of such a draconian choice in Russia. The claim appears to stem from a post by an Indian comedian, who later clarified that this was intended as a ""joke."""

https://twitter.com/_Chinioty/status/1242312384645156865, https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/21/europe/putin-coronavirus-russia-intl/index.html, https://twitter.com/_Chinioty/status/1241606270878191617, https://globalnews.ca/news/6718720/russia-lion-coronavirus/, https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2020/03/24/coronavirus-in-russia-the-latest-news-march-24-a69117, https://www.instagram.com/p/B-C8SE4Hg_n/?utm_source=ig_embed, https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/coronavirus-russia-s-low-infection-numbers-viewed-skeptically-n1166101, https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-51972974

0false

Foreign Policy, Public Health, Coronavirus, Instagram posts,

24575

There's no rationing in any of these bills.

August 25, 2009

There's rationing in health care now, and there still would be under reform bill

Robert Farley

"It is perhaps the most polarizing word in the health care debate: rationing. Countless conservative opponents of the Democrat-backed health care reform plans have used the word. Their argument goes like this: You get government more involved in running health care, you set a goal of reducing costs, and it will inevitably mean rationing of medical services. It's not a long road from there to images of Grandma being denied a life-saving operation as a cost-saving measure. Everyone from former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin to Sen. Chuck Grassley has warned that people have reason to worry about rationing, while Democratic proponents of the plan have dismissed the claims as uninformed fearmongering. The term rationing has become so ubiquitous in the health care debate, we could've chosen to fact-check statements from any number of politicians as a way to talk about this issue. In a separate item, we looked at a claim about rationing from House Republican Leader John Boehner. In this item, we opted for one from Howard Dean, former chairman of the Democratic National Committee, if only because he was so definitive about a subject with a lot of gray. ""Let me just say, A, there's no rationing in any of these bills, so we don't have to worry about that,"" Dean said on ABC's This Week with George Stephanopoulos on Aug. 9. Before we examine his specific claim, let's look at the criticisms that have led to charges of rationing. The critics have often focused on two areas of the health plan to back up their accusations. The first is a proposal to expand comparative effectiveness research. That's a bureaucratic way of saying the government would do studies to find out which medical treatments and medications work better than others, and which are most cost-effective. The idea is that this would help doctors and patients make better informed decisions about the most effective treatment strategies. It's also expected to save money over time. Some opponents, however, claim the government would use findings from this research to ration care. We looked into this issue in detail and concluded that claim is . Other opponents of the plan have pointed to the Obama administration's proposal for an Independent Medicare Advisory Council (IMAC). The board would make annual recommendations for changing federal payments for various services covered by Medicare, as well as recommendations on ways to reform the Medicare delivery system. Michael Cannon, a health policy expert with the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, argues that price controls recommended by IMAC's unelected board amount to implicit rationing. Judith A. Stein, director of the Center for Medicare Advocacy, a group that helps seniors get care under the federal program, doesn't agree. Stein is no fan of IMAC, but she said its goal is not to ""ration"" care but to seek out ways to improve the efficiency of Medicare services, not necessarily cut them. We note that while IMAC has been recommended by the Obama administration, it was not included in any of the House bills so far. It has been discussed as an option by the powerful Senate Finance Committee. Still, we think it's a little premature to suggest this is part of the health care reform plan. And we think claims that IMAC might lead to wholesale rationing are alarmist. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office looked at the IMAC proposal and concluded it would save the government $2 billion from 2016–2019. That doesn't sound to us like the CBO expects any kind of dramatic cuts in service. In fact, we think much of the rhetoric from opponents about how the Democrats' health plan would lead to wholesale rationing has been wildly distorted, fanning the flames of public fear that the health care plan would have the government setting dollar limits on how much could be spent in a year to care for a patient, or deciding that some groups of people — older or disabled people, for example — should not get care because it's too expensive for the common good. And so it's understandable that Dean would want to knock down these wild claims. But we think Dean goes too far when he says the bills have ""no rationing,"" because it ignores a hard reality of health care — there is rationing now and there would be rationing in the Democrats' plan too. ""This whole notion of rationing as it applies to a public option, I think, is really ridiculous,"" Stein said. ""It is what insurance is. Right now, Congress and any health care plan 'rations.' No health insurance I know pays for 'whatever it costs.'"" ""Everyone hates the word rationing,"" said Katherine Baicker, a health economics professor at Harvard University. ""From an economics perspective, there's no way around rationing. Some care is being rationed now. Everyone isn't getting everything."" And you can bet people who can't get health insurance due to a pre-existing condition feel like there's already rationing. Ditto for those who can't afford health insurance. Proponents of the health reform plan — which seeks to provide basic coverage to everyone, regardless of whether they have a pre-existing condition — argue that it would clearly reduce that form of rationing. You could spend an unlimited amount on health care that would have some chance of helping people, Baicker said. But we have a limited amount of public resources. And so decisions have to be made about how to prioritize to allocate those resources. The idea, she said, is to provide adequate, basic health care in a public plan. Above that threshold, she said, people with more money could buy extra care. John Holahan, the director of the Urban Institute Health Policy Research Center, said he has not seen anything in any of the plans that will result in explicit rationing, but ""if you define rationing as 'people can't get everything they want,' it's true. But it's also true today."" Interestingly, he said that Medicare is much less likely to deny a health service than a private insurer. ""That's the argument you hear people making (that the reform bills would lead to government rationing),"" Holahan said. ""But I think they have it backwards."" Even Obama acknowledged the reality of health care rationing in a town hall on health care on Aug. 16: ""When we talk about reform, you hear some opponents of reform saying that somehow we are trying to ration care, or restrict the doctors that you can see, or you name it,"" Obama said. ""Well, that's what's going on right now. It's just that the decisions are being made by the insurance companies. ""Now, in fairness, we probably could not construct a system in which you could see any doctor anywhere in the world any time, regardless of expense. That would be a hard system to set up. So if you live in Maine, you know, we're going to fly you into California, put you up. I mean, you can see — and I'm not trying to make light of it — you can just see the difficulty. ""So any system we design, there are going to have to be some choices that have to be made in terms of where you go to see your doctor, what's going on, et cetera. That's being done currently in the private marketplace. All we're trying to do is to make sure that those decisions that are being made in the private marketplace aren't discriminating against people because they're already sick; that they are making sure that people get a good deal from the health care dollars that they are spending."" In other words, rationing is just a fact of life in a world with limited resources. Or as Cato's Cannon puts it: ""Asking if there will be rationing under the Obama plan is like asking if there will be gravity. It is ubiquitous and unavoidable."" We realize some may read our ruling and conclude that we believe the Obama plan will mean more drastic rationing. But we think it's more accurate to say the bill seeks a more rational way to ration. Whether it can succeed is a topic for legitimate debate. The Democrats' health care plan calls for a health care exchange that will be a vigorous marketplace of companies offering different plans that will compete for customers by offering more or less coverage. But each of those choices about coverage — a lower or higher cap on out-of-pocket expenses, perhaps, or more or less generous coverage for doctor visits — are rationing. And the same goes for three-fourths of Americans who would probably keep their current employer-sponsored health insurance. Those plans too have limits and caps — and rationing. We rule Dean's statement ."

http://www.kff.org/healthreform/upload/7948.pdf, https://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090802/ap_on_go_co/us_health_care_fact_check, https://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/104xx/doc10480/07-25-IMAC.pdf, https://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/assets/legislative_letters/IMAC_bill_071709.pdf, https://www.whitehouse.gov/realitycheck/4, https://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/17/business/economy/17leonhardt.html?_r=2, https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/07/28/AR2009072801444.html, https://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/14/health/policy/14medpac.html

0false

National, Health Care, This Week - ABC News, Howard Dean,

3759

Montana vape shop turns to home kits to dodge flavored ban.

A Montana vape store chain has announced plans to offer customers do-it-yourself vaping kits to combat the state’s new temporary ban on the sale of flavored vaping products.

Montana Public Radio reported Thursday that Freedom Vapes stores in the cities of Bozeman and Hamilton and the town of Belgrade are offering the workaround to help maintain business. The kits allow customers to purchase vaping components separately so they can make their own products, officials said. The option was announced by Freedom Vapes owners Ron and Deanna Marshall a day after the start of a four-month statewide ban on all flavored vaping products. Freedom Vapes was one of the businesses that unsuccessfully sued Democratic Gov. Steve Bullock and his administration to stop the ban. The Marshalls have not returned calls for comment since the ban was put in place on Wednesday, but a statement on their shops’ Facebook page Thursday said they plan to offer the kits for the duration of the 120-day ban. “We are trying our best to keep your needs met while we work through this blatant witchhunt (sic) against our business, and products that have helped all of you break the deadly habit of tobacco use,” the statement said. Their Facebook announcement also warns customers that buying cheap ingredients off the shelf could lead to serious lung damage or death, they said. Montana Department of Public Health and Human Services spokesman Jon Ebelt said Friday it’s not yet clear whether the kits are in compliance with the ban. “If retailers are offering flavor components intended for use in e-cigarettes, including in the do-it-yourself kits, it would fall under the temporary restriction,” Ebelt said in an email. “The flavor may be subject to enforcement.” Do-it-yourself products may lack quality controls and health officials recommend consumers refrain from using any e-cigarettes at this time, he added. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention continues its investigation into lung illnesses that have sickened over 2,500 and killed 54 people in 27 states, including one in Montana. People are urged to avoid all THC vape products and recommend not using any e-cigarette or vaping products, health officials said.

mtpr.org

2true

Health, General News, Business, Montana, Vaping, Steve Bullock

35339

"A photograph shows a genuine crop circle resembling a logo for Microsoft Windows and the ""crown"" shape associated with coronaviruses."

May 6, 2020

U.S. health officials said on Thursday two more deaths occurred since last week from a mysterious respiratory illness tied to vaping, taking the total toll to 54.

Dan Evon

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) also reported 97 more hospitalized cases from 50 states, the District of Columbia, and two U.S. territories, as of Dec. 17. The number of people hospitalized now stands at 2,506. The deaths have been confirmed in 27 states and the District of Columbia, and the CDC said more deaths are under investigation. U.S. officials in November reported the discovery of Vitamin E acetate — believed to be used as a cutting agent in illicit vaping products containing marijuana components — in all lung samples from 29 patients. CDC has called Vitamin E acetate as a “chemical of concern” and recommended the substance not be added to e-cigarette, or vaping products, while the investigation is ongoing.

0false

Fauxtography, COVID-19

1373

UK doctor jailed for 15 years over unnecessary breast surgery.

May 31, 2017

A British breast surgeon who carried out unnecessary operations on 10 patients for personal gain was sentenced to 15 years in prison, a court heard on Wednesday.

In his private practice, Ian Paterson lied to exaggerate risks that patients would develop breast cancer, performing needless surgery and in some cases mastectomies for which patients paid, judge Jeremy Baker said. “The physical, and particularly, psychological effect upon each of them, has been profound,” the judge told Nottingham Crown Court. The trial had heard that patients trusted the doctor who was charming and reassuring, but were later left feeling violated and vulnerable, with some having suffered prolonged psychological distress. The 59-year-old surgeon’s motives were not clear, the judge said, but he had shown a “complete lack of remorse” during the trial. “I have no doubt that in pursuit of your own self-aggrandizement and the material rewards which it brought from your private practice, you lost sight of the fact that you were carrying out significant surgical procedures,” Baker said. “Without any regard for the long-term effects which it had on them, you deliberately played upon their worst fears,” he said. Speaking after the sentencing, Patricia Welch, one of Paterson’s victims, said she felt justice had been done but called for an inquiry so that patients had full protection when seeking private medical care. “We will never know the real reason he has acted in such an evil way,” she told reporters outside the court. “It will never go away because you just see it in the mirror every morning.”

2true

Health News

29437

"Minecraft has a newly-discovered ""sex mod"" of which parents should be aware and exercise caution (or restrict the game from their children entirely)."

October 25, 2016

"What's true: Minecraft can be modified by individual players, some of whom have created risqué ""sex mods."" What's false: Minecraft has no official ""sex mods,"" the process of installing mods is complex, and it's unlikely a user will encounter risqué content in the course of playing the game without having deliberately installed such a mod."

Kim LaCapria

On 21 October 2016 a parenting blog published an editorial penned by a guilt-ridden mother about her purported discovery of “sex mods” for the massively popular Minecraft sandbox video game: Take a minute to Google “Minecraft + sex mod.” I’ll wait … not only did my brain explode, but my heart did as well. Unfortunately, it was my kid who filled me in … I suddenly found myself looking into the tearful eyes of one of my babies who was telling me that, not only was this kid playing Minecraft when she saw this, but she was also propositioned in this “creative mode” room by another player … This child was crushed. She opened up, and told me about the things that appear in apps. She shared a lot about how she was feeling as a result of this experience that made me want to weep and weep. The virtual world is so real to our kids. She felt like it had actually happened to her in real life. It could not be shrugged off. She actually wanted me to take away her phone, the portal to this hurt. There were many tears, half of them from me. All I could do was apologize for not protecting her better. Because the truth is, it’s all my fault. I thought I was doing my due diligence in the technology department. We pay attention to how much time they spend online and limit it as well, even detoxing completely from time to time. We keep the apps they used restricted to the 10 and under age range, and Minecraft falls into this category. And still this happened. Because, sadly where the kids are, the creepers will follow. (Minecraft pun intended.) And the creepers found my baby. The post rattled off purported “stranger danger” statistics unrelated to Minecraft or “sex mods” and advised parents to take the standard steps of “locking down” and/or monitoring their children’s Internet time. (Tips of that sort are standard advice given to parents about Internet safety and have nothing to do with Minecraft specifically.) The mother in question stated she “did a little research,” but that research didn’t pertain to the existence of Minecraft sex mods. The popular parenting blog Scary Mommy tackled the topic on 24 October 2016, also presenting information largely unrelated to the functions of Minecraft: After I dropped my kids off at school, I took a deep breath and googled “minecraft sex mods.” And fuck. Fuckity fuck fuck. A ton of hits come up, mostly YouTube videos. Apparently, in the app version of the game, there is a way to “craft” such cringe-worthy things as pixelated characters getting it on with each other. I could only bring myself to watch a few of the videos. (OK, just one.) I couldn’t get past the “gangsta” Minecraft dude banging a bikini-clad chick in the back room of a Minecraft whorehouse. (Yes, really.) I’ll spare you the rest because I’m a decent human being. At first, I was just happy that my 9-year-old, a Minecraft aficionado for many years, doesn’t use the app version of the game. But then I realized, duh, the kid spends a million hours watching Minecraft YouTube videos. The Scary Mommy writer similarly reported that she engaged in some “research,” which appeared to consist of viewing YouTube videos about (but not hosted by or affiliated with Minecraft). The writer was appalled that some of the videos were not age-protected, although since those videos are not official Minecraft media, responsibility for their policing rests with YouTube. Few things in 2016 have captivated children like Minecraft (software lauded for its ability to operate as a covert educational platform), and few things have terrified parents more than “sex perverts on the Internet.” Moreover, Minecraft’s popularity with children is often matched only by their parents’ lack of understanding of the game. The confluence of these circumstances means that if a Minecraft rumor about sexual predators were to spread unchecked, children could be deprived of one of the most enjoyable learning experiences available to them. Neither of the articles referenced above explained what a Minecraft “sex mod” might be, nor how the process of modifying Minecraft works. We contacted both Minecraft maker Mojang as well as Bec Oakley, the owner of a popular Minecraft web guide for parents called MineMum. Mojang did not respond to our inquiry, but Oakley was aware of the viral rumors and explained how mods work for Minecraft players: Here’s the deal. Mods are bits of unofficial modified game code that users can create that add items to the game or change the things that a player can do. They are then made available for anyone to download in user forums and gamer websites. They’re not an official part of the game, are not supported by Mojang (the makers of Minecraft), don’t come packaged with the game and must be added voluntarily and manually. There are thousands and thousands of these mods around, most of which are not inappropriate. But given that it is user-generated content that is not under any kind of controls or censorship, there are inappropriate mods available (there are also other types of modified content like skins and texture packs). These have been in existence for a long time, and probably since Minecraft was first released years ago. On YouTube there are thousands of videos of players playing modded games of Minecraft, and some of these involve players playing with a sex mod applied to the game. Usually these videos are age restricted but there are ones that slip through the YouTube age protection cracks. We asked Oakley whether it was possible for players to encounter Minecraft sex mods without having gone through the lengthy process of specifically installing those mods themselves. Surmising that YouTube videos (not Minecraft content) was responsible for web-wide parental alarm, she responded: No you can’t encounter a sex mod in the game (or any mod) without having installed it. Kids aren’t going to accidentally come across this mod without someone having installed it — either in their own game or on a multiplayer server that they’re playing on. You can encounter YouTube videos of people playing with sex mods installed, I think that’s a large part of where parents are freaking out. In short, the Minecraft “sex mod” frenzy is likely borne of a combination of fears about Internet predators, ignorance of the manner in which Minecraft works, and the universal popularity of articles warning that a common and popular children’s pastime harbors a hidden danger. There are no “sex mods” or “sex levels” in the official Minecraft game, and such mods can only be accessed after an intentional installation of them or on a multiplayer server. The majority of Minecraft mods are non-sexual in nature, and parents concerned about their children being exposed to “sex mods” are likely better served by restricting their YouTube access than by taking the game away from them.

0false

Politics, minecraft, minecraft sex mods, scary mommy

10926

Coffee may cut risk for some cancers

June 22, 2010

"What basics are wrong? The on-air and online stories still used terms like ""benefit"" and ""lowers risk"" – sometimes with the qualifier ""may cut risk"" which still doesn’t cover up the inaccuracy of using causal language to explain results that can’t prove cause-and-effect. Some of the online comments on the CNN website provide a glimpse of how readers react to such stories:  ""i love how an article starts with something positive and then slowly becomes a little gloomy. so is it good or not? i’m still where i was with coffee, it’s all in moderation, it ain’t gonna solve your health woes."" ""The statistics book in a class I’m taking right know uses coffee as an example of statistics run amok. It seems coffee has caused all the cancers and cures them at the same time."" ""Could it be that instead of having mysterious compounds, coffee drinkers just drink more coffee than they drink alcohol or smoke?"" ""I am so f-ing sick of these studies, or more precicesly how these ""risk factors"" are interpreted as ""facts"" by newspaper headlines. If you can’t explain why something happens other than surmising, stop wasting our time."" ""…correlation IS NOT causation!!!! So people that drink 4 or more cups of coffee have a lower incidence of two certain types of head and neck cancers, and this is supposed to mean that coffee is actually ""warding off"" these cancers???"""

"Not applicable – the cost of coffee is not in question. The online and on-air stories still used inappropriate causal  language – as the WebMD story did – in describing the results of a study that can’t establish cause-and-effect. The online story said ""may cut risk"" and ""may lower the risk."" Adding the qualifying ""may"" doesn’t detract from the inappropriate causal verb that follows. The on-air story used the term ""benefit"" when benefit can not be established in this kind of study. Inappropriate. Inaccurate. At least this story did what the WebMD story didn’t do in discussing some of the potential harms from drinking a lot of coffee. At least the story commented briefly on the nature of the study:  ""They looked at nine existing studies and analyzed how much coffee was consumed by more than 5,000 cancer patients and about 9,000 healthy people."" But it never stated explicitly that this kind of study CAN NOT establish cause and effect. That’s still a major shortcoming of such stories. It only takes a line to do so, and we’ve provided some sample lines in a primer on this topic elsewhere on our site. No overt disease-mongering in the story. One of the researchers and two independent sources were interviewed – something WebMD didn’t do. The story didn’t comment – as the WebMD story did – on other factors analyzed in the study such as tea, fruits and vegetables. Not applicable – the availability of coffee is not in question. The story at least briefly mentions other coffee research: ""Other recent studies suggest coffee may have beneficial effects in other diseases like dementia, diabetes, liver and Parkinson’s disease. However, coffee alone may not be the answer according to some experts."" Because of the number of sources cited, it’s clear this did not rely on a news release."

2true

5205

Study raises fresh dementia concerns from playing pro soccer.

A study of former professional soccer players in Scotland finds that they were less likely to die of common causes such as heart disease and cancer compared with the general population but more likely to die from dementia. The results raise fresh concerns about head-related risks from playing the sport — at least for men at the pro level.

Rob Harris

Researchers from the University of Glasgow reported the results in the New England Journal of Medicine on Monday. They compared the causes of death of 7,676 Scottish men who played soccer with 23,000 similar men from the general population born between 1900 and 1976. Over a median of 18 years of study, 1,180 players and 3,807 of the others died. The players had a lower risk of death from any cause until age 70. However, they had a 3.5 times higher rate of death from neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s. In absolute terms, that risk remained relatively small — 1.7% among former players and 0.5% for the comparison group. Former players also were more likely to be prescribed dementia medicines than the others were. The results “should not engender undue fear and panic,” Dr. Robert Stern, a Boston University scientist who has studied sports-related brain trauma, wrote in a commentary published in the journal. The findings in professional players may not apply to recreational, college or amateur-level play, or to women, Stern noted. “Parents of children who headed the ball in youth or high-school soccer should not fear that their children are destined to have cognitive decline and dementia later in life. Rather, they should focus on the substantial health benefits from exercise and participation in a sport that their children enjoy,” while also being aware of the risks of head-balling, Stern wrote. English Football Association chairman Greg Clark said “the whole game must recognize that this is only the start of our understanding and there are many questions that still need to be answered. It is important that the global football family now unites to find the answers and provide a greater understanding of this complex issue.” The association and players’ union sponsored the study. “We need to kick on now and understand what it means, because that’s all an awful lot we don’t know,” English FA chief executive Mark Bullingham said. “We don’t know if concussion was the cause or whether it was heading or whatever or whether it’s the old heavy ball or something entirely different.” But the association’s medical advisory group has not deemed it necessary to issue to change how the game is played, even reducing heading among younger age groups. “In youth football, you might want to reduce the likelihood of aerial challenges,” Bullingham said. “But our research shows this has already been reduced significantly over the years as we change to small size of pitches, move to possession-based football and now rolling substitutes.” Referees across all levels can stop games for three minutes to fully assess head injuries, but some experts believe that is not long enough. The English FA also is pushing soccer’s global lawmaking body for the introduction of concussion substitutes, with an additional player switch or as a temporary replacement. Campaigning to discover more about the long-term impact of head injuries in soccer has been led in England by the family of former England striker Jeff Astle, whose death at age 59 in 2002 was attributed to repeatedly heading heavy, leather balls. In 2017, a British study of brains of a small number of retired players who developed dementia highlighted the degenerative damage possibly caused by repeated blows to the head. ___ AP Chief Medical Writer Marilynn Marchione in Milwaukee contributed to this report. ___ 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. ___ More AP soccer: https://apnews.com/Soccer and https://twitter.com/AP_Sports

https://www.ap.org/press-releases/2018/ap-hhmi-expand-collaboration-to-bolster-health-science-coverage,https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa1908483,http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMe1912071,/Soccer,https://twitter.com/AP_Sports

2true

Heart disease, Soccer, England, Health, Scotland, General News, Sports - Europe, Dementia

19609

"Claims Joe Biden said ""coal is more dangerous than terrorists."

August 17, 2012

Mitt Romney says Joe Biden once claimed coal was more dangerous than terrorists

Tom Feran

"Ohio looms large in this year's presidential race, but Mitt Romney staged an Aug. 14 campaign rally in one of its smallest and poorest places, the village of Beallsville. Its population is about 400, the median household income is about $23,000, or roughly half the state average. It once gained fame for having the highest per-capita number of residents killed in the Vietnam War of any community in the country. Six men were killed, from its then-population of 475. Beallsville is also in the heart of southeastern Ohio's Appalachian coal country. With a group of miners serving as his backdrop, Romney accused President Obama of ""waging war on coal"" through his energy policies. ""His vice president said coal is more dangerous than terrorists,"" Romney said. ""Can you imagine that? This tells you precisely what he (Obama) actually feels and what he's done and his policies over the last three and a half years have put in place the very vision he had when he was running for office."" Did Vice President Biden really compare coal to terrorism? PolitiFact Ohio was interested. Romney's campaign told us that the support for Romney's claim was s 2007 interview on HBO’s ""Real Time With Bill Maher."" The video clip has been making the rounds on the Internet for years. Maher asked Biden, who was then a candidate for the 2008 presidential nomination, what he thought ""is more likely to contribute to the death of your average American: a terrorist strike or high-fructose corn syrup and air that has too much coal in it?"" Biden responded: ""Air that has too much coal in it, corn syrup next, then a terrorist attack, but -- that is not in any way to diminish the fact that a terrorist attack is real. It is not an existential threat to bringing down the country, but it does have the capacity, still, to kill thousands of people. But hundreds of thousands of people die and their lives are shortened because of coal plants, coal-fired plants and because of corn syrup."" Biden was not volunteering a comparison between coal-fired pollution and terrorism, nor was he speculating about ""danger."" He was answering a direct question about likely causes of death. And, his comment about coal and air pollution was accurate. The American Lung Association issued a report last year, ""Toxic Air,"" which documented the range of hazardous air pollutants emitted from coal-burning power plants. It called for the installation of cleanup technology as the most effective way to reduce them. ""Coal-fired power plants produce electricity for the nation’s power grid, but they also produce more hazardous air emissions than any other industrial pollution sources,"" the report said. ""Their emissions threaten the health of people who live near these plants, as well as those who live hundreds of miles away."" The Lung Association report said, ""Particle pollution from power plants is estimated to kill approximately 13,000 people a year."" A similar report with essentially the same conclusion was issued six months earlier for a study commissioned by the Clean Air Task Force, a national nonprofit research and advocacy organization dedicated to air quality and environmental issues. ""Fine particle pollution from existing coal plants is expected to cause nearly 13,200 deaths in 2010,"" the analysis found. ""Additional impacts include an estimated 9,700 hospitalizations and more than 20,000 heart attacks per year."" The comprehensive study was the third commissioned by the organization, which maintains that adding pollution control technologies to power plants ""is not just good for public health; it is also good for the nation’s economy."" Possibly because the latest study found that ""coal plant emissions of key particle-forming pollutants like sulfur dioxide (SO2) and nitrogen oxides (NOx) have declined significantly over the last several years,"" its estimate of 13,200 deaths ""compares to an estimate of nearly 24,000 deaths per year from existing plants in the 2004 study."" The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency estimated that a proposed air-transport rule to curb sulfur dioxide and nitrogen dioxide from coal-fired power plants would save 14,000 to 36,000 lives a year and help prevent 21,000 cases of bronchitis and 23,000 heart attacks. The lowest of those one-year estimates for the United States is larger than the 2011 worldwide total of deaths, 12,533,  that the National Counterrorism Center attributes to terrorism, which U.S. law defines as ""premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against noncombatant targets by subnational groups or clandestine agents."" According to the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START) and its Global Terrorism Database (GTD), 2,997 people died in the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. More people died in the 9/11 attacks than in all other U.S. terrorist attacks from 1970 to 2010. Since the 9/11 attacks and through 2010, the most recent year with verified statistics in the GTD, ""the total number of individuals killed in attacks in the U.S. is 32,"" the consortium told us. ""Twenty-eight of the 32 were U.S. citizens. The nationalities of the others is unknown. ""There were no fatalities (from) 2003 to 2007,"" the year in which Biden gave his comment. (High-fructose corn syrup is not relevant here. It was not part of Romney's statement, and it was grouped with air pollution as a single unit by the wording of Maher's question, ""terrorist strike or high-fructose corn syrup and air."") What does this stack up to? There is an element of truth in Romney's statement. Biden did say -- accurately -- that coal-fired air pollution is more likely to contribute to the death of an average American than is terrorism. But Romney portrayed Biden’s remark as part of ""waging war on coal."" Rather, PolitiFact found that Biden previously has voiced support for ""clean coal,""  calling for ""carbon capture and sequestration technologies that will allow us to use coal cleanly"" in the energy plan he released during his presidential campaign in 2007. ""Clean coal"" is not a type of coal; the phrase refers to a number of technologies, some in use and others early in the development stage, which would allow the burning of coal for energy without the harmful pollution that coal-fired power plants currently emit. Biden's statement was made in response to a question and he was addressing health impacts of coal-fired air pollution -- not making a statement about coal or coal energy. He was not making a comparison between terrorism and coal. Yet, Romney’s comment implies that was the case and portrays Biden’s comment was as part of an administration policy against the coal industry. Those are critical facts that Romney’s claim ignores would give the listener a different impression. On the Truth-O-Meter, that makes it ."

http://www.nationaljournal.com/2012-presidential-campaign/romney-uses-2007-biden-comment-to-attack-administration-on-coal-20120814, http://www.post-gazette.com/stories/news/health/region-at-risk-can-higher-rates-of-death-be-linked-to-air-pollution-277280/, http://www.mittromney.com/news/press/2012/08/mitt-romney-president-obamas-policies-have-hurt-coal0, http://www.start.umd.edu/start/announcements/BackgroundReport_10YearsSince9_11.pdf, http://www.city-data.com/city/Beallsville-Ohio.html, http://www.catf.us/resources/publications/files/The_Toll_from_Coal.pdf, http://www.start.umd.edu/gtd/search/Results.aspx?expanded=no&casualties_type=b&casualties_max=&start_year=2001&start_month=9&start_day=12&end_year=2010&end_month=12&end_day=31&dtp2=all&success=yes&country=217&ob=GTDID&od=desc&page=1&count=100#results-table, http://www.lung.org/about-us/our-impact/top-stories/toxic-air-coal-fired-power-plants.html, http://www.nctc.gov/docs/2011_NCTC_Annual_Report_Final.pdf, https://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-57493059-503544/romney-uses-2007-biden-comment-to-attack-administration-on-coal/, https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2008/oct/01/john-mccain/a-clean-hit-not-quite/, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8TTfCE1QfYg&feature=player_embedded, http://www.politico.com/multimedia/video/2012/08/romney-campaigns-in-coal-country.html, http://www.ohiohistorycentral.org/entry.php?rec=1715, http://www.epa.gov/airtransport/pdfs/FactsheetTR7-6-10.pdf

0false

Environment, Ohio, Economy, Energy, Jobs, Mitt Romney,

28626

Eating Takis brand corn chips causes ulcers and cancer in children.

June 7, 2013

What's true: Excessive consumption of spicy snack foods (such as Takis brand corn chips) can lead to stomach pains and gastritis in children. What's false: Evidence that moderate consumption of such snacks by children carries a significant risk of ulcers or cancer is lacking.

David Mikkelson

Takis are a brand of corn tortilla chips vended by Mexico-based Barcel and known for its spicy hotness: Takis Snacks by Barcel are tortilla snacks that resemble rolled tacos; this crunchy snack is coated with salsa and seasoned with lemon powder. They come in four flavors with varying heat intensities: Fuego (Hot Chili Pepper & Lemon), Salsa Brava (Hot Sauce), Takis Nitro (Habanero & Lime) and Crunchy Fajita (Taco Flavored). Takis (also known as Taquis) are owned by the Barcel company, who are manufacturers of tortilla snacks and potato chips, as well as other confectionary and snack foods. Barcel is a unit of the famous Grupo Bimbo Company, who are also owners of many other popular Mexican brands. Grupo Bimbo purchased a snack factory in Queretaro during the late 70s which later became known as Barcel when the famous title was born in February 9th, 1978. The brand’s popularity has spread ever since and many factories were inaugurated in Queretaro Norte, the State of Mexico, Mexicali Baja California, Merida Yucatan and Hidalgo. An item that began circulating on the Internet in June 2013 presents a first-person account of a woman who took her ten-year-old daughter to an urgent care facility for treatment of extreme stomach distress, where a physician reportedly suggested the daughter’s consumption of Takis was the cause of her stomach pains (even though the mother stated her daughter consumed just “3 small bags of Takis a month”). Additionally, according to this account, the physician asserted that “the harsh chemicals and seasoning in the chips cause corrosion in the throat and stomach,” that Takis are “causing stomach ulcers in children,” and that she was currently treating a 16-month-old patient for throat cancer brought about by the toddler’s consumption of Takis: Yesterday, I took my 10 year old daughter to Urgent Care in Lancaster with extreme stomach pain (two days off and on). After the Dr. evaluated her stomach and ran urine tested, she checked for tenderness, she found the area that was causing my daughter the pain. The Dr. then asked about what my daughter ate on a regular basis as well as what she had had within the last few days. (Keep in mind that we are pretty consistent with eating healthy and my daughter was having about 3 small bags of takis a month.) When my daughter told her she had takis, the Dr. warned her right away about the dangers of that product. The Dr. mentioned how she had a 16 month old patient in the hospital with throat cancer due to those chips! The toddles teeth failed to grow because even his gums were affected and now the toddler is at The Children’s Hospital in LA undergoing chemo. The Dr. also advised me NOT to allow my children to eat ANY of those hot chips. The product that they use to make them is harsh on the mouth, throat, and stomach. PLEASE spread the word! STOP eating takis and hot chips!!! She explained how the harsh chemicals and seasoning in the chips cause corrosion in the throat and stomach. It is causing stomach ulcers in children. My daughter was given a 10 day treatment plan to prevent ulcers as the pain her her stomach was severe. PLEASE believe it and read up on the info online for yourself! I am making sure that everyone I come in contact with is aware of what we are unconsciously doing to ourselves and our children when we eat those things! We consulted with some urgent care pediatricians of our acquaintance who told us that they had never treated, or heard of, any cases of children developing severe stomach pains linked to the consumption of Takis. Moreover, they said, no credible doctor would definitively pronounce that consumption of one type of food (or any other single factor) had “caused” a particular case of cancer — although relationships have been established between certain risk factors and the onset of cancer, no given case of cancer can be reliably attributed to one identifiable cause. Some reports indicate that cases of children developing stomach aches after eating Takis and similar snack foods are known, but that the issue seems to be linked to children consuming those snacks in immoderate and excessive amounts far beyond the “3 small bags a month” referenced in the above account: The spice [in Takis] increases stomach acidity, so children “get stomach aches, sometimes so terrible they’re doubled over in pain,” said Yvonne Juarez, chief of pediatrics at Kaiser Permanente-Fresno. “I’ve had patients go to the ER because of it. It’s insane, absolutely insane.” Melissa Ortiz, a Kaiser-Fresno dietitian, said it’s rare for a child to stop at [consuming a single 1-ounce bag]. Too often, children and teens are eating 2 or 3 ounces of Hot Cheetos or Takis in a single sitting, she said. At that point, “it’s not a snack, it’s a meal.” Gabriella Gaona, 16, of Fresno, said her mother no longer lets her eat either snack after she got sick and had to go to the hospital: “I had Takis for six months straight and that’s all I would eat.” Dr. Robert Glatter, an emergency medicine physician for Lenox Hill Hospital in New York, said, “A number of patients who have consumed [Flamin’ Hot] Cheetos in excess have complained of pain in their upper abdomen, rising up into their chest, likely due to due to the red peppers and spice contained in the snack.” As well, some physicians have noted that children have been taken to emergency rooms after eating Takis and similar snacks not because they were ill, but because their excessive consumption of those snacks resulted in misinterpreted symptoms: St. Louis Children’s Hospital pediatrician Dr. Kathleen Berchelmann says Flamin’ Hot Cheetos contain a lot of red food dye and when kids eat large amounts of them, eventually it turns their stool bright red or orange. Parents, she says, falsely believe they’re seeing blood in the stool and take the kids to the ER to find out nothing is wrong. “So even though we might eat some foods with red food dye in them regularly, our stool doesn’t usually become discolored unless you eat huge amounts of it,” Berchelmann said. “Flamin’ Hot Cheetos is one food that people will eat enormous amounts of and will see a change in their stool.” Berchelmann says parents could use this as a teaching moment, talking with their kids about gluttony and eating things in moderation. However, some critics maintain that children commonly over-consume such snack foods because the foods themselves are engineered to promote that behavior: Some scientists and doctors cite the addictive qualities of food products like Cheetos as one reason why children may overeat them. “It’s something that has been engineered so that it is fattier and saltier and more novel to the point where our body, brain, and pleasure centers react to it more strongly than if we were eating, say, a handful of nuts,” Ashley Gearhardt, a clinical psychology professor at the University of Michigan, told the Chicago Tribune. “Going along with that, we are seeing those classic signs of addiction, the cravings and loss of control and preoccupation with it.” Because Flamin’ Hot Cheetos have become so popular among young people, other snack companies have created spicy products to compete: Hot ‘N Spicy Crunchy Nuggetz, Sizzlin’ Cheese Flavored Twists, and Sizzlin’ Hot Crunchy Kurls, for example. The bottom line remains that children should avoid spicy snack foods and other processed snacks in large quantities in order to avoid gastritis and other health risks, but no solid evidence indicates that moderate consumption of such snack foods puts youngsters at risk for stomach ulcers or cancer. Takis’ parent company, Barcel, did not respond to our request for additional information on this topic.

1mixture

Food, cheetos, takis

8802

Unilever says new milkshake helps control appetite.

A new weight loss drink that tastes like a milkshake significantly reduces appetite and could soon join Unilever’s $400 million Slim-Fast weight-loss brand, the company’s researchers said on Wednesday.

Michael Kahn

A study showed that the drink, which works by trapping gas in foods to make people feel full, worked even better than the company’s Slim-Fast weight-loss drink, they said. The researchers, who presented their findings at the 2008 European Congress on Obesity, said the company has patented the technology. “The technology is now available for the brand to use in future formats,” said David Mela, a Unilever nutritionist who worked on the study. “The food maintains the bulk, much of which is air that helps you maintain that full feeling.” Obesity is a big problem and big business. About 400 million people are classified as obese, putting them at higher risk of diseases like type 2 diabetes and heart diseases, according to the World Health Organization. This has in part spurred companies like Unilever, Kraft Foods, General Mills, Sara Lee and others to turn to healthier products with a whole range of so-called health and wellness foods. “If you look at western populations, a (large number) of adults are overweight,” said Gert Meijer, an executive at Unilever’s research and development division. “In terms of the amount of people who might be interested in this product, it could be huge.” In the Unilever study, the researchers tested their milkshake on 24 volunteers who were given either the new drink or a serving of regular Slim-Fast at breakfast. People who had the milkshake reported that they were significantly fuller when asked at different intervals over a four-hour time period. The researchers found that a half-sized serving of the milkshake also suppressed hunger. “We are clearly talking about hours,” said Sergei Melnikov, a physical chemist who helped develop the technology. “It is an effect that lasts for an hour or two or longer.” The milkshake is designed to trap gas in the food after consumption, preventing it from dissolving in the mouth as happens with foods like whipped cream, and cutting appetite. To do this the team engineered the fats, proteins and fibers in the food until reaching the right mix to trap the gas — a technology that might appear in other Unilever foods, the researchers said. “I would say this is not limited to liquids,” Melnikov said. “It could be used in other food forms.”

2true

Health News

30558

Hollywood film producer and alleged sexual predator Harvey Weinstein shot and killed himself in a Scottsdale, Arizona, hotel room.

March 1, 2018

It wasn’t the first time that a fabricated report of a celebrity death appeared on ABCNewGo.com. The site reported that ailing British comedian Ken Dodd had died in January 2018, prompting an angry denial from his publicist.

David Emery

In late February 2018, a “developing story” saying that Hollywood producer and accused sexual assaulter Harvey Weinstein had committed suicide appeared on faux ABC News web site abcnewgo.com: Disgraced Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein shot and killed himself, officials said — just months after spending time in Arizona for addiction treatment. The film mogul, shot himself at a Scottsdale hotel in Arizona and the weapon reportedly was found at the scene. He was 65. His body was discovered inside the hotel room and officials in Arizona are now waiting for toxicology test results to determine the exact cause of death. Earlier this week, Harvey Weinstein took to Facebook to post about the accusations leveled against him, claiming they were “false” and “only GOD knows the truth.” According to the report, Weinstein, who had been accused of sexual assault by more than 80 women since October is alleged to have earlier sent a private message via facebook to a close pal before his suicide. The content read: “The accusations are sicknesses that will take my life, I cannot handle them any longer. THEY Have Won This Life. BUT HEAVEN IS MY HOME.” No such reports appeared in any reliable news sources, although the Los Angeles Times reported earlier in February that Weinstein was living in Arizona while undergoing addiction treatment. Weinstein did not write the social media statements attributed to him in the article. Rather, in a maudlin move, someone copied them from a Facebook post that Kentucky state representative Dan Johnson posted shortly before he died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound on 13 December 2017. Politico reporter Akela Lacy quoted Johnson’s post as follows: The accusations … are false GOD and only GOD knows the truth, nothing is the way they make it out to be. AMERICA will not survive this type of judge and jury fake news. Conservatives take a stand,” the post read. “9-11-2001 NYC/WTC, PTSD 24/7 16 years is a sickness that will take my life, I cannot handle it any longer. IT Has Won This Life . BUT HEAVEN IS MY HOME.

0false

Junk News, abcnewgo, celebrity death hoaxes, fake news

29515

Donald Trump improperly received $150,000 in federal aid earmarked for small businesses damaged by the 9/11 attacks, despite the fact his business was neither small nor damaged in the attacks.

May 26, 2016

What's true: A business owned or operated by Donald Trump was entitled to $150,000 in federal aid to businesses affected by the 9/11 attacks. What's false: The grant money wasn't specifically earmarked for small businesses, nor was it improperly accessed by Trump. Trump's businesses did not lie or mislead federal agencies to in order to qualify under the terms of the programs, which didn't require businesses to have sustained physical damage to be entitled to the funds. Trump's business also wasn't the only large firm to qualify under criteria used by the agency tasked with distributing the grant money.

Snopes Staff

In late May 2016 a number of web sites published articles reporting that presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump had improperly received $150,000 in federal aid earmarked for small businesses affected by the September 11 attacks for a property he owned or maintained at 40 Wall Street in New York. Many social media shares misleadingly described the reports as “just in” or “breaking,” suggesting that rumors of Trump’s purported fiscal impropriety with respect to 9/11 funds had only recently come to light, and their underlying articles mischaracterized the details of the controversy. The web site Bipartisan Report published an article inaccurately stating the funds in question were allocated expressly for buildings that had sustained physical damage in the 9/11 attacks and incorrectly implied that the funds were intended only for use in repairing structural damage to buildings: Donald Trump’s building at 40 Wall Street is located a mile from ground zero, yet Donald Trump joined in with fellow bigwigs to take that money from the mouths of business owners, some of whom had to close shop completely after the attack. Trump granted the money after he was able to prove that the business located at 40 Wall Street only had $26 in its bank account. How exactly Trump’s financially failing business qualified for a $150,000 grant from Empire State Development Corporation, money meant for buildings that were structurally damaged during the attack, is beyond most people with functioning brains, but that is exactly what he did. The federal government is responsible for allowing the large corporations to take advantage of the funds set up for Americans who actually needed it. The real clincher, is the fact that the business located at 40 Wall Street brings in an annual revenue of $8 million, which clearly disqualifies if from being considered a small business. Also, even if there were structural damages to the building, Donald Trump could have easily afforded to fix it himself. Trump, however, decided to take advantage of the federal government’s generosity. ReverbPress‘s reporting dated the controversy (not Trump’s purported acceptance of funds) to a 2006 New York Daily News “exposé,” framing the distribution of funds to larger businesses as some sort of corporate shell game: Presumptive Republican Presidential nominee Donald Trump, who claims to be worth $10 Billion (though recent reports suggest that could be as “little” as $150 Million), put money well ahead of the country he plans to make great again during her darkest hour when he took $150,000 earmarked by Congress for small businesses devastated by the 9/11 attacks. Trump, along with other financial giants exploited a loophole created by a state agency that ignored the federal definition of what qualified as a “small business”, according to a New York Daily News report: Trump got $150,000 for his swanky property at 40 Wall Street because the Empire State Development Corporation, run by the state, didn’t enforce federal guidelines on what defines a small business. Instead, the state used much looser rules that let The Donald and others including Morgan Stanley and Bank of China take money that was earmarked by Congress to help small business owners in the neighborhood recover after the tragic attacks. In a 2006 expose, the Daily News uncovered the loophole that the Empire State Development Corporation used to funnel money away from small businesses and into the hands of people like Trump and corporations like Morgan Stanley, Dell, The AXA Group and others[.] Both articles linked to an 18 May 2016 Daily News article about the controversy, in which the Daily News cited their own January 2006 coverage of the allegations. Back then, the New York newspaper quoted lawmakers and community leaders who opined that money purportedly funneled to Trump could have assisted truly small businesses decimated by the collapse of the World Trade Center: Donald Trump made a pretty penny off a program to help small businesses hurt by 9/11, one of many times where The Donald took advantage of government programs to save or make money off the taxpayer. The self-proclaimed billionaire, who has so far refused to release his tax returns, was one of many wealthy individuals and businesses who used a loophole in a program intended to help smaller companies in lower Manhattan recover after the Sept. 11 tragedy. Trump got $150,000 for his swanky property at 40 Wall Street because the Empire State Development Corporation, run by the state, didn’t enforce federal guidelines on what defines a small business. Instead, the state used much looser rules that let The Donald and others including Morgan Stanley and Bank of China take money that was earmarked by Congress to help small business owners in the neighborhood recover after the tragic attacks, a 2006 Daily News expose found. Locals say Trump, who used the bravery of 9/11 responders to counter-punch when Ted Cruz maligned his “New York values” during the Republican primary, didn’t live up to the term … Many small businesses were destroyed in the towers themselves, and others in the neighborhood went under because of the exodus of locals, loss of patrons who used to work in other shuttered shops and a decrease in foot traffic in the area. The funds were aimed at helping the mom and pop shops make it through an incredibly difficult stretch. “It’s really indefensible that this money went to big guys like Trump,” said Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-Manhattan), who helped secure the funds from Congress for the program and earlier in his career fought Trump over funding for a pair of construction projects on the Upper West Side. “It’s unfortunate because it meant a lot of the small businesses didn’t get that money,” Nadler continued. The paper’s 2016 rehash of the claims added little in the way of updated information, dubbing Trump a “welfare king” and briefly delving into the candidate’s contemporaneous response to those allegations before listing off a number of other controversial arrangements with the City of New York unrelated to 9/11: [Trump] told Time Magazine earlier this year that the 9/11 money was “probably a reimbursement for the fact that I allowed people, for many months, to stay in the building, use the building and store things in the building,” arguing “The value of what I did was far greater than the money talked about, much of which was sent automatically to building owners in the area.” The Daily News article didn’t reference a specific Time magazine piece, but on 12 April 2016 that publication had reported on claims made by a Political Action Committee (PAC) against Trump that referenced the 2006 Daily News report. According to Time, the 9/11 allegations had resurfaced in ads geotargeted to New York City residents ahead of the state’s primary elections: A super PAC opposing Donald Trump is releasing a new web ad criticizing the GOP front runner for allegedly accepting funds earmarked for small-business recovery after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. The video released by the #NeverTrump PAC cites a 2006 investigation by the New York Daily News into the small-business funding program that revealed a Trump-owned property at 40 Wall Street received $150,000 in a federal grant for losses incurred after the attacks. “Donald Trump owes New Yorkers an explanation for taking funds meant for small-business owners recovering from 9/11,” said Rory Cooper, a senior adviser to #NeverTrump PAC. “In his own words, Trump has said his businesses were unharmed and surely we are not to believe he is a small-business man. Over the years, Trump has flirted with 9/11 trutherism and has lied about events surrounding the terror attack. Trump should own up to what he did with this money.” Targeted at New York City, the ad is the latest in the GOP establishment’s last-ditch effort to try to slow Trump’s momentum. Coming one week before the New York primary, the group hopes the spot will help keep Trump from winning more than 50% of the Empire State’s GOP vote and with it, nearly all of the state’s delegates. The ad in question was titled Stolen Recovery and included footage of Trump presumably recorded in 2001. In the clip Trump stated that he owned property in the vicinity of the World Trade Center, but that it had not been damaged in the attack: As the Daily News‘s 2016 article noted, Trump provided a statement to Time about the attack ad’s claims, but the statement was vague, and Trump asserted any funds he received were compensation for his hospitality in the aftermath of 9/11. It wasn’t clear whether Trump was admitting to receiving the small business aid funds in question, or whether he was maintaining he did receive funds but the money was intended for a purpose other than small business recovery. Trump said “it” was “probably a reimbursement” for his actions during the period of immediate post-9/11 recovery, but he appeared not to be aware of the specifics of the media’s charge against him: It was probably a reimbursement for the fact that I allowed people, for many months, to stay in the building, use the building and store things in the building. I was happy to do it and to this day I am still being thanked for the many people I helped. The value of what I did was far greater than the money talked about, much of which was sent automatically to building owners in the area. Another version of the claim was published by the web site Addicting Info, holding that Trump’s property at 40 Wall Street didn’t meet federal criteria for what constituted a small business entitled to financial relief doled out to affected businesses. The outlet asserted Trump had “swindled” the Empire State Development Corporation out of funds to which he was not entitled. That web site also misrepresented the financial aid as funds designated solely for the repair of damaged buildings: Donald Trump’s building at 40 Wall Street is one mile away from the World Trade Center, yet Trump was able to claim that the building only had $26 in the bank and that it was a small business in order to receive $150,000 that should have gone to revitalize the real small businesses around the World Trade Center. But 40 Wall Street brings in $8 million in revenues every year, which goes beyond the federal definition of a small business. Even if there had been any damage to 40 Wall Street because of 9/11, Trump could have definitely paid to fix it himself. But he didn’t. Instead, he swindled the Empire State Development Corporation out of $150,000 of taxpayer money so that he wouldn’t have to reach into his own deep pockets. However, back in 2006 the Daily News not only suggested Trump was technically entitled to federal aid under the established guidelines, but they also reported that many other subsidiaries of large businesses had similarly qualified for and received federal aid from the same program by meeting the Empire State Development Corp.’s definition of what constituted a “small business”: Donald Trump, the Rockefeller Group and Ford Models were among the tycoons and huge corporations that received federal 9/11 recovery grants earmarked by Congress for small businesses, a Daily News investigation has found. Other unlikely recipients include subsidiaries of corporate giants Dell Inc., Morgan Stanley, The AXA Group and the Bank of China, records show. Even World Trade Center leaseholder Larry Silverstein’s company qualified for some small-business recovery aid. The firms were allowed to collect small-business grants because the state agency that dished out the free money, the Empire State Development Corp., ignored the federal definition of a small business and adopted a much looser standard. The ESDC used employee counts — setting the maximum for its $556 million Business Recovery Grant (BRG) program at 500 workers — to determine whether applicants were small businesses. Federal law requires that the size category of the types of businesses most common in lower Manhattan — finance, insurance, real estate and law firms — be determined based on annual revenue. Only the wholesale, manufacturing and mining sectors — obviously uncommon downtown — are measured by number of employees. Also, in totaling the number of employees, the ESDC didn’t require applicants to include employees of subsidiaries and other affiliated businesses. Federal regulations require that linked companies are included in determining whether a business is small. The News found dozens of examples of large firms slipping through as small ones. One couldn’t tell from ESDC records, for example, that “40 Wall Street LLC” is owned by Trump … But the ESDC’s rules transformed Trump into a small-business man. His company collected a $150,000 grant for losses at 40 Wall St. The grant application describes the corporation through which Trump owns that building as having 28 employees and $26. 8 million in annual revenues. That passed the ESDC’s small business test of less than 500 employees. But the revenue amount would put the single Trump property over the federal definition of a small business — which is $6 million annually for lessors of nonresidential buildings. At the time of the controversy, Trump was not the sole business entity named by the paper. The Daily News explained in detail that the ESDC used number of employees as a qualifying benchmark with respect to the disbursed funds, not annual revenues or additional ownership of businesses. In the chaotic wake of 9/11, it was not uncommon for relief agencies and the government to adopt a simpler standard of categorization in order to allocate money with alacrity to victims in need, or to stave off damage to the economy in the weeks, months, and years to come. That original report named several large businesses entitled to relief funds under the standard applied by the ESDC, Trump among them. The paper noted that those entities often reported yearly profits far exceeding the relatively minor funds received under the 9/11 small business aid initiative and decried what was painted as a loophole under which a significant portion of the funds allocated were distributed to larger companies with relatively small presences in the downtown Manhattan area affected by the tragedy: The ESDC’s use of the number-of-employees standard allowed Ford Models to be seen as small and collect a $100,000 grant because it reported just 65 employees on its application. But Ford’s annual revenues of $19.9 million at its New York office put it far above the federal mark of $6 million for talent agencies to be considered small. Nine months after receiving the grant, Ford’s annual Supermodel of the World contest awarded a $250,000 contract to Dari Maximova, an 18-year-old from Germany. The third-place contestant was given a $100,000 contract — the same amount the ESDC awarded the Ford agency under the 9/11 program. A grant application filed by the owner of an office building at 140 Broadway listed 16 employees and $29 million in annual revenues, way over the federal revenue cap of $6 million for that sector. Plus, the entity that received the grant — MSDW 140 Broadway Property, LLC — belongs to Morgan Stanley, the investment powerhouse that owns the Discover Card and has annual revenues of $7 billion and 53,218 employees. The ESDC awarded this Morgan Stanley subsidiary a $300,000 BRG. Larry Silverstein’s company, which held a 99-year lease on the twin towers and stands to collect as much as $4.65 billion in insurance, was awarded two BRGs totaling $82,031 on 120 Wall St. and 120 Broadway. Two subsidiaries of The Rockefeller Group, the original developer of Rockefeller Center, also looked like small businesses under the ESDC’s rules. They reported three employees each and received grants totaling $234,397. The Rockefeller Group, which acknowledged receipt of the grants but declined comment, is even bigger than its name suggests. It is wholly owned by the Japan-based Mitsubishi Estate Group, one of the largest real estate companies in the world … A News analysis of a complete set of grant data recently obtained under the state Freedom of Information Law found that vast portions of the money went to businesses that few would consider small: At least $114 million – 20% of the total awarded under the BRG program — went to companies that reported too much revenue to meet the federal definition of a small business. And that figure likely represents only a fraction of the grant recipients whose revenue would surpass federal limits, because the ESDC asked applicants only to report the revenue attributable to their lower Manhattan office. Some $468 million — 84% of the money the ESDC handed out through the BRG program — went to businesses in sectors that federal law says should be evaluated based on revenue, not on the number of employees, the standard the ESDC used. An ESDC spokeswoman said the state agency chose a 500-employee threshold for its biggest program because the SBA uses that standard in its research. “We preferred a simple definition that could be administered consistently,” ESDC spokeswoman Deborah Wetzel wrote the Daily News in an e-mail … Congress explicitly mandated that at least $500 million of the $21.4 billion 9/11 aid package go to “individuals, nonprofits, and small businesses for economic losses from the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. The Daily News was neither the sole source of information on the grants provided to businesses after the attacks, nor the most neutral. A September 2005 report [PDF] on the economic recovery initiatives undertaken after the event clearly and concisely explained the scope business loans and grants available to affected businesses under the Business Recovery Grant Program, which was not specifically described as being for small businesses only (save for the 500-employee threshold). Moreover, the qualifying zone included any business operating on or below 14th Street, an area so large that the majority of eligible businesses would not have been “damaged” in the attack in a structural sense: Eligibility: Businesses and nonprofit organizations qualified for the BRG program if they met three eligibility requirements: occupied an establishment on or below 14th Street prior to September 11th and were either continuing or intended to resume operations within New York City; employed fewer than 500 people; derived revenues or expenses from operations conducted in, and maintained at least one full-time permanent employee (or were self-employed) at a location within, the Eligible Area. The BRG2 program was established for businesses that employed more than 500 people nationwide and operated on or south of 14th Street one or more establishments, each of which employed fewer than 200 people. Status: At the conclusion of the programs, 14,311 businesses employing 161,252 persons had received $556 million. Seventy percent of small businesses located south of 14th Street were grant recipients, and BRG grants compensated 17 percent of total net losses claimed The attack ad from which allegations resurfaced placed focus on Trump’s 2001 statement that none of his properties were damaged in the event, suggesting that his access to grants was improper. That implication was misleading, as recovery programs focused on the broader effects of the attacks on businesses, since even businesses that didn’t sustain physical damage did not escape financial damage due to the months-long excavation of the site, ongoing disruption of widely relied upon public transportation services, and other factors that gravely affected all businesses located in the surrounding area: ESD’s emphasis on grants reflected an understanding that loans alone were not a sufficient response given the scale of losses suffered by affected businesses and uncertainty about the return of normal economic conditions to Lower Manhattan. The BRG’s documentation [PDF] expressly contradicted the Daily News‘ assertion that the funds were somehow only intended for small businesses, and that large ones nonetheless managed to get their hands on chump change they neither needed nor were entitled to under the law. Another concise explanation of the recovery program explicitly stated that the funds were for small and large firms alike, with a clear goal of preventing their exodus from a then-recovering lower Manhattan: LMDC’s Business Recovery Grant (BRG) program provided grants to businesses (including not-for-profit organizations) with fewer than 500 employees, located in Manhattan south of 14th Street, to compensate them for economic losses resulting from the disaster. The goal of the program was to keep businesses and jobs from deserting the city and moving to other States or overseas. The program was designed to retain and create jobs and attract and retain large and small firms and non-profit organizations. Eligible businesses had to show a business lease, deed, or permit that was in effect on September 11, as well as a new business lease, deed, or permit, if relocated, that confirmed the ongoing viability of the enterprise.

0false

Politics, 9/11, donald trump

9452

Hate UTIs? One Simple Step Can Cut the Risk

October 11, 2017

Urinary tract infections, or UTIs, are a common problem among women, and this story looks at a possible preventative technique: drinking more water. A study conducted in Bulgaria tracked women over a year, half of whom significantly increased the amount of water they drank. The story was strong on many points, providing plenty of details on how the study was designed and what the outcomes were. However, it missed the mark in one key area: It didn’t disclose that five of the seven researchers either work or consult for Danone, which makes several brands of bottled water. That’s important context for understanding the research and some of the frothier claims that it’s generating, such as increased water consumption might eliminate the need for antibiotics. As we’ve covered many times, health care is full of potential conflicts of interest. Even water is not off limits–and readers deserve to know that.

Joy Victory,Karen Carlson, MD,Kathlyn Stone

Although tap water generally costs very little, the sponsors of this research have helped turn bottled water into a multi-billion dollar industry. We’ll rate the criterion Not Applicable, but some comment on the costs of bottled water wouldn’t have been inappropriate. The story addressed the scope of the benefits in this way: Young women plagued by UTIs who drank an additional 6 cups of water each day were nearly half — 48 percent — as likely as a control group to have another infection, the study showed. The water group also reduced their use of antibiotics by roughly half — or 47 percent. This is a good start. However, we need the absolute numbers. As the study abstract shows, the increased water group had 111 UTIs while the control group had 217. It’s also noteworthy that the women enrolled in the study had a low fluid intake of water to begin with — about 1 liter per day (half of the amount considered necessary to replenish fluids excreted daily). We don’t know whether women who already have a healthy fluid intake would have a similar benefit. Increasing intake of water carries a low risk of causing problems–except for more bathroom trips. For women suffering from incontinence, this could be especially troublesome and a disincentive. The story indirectly addressed that, so we’ll give credit: “In addition, the bother associated with the higher urine output, and feasibility of implementing this water intake strategy across a range of occupations and ages, requires further study as well,” he said. This was a strong point of the story. We’re given many details about the study: How many women were enrolled in both a control group and an active intervention group, how many UTIs they suffered from at baseline, what their water intake was like before and during the study, how much water intake was involved in the intervention, how long the study lasted, and how the researchers kept track of the women, and so on. It also let us know the results are considered preliminary, since they’ve only been presented at a conference and haven’t been peer-reviewed. The story did not disease-monger and it discussed the prevalence of UTIs and why they affect women more often. However, we think it could have dialed back some of the predictions that this could lead to the end of antibiotic use for UTIs. The story included an independent source. However, it unfortunately left out that Danone, which sells several brands of bottled water, was heavily involved in the study. This is disclosed in the study abstract. The story did not discuss alternatives to drinking extra water but there may not be any. According to the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Disease, “Experts don’t think eating, diet, and nutrition play a role in preventing or treating bladder infections.” Changes in hygiene habits — such as emptying the bladder after sex — can reduce the frequency of UTIs. For most people in the U.S, water is easily available. It’s well-known that increasing fluid intake might help prevent UTIs, so the story should not have described this as an “unexpected benefit” and it should have addressed how this new study fits into the larger body of evidence. The story contained interviews and original information not found in the news release.

https://www.healthnewsreview.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/GettyImages-636083442.jpg,https://idsa.confex.com/idsa/2017/webprogram/Paper67459.html,https://www.healthnewsreview.org/toolkit/trail-tainted-funding-conflicts-interest-healthcare-academics-public-relations-journalism/

1mixture

hydration,urinary tract infection

21341

"EMILY's List Says Tommy Thompson ""pushed such strict laws that abortion providers faced potential life imprisonment and women were forced to cross state lines in order to receive attention for life-threatening issues."

October 3, 2011

EMILY's List says GOP U.S. Senate hopeful Tommy Thompson pushed law that exposed partial-birth abortion providers to life in prison

Tom Kertscher

"EMILY’s List, one of the 100 largest overall donors to federal elections over the past two decades, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, has set its sights on the race for an open U.S. Senate seat in Wisconsin. The group -- whose acronym stands for ""Early Money Is Like Yeast"" -- has raised $8.39 million in the 2011-2012 election cycle alone to elect pro-choice Democratic women to office. Founded in 1985, the group takes credit for helping elect 16 women to the U.S. Senate and 86 women, including Wisconsin’s Tammy Baldwin, to the U.S. House of Representatives. EMILY’s List is backing Baldwin’s run for the Senate seat that is being vacated in 2012 by Wisconsin Democrat Herb Kohl. And it is criticizing the Republican Senate hopefuls, including state Assembly Speaker Jeff Fitzgerald, former U.S. Rep. Mark Neumann and former Gov. Tommy Thompson. In a Sept. 19, 2011 blog post, EMILY’s List derided all three GOP contenders as ""far-right, conservative white males."" It focused criticism on Thompson, who was Wisconsin’s governor from 1987 to 2001 before becoming U.S. health and human services secretary under President George W. Bush. The group declared that as governor, Thompson ""pushed such strict laws that abortion providers faced potential life imprisonment and women were forced to cross state lines in order to receive attention for life-threatening issues."" Strong words and a strong statement. The statement contains two parts. We’ll address them one at a time. Abortion providers facing prison In its blog post, EMILY’s List cited a 1998 Wisconsin law signed by Thompson that banned most partial-birth abortions. The law defined the procedure, performed during the second or third trimester of pregnancy, as one ""in which a person partially vaginally delivers a living child, causes the death of the partially delivered child with the intent to kill the child and then completes the delivery of the child."" Under the law, a partial-birth abortion could be performed to save the life of a woman. But anyone who illegally performed a partial-birth abortion could be convicted of a Class A felony, punishable by life in prison. That procedure, long controversial, is rarely used -- a point even pro-choice advocates made when fighting the ban. At the time, Thompson was quoted as saying: ""This issue has captured our hearts, for the people of Wisconsin will not stand for a procedure so heartless to occur in our state. This is a matter of humanity. Banning partial birth abortions is simply the right thing to do.'' A federal appeals court struck down the Wisconsin law as unconstitutional in 2001. That court cited a U.S. Supreme Court ruling on a similar Nebraska law, which the high court said put an ""undue burden upon a woman's right to make an abortion decision."" That left Wisconsin among 14 states whose partial-birth ban laws have been blocked by courts and are not in effect, according to the Alan Guttmacher Institute, an independent research organization that analyzes data on population growth and reproductive health. The institute doesn’t have statistics on partial-birth abortions, per se, but its latest national figures show that 1.5 percent of abortions in 2006 were done during the late second trimester or the third trimester of pregnancy. In any case, partial-birth abortions make up only a portion of the 1.5 percent of all abortions that are performed later in a pregnancy. So, although partial-birth abortions were rarely done, Thompson did --as EMILY’s List claimed -- support a law that subjected partial-birth abortion providers to possible life imprisonment. Women forced to leave state The second claim made by EMILY’s List was ""women were forced to cross state lines in order to receive attention for life-threatening issues."" The group cited news articles about abortion providers around Wisconsin canceling abortion appointments after a federal judge refused to issue a temporary restraining order to prevent the 1998 partial-birth ban law from going into effect. The articles quoted providers as saying that women who had scheduled abortions were forced to reschedule them or to get the procedure done out of state. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported at the time that abortion providers throughout Wisconsin put all abortion procedures on hold for a few days as they waited for legal questions about the law to be sorted out. EMILY’s List did not provide us evidence to show that any women left Wisconsin ""to receive attention for life-threatening issues."" The group’s spokeswoman, Jess McIntosh, said in an email: ""The abortion providers who stopped working told dozens of prospective patients who needed to be seen immediately that they had to travel. Assuming not a single one did that and went on to have the procedure just isn't plausible."" It’s also not likely, however, that all or even most females who were seeking an abortion at the time faced a life-threatening situation. Asked about the EMILY’s statement, Thompson campaign spokesman Darrin Schmitz said: ""Gov. Thompson is proud of his pro-life record and defense of the unborn."" Our conclusion In support of Baldwin’s Senate bid, EMILY’s List said Thompson had ""pushed such strict laws that abortion providers faced potential life imprisonment and women were forced to cross state lines in order to receive attention for life-threatening issues."" A partial-birth abortion ban that Thompson signed into law as Wisconsin’s governor did contain the life imprisonment provision. The law also caused many abortion providers, at least for a few days, to stop performing abortions. That means it was possible some Wisconsin women had to leave the state in order to get an abortion. But there is no proof, as EMILY’s List claimed, that women were forced to leave the state ""to receive attention for life-threatening issues."""

http://www.jsonline.com/news/opinion/29345399.html, https://www.opensecrets.org/pacs/lookup2.php?strID=C00193433&cycle=2012, http://www.prolifewisconsin.org/staff.asp, https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/summary.php?id=D000000113&cycle=2012, http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1G1-69452851.html, http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1G1-69452895.html, https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=proaAAAAIBAJ&sjid=Wi4EAAAAIBAJ&pg=5326%2C5290626, https://www.guttmacher.org/statecenter/spibs/spib_BPBA.pdf, https://www.opensecrets.org/pacs/lookup2.php?strID=C00473918&cycle=2010, https://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/fb_induced_abortion.html, http://legis.wisconsin.gov/lrb/pubs/lb/98lb6.pdf, http://emilyslist.org/blog/tommy_thompson_jumps_into_wisconsin_senate/, http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1G1-69451351.html

1mixture

Abortion, Wisconsin, EMILY's List,

27633

A viral video shows a man punching a kangaroo in the face to save his dog.

December 6, 2016

In this case, though, all parties — dog, man, and kangaroo — emerged from the confrontation relatively unscathed.

Dan Evon

In December 2016, a video went viral, purportedly showing a man punching a kangaroo in order to save a dog: Matthew Amor, who organized the trip in support of a friend who was battling an incurable disease, detailed the events that led to his friend punching a kangaroo to News.com.au: Mr Amor said it was totally out of character for his friend, Mr Tonkins, to hit the marsupial, describing him as a “placid bloke”. “My mate has a good government job, so he’s gone pretty quiet on this,” Mr Amor laughed. “We were driving along, the dogs are loose. They are trained to smell pig’s blood, and picked up a scent. “The dogs went past 20 kangaroos, which they are trained not to touch. “Anyway, this big buck got a hold of my friend’s dog. It just grabbed him.” Shortly after the video went viral, many people called on Taronga’s Western Plains zoo to fire Tonkins for punching the kangaroo. However, the zoo released a statement on 6 December 2016, saying that the incident did not put Tonkins’ position in jeopardy: Best practice animal welfare and the protection of Australian wildlife are of the utmost importance to Taronga. Taronga strongly opposes the striking of animals and does not support the practice of using dogs to hunt, as this can result in negative welfare for both species. We support the Guidelines outlined by the Department of Environment and Heritage in the event of confrontation with a kangaroo. Mr Tonkins is an experienced Zoo keeper and during his six years at Taronga Western Plains Zoo has always followed Taronga’s best practice approach to animal care and welfare. We confirm that there is no suggestion of Mr Tonkins’ employment at Taronga Western Plains Zoo ending as a result of this event. However, the highest standards of animal welfare and care are a core value of Taronga and one that we expect our staff to uphold in all their interactions with wildlife and we continue to work with Mr Tonkins on his conduct in regards to this incident. Kangaroos are often portrayed as cuddly and gentle marsupials and are generally docile, but can be quite vicious and even dangerous (kicking with their muscular back legs, using feet topped by razor-sharp nails as weapons) when they feel threatened (often by dogs).

2true

Critter Country, kangaroo, man punches kangaroo, viral video

9022

Minimally invasive treatment reduces knee pain and disability from osteoarthritis

March 23, 2018

This release outlines interim results from a small  clinical trial proposing a new treatment — geniculate artery embolization (GAE) — to reduce the pain in patients with osteoarthritis (OA) of the knee. The study was presented at the Society of Interventional Radiology’s annual meeting. The main concerns with this report are the small study size (just 13 patients) and the brief duration of the study. Outcomes include results only through 1 month after the procedure. Almost half of the patients didn’t complete the 1-month follow-up assessment. The study didn’t include a control group. The release also ignored the potential risks of the procedure and its costs. Knee pain from osteoarthritis is a growing problem among the aging population and new approaches to reduce this type of pain could improve the quality of life for many older patients. Any non-opioid or  non-surgical approach which can match the success of knee replacement surgery in resolving pain and improving function would be an advance in caring for people with disabling osteoarthritis of the knee. But this release, and the extremely early stage of this research, goes too far in its claims of benefit. Larger trials of greater duration will be needed before this new invasive approach can be seen as a ready alternative to current treatments.

Earle Holland,Paul E. Levin, MD,Kathlyn Stone

This release doesn’t mention anything about the cost of this new procedure although interventional radiography procedures are normally complex and expensive. The release is remiss in not pointing out that GAE is likely to be more costly than other standard treatments for knee OA such as corticosteroid injections, exercise regimens and weight loss. Although the release reports improvement in physical function and decreasing pain based on standard measurements, it’s impossible to use this preliminary report to make any clinical recommendations. Successfully demonstrating the value of this procedure as an effective approach to resolve pain and improve function in an individual with painful OA of the knee will require a longer period of followup and a comparison with control groups including a sham needle insertion group and a group receiving a corticosteroid injection in the knee. The release doesn’t discuss the potential harms associated with this procedure. The procedure is complex involving the catheterization of  “very small arteries or capillaries within the lining of the knee,” and carries inherent risks of penetrating those blood vessels. Potential complications include bleeding at the puncture site and pain. Long-term complications have yet to be determined but could include failure of the intervention to address the symptoms of knee OA, worsening of the pain in some individuals, and osteonecrosis (a bone disease that results from loss of blood supply to the bone). Also yet to be established is the period of time it takes for healing to occur within the joints after the procedure. According to the release only eight of the 13 participants were assessed at the 1 month follow-up. This represents a loss of more than one-third of the original group of study participants and introduces a potential for significant bias of outcomes in those who completed the study. The study needs to be followed up with a randomized, long term trial. The release does point out that a randomized controlled clinical trial that began in February 2018 is intended to provide further data on on the procedure. The release doesn’t engage in disease mongering. The release doesn’t note how the study was funded. The release mentions medications and specifically opioids as one treatment for knee OA. According to the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons, alternatives also include exercise, over-the-counter anti-inflammatory medications such as ibuprofen and naproxen sodium, and corticosteroid injections. The release is confusing for readers on this point. The release suggests that GAE is an intervention already in current use when it states: “Interventional radiologists perform GAE for knee pain by inserting catheters through a pinhole-sized incision, blocking the very small arteries or capillaries within the lining of the knee, reducing the inflammation caused by osteoarthritis. As an outpatient treatment, GAE does not require open surgery or physical therapy, and takes 45-90 minutes to perform.” However, further down in the release its noted that the procedure has “only been used in a clinical trial setting.” The release doesn’t claim novelty. It states that the research “builds on the growing international research around GAE and osteoarthritis.” The headline and sub-head (touting “long-term relief”) claim benefits that aren’t supported by the evidence reported on this small, brief study.

https://www.healthnewsreview.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/GettyImages-653826510.jpg,https://www.healthnewsreview.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/Abstract-210.pdf

0false

osteoarthritis,Society of Interventional Radiology

29121

The character 'Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer' was created by a father to bring comfort to his daughter as her mother was dying of cancer.

December 16, 1999

What's true: Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer was created by a man whose wife was dying of cancer. What's false: The story of Rudolph was not created to bring comfort to a girl as her mother lay dying of cancer.

David Mikkelson

To most of us, the character of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, immortalized in song and a popular holiday television special, has always been an essential part of our Christmas folklore. But Rudolph is in fact a mid-twentieth century invention whose creation can be traced to a specific time and person — often described as follows in online posts: A man named Bob May, depressed and brokenhearted, stared out his drafty apartment window into the chilling December night. His 4-year-old daughter Barbara sat on his lap quietly sobbing. Bob’s wife, Evelyn, was dying of cancer. Little Barbara couldn’t understand why her mommy could never come home. Barbara looked up into her dad’s eyes and asked, “Why isn’t Mommy just like everybody else’s Mommy?” Bob’s jaw tightened and his eyes welled with tears. Her question brought waves of grief, but also of anger. It had been the story of Bob’s life. Life always had to be different for Bob. Small when he was a kid, Bob was often bullied by other boys. He was too little at the time to compete in sports. He was often called names he’d rather not remember. From childhood, Bob was different and never seemed to fit in. Bob did complete college, married his loving wife and was grateful to get his job as a copywriter at Montgomery Ward during the Great Depression. Then he was blessed with his little girl. But it was all short-lived. Evelyn’s bout with cancer stripped them of all their savings and now Bob and his daughter were forced to live in a two-room apartment in the Chicago slums. Evelyn died just days before Christmas in 1938. Bob struggled to give hope to his child, for whom he couldn’t even afford to buy a Christmas gift. But if he couldn’t buy a gift, he was determined to make one — a storybook! Bob had created an animal character in his own mind and told the animal’s story to little Barbara to give her comfort and hope. Again and again Bob told the story, embellishing it more with each telling. Who was the character? What was the story all about? The story Bob May created was his own autobiography in fable form. The character he created was a misfit outcast like he was. The name of the character? A little reindeer named Rudolph, with a big shiny nose. Bob finished the book just in time to give it to his little girl on Christmas Day. But the story doesn’t end there. The general manager of Montgomery Ward caught wind of the little storybook and offered Bob May a nominal fee to purchase the rights to print the book. Wards went on to print, Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer and distribute it to children visiting Santa Claus in their stores. By 1946 Wards had printed and distributed more than six million copies of Rudolph. That same year, a major publisher wanted to purchase the rights from Wards to print an updated version of the book. In an unprecedented gesture of kindness, the CEO of Wards returned all rights back to Bob May. The book became a best seller. Many toy and marketing deals followed and Bob May, now remarried with a growing family, became wealthy from the story he created to comfort his grieving daughter. But the story doesn’t end there either. Bob’s brother-in-law, Johnny Marks, made a song adaptation to Rudolph. Though the song was turned down by such popular vocalists as Bing Crosby and Dinah Shore , it was recorded by the singing cowboy, Gene Autry. “Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer” was released in 1949 and became a phenomenal success, selling more records than any other Christmas song, with the exception of “White Christmas.” The gift of love that Bob May created for his daughter so long ago kept on returning back to bless him again and again. And Bob May learned the lesson, just like his dear friend Rudolph, that being different isn’t so bad. In fact, being different can be a blessing. However, the glurgified account of that event reproduced above, while essentially correct in its broad strokes, erroneously inverts a key aspect of the process: The story of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer was not developed by a man who was seeking to bring comfort to his daughter as her mother lay dying of cancer and who subsequently sold his creation to a department store chain. Instead, the Rudolph character and story was developed for commercial purposes by a Montgomery Ward copywriter at the specific request of his employer, and that copywriter then tested the story out on his own daughter during the development process to ensure it would appeal to children. Rudolph came to life in 1939 when the Chicago-based Montgomery Ward company asked one of their copywriters, 34-year-old Robert L. May, to come up with a Christmas story they could give away in booklet form to shoppers as a promotional gimmick — the Montgomery Ward stores had been buying and distributing coloring books to customers at Christmastime every year, and May’s department head saw creating a giveaway booklet of their own as a way to save money. Robert May, who had a penchant for writing children’s stories and limericks, was tapped to create the booklet. May, drawing in part on the tale of The Ugly Duckling and his own background (he was often taunted as a child for being shy, small, and slight), settled on the idea of an underdog ostracized by the reindeer community because of his physical abnormality: a glowing red nose. Looking for an alliterative name, May considered and rejected Rollo (too cheerful and carefree a name for the story of a misfit) and Reginald (too British) before deciding on Rudolph. He then proceeded to write Rudolph’s story in verse as a series of rhyming couplets, testing it out on his 4-year-old daughter, Barbara, as he went along. Although Barbara was thrilled with Rudolph’s story, May’s boss was worried that a story featuring a red nose — an image associated with drinking and drunkards — was unsuitable for a Christmas tale. May responded by taking Denver Gillen, a friend from Montgomery Ward’s art department, to the Lincoln Park Zoo to sketch some deer. Gillen’s illustrations of a red-nosed reindeer overcame the hesitancy of May’s superiors, and the Rudolph story was approved. Montgomery Ward distributed 2.4 million copies of the Rudolph booklet in 1939, and although wartime paper shortages curtailed printing for the next several years, a total of 6 million copies had been distributed by the end of 1946. The post-war demand for licensing the Rudolph character was tremendous, but since May had created the story on a “work made for hire” basis as an employee of Montgomery Ward, that company held the copyright to Rudolph, and May received no royalties for his creation. Deeply in debt from the medical bills resulting from his wife’s terminal illness (she died about the time May created Rudolph), May persuaded Montgomery Ward’s corporate president, Sewell Avery, to turn the copyright over to him in January 1947, and with the rights to his creation in hand, May’s financial security was assured. (Unlike Santa Claus and other familiar Christmas figures of the time, the Rudolph character was a protected trademark that required licensing and the payment of royalties for commercial use.) “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” was reprinted commercially beginning in 1947 and shown in theaters as a nine-minute cartoon the following year, but the Rudolph phenomenon really took off when May’s brother-in-law, songwriter Johnny Marks, developed the lyrics and melody for a Rudolph song. Marks’ musical version of “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” (turned down by many in the music industry who didn’t want to meddle with the established Santa legend) was recorded by cowboy crooner Gene Autry in 1949, sold two million copies that year, and went on to become one of the best-selling songs of all time (second only to “White Christmas”). A stop-action television special about Rudolph produced by Rankin/Bass and narrated by Burl Ives was first aired in 1964 and remains a popular perennial holiday favorite in the U.S. May quit his copywriting job in 1951 and spent seven years managing the Rudolph franchise his creation had spawned before returning to Montgomery Ward, where he worked until his retirement in 1971. May died in 1976, comfortable in the life his reindeer creation had provided for him. The story of Rudolph is primarily known to us through the lyrics of Johnny Marks’ song (which provides only the barest outlines of Rudolph’s story) and the 1964 television special. The story Robert May wrote is substantially different from both of them in a number of ways. Rudolph was neither one of Santa’s reindeer nor the offspring of one of Santa’s reindeer, and he did not live at the North Pole. Rudolph dwelled in an “ordinary” reindeer village elsewhere, and although he was taunted and laughed at for having a shiny red nose, he was not regarded by his parents as a shameful embarrassment; Rudolph was brought up in a loving household and was a responsible reindeer with a good self-image and sense of worth. Moreover, Rudolph also did not rise to fame when Santa picked him out from a reindeer herd because of his shiny nose; instead, Santa discovered the red-nosed reindeer quite by accident, when he noticed the glow emanating from Rudolph’s room while he was delivering presents to Rudolph’s house. Worried that the thickening fog that night (already the cause of several accidents and delays) would keep him from completing his Christmas Eve rounds, Santa tapped Rudolph to lead his team, which the young reindeer agreed to do, after first stopping to complete one last task: leaving behind a note for his mother and father. As Ronald Lankford noted in his cultural history of American Christmas songs, Rudolph’s story was a classic reflection of American values during the 1940s and beyond: Much like the modern Santa Claus song, Rudolph’s story is for children; more specifically, it is a children’s story about overcoming adversity and earning, by personal effort, respect in the adult world. As a young deer (child) with a handicap that turns out to be an unrecognized asset, Rudolph comes to the rescue of an adult (Santa) at the last minute (on Christmas Eve). When Rudolph saves the day, he gains respect from both his peers (the reindeer who refused to include him in games) and the adult world. The story of Rudolph, then, is the fantasy story made to order for American children: each child has the need to express and receive approval for his or her individuality and/or special qualities. Rudolph’s story embodies the American Dream for the child, written large because of the cultural significance of Christmas.

1mixture

Holidays, christmas, glurge

26673

Drinking “water a lot and gargling with warm water & salt or vinegar eliminates” the coronavirus.

March 16, 2020

Neither drinking a lot of water, nor gargling with warm water and salt or vinegar, has been identified as working against the coronavirus. There is no remedy yet to prevent or treat the disease.

Tom Kertscher

"One myth making the rounds on social media is that if coronavirus gets in your mouth, you should drink lots of water to get it into your stomach, where acids will kill it. Health officials and media outlets debunked that one. Now comes a supposed remedy that’s a bit more complex: Drinking lots of water and gargling. That’s the recommendation from a viral image of a mannequin-like head and neck with these words: ""Corona virus before it reaches the lungs it remains in the throat for four days and at this time the person begins to cough and have throat pains. If he drinks water a lot and gargling with warm water & salt or vinegar eliminates the virus."" The post was flagged as part of Facebook’s efforts to combat news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Facebook.) It’s . And it’s part of a growing body of misinformation about coronavirus on social media. ""While staying hydrated by drinking water is important for overall health, it does not prevent the coronavirus,"" the World Health Organization warns. Gargling won’t do the trick, either (even if gargling with salt water can ease a sore throat). ""No specific treatment for COVID-19 is currently available,""  the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has declared about the coronavirus disease. Similarly, the World Health Organization states ""there is no specific medicine recommended to prevent or treat the new coronavirus (2019-nCoV)."" Among the tips the WHO offers to contain the spread of the virus: Regularly and thoroughly clean your hands with an alcohol-based hand rub or wash them with soap and water. Stay at least 3 feet away from anyone who is coughing or sneezing. Avoid touching your eyes, nose and mouth. Health experts say no coronavirus remedy has yet emerged. So drinking lots of water, or gargling with warm water and salt or vinegar, won’t eliminate it."

https://www.rappler.com/newsbreak/fact-check/254504-gargling-salt-water-eliminates-coronavirus, https://hoax-alert.leadstories.com/3471891-fact-check-memes-with-advice-for-preventing-coronavirus-are-not-accurate.html?fbclid=IwAR0n1mGdjh2bj6VXKWfURALaXmFrzxcklElJoaLN5BjnTBf25eH-zLfCCEM, https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/hcp/clinical-guidance-management-patients.html, https://www.facebook.com/lluhjjay.underwood, https://factcheck.afp.com/these-14-claims-covid-19-are-viral-misleading, https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/gargling-eliminate-coronavirus/, https://twitter.com/WHOPhilippines/status/1225961563594510337?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1225961563594510337&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.politifact.com%2Ffactchecks%2F2020%2Fmar%2F11%2Ffacebook-posts%2Fdrinking-water-does-not-prevent-coronavirus-infect%2F

0false

Public Health, Facebook Fact-checks, Coronavirus, Viral image,

18582

Very few men outlive their own fertility.

March 28, 2013

"Cooper argued before the Supreme Court that ""very few men outlive their own fertility."" Experts we consulted generally agree that men — or at least some men — may still father children well into their advanced years. But whether that’s most men or a minority isn’t yet supported by research. Meanwhile, emerging studies document declining fertility as individual men age, and studies don’t yet confirm how many men remain fertile their entire lives. Given the sweeping nature of Cooper's claim, and the lack of unequivocal evidence."

Becky Bowers

"Kids are at the center of marriage, argue supporters of California’s same-sex marriage ban. But infertile opposite-sex couples can get married, opponents point out — so why not same-sex pairs? Men stay fertile till their deathbeds, said an attorney arguing against rights for same-sex couples. Confused? Consider the actual debate before the Supreme Court on March 26, 2013, in Hollingsworth vs. Perry. Justice Elena Kagan compared a ban on marriage licenses for couples over age 55 with a ban on marriage licenses for same-sex couples. Couples over 55 are unlikely to produce children, she pointed out. Yet it would be unconstitutional to deny them a marriage license. So, she asked, what’s the difference between that couple and a same-sex couple that can’t naturally conceive? Attorney Charles Cooper, arguing in favor of California’s ban, said, ""With respect to couples over the age of 55, it is very rare that … both parties to the couple are infertile."" A bit later, he clarified: ""Very few men outlive their own fertility."" He explained that the state’s interest in marriage extends to older couples, because preserving the ""marital norm""  — with its obligations of fidelity and monogamy — discourages ""irresponsible procreative conduct outside of that marriage."" (He meant old guys having affairs with young mistresses.) It’s settled science that most women over 55 can’t naturally conceive. But we wondered — apart from what it may mean for the constitutionality of same-sex marriage — what does science say about men’s fertility in their declining years? Do ""very few men outlive their own fertility""? What studies say — and don’t say We spoke with a range of fertility experts, combed through their research, and can tell you this: Science doesn't yet tell us how many old men can make babies. Especially if we’re talking about natural conception of the variety that might take place if a 70-year-old is seeing a 25-year-old on the side. The kind that requires, you know, sex, and enough sperm that move vigorously enough to reach and penetrate an egg. (One expert told us some couples who visit fertility clinics don’t realize sex is required to make babies. We’re going to assume here that you generally get how this process works.) We do know that roughly 10 to 20 percent of couples generally are infertile, with the man’s fertility a factor in about 40 percent of those cases. But evidence is tricky when it comes to fertility as men age. Cooper’s office sent us links to two studies that note men make sperm late into life. But one happens to document age-related decline in sperm quality and the other notes that studies suggest men contribute to reduced fertility beginning in their early 40s. Here’s a roundup of points on both sides. Signs of late-life fertility: • There’s no ""cliff"" as with menopause around age 50 in women, where fertility drops off dramatically. • Most men still make sperm into old age, studies say. (This is different from women, who are born with all the eggs they will ever have — no making fresh ones.) • Sperm count, one of the most important measures of male fertility, isn’t as sensitive to age as other factors, said Andrew La Barbera, scientific director for the American Society for Reproductive Medicine. • We’ve all heard of guys old enough to be great-grandfathers fathering kids. Or, as Justice Antonin Scalia joked in court, about the late Sen. Strom Thurmond of South Carolina, who fathered four children in his late 60s and early 70s. Points that give pause: • While there’s no menopause-like fertility cliff for men, sperm quality, amount of semen and fertility do appear to decline with age. Older men may be more likely to make sperm that’s strangely shaped and doesn’t swim well. ""These data suggest that men may become progressively less fertile as they age,"" said a 2003 study cited by Cooper’s office. • The timing of fertility decline may vary dramatically from person to person — but there’s a need for more research to explain the variation. • There’s no clear research that shows how many older men may be capable of impregnating a woman in a year of regular sex, the clinical definition of fertility. ""We don’t have data on men as they age ... not men who are in their 60s and 70s,"" said Harry Fisch, clinical professor of urology and reproductive medicine at Weill Cornell Medical College and author of The Male Biological Clock. ""Very few men in these studies are older."" ""If it’s true, then let me ask you: Where’s the data?"" That point was echoed by researchers who explained the limits of current studies. ""It is rather difficult to give a precise estimate of (men’s) fertility by age because very few are still trying to have children beyond 60 or 65 years,"" said Henri Leridon, an expert in human reproduction who headed research at France’s National Institute for Demographic Studies. An Israeli fertility researcher, Eliezer Girsh, told PolitiFact that not only does fertility decline in men after age 50, but that just 20 to 40 percent of men are ""still fertile in advanced age."" Other experts said that, frankly, there’s a need for more research. But anecdotes sometimes overshadow the lack of data. The oldest scientifically documented case of fatherhood: a 94-year-old. Our ruling Cooper argued before the Supreme Court that ""very few men outlive their own fertility."" Experts we consulted generally agree that men — or at least some men — may still father children well into their advanced years. But whether that’s most men or a minority isn’t yet supported by research. Meanwhile, emerging studies document declining fertility as individual men age, and studies don’t yet confirm how many men remain fertile their entire lives. Given the sweeping nature of Cooper's claim, and the lack of unequivocal evidence,"

https://humupd.oxfordjournals.org/content/10/4/327.long, https://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303936704576400161673484394.html, http://infertility.about.com/gi/o.htm?zi=1/XJ&zTi=1&sdn=infertility&cdn=health&tm=217&f=00&tt=12&bt=1&bts=4&zu=http%3A//www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18392674%3Fordinalpos%3D15%26itool%3DEntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_RVDocSum, https://www.nature.com/aja/journal/v14/n1/full/aja201169a.html, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17430422, http://books.google.com/books?id=cPE8UoKvtukC&pg=PA47&dq=age+%22male+factor+infertility%22&hl=en&sa=X&ei=z_1SUbSpDIT69gSJ9YHwBA&ved=0CD8Q6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=age%20%22male%20factor%20infertility%22&f=false, http://www.harryfisch.com/pdf/wju-male_bio_clock.pdf, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=Fathers+over+40+and+increased+failure+to+conceive%3A+the+lessons+of+in+vitro+fertilization+in+France., http://www.mdconsult.com/das/article/body/406386822-533/jorg=journal&source=&sp=14405014&sid=0/N/404137/1.html?issn=00257125&_returnURL=http%3A//linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S0025712503001500%3Fshowall%3Dtrue, http://superfund.berkeley.edu/pdf/282.pdf, https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/06/060606091933.htm, http://www.harryfisch.com/the-male-biological-clock.html, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23493186, https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0015028205036782, https://humrep.oxfordjournals.org/content/18/2/447.long, http://books.google.com/books/about/Infertility_in_the_Male.html?id=QZqIhMZGq0kC, http://www.supremecourt.gov/oral_arguments/argument_transcripts/12-144a.pdf, http://www.asrm.org/detail.aspx?id=2322, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22561776

1mixture

National, Children, Families, Gays and Lesbians, Human Rights, Legal Issues, Marriage, Science, Sexuality, Supreme Court, Charles Cooper,

27138

Sitting inside a running, snowed-in car can result in carbon monoxide poisoning.

February 14, 2019

In the wake of these deaths, WABC visited the Maplewood Fire Department in New Jersey to conduct an informal experiment showing just how quickly the passenger compartment of a car buried in snow could fill up with carbon monoxide gas. It took only 1 minute and 24 seconds for levels to spike to dangerous levels inside the running vehicle.

Bethania Palma

Many motorists are aware of dangers of carbon monoxide poisoning resulting of running a car engine inside an enclosed space such as a garage with a lowered door. But with extremely cold weather afoot in many parts of the U.S., a Reddit user on 12 February 2019 sought to warn about another danger: sitting inside a snowed-in car parked outdoors with the engine running. “Just a reminder that if you haven’t moved your car since Saturday and you’re parked outside, make sure your exhaust is clear before warming up your car,” was the advice. A vehicle’s exhaust system serves the dual purposes of carrying away carbon monoxide and other harmful gases resulting from combustion and of muffling noise produced by the engine, according to safety literature published by the American Automobile Association (AAA). The former purpose can be rendered less effective if something is obstructing a vehicle’s tailpipe. “Carbon monoxide is odorless, very hard to detect, and it can quickly cause death. If your car is stuck in the snow and you have the engine running, open a window slightly and clear snow away from the exhaust pipe,” motorists are advised when weather conditions bring immobilizing amounts of snowfall. If you must run your vehicle, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration cautions, “clear the exhaust pipe of any snow and run it only sporadically — just long enough to stay warm.” Carbon monoxide can fill up a small enclosed space (such as the passenger compartment of a car) quickly and render persons unconscious before they realize the danger. This hazard was demonstrated tragically in 2016 when 23-year-old New Jersey mother Sashalynn Rosa and her two small children died sitting in a running car trying to keep warm as the children’s father worked to clear snow from around the vehicle, as television station WABC reported at the time: “It’s hard to lose them like that,” says boy’s grandfather, Felix Bonilla. His son, Felix Bonilla, Jr. had been digging out the family’s car while his girlfriend and their two children sat inside to stay warm. With the car’s engine on, and its tail pipe clogged by snow, the odorless, invisible gas seeped into the car in minutes, killing the mother and her baby boy. The little girl also unconscious, was kept alive by paramedics and a bystander who was not afraid to get involved. … Police say the tragedy is a reminder to people to make sure their tailpipes are free and clear because it doesn’t take long for cars to fill up with carbon monoxide. Rosa’s daughter also passed away at a regional hospital soon afterwards.

2true

Automobiles, Highway Hazards

20167

"National Republican Congressional Committee Says that Rep. Betty Sutton ""would rather riot with Occupy (Wall Street) than stand up for Ohio families."

May 9, 2012

NRCC says Betty Sutton supported rioting at Occupy Wall Street event

Henry J. Gomez

"Republicans moved quickly to politicize what federal agents have described as a failed bomb plot cooked up by anarchists connected to the Occupy Cleveland organization. The group, an offshoot of last fall’s anti-Wall Street demonstrations in New York, is not under investigation, officials stressed May 1, 2012,  when announcing the arrests of five suspects. But that did little to stop the GOP from buzzing about the movement’s support among Democrats. The most direct attack came May 2, 2012, from the National Republican Congressional Committee. The group is working to unseat Rep. Betty Sutton, a Democrat from Copley Township near Akron. Redistricting put her into battle this fall against fellow Rep. Jim Renacci of Wadsworth. In an email, the NRCC blasted Sutton for not immediately denouncing the accused anarchists and noted that the congresswoman attended an Occupy rally last October in New York. The email, sent by NRCC Deputy Communications Director Andrea Bozek, accuses Sutton of missing votes to protest with Occupy Wall Street and being slow to criticize the ""plot by Occupy members to blow up an Ohio bridge."" Bozek then delivered the punchy email’s parting shot. ""Sutton’s cowardly silence shows she would rather riot with Occupy than stand up for Ohio families."" When it comes to Occupy, it’s no secret Sutton has been a supporter. But a rioter? PolitiFact Ohio decided to check that accusation. Bozek provided a link to a story that was published last October in The Plain Dealer and online at Cleveland.com. The story reported on Sutton’s travel to the Occupy rally in New York. Bozek also shared an NRCC video montage of Occupy protesters preaching communism and engaging in other unruly behavior. An oft-used image of a man defecating on a police car makes a cameo. The video targets another congressional Democrat, Steve Israel of New York. Asked if any of the clips came from the event Sutton attended, Bozek replied: ""That video demonstrates the kind of behavior that defines this radical group. Multiple arrests, sexual assaults, attacks on police officers and … vandalism. Is that what Betty Sutton supports?"" ""The congresswoman does not ever condone or participate in riotous behavior,"" said Sutton spokesman Anthony DeAngelo. The New York rally last fall is the only Occupy event Sutton has attended, DeAngelo told PolitiFact Ohio. We checked news reports from that day and found little to support the NRCC’s attack. Yes, there were violent outbursts -- an element necessary to meet nearly any modern definition of riot. The New York Times City Room blog reported that 23 people were arrested during the Oct. 5 protests, including one charged with second-degree riot -- a misdemeanor. According to New York penal code, rioting in the second degree occurs when someone in a group of at least four ""engages in tumultuous and violent conduct,"" risking ""public alarm."" But we suspect the New York Times would have noted an Ohio congresswoman among the group had Sutton been involved. But the newspaper didn’t because Sutton wasn’t. DeAngelo offered a few photos of his boss at the rally. Sutton appears more dressed up than her fellow demonstrators, and her dark coat and purple blouse look no worse for the wear. Most coverage of the Oct. 5 protests indicated that violent behavior was the exception. That evening, on CNN’s broadcast of ""Situation Room,"" reporter Susan Candiotti agreed with host Wolf Blitzer that the protests had been peaceful and that ""there have been no confrontations."" The NRCC is correct that Sutton missed votes to attend the rally last October. It is also accurate to say that Sutton did not send out a formal condemnation of the five bomb plot suspects, though, in fairness, neither did Renacci until after the NRCC attack. But the rhetorical flourish is where the NRCC’s claim departs from truthfulness. The NRCC email said that Sutton’s ""cowardly silence shows she would rather riot with Occupy than stand up for Ohio families."" Did Sutton stand with the Occupy Wall Street protesters in October? Yes. Did she engage in rioting? No. Was there even rioting at the rally Sutton attended? News coverage indicates violent behavior was the exception and that protests at the event were generally peaceful. Meanwhile, the material provided by the NRCC fails to support the notion that Sutton would support rioting. The NRCC claim is beyond False. On the Truth-O-Meter, the claim rates ."

http://www.cleveland.com/open/index.ssf/2012/05/republicans_try_to_tie_rep_bet.html, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g1LNGd7uANk&list=PL951E32C3823CF521&index=31&feature=plpp_video, http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2011/ROLL_700.asp, https://thirdbasepolitics.blogspot.com/2012/05/occupy-movement-that-sherrod-brown.html, https://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/10/06/23-arrested-wednesday-in-wall-st-protest/, http://www.nycourts.gov/cji/2-PenalLaw/240/240-05.pdf, http://www.cleveland.com/open/index.ssf/2011/10/rep_betty_sutton_to_join_occup.html, https://thirdbasepolitics.blogspot.com/2012/05/ted-strickland-also-parroted-occupy.html

0false

Ohio, Economy, Jobs, Poverty, Wealth, National Republican Congressional Committee,

13122

Report: 3 million votes in presidential election cast by illegal aliens.

November 18, 2016

"Reports claim 3 million ""illegal aliens"" cast votes in this year's election. The articles point back to tweets from Gregg Phillips, who has worked for the Republican Party and has a voter fraud reporting app. But Phillips will not provide any evidence to support his claim, which happens to be undermined by publicly available information. If Phillips does release a more detailed report, we will consider that information. But for now, this claim is inaccurate."

Allison Graves

"Were there 3 million illegal votes from undocumented immigrants in this year’s presidential election? Well, that’s what some websites are saying. ""Report: 3 million votes in presidential election cast by illegal aliens,"" reads a headline on InfoWars, a conspiracy website ran by Alex Jones. The article has been shared via Facebook more than 48,000 times when we last looked. Other websites also have touted this report, including Milo, TheNewAmerican and FreedomDaily. So is there any truth to it? Well, we don’t know for absolute certain. But the report is actually a tweet, and the person who authored the tweet won’t explain how he arrived at his figure. If that isn’t reason enough to be skeptical, independent experts and historical analyses suggest it’s highly suspect. In other words, don’t buy it. Where’s the report? As evidence of its claim, InfoWars’ headline refers to a report from VoteFraud.org and tweets from Gregg Phillips, whose Twitter profile says he’s the founder of VoteStand, a voter fraud reporting app. There is no report from VoteFraud.org, however, and Phillips told PolitiFact he is not affiliated with that website. The information comes from tweets made by from Phillips on Nov. 11 and Nov. 13. Here they are: We have verified more than three million votes cast by non-citizens. We are joining . @TrueTheVote to initiate legal action. #unrigged Completed analysis of database of 180 million voter registrations. Number of non-citizen votes exceeds 3 million.Consulting legal team. Phillips would not provide any additional information when asked by PolitiFact. He said he has chosen not to release more information because he is still working on analyzing the data and verifying its accuracy. Phillips would also not say what the data is or where it came from, or what methodology he used. Phillips said he would release the information publicly once he is finally finished. According to his page on LinkedIn, Phillips is a former finance director of the Alabama Republican Party. He also served as executive director of the Mississippi Republican Party and was managing director of a super PAC that supported Newt Gingrich’s 2012 campaign for president. Plenty of reason to be skeptical While we have no idea how Phillips arrived at his claim that 3-million noncitizens voted, people who have made similar claims in the past have cited a 2014 report that claims 6.4 percent of non-citizens voted in 2008 and 2.2 percent of non-citizens voted in 2010 midterm congressional elections. That report was based on data from a Harvard survey of people. But the data was flawed, which created flaws in the subsequent report. The authors of the survey say a small percentage of respondents, who are citizens, accidentally misidentified themselves as noncitizens on the survey. This is because the respondents didn’t read the question carefully and accidentally selected the wrong response to the question. How do researchers know this? One of the authors of the survey, Brian Schaffner, said people changed their answers later when they were asked about their citizenship. ""When we took out people who changed their answer on the citizenship question and only look at people who answered consistently that they were noncitizens, we found no reported noncitizens who voted,"" Schaffner told PolitiFact. Other research contradicts Phillips’ tweet. News 21, a national investigative reporting project funded by the Carnegie Corporation of New York and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, found just 56 cases of noncitizens voting between 2000 and 2011. A report by the liberal Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law found that most cases of noncitizens voting were accidental. ""Although there are a few recorded examples in which noncitizens have apparently registered or voted, investigators have concluded that they were likely not aware that doing so was improper,"" reads the 2007 report. States that have tried to purge noncitizens from voter rolls, meanwhile, have found even government data lacking. In 2012, Florida Governor Rick Scott’s administration started an effort trying to crack down on noncitizens voting by comparing driver's license data against voter rolls. Through this process the Florida Department of State created a list of 182,000 potential noncitizens that had voted. That number was whittled down to 2,700, then to about 200 before the purge was stopped amid criticism that the data was flawed given the number of positives — including a Brooklyn-born World War II vet. Ultimately, only 85 people were removed from the voting rolls. State officials began to pursue a second attempt at a purge in advance of the 2014 election but then abandoned that effort, too. Richard Hasen, an election law expert at the University of California, Irvine, called Phillips’ claim ""fake news."" ""There is no credible evidence I have seen to show large numbers of noncitizens voting in U.S. elections anywhere,"" Hasen said. ""The idea that 3 million noncitizens could have illegally voted in our elections without being detected is obscenely ludicrous."" Our ruling Reports claim 3 million ""illegal aliens"" cast votes in this year's election. The articles point back to tweets from Gregg Phillips, who has worked for the Republican Party and has a voter fraud reporting app. But Phillips will not provide any evidence to support his claim, which happens to be undermined by publicly available information. If Phillips does release a more detailed report, we will consider that information. But for now, this claim is inaccurate."

https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2016/oct/24/donald-trump/donald-trump-wrongly-says-14-percent-noncitizens-a/, http://freedomdaily.com/3-million-illegal-immigrants-investigated-voting-obama-told-safe/, https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/post/floridas-voter-purge-explained/2012/06/18/gJQAhvcNlV_blog.html, https://www.brennancenter.org/sites/default/files/legacy/The%20Truth%20About%20Voter%20Fraud.pdf, http://www.infowars.com/report-three-million-votes-in-presidential-election-cast-by-illegal-aliens/, http://votingrights.news21.com/article/election-fraud/, https://twitter.com/JumpVote?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw, http://www.thenewamerican.com/usnews/immigration/item/24630-vote-fraud-monitoring-group-says-three-million-noncitizens-voted-in-presidential-election, https://www.politifact.com/florida/statements/2012/jun/07/alcee-hastings/us-rep-hastings-says-floridas-noncitizen-voter-pur/, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2014/10/24/could-non-citizens-decide-the-november-election/, http://www.tampabay.com/news/politics/stateroundup/appeals-court-rules-florida-voter-purge-violated-federal-law/2173054, http://milo.yiannopoulos.net/2016/11/illegal-immigrants-3-million-votes/

0false

Immigration, Elections, PunditFact, Bloggers,

2793

Florida's top court puts medical marijuana initiative on November ballot.

January 27, 2014

Florida voters will decide in November whether to legalize medical marijuana after the state Supreme Court on Monday approved an initiative to put the measure on the ballot.

Bill Cotterell

Florida’s Republican Party leadership had opposed the wording of the ballot measure, saying it was too vague and misleading and that it would allow almost anyone to obtain marijuana for the slightest medical complaint. A bitterly divided state Supreme Court voted 4-3 on Monday to allow the medical marijuana initiative to go on the November ballot, saying it met all legal requirements. If the petition is backed by 60 percent of voters in November, Florida would become the first Southern U.S. state to approve marijuana for medical use, joining 20 other states. A Quinnipiac University Polling Institute survey late last year showed 82 percent public support for the amendment if it was put on the ballot. A constitutional amendment in Florida requires 60 percent voter approval for adoption. In an unsigned 44-page ruling, the high court held that the ballot title and summary wording “are not clearly and conclusively defective.” It went on to say the proposed amendment gave voters “fair notice as to the chief purpose and scope of the proposed amendment, which is to allow a restricted use of marijuana for certain debilitating medical conditions.” Organizers of the “United for Care” campaign had succeeded on Friday in topping the signature requirement of 683,000 verified voter petitions from across the state. “We’re obviously thrilled with the results,” said Ben Pollara, campaign manager for the ballot drive. “The voice of Floridians will finally get to be heard on this issue.” Florida Governor Rick Scott, a Republican, opposes the initiative, as do the Florida Medical Association and the Florida Sheriff’s Association. The Florida legislature has refused for years to authorize medical use of marijuana, although a plan to permit tightly controlled prescription of a non-euphoric marijuana derivative known as “Charlotte’s Web” for children with epileptic seizures has gained traction in the House. Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi and the state’s Republican leadership filed briefs in the Supreme Court last year urging the justices to deny the ballot initiative. The justices do not rule on the wisdom of an amendment, but only determine whether it deals with a single subject and whether its ballot summary properly informs the voter of what the proposal does. Scott issued a short statement expressing “empathy” for people battling diseases but said he would vote against the amendment. Charlie Crist, a one-time Republican governor of Florida who is running for the same office against Scott in November as a Democrat, welcomed the court’s decision. “I’m going to vote for it and I think it’s the right thing to do,” he said. Chief Justice Ricky Polston and Justices Jorge Labarga and Charles Canady strongly dissented on Monday. “The summary and title ‘hide the ball’ and allow this initiative to ‘fly under false colors’ regarding the severity of medical issues that qualify for marijuana use,” wrote Polston. Bondi and legislative attorneys had argued that allowing doctors to prescribe marijuana when they believe its benefits outweigh its risks for a patient was overly broad. In oral arguments in December, Polston said the amendment would allow doctors to prescribe pot for “stress” and asked whether a college student worried about final exams might be able to get marijuana legally. Backers of the amendment said marijuana would be tightly controlled and that the proposal would not lead to legalization of recreational pot smoking. Jon Mills, a former University of Florida law school dean defending the ballot language, replied that doctors - and voters - know the difference between a debilitating “disease,” such as HIV/AIDS, cancer, ALS (also called Lou Gehrig’s disease), or epilepsy, and a “condition” warranting marijuana use. Canady, a former Republican congressman, focused much of his dissent on potential conflict with federal drug laws, saying the ballot was “blatantly deceptive.” The ballot language states that nothing in the amendment allows illegal marijuana use or violation of federal law. That cannot be, wrote Canady in a separate dissent. “The summary states that the proposed amendment ‘does not authorize violation of federal law,’ but the truth is that violations of federal law unquestionably are authorized by the amendment,” he wrote.

2true

Health News

22977

"Said they reached a  ""power-sharing agreement"" with Republican Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle"

November 17, 2010

"Georgia Senate leaders claim ""power sharing"" with lieutenant governor"

Jim Tharpe

"There was a time when the future looked very bright for Republican Casey Cagle, Georgia's lieutenant governor. He was young and riding the rising tide of a Republican takeover of what had once been a state dominated by Democrats. The governor's office seemed well within his reach. All he had to do was put a couple of terms as the state Senate's leader behind him, line up the campaign donors and then start measuring the curtains in the chief executive's suite. But these days, the doe-eyed Cagle looks more like a deer in the headlights, thanks to a rebellious group of his fellow Republican senators who have staged a lightning-quick palace coup, striking hard and fast at the man who was to have been their leader. The Nov. 2 election returns had barely been counted when the Republican caucus met in Macon in a closed-door session at Mercer University. With a voice vote, Republicans removed Cagle’s power to appoint Senate committee chairmen, which is the key to real influence in the upper chamber. They also stripped Cagle of the ability to decide the makeup of Senate committees. The lieutenant governor will be allowed to direct legislation to particular committees, but he can do that only under the supervision of the Senate membership. Cagle does still preside over the Senate, and he has the bully pulpit of the upper chamber at his disposal. And he can -- apparently -- still appoint senators to important conference committees to iron out House-Senate differences in legislation. However, that power also could come under attack when senators meet next month in Athens in a pre-session gathering. One newspaper columnist noted after the Nov. 5 Macon meeting that Cagle had been relegated to little more than a hall monitor. GOP leaders, however, painted a different picture. ""This is simply a new power-sharing agreement that we’ve come to,"" Senate Majority Leader Chip Rogers, R-Woodstock, told reporters. That sentiment was echoed by other GOP leaders. PolitiFact Georgia wondered who's correct. Does Cagle retain important Senate powers? Or has he been reduced to figurehead? First, a little background about all the intraparty back-stabbing. During the last legislative session, Cagle inserted his Senate allies into the middle of a Republican brawl over Gov. Sonny Perdue's proposal to levy a tax on hospitals and other health facilities. Cagle backed the idea, but some key committee chairmen in the Senate vigorously opposed it. They claimed Cagle never consulted them before pledging their support. Cagle retaliated, stripping the chairmanships of Sens. Judson Hill, R-Marietta, and Preston Smith, R-Rome, two of four Republicans who voted against Perdue's proposal. Sen. Mitch Seabaugh, of Sharpsburg, resigned his position as party whip. That set the stage for a very uncivil war if Cagle won re-election. Which he did, easily, against Democrat Carol Porter. Ironically, Cagle campaigned against Porter by warning Georgia voters that Senate Republicans would immediately strip her of her Senate powers if she won. Emory University political scientist Merle Black said Cagle now finds himself in the same situation faced by former Democratic Lt. Gov. Mark Taylor, who was stripped of his power by the new GOP majority in 2003. ""They've turned him into a nominal lieutenant governor -- lieutenant governor in name only,"" Black said. ""I think they've really limited his career opportunities."" Kerwin Swint, a political science professor at Kennesaw State University, said the GOP Senate leaders have essentially ""marginalized"" the lieutenant governor. ""There is no doubt his power has been diminished by this,"" Swint said. ""He's not powerless, but his power has certainly been diminished."" Cagle spokesman Ben Fry had this to say about all the shenanigans: ""While some may be playing political games, the lieutenant governor remains committed to delivering results, which is exactly what the voters just overwhelmingly elected him to do. He is not going to let procedural hurdles get in the way of his passion for creating jobs and making the difficult decisions necessary to balance the budget and move our state forward."" But the facts are clear. Power in the Senate has shifted, and shifted dramatically. The real clout in the Senate now will be wielded by an eight-member committee. That body is composed of President Pro Tem Tommie Williams, five GOP caucus officers and two Senate appointees by Cagle. Cagle was expressly prohibited from membership on the committee. This is ""power sharing"" all right. In the aftermath of the Macon coup, the GOP Senate leadership now has all the power. And it doesn't plan to share it with Cagle. We find the GOP claim about power sharing with the lieutenant governor not only not accurate. It's ridiculous. ."

0false

Georgia, Elections, Republican state senators,

35765

U.S. Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., supports the ability to carry out abortions up until the time a woman gives birth.

August 28, 2020

What's true: U.S. Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif, has maintained that the timing of carrying out an abortion should be left up to a woman. Harris was a co-sponsor of the 2019 Women’s Health Protection Act (WHPA), which prohibits state laws banning post-viability abortions that do not make exceptions if a woman’s health and life are at risk. What's false: She has not explicitly stated that she supports the termination of a pregnancy at any time just before birth.

Nur Ibrahim

Debates surrounding abortion frequently resurface around presidential election season, and 2020 was no different. U.S. Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif, has been touted as a pro-abortion-rights advocate based on her record of supporting legislation focused on increasing abortion access across the U.S. Conservative media like The Federalist and Life News have scrutinized Harris’ record for this very reason and have argued that she supports abortions until birth, or “late-term” abortions. Snopes readers also shared the below image with us, asking us to investigate whether Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden and Harris, his vice-presidential running mate, were in favor of an abortion minutes before a baby’s birth. We learned that while Harris has not explicitly stated that she supports abortion until the moment of birth, she has advocated for policies that allow for late-term abortions, primarily when the mother’s life is at risk. This issue was presented to Harris back in February 2019, when conservative news outlet The Daily Caller asked various Democratic senators “if there was a point at which [abortion] would be considered immoral.” Harris did not offer a direct answer, instead saying: “I think it’s up to a woman to make that decision, and I will always stand by that […] I think she needs to make that decision with her doctor, with her priest, with her spouse.” Harris has frequently spoken out against laws that prevent abortions after 20 weeks of gestation: We must keep fighting to defend and expand on the progress made for women’s rights and reproductive health, not pass a 20-week abortion ban. Add your name if you agree: https://t.co/Q0wquwR68y — Kamala Harris (@KamalaHarris) January 27, 2018 Her opposition to the 20-week abortion ban is illustrated through her co-sponsorship of the Women’s Health Protection Act (WHPA) of 2019. The federal bill aims to protect access to abortion across states by establishing federal statutory rights for providers and patients to give and receive abortion care, free from medically unnecessary restrictions and bans based on fetal viability. If passed, the act would require states to get preliminary clearance from the federal government before implementing new restrictions on abortion. The bill states: Since 1973, the Supreme Court repeatedly has recognized the constitutional right of a woman to decide to terminate her pregnancy before fetal viability, and to terminate her pregnancy after fetal viability where it is necessary, in the good-faith medical judgment of the treating health care professional, for the preservation of her life or health. Typically, full-term pregnancies last up to 40 weeks — fetal viability is defined as the ability of a fetus to survive outside of the uterus. Infants that are born very premature — normally before 24 weeks of gestation — are often not considered “viable.” But states have numerous definitions of viability in laws that ban abortions at different points during pregnancy. Fetal viability is hotly debated. And according to the Guttmacher Institute — a research and advocacy organization that focuses on sexual and reproductive health issues — states can’t rely on any one factor. Defining viability is often done on a case-by-case basis by an individual’s doctor. According to the Center for Reproductive Rights, the WHPA would prohibit states from imposing the following restrictions: Pre-viability bans: Laws that prohibit abortion before viability, including twenty-week bans, six-week “heartbeat” bans, and bans on the most common abortion procedures, are patently unconstitutional […] Post-viability bans that do not make exceptions for a woman’s health or life: Serious complications can arise at any point in a pregnancy. The U.S. Supreme Court has held that even a ban on abortion after viability must include exceptions for situations in which an abortion is necessary to preserve the life or health of a woman. We should note a key distinction here is the WHPA’s effort to stop post-viability bans. As defined by the U.S. Supreme Court, bans on post-viability abortions must make exceptions for when the woman’s health and life are at risk. This distinction implies that proponents of this bill support certain post-viability abortions in situations where giving birth may harm the woman’s health. It is clear from the language in the WHPA that post-viability abortions should be allowed when the life of the woman is at risk.

1mixture

Politics, 2020 election

7335

Burundi defies COVID-19 for election ending a bloody rule.

Burundi is pushing ahead with an election on Wednesday that will end the president’s divisive and bloody 15-year rule.

Rodney Muhumuza And Ignatius Ssuuna

When President Pierre Nkurunziza hands over power, it could be the first truly peaceful transfer of authority in the East African nation since independence in 1962. But the coronavirus poses a threat to the May 20 vote. Burundi has kicked out World Health Organization workers after concerns were raised. The WHO Africa director messaged the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention chief about political rallies the day that Burundi’s campaigning launched and images of crowds circulated online. Authorities have been accused by critics of downplaying the pandemic and citing divine protection. But the government appears to be using virus measures to limit election observers, warning the East African regional bloc on May 8 that arriving foreigners face a 14-day quarantine. More than the virus, however, it’s the fear of violence that weighs on many of the more than 5 million people eligible to vote. Government agents have been accused of harassing the main opposition party, the CNL, whose leader Agathon Rwasa is believed to be in a close race with Nkurunziza’s chosen successor in the ruling CNDD-FDD, Evariste Ndayishimiye. More than 145 CNL members have been arrested since campaigning began on April 27, according to SOS Medias Burundi, a group of independent journalists. Police spokesman Pierre Nkurikiye has accused Rwasa of making “incendiary and defamatory” remarks and inciting revolt. Rwasa, the deputy parliament speaker, has drawn large crowds despite the risks of openly supporting him, according to an online group of activists known as i-Burundi. The group worries that a rigged election could spark the kind of street demonstrations that marked the previous vote in 2015. “The ruling party was hoping to use this post-Nkurunziza election to gain a semblance of legitimacy, but given what’s happening we might end up with more violence,” i-Burundi said in an interview. “People want change. ... But the ruling party has the incumbent advantage and controls the electoral process.” Rwasa told The Associated Press he feels it’s important not to boycott the election even if the outcome is not expected to be fair. “Everything has its right time,” he said. “Right now, it is not the time to give up and abandon our people.” Ndayishimiye, a retired general, would be a weak president because he will be a front for Nkurunziza and other powerful ruling party members, said David Gakunzi, a Burundian political analyst: “He consults but he will fear to take independent decisions.” Ndayishimiye fought alongside Nkurunziza as a rebel in the civil war from 1993 to 2005 that killed about 300,000 people. Nkurunziza was chosen by lawmakers to be president during the peace process known as the Arusha Accords, which specified that a president’s term can be renewed only once. But Nkurunziza, who won a second term in 2010, said he was eligible for a third term in 2015 because he had not been chosen the first time by universal suffrage. The deadly turmoil that followed badly damaged ties with the international community, and Burundi became the first country to leave the International Criminal Court after it started investigating allegations of abuses. The U.N. human rights office reported more than 300 extrajudicial killings and was kicked out of the country. Nkurunziza survived a coup attempt shortly after the 2015 vote while traveling in Tanzania and has left Burundi only once since then. Meanwhile international donors have cut support, leaving the government struggling. It has ordered citizens to pay for the upcoming vote. Many Burundians were surprised when the president announced in 2018 that he was serving his last term. Skepticism persists. The government has approved legislation that bestows upon Nkurunziza the title of “paramount leader” after he steps down. “It’s hard to know what’s going to happen ... Nkurunziza has a track record of being quite unpredictable,” said researcher Lane Hartill of the Burundi Human Rights Initiative. “Both the ruling party and the main opposition party, the CNL, are convinced their candidates are going to win the presidential election. It’s telling, though, that government officials continue to arrest large numbers of CNL members.” Even some senior members of the ruling party are tired of rights violations and the cratering economy but are afraid to speak out for fear of losing their jobs or being killed, Hartill said. Burundi’s government has denied allegations it targets its people, calling them malicious propaganda by dissidents. Memories of the 2015 violence are still raw. Jean Baptiste Bakunzi said he remains traumatized by his brother’s death at the hands of the police and the Imbonerakure, a militarized youth group associated with the ruling party. His brother, accused of participating in anti-government activities, “knelt down and begged them to save his life,” Bakunzi said. “Instead, one policeman pulled the trigger and shot him dead,” he said. “Whoever opposes the ruling party becomes an enemy even today.” The violence has dimmed hopes for those outside Burundi who will not be able to vote. Over 330,000 refugees are sheltering in Tanzania, Uganda, Rwanda and Congo, according to U.N. figures. “These elections will not bring hope for us because we have lost so much,” said Solange Teta, a refugee in Rwanda. “The ruling party candidate cannot alleviate our suffering.” Sporadic violence persists. Police said two people were killed and eight wounded in a grenade attack Sunday on a bar in Bujumbura that’s a popular hangout for ruling party supporters. Opposition supporters worry the security services may retaliate. Charles Nditije, a former government minister who lives in exile, described the election as a “joke,” calling the polls a formality aimed at installing Nkurunziza’s chosen successor. “What Burundians want now is anything that can bring to (an) end the reign of CNDD-FDD. But the ruling (party) candidate will fight tooth and nail to win fraudulently and set another round of crisis,” he said. Hartill, the Burundi researcher, said disputed election results could put the country back on edge. The big question, he said, is whether the opposition leader will “say enough is enough.” ___ Ssuuna reported from Kigali, Rwanda. Eloge Willy Kaneza in Nairobi, Kenya, contributed.

/f626088ad9ea4907b167d79153a442fe,/844e4c6a4b726c1eaf4e3ceaaa0eef46

2true

Pierre Nkurunziza, Health, General News, Elections, East Africa, Africa, International News, Pandemics, Uganda, Burundi, Virus Outbreak

10648

Study casts doubt on duct tape wart cure

March 21, 2007

"Beyond the polished floors of medical clinics, the unassuming roll of duct tape enjoys a gritty reputation for mastering countless tribulations of daily life, from rotted radiator hoses and sprung suitcases to broken barbecues and split rake handles. Is it possible that duct tape could also cure one of medicine’s intractable problems—the harmless, common wart? Well, maybe—and maybe not. This nifty AP story ably describes the medical threat posed by warts (“harmless, stubborn bumps” that eventually go away on their own), explains the scientific methods used to test the theory that duct tape cures warts, quantifies the research results, and outlines several other treatment options. The article also provides a glimmer of hope for duct tape devotees who might be sorry to see this unassuming therapy headed for the dust bin. The researchers used a rubberless, transparent tape foresworn by aficionados. Conceivably, the classic, silver standard tape used in previous attempts at duct tape therapy might do the trick. Or, as The Duct Tape Guys sagely observe on their distinctive website, ""If duct tape isn't the answer, then you must be asking the wrong question!"" (http://www.ducttapeguys.com/)"

The article doesn’t comment on costs. Though most readers will know that if duct tape were effective it would cost only pennies, few are likely to know the cost of the various medical therapies – from over-the-counter ointments to lasers and injections. The article notes that the researchers looked at a single outcome—the disappearance of the wart—and that one in five patients in each group had a successful outcome. According to the published study, duct tape is a virtually harmless treatment, but can cause minor irritations (numbness and bleeding in two of the 90 subjects enrolled in the study). The AP story neglects to mention this. The article nicely explains the workings of a randomized, double-blind, controlled trial in which one group received treatment with moleskin alone and the other group received moleskin plus duct tape; neither doctors nor patients knew which treatment they received. The news story puts warts in their proper context—saying they are “harmless, stubborn bumps” that will eventually go away on their own without any treatment at all. The article quotes the lead author of the study and the chair of the dermatology department at an academic medical center with no relationship to the study. The news story ably summarizes a broad range of other medical therapies that attempt to eliminate warts, from over-the-counter ointments to lasers and injections. Duct tape is as American as apple pie, and if readers want to buy some they will know where to find it. The news story explains that duct tape has fascinated previous researchers, and “earned a place in the medicine cabinet in 2002.” No obvious use of text from a press release.

2true

11255

Generic Drug Could Save Many Trauma Patients

June 15, 2010

While it earns credit for presenting the benefits in absolute terms and for including the number-needed-treat to save a life, this was the only story of the three that failed to include an independent perspective on the results. A good effort considering the space limitations, but a few more caveats would have been appreciated. Even in a brief such as this, there needs to space for an independent take on the issue.

"TXA costs $10 per treatment, according to the story. Although this cost is characterized as low, the story could have noted that the price may be prohibitively expensive in many poor countries. The story focuses on mortality difference between the TXA and placebo groups and presents the results in absolute terms. It helpfully notes that TXA would need to be adminstered to 66 patients to prevent one death. Although it passes along the claim that TXA might save ""tens of thousands of people"" without questioning it, the story doesn’t hype the assertion quite as vigorously as the competing coverage. The story mentioned there was no increase in deaths due to blood clots in the TXA group. We understand it’s a blog brief – so this is sufficient. The story provides the bare essentials noting the outcomes in absolute numbers and in number needed to treat. Unfortunately, several important facts were not reported including the number of sites involved, the number of countries and other essential attributes of the study. Nonetheless, we’ll give it the benefit of the doubt. No disease-mongering in this story. It’s difficult to find room for an independent perspective in a 245-word brief, and this story didn’t find the room. Numerous other pro-coagulatory agents are used to help control bleeding in trauma patients. The story didn’t mention any of them. The story states that TXA is a 25-year-old medicine that is approved in the U.S. to prevent bleeding in hemophiliacs who have teeth pulled. The story mentions that TXA is already used to control bleeding during surgery and doesn’t portray the treatment as new. While there’s no evidence that this story lifted anything directly from a news release, we can’t be sure to what extent this story may have relied on one. We’ll call it not applicable."

2true

10533

Intensive Vegetable-Fruit Diet Shows No Effect on Breast Cancer Return

July 18, 2007

"This was a brief story (only 242 words) that accurately described the main findings of an important randomized trial. Specifically, this story discussed a newly published study showing no evidence that a diet high in fruits and vegetables is related to a decreased risk of breast cancer recurrence. These findings are important for breast cancer survivors to know about, but the story did not include adequate context. Further developing the story to include known treatments to prevent recurrence, both medical and behavioral, would have strengthened the story considerably. Including another perspective from an expert in this field would have been helpful in interpeting the results and in addressing this key issue. Other research suggests that weight management via diet and exercise may play a role in the prevention of certain types of breast cancer in post-menopausal women  (e.g. hormone receptor negative). The story did mention prevention of excessive weight gain via diet and exercise would be the ""next frontier in cancer prevention research"". In a similarly designed study recently published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, there was a small (about 6-pound) weight loss difference in the group of women assigned to a high-fiber, low-fat diet, and fewer breast cancer recurrences in this group (though the difference was not statistically significant). The story failed to mention other evidence-based breast cancer recurrence strategies currently available such as hormone and biological medications, etc. These medications can reduce the risk of recurrence by about 50% or more. The story does not mention any potential ""side effects"" of such a high fiber diet, which might include bloating, gas, and diarrhea or loose stools. While the reporter cites Dr. Gapstur, an editorial writer on the newly published data, her comment needs further explanation. More information from her and from other researchers or clinicians not affliated with the study would have been useful, especially regarding a discussion of non-cancer related benefits associated with a high-fiber, low-fat diet focused largely on plant-based foods. (Publisher note and correction on July 26, 2007:  We should have noted that this was not an enterprise story by the Washington Post. The Post slashed an original 733-word story by the Associated Press to come up with this almost 500-word-shorter version.)"

"There was no discussion of the cost of fresh fruit and vegetables compared to the typical American diet of largely processed/fast foods. But it’s safe to assume most readers know the costs from their regular grocery shopping. The story provided information that the two groups did not differ in terms of rates for breast cancer recurrence, the main outcome of the study. The story only provided the information that the two groups did not differ in terms of rates for breast cancer recurrence, not survival. The story did mention that neither of the groups lost more weight, so such a high-fiber diet is not a guarantee for weight loss. The story does not mention any harms of a diet high in fiber and low in fat. Possible ""side effects"" of such a diet might include bloating, gas, and diarrhea or loose stools. The story discusses the study design and presents the absolute number of women who had a breast cancer recurrence in each group. The story does not mention that the study participants self-reported their dietary habits. The story did not engage in disease mongering. The story only quotes the author of an editorial on the newly published data. Her comment needs further explanation, so more information from her or from other researchers or clinicians not affliated with the study would have been useful, especially regarding a discussion of other benefits associated with a high-fiber low-fat diet focusd largely on plant-based foods. The story failed to mention other breast cancer recurrence strategies such as hormone and biological medications, etc. Other studies have suggested that weight management via diet and exercise may play a role in the prevention of certain types of breast cancer in post-menopausal women  (e.g hormone receptor negative). The story did mention prevention of excessive weight gain via diet and exercise would be the ""next frontier in cancer prevention research"". The story does not specifically mention the availability of a fresh fruits and vegetables for all populations, but the focus of the story is on the lack of evidence that a diet concentrated on these foods has any benefit for breast cancer recurrence. No preventative behavioral modification related to diet is advocated. The story was also suffienciently clear about what the ""treatment"" was (number of servings of vegetables and fruits, etc) such that if a person wanted to ""treat"" themselves in this manner they could replicate the intervention. The story mentions that this is a newly published study showing no evidence that a diet high in fruits and vegetables is not directly related to a decreased risk of breast cancer recurrence. Increasing fruits/vegetables in the diet is not a novel concept. The story does not appear to be taken directly from a press release and there is independent reporting."

2true

11567

Swedish mammography study sows more confusion about screening for breast cancer

September 29, 2010

This story about a study of mammography in Swedish women in their 40s puts the findings in the context of other recent reports and highlights the critiques of independent experts, thus helping readers to see that this is just one more piece of the puzzle. By including the number of women that needed to be screened in order to prevent one breast cancer death, the story gives readers a more realistic perspective on the percentage difference in death rates the researchers saw between areas that screened younger women and those that did not. A percentage difference that sounds dramatic may look much different when put into the context of the baseline risk and the potential drawbacks of an intervention.

"The story only said once that ""the costs are high"" referring to screening and the risks of false positives and invasive procedures associated with them. We look for a bit more detail than that. But because it was the only story we reviewed that even mentioned costs, and becasue it reported that even this study indicates that over a thousand women would need to be screened for a decade to make a difference for one, we give it a satisfactory score. This story reports not only the percentage difference in breast cancer deaths between the regions where women were routinely screened and where they weren’t, it also gives readers the total number of deaths and it highlights the finding that about 1250 women would need to be screened for a decade to prevent one breast cancer death. The story also pointed out that the study did not report true breast cancer mortality rates – meaning how many women diagnosed with breast cancer died of it. The story notes that screening can lead to false alarms and other adverse outcomes. Although it does not go into detail on the adverse outcomes, it includes comments from independent experts that the study failed to include the harms of screenings as well as the benefits. The story provides an overview of the key features of this study and includes critiques from independent experts. Indeed, the story highlights concerns about the study design near the top of the story. (It could have done much more on this issue. For example, see our blog post on this matter.) This story highlights both the total number of deaths reported by the researchers and the number of women who would need to be screened in order to prevent one death, thus putting the risk in perspective. This story includes critiques of the study design and conclusions, although it does not identify or quote the independent experts, except for one neutral summary quote. (Why are these other critics named?) Although potential conflicts of interest are not reported, the researchers did not disclose any conflicts in their journal article. We’ll give it a barely satisfactory score, although the unnamed critics issues bothers us. The story does not go into detail about alternatives, but it does highlight a guideline report from the United States Preventive Services Task Force that questions the value of screening mammography for women in their 40s, thereby implying that not being screened is an option. There was no explicit discussion of mammography, but we can’t criticize the story for that. Nonetheless, we can only give a score of Not Applicable on this criterion. The story does a good job of putting this study in context with other reports. The story does not rely on a news release."

2true

31904

"H.R. 4919, passed on 8 December 2016, allows the microchipping of ""mentally disabled"" citizens such as patients with autism and Alzheimer's disease."

December 17, 2016

"What's true: H.R. 4919 would, among other things, have authorized federal grants to local agencies to fund the voluntary use of tracking devices to locate and safeguard patients with dementia or developmental disabilities (such as autism). What's false: The legislation did not pass and did not provide for ""microchipping"" anyone; in fact, it specified that all tracking devices be non-invasive (i.e., non-implantable) and non-permanent."

David Emery

On 8 December 2016, the U.S. House of Representatives passed House Resolution 4919 (also known as Kevin and Avonte’s Law), a bill reauthorizing the Missing Alzheimer’s Disease Patient Alert Program — a program that, until it expired in 2013, provided federal grants to locally based agencies and organizations for the purposes of protecting and locating missing patients with Alzheimer’s disease and related dementia (with an added provision supporting the same services for missing patients with developmental disabilities such as autism). The bill’s sponsor, Republican Congressman Chris Smith of New Jersey, explained the motivation behind it as follows (in part): “Having worked with the Alzheimer’s and Autism communities for years, I know how important this program can be in advancing the health and safety of persons who wonder as well as advancing awareness and education about the problem,” Smith said. “What is shocking is that while almost half of all children with autism wander from safety, only half of those affected families have received any guidance or training on addressing the concern and keeping their child safe, according to a study published in Pediatrics.” Smith said the funding can be used to provide proactive educational programming to prevent wandering and assist in locating missing individuals, as well as innovative locative technology to help find those who may wander. “According to the Alzheimer’s Association, half of Alzheimer’s patients who wander will suffer serious injury, sometimes fatal, if not found within the first 24 hours,” Smith noted. “This legislation will provide funding to law enforcement agencies and non-profits to help implement locative tracking technology programs for individuals with dementia/disability and implement a notification or communications system of alerts,” he said. After being approved by the House, Smith’s bill was sent to the Senate, which adjourned for the year before acting on it. There was little controversial about H.R. 4919, apart from the authorization of tracking devices to monitor patients at risk for wandering. Not without good reason, privacy concerns have always arisen when the phrase “tracking device” appears in government legislation. There are cases, however, when such concerns mushroom into full-blown paranoia. Often, as in the present case, this is due to the spread of misinformation. An article originally published on TrueActivist.com and subsequently reposted on other web sites, including Anonymous News, described a provision of H.R. 4919 as follows (emphasis added): Six years ago, NBC Nightly News boldly predicted that all Americans would be fitted with RFID microchips by the year 2017. Though at the time, NBC’s prediction seemed far-fetched, the House recently passed a bill that would bring a micro-chipped populace closer to reality before year’s end. Last Thursday, the House passed HR 4919, also known as Kevin and Avonte’s Law, which would allow the US attorney general to award grants to law enforcement for the creation and operation of “locative tracking technology programs.” Though the program’s mission is to find “individuals with forms of dementia or children with developmental disabilities who have wandered from safe environments,” it provides no restriction on the tracking programs inclusion of other individuals. The bill would also require the attorney general to work with the secretary of health and human services and unnamed health organizations to establish the “best practices” for the use of tracking devices. Those in support of the legislation maintain that such programs could prevent tragedies where those with mental or cognitive disabilities wandered into dangerous circumstances. Yet, others have called these good intentions a “Trojan horse” for the expansion of a North American police state as the bill’s language could be very broadly interpreted. The suggestion that H.R. 4919 is simply a short step along the road from safeguarding dementia and autism patients to microchipping the entire populace and implementing a police state is based far more on alarmism than fact, however. First, it is not the case that NBC Nightly News predicted that all Americans would have RFID microchips implanted in their bodies by 2017 (we debunked this false rumor long ago). Second, although the wording of H.R. 4919 may raise some legitimate discussion about privacy concerns, it does not provide for “microchipping” anyone — not people with Alzheimer’s, not people with autism, not the general populace. The bill clearly restricts the type of tracking devices to be used to ones that are “non-invasive and non-permanent”: Not later than 120 days after the date of enactment of this Act, the Attorney General, in consultation with the Secretary of Health and Human Services and leading research, advocacy, self-advocacy, and service organizations, shall establish standards and best practices relating to the use of non-invasive and non-permanent tracking technology, where a guardian or parent, in consultation with the individual’s health care provider, has determined that a non-invasive and non-permanent tracking device is the least restrictive alternative, to locate individuals as described in subsection (a)(2) of section 240001 of the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994 (42 U.S.C. 14181), as added by this Act. Another paragraph defined the terms employed in the paragraph quoted above: The term non-invasive and non-permanent means, with regard to any technology or device, that the procedure to install the technology or device does not create an external or internal marker or implant a device or other trackable items. (Previous iterations of the law, in effect through 2013, called for the use of simple ID bracelets.) Third, while it’s true that the legislation calls for the U.S. Attorney General to consult with the Secretary of Health and Human services and “leading research, advocacy, self-advocacy, and service organizations” to establish best practices for the use of such tracking devices, its language, again, specifies that those devices be non-invasive and non-permanent. It also requires that the best practices include procedures to safeguard privacy, criteria for establishing in each case that a tracking device is the least restrictive alternative to prevent harm to a patient, measures for preventing abuse, protection of the civil rights and liberties of the patient, and a complaint and investigation process to address reported abuses of the program. Lastly, the bill specifies that use of tracking devices is strictly voluntary and prohibits the federal government from establishing databases that gather information collected from such devices: Limitations on program (1) Data storage Any tracking data provided by tracking devices issued under this program may not be used by a Federal entity to create a database. (2) Voluntary participation Nothing in this Act may be construed to require that a parent or guardian use a tracking device to monitor the location of a child or adult under that parent or guardian’s supervision if the parent or guardian does not believe that the use of such device is necessary or in the interest of the child or adult under supervision. Kevin and Avonte’s Law was reintroduced to Congress at the end of 2017 as HR 4221. The Senate has passed it, but the House of Representatives has not yet voted upon their version.

0false

Politics Conspiracy Theories, alzheimer's, autism, microchips

8752

Gene mutation underlies some mad cow disease: study.

A rare genetic mutation may underlie some cases of mad cow disease in cattle and its discovery may help shed light on where the epidemic started, U.S. researchers reported on Friday.

Maggie Fox, Health, Science Editor

Homebred beef cattle are seen at a local cattle market in Hongseong, about 170 km (106 miles) south of Seoul July 29, 2008. A rare genetic mutation may underlie some cases of mad cow disease in cattle and its discovery may help shed light on where the epidemic started, U.S. researchers reported on Friday. REUTERS/Lee Jae-Won The mutation, in an Alabama cow that tested positive in 2006 for bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or BSE, is identical to one that causes a related brain-wasting disease in humans. This suggests BSE may sometimes arise spontaneously in cattle. Jurgen Richt of Kansas State University said cattle producers must never let down their guard against BSE because cattle anywhere, at any time, can develop the disease. The finding may support a 2005 theory that the BSE epidemic in cattle could be traced to feed contaminated with cattle remains from India, the researchers report in the Public Library of Science journal PLoS Pathogens. BSE or mad cow disease swept through British dairy herds in the 1980s, forcing the destruction of millions of animals. No one ever found where it came from but most experts thought at the time it came from cattle feed that contained the remains of sheep infected with a similar disease called scrapie. Cattle were never known to develop BSE before the epidemic, but some experts have argued they may have. This report lends credence to that idea. BSE, scrapie and a human version called Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, or CJD, are brain-destroying illnesses called transmissible spongiform encephalopathies. In some cases, animals or people that eat brain and nervous system material from victims of these diseases can develop them, too. They are passed along by misfolded infectious protein fragments called prions. A very rare disease called variant CJD has been found in people who ate infected beef products. Fatal and incurable, it has affected just 167 people so far. Most countries now ban the use of meat and other parts from mammals in food for cattle. They also ban the use of potentially infectious tissues such as brain and spinal cord in human food. “There are tendencies around the world, now that the feed-borne epidemic has gone down, to relax these rules and regulations,” Richt said in a telephone interview. “So if we have these genetic cases popping up here and there and we don’t have our mitigations in place, we will have another epidemic somewhere.” He suggested breeding the gene out of cattle. “We can clean the world cattle herd of that mutation,” Richt said. CJD is also known to pop up spontaneously in the human population. A genetic mutation causes the disease in one in a million people globally. Richt and colleagues tested the brain of the Alabama cow and found a mutation identical to the prion gene mutation that causes some cases of CJD. It is probably rare in cattle, found in fewer than one in 2,000, they said in the report, published here But the animal passed along its mutation to its heifer, which suggests it is inherited.

http://dx.plos.org/10.1371/journal.ppat.1000156.

2true

Science News

5153

US urges transparency in Ebola-like death in Tanzania.

Tanzanian authorities must show transparency in the case of a patient who recently died after suffering Ebola-like symptoms, the U.S. health and human services secretary said Monday.

Associated Press

Alex Azar, speaking in Uganda, told reporters that he and others are “very concerned” and urged Tanzania’s government to share laboratory results regarding the case. The Ebola outbreak in neighboring Congo has become the second-deadliest in history, with confirmed cases now exceeding 3,000. Azar said efforts were underway to secure Tanzania’s compliance with international health regulations and obligations to the World Health Organization “to protect Tanzanians as well as all people in the region.” Tanzania’s government said Saturday there is no confirmed case of Ebola in the East African nation. No confirmed Ebola case has ever been recorded there. WHO in a statement last week noted a rumor regarding a death in Tanzania from an unknown illness and said it was sending a technical team to investigate “as a matter of urgency.” According to an internal WHO document seen by The Associated Press, the patient, a 34-year-old woman, died on Sept. 8 and was buried that day. It was not clear where she died. The document says the victim most recently was a student in central Uganda, where she visited health facilities on a research mission, before returning to Tanzania on Aug. 22. No case of Ebola has been reported in Uganda’s central region. “This mysterious disease has to be investigated and samples have to be tested. We couldn’t rule out any of the viral hemorrhagic fevers and the investigation will continue,” Dr. Yonas Woldemariam, the WHO representative in Uganda, said Monday. The Ebola outbreak in eastern Congo, which was declared over a year ago, has killed nearly 2,000 people. Health workers have been challenged by community mistrust and insecurity caused by years of rebel attacks. Cases of Ebola patients crossing borders during this outbreak have been rare. In June, a family of Congolese with sick family members crossed into Uganda via a bush path. Two died of Ebola inside Uganda. And in August, a Congolese girl tested positive for Ebola and later died in Uganda after traveling from Congo. ___ Follow Africa news at https://twitter.com/AP_Africa

https://twitter.com/AP_Africa

2true

Alex Azar, Health, General News, East Africa, Africa, International News, Tanzania, Uganda, Ebola virus

5094

Why do zebras have stripes? Perhaps to dazzle away flies.

Zebra stripes are dazzling — particularly to flies.

Danica Kirka

That’s the conclusion of scientists from the University of Bristol and the University of California at Davis who dressed horses in black-and-white striped coats to help determine why zebras have stripes. The researchers found that fewer horseflies landed on the cloaked horses than on the ones without striped coats, suggesting that zebra stripes may offer protection from blood-sucking insects that can spread disease. “This reduced ability to land on the zebra’s coat may be due to stripes disrupting the visual system of the horse flies during their final moments of approach,” said Martin How, a research fellow at the University of Bristol. “Stripes may dazzle flies in some way once they are close enough to see them with their low-resolution eyes.” From a distance, the flies were equally attracted to both horses and zebras, with the same number of insects hovering around both types of animals. But when the flies got closer, things get dicey. The flies landed less frequently on the zebras and the horses covered in striped coats. “Once they get close to the zebras, however, they tend to fly past or bump into them,” said Tim Caro, a professor in the U.C. Davis Department of Wildlife, Fish and Conservation Biology. “This indicates that stripes may disrupt the flies’ abilities to have a controlled landing.” The work , reported in the journal Public Library of Science ONE, seeks to answer one of the oldest questions in zoology — why do zebras have stripes? Charles Darwin had his theories. So did British naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace. But the scientists from Britain and California sought to examine that question by studying both horses and zebras at the Hill Livery in Britain, which works with zoos in Europe on conservation for zebras. That provided a controlled environment where the horses could be dressed up and closely observed to test the theory. “It’s one of those pieces of research that you say, ‘why hasn’t someone done this before?’” said Tim Woodfine, the director of conservation at Marwell Wildlife in southern England. He did not take part in the study. “It’s simple and neat. I think it’s a great piece of work,” he said. How, an expert on animal vision, told The Associated Press on Thursday there are reasons to be “quite excited” about the research, which he said helps scientists understand what’s happening in the mind of a fly. The insights have broader implications for technology such as driverless cars, which are inspired by insect vision. If stripes disrupt a fly, they might also disrupt a driverless car’s systems, according to How. “What we needed to do is get our mind into the eye of the fly,” How said. “They have very different eyes from us.” Erica McAlister, the senior curator of flies and fleas at the Natural History Museum in London, said the research contributes information to a subject long debated by scientists. “We’ve been arguing about zebra stripes for 75 years,” said McAlister, who was also not involved in the study. But there are also human applications. How says from now on, he’s wearing stripes while riding his bicycle during horse-fly season. Caro hopes the study will underscore the wonders that remain to be discovered in the natural world. “If we can try to pique the public’s appreciation of the wonders of nature, they’ll be less cavalier about destroying it,” he said. “That’s my hope.” ___ This story has been corrected to show the verb in the closing quote should be “pique,” not peak.

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0210831

2true

Horses, AP Top News, University of California, International News, Oddities, Africa, Insects, California, Science, Bristol, Davis, Europe

9689

Cancer treatment offers MS patients hope after 'remarkable' trial results

January 21, 2016

An international clinical trial of a stem cell treatment for a common form of multiple sclerosis may be nearing completion, and several media outlets in the UK jumped on encouraging testimonials from some of the patient participants. The BBC and The Guardian both issued stories on the same day reflecting much the same information, including interviews with the same patients and very similar quotes. It is not clear why the story emerged at this point, as there is no indication that the trial is complete or that data from it have been analyzed. And the same patients from the very same trial were featured prominently in a similar round of stories from 2013, many of which carried “miracle” headlines. Can these glowing testimonials stand the test of time? If not, then the stories may have done a disservice to MS sufferers. Multiple sclerosis can be a terrifying disease for patients and their families. While for some, they have a mild course for long periods without evidence of progression, for others it can lead to permanent disability. This article talks about a form that comes and goes, but the general course is one of gradual worsening that leads to eventual disability. For each episode, treatment may shorten the duration of the flare, but it doesn’t appear to alter the long-term prognosis. There is considerable research investigating new medications that can decrease the progression to permanent disability. This study refers to interest in a different form of treatment, using the patients own cells to reconstitute their immune system after having undergone chemotherapy to wipe out the immune cells that are thought to cause the MS in the first place. As described, this is a treatment used for serious conditions such as cancer. It is associated with real risks including infection, prolonged hospitalization and even death. Despite the testimonials in this piece, it is unclear whether this form of treatment will represent an advancement over current therapy or not. Only controlled studies comparing patients who get this new treatment with similar patients who are treated with current standard therapy can tell. Even if helpful in the short-term, it is unclear whether the immune system will in the future again attack the patient’s nervous system and cause new symptoms of MS. This is because the patient is given back her/his own cells, not someone’s who doesn’t have MS, and so it is possible that those cells given back will still carry the risk for future MS. For patients with this condition who are desperate for treatment that can lead to improvement, this piece may provide false hope that a new cure is right around the corner.

Sharon Dunwoody, PhD,Steven J. Atlas, MD, MPH,Kevin Lomangino

Low in the story, one patient is identified as having spent £30,000 (approximately $42,500) on the treatment. We’ll give credit for this nod in the direction of cost, but it would be hard for a reader to generalize from that. It isn’t clear whether this is covered by insurance or not. It also isn’t clear whether the price paid by this one patient is also the cost for the others. At the least, some context for that reference would have been helpful. We don’t think of UK patients as paying out of pocket for health care. And since this is the U.S. edition of the Guardian, the info should be tailored for a U.S. audience. Quantification of benefits may not be possible at this point, as the “about 20 patients” in this UK branch of an international trial are still presumably embedded in the trial protocol. The story, instead, relies on personal testimonials from two patients who had received the treatment, who describe major improvements in their conditions. Note: There seems to have been at least some empirical data available. At least one earlier study, published in January 2015 in JAMA, showed that the treatment was linked to reduction in level of disability in 64% of the 123 patients treated. It isn’t clear why this story is coming out now. If this is part of a larger trial, why are these results being shared? Presumably this isn’t a blinded trial, but it isn’t even clear if there is a control group that received standard treatment without the bone marrow transplant. Risks are left unexplained. One source notes that haematopoietic stem cell transplant (HSCT) “is an aggressive treatment that comes with significant risks.”  And one patient who received the treatment noted that “I’d rather have done 10 rounds with Mike Tyson.”  But none of that illuminates the nature of the risks that someone would encounter. This is the weakest point of the story. This is a treatment with real risks. They way it is presented gives very little insight to the reader about what these risks are. The story is clear that a clinical trial of HSCT is under way and that the treatment is suitable for only a specific subset of MS patients. It also explains that the number of participants at the Sheffield Teaching Hospitals site is small. But the text is mum regarding the trial process (A description of the study at ClinicalTrials.gov indicates that the study is still recruiting participants and anticipates a December 2017 completion date). And there is little describing the study and whether these patients are being compared to others who haven’t had this treatment. There is no information about experience at other sites and why these investigators are sharing the results now. The article implies that while this isn’t for everyone, it highlights those patients being studied in this trial. Implicit is that these are the patients who should be treated with a bone marrow transplant. Of course, we can’t say that because we don’t know what to compare these results to. We are told of positive responses after treatment, but we also know that this form of MS involves relapses and remissions. So are these remissions due to the treatment or simply the natural history of the patient’s condition? Relapsing remitting multiple sclerosis is a common form of the disease for which there is currently no cure. So the stakes are sufficiently high. Funding sources are not identified, but the principal investigator for the international trial notes that “we have achieved this [the international clinical trial] without industry backing,” which is helpful. Most of the sources in the story are either doctors involved with the trial or patients participating in the trial. One potentially independent source, who heads clinical trials at the MS Society in the UK, reacts cautiously to the testimonials, reminding readers that HSCT “needs to be carried out at an accredited centre or as part of a clinical trial.” Although It isn’t clear that anyone quoted doesn’t have a vested interest in this trial, including the head of clinical trials for the MS society, we’ll give the story the benefit of the doubt since it does at least specify no involvement from industry. The story would have been better had it commented on involvement from other vested interests. Aside from noting that there is no cure for this type of MS, the story offers no information about existing treatments such as drugs to lessen relapses and steroid treatments to cope with flare-ups. More detail could be provided about how this form of MS is currently treated. It also isn’t clear whether the bone marrow treatment will affect long-term disability or not. The reader must infer that, because the information comes from an ongoing clinical trial, the treatment is not yet available. And the story implies that it may be available outside of a research study: “It needs to be carried out at an accredited centre or as part of a clinical trial”. Does this mean that if I have 30,000 pounds, I can have this done to me in the UK? A round of similar stories on patients in this same trial — many with “miracle” headlines — appeared in March 2015. It’s not clear what’s different about this story or why these results are being reported now. We couldn’t find any news release that could have spawned this story. However, its use of almost identical sources and direct quotes to those of a BBC News story that was posted earlier on the same day leads us to question the nature of the material used by the newspaper. The BBC claimed that it had been given “exclusive access” to the patients in this clinical trial, but that does not explain the details in The Guardian. Given the troubling overlap between these stories, we’re reluctant to award a Satisfactory since the story does seem at the very least to have borrowed text either from the BBC or an unknown source news release. We’ll rate this Not Applicable, which means we’re neither crediting nor penalizing the story.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/science/science-news/11442985/Miracle-stem-cell-therapy-reverses-multiple-sclerosis.html

0false

Multiple sclerosis,stem,stem cell therapy,stem cells

9546

Testing cholesterol in toddlers, even younger? Study says it could help

October 31, 2016

This is a story looking at a study that found familial hypercholesterolemia was more common than previously thought. This condition is associated with an increased risk of heart disease and heart attacks in adults under 40. As a result, researchers are proposing that more kids get screened, and possibly start treatment earlier, to reduce this risk. One commentator noted:  “We really need to pay attention to this” and “It’s reasonable to screen for something that’s common, dangerous and has a treatment that’s effective and safe.” The corollary to this statement is that there is little direct evidence that treating children with medication to lower cholesterol reduces cardiac deaths, and there are plenty of unknowns, such as the costs of screening and labeling very young kids with a disease that may not cause any problems for a long time. The story should have done more to explore both sides of this issue. Parents want to do everything they can to make sure their children have a long and healthy life, and so a story about a genetic condition being more common than previously thought is likely to be read widely. Unfortunately, the story’s framing takes the stance that finding the risk factors for this disease very early on in life leads to an overall benefit. But the study provides no evidence of that, and parents need to know this.

Alan Cassels,Karen Carlson, MD,Joy Victory

This was a strong point for the story, which did provide some information on cost. “The study did not address whether screening is cost-effective. In the U.S., cholesterol tests cost around $80 and usually are covered by health insurance, though much lower prices often are negotiated. The study authors in England estimated that if cholesterol testing costs $7 and gene testing costs $300, it would cost $2,900 for every person identified as having the disorder.” We wish the story would have noted the cost of gene testing in the U.S. but otherwise found this satisfactory. The story also could have noted that although statin drugs are generic and relatively inexpensive, the long-term costs of treatment from childhood onward are likely to be significant. The story quantified the findings this way: “For every 1,000 people screened in the study, four children and four parents were identified as being at risk for early heart disease. That’s nearly twice as many as most studies in the past have suggested.” That lets us know how many more people might get identified if screening was widened, but readers should also be informed that it isn’t clear if this ultimately reduces cardiac deaths. The harms of screening including false positives and negatives, overdiagnosis, overtreatment, inappropriate disease labelling and so on are not mentioned. The story explains how many babies were tested and how they were tested. But, we didn’t get a sense of how reliable these testing methods are, nor what the study’s limitations were. Instead, the story implied that the study showed that screening kids will lower their risk, with statements like this: “What if a blood test could reveal that your child is at high risk for early heart disease years in the future, giving you a chance to prevent it now?” The story included numbers on how prevalent this condition is, and the increased risk of heart disease that it carries, though it would have been stronger if it had given specifics on what the baseline risk is versus the 10-fold increase. The story included independent sources. Also, the story discloses this: “The study was led by Dr. David Wald at Queen Mary University of London. He and another author founded a company that makes a combination pill to prevent heart disease. The work was funded by the Medical Research Council, the British government’s health research agency.” The alternative here is no screening in early childhood. Are these sorts of genetic tests available for parents to buy off the shelf, or ask for a referral from a doctor to get? The story doesn’t clarify. The story establishes the novelty of the study by explaining that it found that this genetic condition is more common than originally thought. There are two sources who do not appear to be associated with the study.

2true

cholesterol,statins

5455

Harvard’s ‘Outbreak Week’ marks centennial of flu pandemic.

Harvard University will be honoring the centennial of the 1918 influenza pandemic with a series of events on disease outbreak.

The school’s Global Health Institute is hosting “Outbreak Week” starting Monday, featuring public lectures and discussions with prominent scholars and scientists. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, is scheduled to give a keynote address Friday. Other speakers include Ron Klain, the U.S. Ebola czar under former President Barack Obama, and Scott Burns, a screenwriter who penned the 2011 film “Contagion.” Harvard’s Global Health Institute says the week-long event is meant to explore epidemic and pandemic preparedness in the 21th century. The 1918 influenza outbreak, also known as the Spanish Flu, infected about 500 million people around the world and killed more than 50 million.

2true

Health, Anthony Fauci, Flu, Harvard University, Epidemics, Infectious diseases, Pandemics, Ron Klain, Disease outbreaks, Barack Obama

10672

Experimental Drug Helps Fight Aggressive Breast Cancer: Report

January 5, 2011

This article reports on a study and accompanying editorial published in The New England Journal of Medicine. The piece details the results of a Phase 2 trial for the experimental cancer drug Iniparib which was developed to treat triple-negative breast cancer. There were appropriate caveats in the body of the story – “we really don’t know if this is going to end up benefitting patients”…”both excitement and caution are appropriate in interpreting the trial”…”some clear drawbacks should be noted.”  Metastasized triple-negative breast cancer is difficult to treat. If the results of this study hold up in already ongoing larger trials, PARP inhibitors may be a new class of drugs that might be more effective than current therapies. The story deserves credit for showing restraint in covering the results of this study. However, it would have been better if the story had included more key details on costs, harms and potential conflicts of interest.

There was no discussion of the potential cost of the drug. Since the story briefly discusses “a similar drug” it could have at least given the cost of that drug. As it is, cost is unaddressed – a huge vacuum. The benefits are quantified. Women who received Iniparib plus chemotherapy lived an average of 12.3 months while those receiving chemotherapy alone lived an average of 7.7 months. Tumor volume decreased in 50% of the women receiving Iniparib & 33% of women receiving only chemotherapy. While the researcher believed the drug was well-tolerated, the article should have included information about demonstrated side effects, even minor ones. The author also should have noted if the study was powered to detect differences since the study cohort was so small. The evaluation of the evidence was good. The piece included cautionary quotes from the researcher. Quotes from a journal editorial also specified drawbacks of the study. Three of the four drawbacks listed were not explained in the piece. Explanations would have been helpful especially since the piece termed the chemotherapy regimen “commonly used” but one drawback was “the unconventional chemotherapy regimen.” There is no disease mongering. The article does not include information about Dr. O’Shaugnessy’s funding from the drug company for consulting & travel. Observations from other researchers about the study would have provided needed perspective about the results. Alternative treatments are not mentioned but the piece explains that metastatic triple-negative breast cancer is very difficult to treat & that many currently available treatments are not effective. The story notes that the drug is experimental & that the results reported are from a Phase 2 trial. Results from a larger Phase 3 trial of 500 women will be available in 2-3 months. Information about whether the drug has FDA approval or whether it is currently used for treating other diseases would have been helpful. The piece states that Iniparib is from a new class of drugs called PARP inhibitors. It also notes that a similar drug has shown benefits in women with BRCA I or BRCA II mutations. The piece includes information beyond that available in the press release from Sanofi-Aventis.

2true

Cancer,HealthDay

7582

State adds anxiety to qualifying conditions for medical pot.

The Pennsylvania Health Department is adding anxiety disorders and Tourette’s syndrome to the list of conditions that can qualify people to obtain legal medical marijuana.

The heath secretary, Dr. Rachel Levine, announced Thursday she’ll be adding them as of July 20. Levine says her decision was based on the recommendation of the state’s Medical Marijuana Advisory Board and her own review of medical research literature. She says medical marijuana shouldn’t be the first treatments for those conditions, but physicians can recommend it to be used together with traditional therapeutic approaches. The list already includes cancer, epilepsy, intractable seizures, post-traumatic stress disorder, terminal illness and other conditions. Nearly 111,000 Pennsylvanians have been certified for participation in the state’s medical marijuana program .

http://www.medicalmarijuana.pa.gov

2true

Anxiety, Medical marijuana, Health, Marijuana, Pennsylvania

35225

Dr. Vladimir Zelenko's 669 COVID-19 patients that were treated with a combination of hydroxychloroquine, azithromycin, and zinc have seen zero hospitalizations, complications, or deaths.

March 30, 2020

Since last Thursday, my team has treated approximately 350 patients in Kiryas Joel and another 150 patients in other areas of New York with the above regimen. Of this group and the information provided to me by affiliated medical teams, we have had ZERO deaths, ZERO hospitalizations, and ZERO intubations. In addition, I have not heard of any negative side effects other than approximately 10% of patients with temporary nausea and diarrhea.

Alex Kasprak

On March 29, 2020, Rudy Giuliani, the personal attorney to U.S. President Donald Trump, tweeted about a treatment from family practitioner Dr. Vladimir Zelenko, who has claimed to have treated 669 COVID-19 coronavirus patients with a cocktail of hydroxychloroquine, azithromycin, and zinc: A more detailed explainer of the potential role of anti-malarial drugs like hydroxychloroquine against the COVID-19 coronavirus disease, with or without antibiotics, can be found here. Zelenko’s claims, however, rest solely on taking him at his word: He has published no data, described no study design, and reported no analysis. In an open letter to Trump dated March 23, 2020, and published online in various locations, Zelenko provided his first batch of assertions without providing evidence to support his treatment regime: I developed the following treatment protocol in the pre-hospital setting and have seen only positive results. […] The rationale for my treatment plan is as follows. […] We know that hydroxychloroquine helps Zinc enter the cell. We know that Zinc slows viral replication within the cell. Regarding the use of azithromycin, I postulate it prevents secondary bacterial infections. These three drugs are well known and usually well tolerated, hence the risk to the patient is low.

3unproven

Medical, COVID-19

27680

Hanan al-Hroub, whose husband was jailed for providing chemicals used in making bombs that killed Israelis, was invited to speak at a Clinton Global Initiative dinner.

September 21, 2016

Hanan al-Hroub was one of several dozen people invited to speak during the Clinton Global Initiative’s Annual Meeting; she was not singled out to be “honored” or “feted” by that event.

Kim LaCapria

Hanan al-Hroub, a Palestinian teacher scheduled to speak at a Clinton Global Initiative Annual Meeting dinner event on 20 September 2016, drew criticism from Republicans because her husband, Omar al-Hroub, is a Palestinian official who served 10 years in an Israeli prison for supplying chemicals used in a deadly bombing attack in Hebron that killed six Israelis in 1980 — especially given the close proximity (in both time and distance) of the speaking engagement to recent bomb attacks in New York and New Jersey. For example, Raj Shah, ​deputy ​communications director of the Republican National Committee, stated that: In the wake of this weekend’s attacks, granting a platform to the spouse of a terrorist bomb-maker just miles away from where explosives were detonated days ago is an insult to the victims and makes a mockery of the Clinton Foundation. Donald Trump’s campaign similarly issued a press release titled “Statement on Clinton Foundation Honoring Wife of Palestinian Terrorist,” objecting to al-Hroub’s appearance at the Clinton Global Initiative dinner: Today’s report that the Clinton Foundation is feting the wife of a Palestinian man convicted of helping bomb innocent Israeli citizens is deeply disturbing, especially in the wake of this weekend’s attacks. The decision to honor the wife of a terrorist by Hillary Clinton’s foundation shows a complete lack of judgment and a callousness that should disqualify her from holding the presidency. Mrs. al-Hroub has become famous in her own right, independently of her husband, as described in a March 2016 Guardian profile of her achievements that delved into her experiences and her path to worldwide recognition: Hroub only began working as a teacher in 2007. After leaving school, she was forced to abandon her plans for further education when Palestinian universities closed during the first intifada, or uprising, between 1987 and 1993. Instead she got married and had five children. In 2000, when her youngest was established at school, Hroub resumed her education part-time at Al-Quds University. Within months, her husband, Omar, and two of her daughters were shot at by Israeli soldiers at a checkpoint near Bethlehem. Omar was injured in the shoulder and the girls were traumatised. “This incident changed my life. We were in shock. My children were suffering, and the teachers were not trained to deal with trauma. At that point I decided to commit my life to teaching.” She vehemently rejects Israeli claims that Palestinian schools incite children against Israel. “My message to those who say that is that all children should be protected from violence. I had a very hard childhood, and I don’t want these children to experience the same. Once a cycle of violence is created, it’s very hard to break.” Prior to the Clinton Foundation-related controversy, the Associated Press reported on a similar issue surrounding Mrs. al-Hroub’s March 2016 receipt of a global award for excellence in education: The U.K.-based foundation that awarded a Palestinian schoolteacher a $1 million prize for preaching nonviolence is sticking by its choice following revelations that the woman’s husband participated in an attack that killed at least six Israelis three decades ago. The Varkey Foundation awarded Hanan al-Hroub its Global Teacher Prize. In its selection, it cited her slogan “No to Violence” and her efforts in protecting Palestinian schoolchildren from the effects of living in a conflict zone. She had developed a book called “We Play and Learn” focusing on the importance of playing, trust, respect, honesty and literacy. However, her husband, Omar, served time in Israeli prison, convicted as an accomplice in a bombing attack that killed six Israelis as they were walking home from sabbath prayers in the West Bank city of Hebron in 1980. According to an Associated Press account at the time, Omar al-Hroub was a chemist who provided chemicals needed for making the bombs … In a statement, the Varkey Foundation said it does not look into the conduct of candidates’ relatives and that the teacher was committed to nonviolence. “As a point of principle, we only look at the qualities, achievements and conduct of the candidates themselves … As Hanan al-Hroub has said herself, she has spent her whole life dealing with the effects of violence on children at close hand and every day she works toward a world where children, wherever they come from, can grow up peacefully,” it added. “She has spent her entire career teaching the principle of nonviolence. She believes in nonviolence in all its forms and in all circumstances.” Qadura Faris, the director of the Palestinian prisoners’ association, said that after serving a 10-year sentence, Omar al-Hroub accepted the 1993 Oslo interim peace accord with Israel, served as a deputy Cabinet minister in the Palestinian Authority and supports a two-state solution with Israel. He said al-Hroub remains a senior Palestinian official who is close to President Mahmoud Abbas and “believes in his peaceful approach.” Al-Hroub’s biography, as presented among those of the speakers at the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI)’s Annual Meeting from 19 to 21 September 2016, reads: Winner of the 2016 Global Teacher Prize, an initiative of the Varkey Foundation, Hanan Al Hroub grew up in the Palestinian refugee camp, Bethlehem, where she was regularly exposed to acts of violence. She went into primary education after her children were left deeply traumatized by a shooting incident they witnessed on their way home from school. Her experiences in meetings and consultations to discuss her children’s behavior, development and academic performance in the years that followed led Al Hroub to try to help others who, having grown up in similar circumstances, require special handling at school. With so many troubled children in the region, Palestinian classrooms can be tense environments. Al Hroub embraces the slogan “No to Violence” and uses a specialized teaching approach she developed herself. Al Hroub has shared her perspective at conferences, meetings and teacher training seminars.

2true

Politics, breitbart, clinton foundation, clinton global initiative

9137

Bitter taste receptors may hold the key to managing preterm labor

June 12, 2017

This news release reports on a study examining substances that will stop preterm births by stopping uterine contractions. The researchers looked at strips of uterine tissue from both humans and mice, initiated contractions in the tissue using chemicals known to bring on labor, and then tested a bitter substance on the tissue. They write that this substance decreased contractions more effectively than current drugs used for this practice. They also briefly mentioned they tested the same drug in pregnant mice. The release neglects to share the name of the “bitter substance” (chloroquine) used to halt contractions in the human and mouse tissue, nor does it say how the experimental substance compared with any of the current treatments or name any of them. The release also would have served readers better by including a clear explanation that bitter taste receptors — usually only associated with the tongue — also exist in other cells in the body and that stopping early contractions is not always the best course of treatment. Preterm birth is one of the leading causes of infant mortality, according to the National Institutes of Health. The World Health Organization states “Common causes of preterm birth include multiple pregnancies, infections and chronic conditions such as diabetes and high blood pressure; however, often no cause is identified.” While not all babies born prematurely experience complications, being born too early can lead to short or long-term health problems. Stopping early labor may be one preventative way to reduce risks from preterm birth. A variety of drugs are currently used for stopping early contractions but have limited effectiveness and may carry risks.

A'ndrea Elyse Messer, MS, PhD,Doug Campos-Outcalt, MD, MPA,Kathlyn Stone

There is no discussion of the cost of this treatment. If it’s not too early to send a news release touting a potential new treatment — even one that is in the earliest stages of development — it’s not too early to address cost. Chloroquine, the unnamed substance in the release, when used to treat malaria costs about $4 a tablet. The release doesn’t say whether the drug would be given as an injection or tablet when used to stop early contractions. The release should have mentioned some results with actual numbers from the research to indicate how superior this bitter substance was when tested on tissue samples. However, that still would not prove it’s beneficial to humans since the research was in laboratory mice and tissue samples. Hinting that it will translate to humans at the same level, in real world trials, is inappropriate. The harms of preterm birth are explained, but nothing is said about the possible harm of the drug — even to pregnant mice and fetuses. The release states that “Zhuge and colleagues attached strips of human and mouse uterine myometrium tissue (also known as smooth muscle) to a machine that measured their contraction efforts.” This strikes us as an inappropriate estimation of how this treatment would work in humans. Some cautions and limitations of the research in this regard were sorely needed. There is no disease mongering in this news release. Premature birth resulting in complications or death are a known problem around the world. We do think the release relies on exaggerations that should have been avoided: “Bitter taste receptors may hold the key to managing preterm labor” “This could be good news for those trying to prevent preterm labor: New research published online in The FASEB Journal suggests that exposing bitter taste receptors in the uterus to certain substances can stop many unwanted contractions that occur during premature labor.” The news release does not list the funding sources, although the paper does list them. There is no mention of conflict of interest in either the published study or the news release. The news release only makes passing reference to the bitter substances being better than other treatments. It does not name the bitter substance used in the study or any alternatives. The news release does not mention the name of the substances tested, so there is no way to know anything about availability. After looking at the research paper we found that the substance was chloroquine which is readily available. The research focuses on a novel approach to preterm contractions but it is still far from human testing. The release doesn’t rely on sensational language. As noted above under disease mongering,we found some examples of exaggeration in the release.

https://www.healthnewsreview.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/news-stories-on-mice-social-size-2-1.jpg,http://dx.doi.org/10.1096/fj.201601323RR,https://www.nichd.nih.gov/health/topics/infant-mortality/topicinfo/Pages/causes.aspx,http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs363/en/

0false

bitter taste receptors,Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology (FASEB),preterm labor

34341

Bay leaves contain a compound that decreases anxiety when burned.

October 17, 2017

Teasing apart this kind of effect from from any more specific biochemical method is challenging, and none of the research on linalool or lavender oil is adequate to address the possibility that bay leaf smoke could have a marked effect on anxiety. As such, we rank the claim that bay leaf combustion serves to reduce anxiety as unproven.

Alex Kasprak

One of the more popular topics on web sites that advocate for “natural” cures is the cornucopia of purported benefits ascribed in some way to leaves from the bay laurel (Laurus nobilis). Blender spokesperson and gravity skeptic David “Avocado” Wolfe, who runs a pseudoscientific alternative health and supplement empire, made this claim about burning the leaves on a widely shared post on his eponymous web site: The bay leaf contains a compound called linalool. A study by the American Association of Nurse Anesthetists found that linalool decreases anxiety and enhances social interaction. In as little as 10 minutes of smelling a burning bay leaf, linalool begins working. Some have even described the effect as mildly psychedelic. It is interesting that Wolfe selected this specific article to support the assertion that burning a bay leaf works to reduce anxiety, as that study actually concluded — using laboratory rats — that while linalool can decrease motor function and essentially knock a rat unconscious at excessive doses, it does not appear to have a strong anti-anxiety effect: Our data did not support anxiolytic [anti-anxiety] effects of linalool in the rat model, they suggested that linalool modulates the central nervous system by producing unconsciousness and degradation of motor movements. That does not mean, however, that there were a dearth of papers Wolfe could have selected that suggest a connection between linalool and anxiety, merely that his review of the scientific literature appears to have been both extremely superficial and largely incomplete. Linalool is a major component of many aromatic plants, most notably lavender, and it has been the subject of a number of different areas of research. A better study (in terms of results but not necessarily methodology) for Wolfe would have been a 2010 paper published in the journal Phytomedicine, which suggested (using laboratory mice and pure linalool vapors) that linalool may have an effect on anxiety: The aim of this study was to investigate the effects of inhaled linalool on anxiety, aggressiveness and social interaction in mice. […] Inhaled linalool showed anxiolytic properties in the light/dark test, increased social interaction and decreased aggressive behavior […]. These results strengthen the suggestion that inhaling linalool rich essential oils can be useful as a mean to attain relaxation and counteract anxiety. The light/dark box test, which investigates how quickly a laboratory mouse leaves a dark space to explore a novel light space, is a controversial method to assess anxiety, however, as it is prone to false positives and many do not consider it an accurate analog for human anxiety. This test was also performed in other animal studies related to anxiety and linalool that provide evidence for a connection. In terms of human studies, a study published in the journal Human Psychopharmacology in 2009 reported results from the administration of lavender capsules (which, again, contain linalool) to 97 individuals while showing them a combination of “neutral” and “anxiety-producing” films. They concluded: Lavender has anxiolytic effects in humans under conditions of low anxiety, but these effects may not extend to conditions of high anxiety. Whatever one’s reservations are about the methodology employed here, it is important to note that lavender capsules are not bay leaf vapors, even though both likely contain linalool. Lavender oil contains between 25 to 38 percent linalool, whereas the oil derived from bay leaves contain around 4 to 6 percent linalool, and ingestion versus inhalation involve different processes in the body. It is also important to distinguish between the overall effect of smelling a pleasant aroma such as bay leaf smoke or lavender vapors, which can have a general effect on mood, from the specific biochemical mechanism by which substances may affect mood. Rachel Hertz, a professor of Psychiatry and Human Behavior at Brown University who has studied the interplay between mood and smell extensively, explained in a piece for Scientific American that the most obvious mood-scent link is through associative learning, which she says is especially powerful for the sense of smell: Odors do affect people’s mood, work performance and behavior in a variety of ways but it isn’t because odors work on us like a drug, instead we work on them through our experiences with them. […] In olfaction, the process can be understood as follows: a novel odor is experienced in the context of an unconditioned stimulus, such as surgical procedure in a hospital, which elicits an unconditioned emotional response, such as anxiety. The odor then becomes a conditioned stimulus for that hospital experience and acquires the ability to elicit the conditioned response of anxiety when encountered in the future. This mechanism explains both how odors come to be liked or disliked, as well as how they can elicit emotions and moods.

3unproven

Medical, anxiety, bay leaf, laurels

5743

Couple seeks to stop release of more vaccine data.

A Connecticut couple is seeking to stop the state Department of Public Health from publicly releasing additional information about immunization rates at private and public schools.

Brian and Kristen Festa, of Woodstock, have filed a lawsuit requesting a temporary injunction. The parents of an unvaccinated son say they’ve suffered “mental and emotional distress due to the vitriolic and hateful statements from the public” since the agency released immunization data on May 3. The couple’s 7-year-old son attends a private school in Meriden for students with autism spectrum disorders where 18.5% of students claim a religious exemption from vaccinations, one of the highest exemption rates in the state. They say it’s “reasonable to presume” their son and other students will be harassed. Attorney General William Tong’s office declined to comment.

2true

Immunizations, Health, General News, Connecticut, Public health

11083

Growth hormone reduces risk of osteoporosis fractures in older women

September 3, 2015

This release focuses on a study that reports long-term benefits in regard to bone density and reduced risk of bone fractures for women with osteoporosis who take growth hormone. However, the release does not make sufficiently clear that this was a small-scale study nor does it mention any risks or side effects associated with the use of growth hormone. Perhaps more important, this was essentially an observational follow-up study to the original trial, and there were a number of factors discussed below in our review that could have confounded or biased the results. We think it’s inappropriate to conclude, as the headline does, that “Growth hormone reduces risk of osteoporosis fractures” without at least some mention of these limitations. Osteoporosis affects around 16 percent of U.S. women over the age of 50 and can cause back pain and increase the risk of bone fractures — including hip and other fractures with significant consequences for health and well-being. That means millions of people are affected and, with an aging population, that number is likely to go up. Given the large number of people living with osteoporosis, it makes sense to highlight research that has the potential to mitigate the health risks associated with the condition. But it’s also important to note the limitations of that research.

Matt Shipman,Karen Carlson, MD,Kevin Lomangino

The release does not mention cost at all, possibly because the study was conducted in Sweden, which has a taxpayer-funded public health system. However, in the U.S., growth hormone treatments can cost hundreds of dollars per month — and it’s not clear if that would be covered by insurance for treating osteoporosis. This high cost is certainly worth mentioning. The release notes that the rate of bone fractures among study participants declined by 50 percent over the 10-year course of the study and provides an absolute measure of that benefit: 56 percent of participants had experienced a bone fracture before the study, and 28 percent had a bone fracture over the course of the study. We’ll give credit for the quantification, however it must be noted that this before and after comparison is seriously limited in what it can tell us about the benefits of growth hormone treatment — something addressed below under the “Evidence” criterion. The release doesn’t mention potential harms at all. Given the wide range of potential side effects from growth hormone use — from headache and joint pain to weight gain and weakness — this is a significant oversight. The release does a fair job of describing the study design. It was a three-year, randomized, double-blind trial of 80 postmenopausal women with osteoporosis, with a seven-year follow-up period. The study also included a control group of 120 women who did not have osteoporosis — at least when the study began. However, the release does not sufficiently highlight the limitations of the study, which are significant. It’s problematic to attribute the benefits observed 10 years after the study began (and 7 years after stopping treatment) entirely to growth hormone therapy as this release does. About a quarter of the women in the study started taking fracture-preventing bisphosphonate drugs during the follow-up period. Is it possible that those drugs had an impact on the fracture rates seen in the study? Without a true placebo control group (patients stopped receiving placebos 18 months into the study and started receiving growth hormone), it’s impossible to differentiate the effects of the growth hormones, the bisphosphonates, or possibly other factors (e.g. fall prevention measures, vitamin D supplements) that were introduced during the study and which may have contributed to the before/after difference in fracture rates. Another important limitation mentioned by the study authors in their paper (but not in the release) is the small sample size. Only 27 women received the high dose of growth hormone, only 28 received the low dose, and 25 received the placebo. While a study of 80 people can show promise, it’s worth mentioning that this study would need to be replicated on a larger scale in order to determine whether the findings hold up and can be extrapolated to a larger population. No disease mongering here. The release provide no information on who funded the study. The research was funded by the University of Gothenburg as well as a variety of public grants. The independent nature of the research was worth mentioning. The release does not mention other osteoporosis treatment options — such as bisphosphonates, fall prevention interventions, etc. — at all, making it impossible for readers to determine how the growth hormone therapy performed relative to other courses of action. Many readers may know that growth hormones are available and already used for the treatment of short stature in children. But the release doesn’t establish this for those who might not know. Are these hormones prescription-only? Over the counter? Was it a new formulation developed for use in the study? It’s impossible to tell. The release establishes what’s new about the study, calling it the largest and longest of any study of growth hormone for osteoporosis to date. However, it would have been useful to inform readers about the long history of research in this area. The release does not mention any previous work, making it difficult for anyone (and impossible for non-experts) to place this new work in context with earlier research — whether that work is 40 years old or more recent. The release is careful in its use of language. Any problems with the release revolve around what was left out, rather than on the language of the release.

http://press.endocrine.org/doi/10.1210/jc.2015-1757,http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/osteoporosis.htm

0false

Association/Society news release,Women's health

27216

In 1994, a 17-year-old Eagle Scout built a nuclear reactor in his mother’s backyard, an act that ultimately necessitated a Superfund cleanup.

October 24, 2018

Hahn’s story first came to public light in the 1998 Harper’s profile written by Ken Silverstein. Silverstein later expanded that piece into the book The Radioactive Boy Scout which was in turn optioned for a feature film in 2016. “I’m proud of my son and I’m very sad that he’s gone,” Kenneth Hahn told Ars Technica in March 2017. “He could have done a lot more in this world.”

Alex Kasprak

On 10 May 1991, a 14-year-old Boy Scout named David Hahn earned an Atomic Energy merit badge, the first (and likely only) person in the history of Troop 371 in Clinton Township, Michigan, to receive a badge in that discipline: David was awarded his Atomic Energy merit badge on May 10, 1991, five months shy of his fifteenth birthday. To earn it he made a drawing showing how nuclear fission occurs, visited a hospital radiology unit to learn about the medical uses of radioisotopes and built a model reactor using a juice can, coat hangers, soda straws, kitchen matches, and rubber bands. By now, though, David had far grander ambitions. Throughout his childhood, Hahn had been obsessed with chemistry, teaching himself everything he knew from encyclopedias, textbooks, and chemistry sets, while personal safety did not seem to be a concern of his. According to a 1998 Harper’s profile of Hahn written by Ken Silverstein, “He once appeared at a scout meeting with a bright orange face caused by an overdose of canthaxanthin, which he was taking to test methods of artificial tanning.” In another instance, he was held responsible for a blowing a large hole in the wall of a Boy Scout tent after accidentally igniting a stockpile of powdered magnesium he had brought along. His “laboratory” was eventually moved to the potting shed behind his mother’s house, after an incident in his father’s basement that did not go as planned: One night as [Hahn’s father and stepmother] were sitting in the living room watching TV, the house was rocked by an explosion in the basement. There they found David lying semiconscious on the floor, his eyebrows smoking. Unaware that red phosphorus is pyrophoric, David had been pounding it with a screwdriver and ignited it. After achieving the rank of Eagle Scout, Hahn decided he wanted to experiment with real radioactivity, not merely the models he had used to earn his badge. He created various radioactive devices, including two different “neutron guns” that emitted radioactive particles, and eventually decided he wanted to create a “breeder reactor” — an energy generating nuclear reactor that actually produces more fissile material than it consumes (by essentially turning material around it radioactive). The concept was popular in the 1970s but for the most part has been abandoned thanks to modern technology and geologic finds that make mining uranium more cost-efficient. The breeder reactor concept was described by the Department of Energy in 1971 as follows: A breeder is a reactor that produces more fuel than it consumes … If the breeder can be used in a nuclear power plant, it can provide the heat needed for the generation of electricity and simultaneously produce an excess of fissionable material that can be used to fuel other plants. The answer to this apparent contradiction is that breeder reactors do not give “something for nothing”, but produce usable fissionable material from comparatively useless fertile material at a greater rate than the original fuel in the reactor is consumed in the fissioning process. The obvious question is how would an adolescent working out of his mother’s potting shed acquire fissile material to play around with? This is where Hahn’s myopic focus and determination really shined: Many household products (and even more in the 1990s) contain radioactive material, but the problem is scale. Hahn exploited several commonly found products and used his knowledge of chemistry to extract and concentrate it to create radioactivity at levels “not found in nature.” Early on, one common source of Hahn’s radioactive material came from household smoke detectors, which contain extremely small amounts of the radioactive isotope americium-241 as part of the mechanism that detects smoke. He “contacted smoke-detector companies and claimed that he needed a large number of the devices for a school project.” To obtain the radioactive isotope thorium-232, Hahn recalled a fact he had learned as an Eagle Scout: that the mantle of gas lanterns contains traces of the radioactive material. So he purchased “thousands of lantern mantles from surplus stores and, using the blowtorch, reduced them into a pile of ash.” This method produced radiation levels “9,000 times the level found in nature and 170 times the level that requires [Nuclear Regulatory Commission] licensing.” Radium-226, he learned, was found in the paint of antique luminescent clocks. Hahn was able to find an antique can of the mildly radioactive paint in a clock at a nearby antique store, which he used to isolate the isotope for experiments. Tritium, he found, was used as a component of glow-in-the-dark gun and bow sights, which he repeatedly purchased and returned as part of a scheme to collect the material. Hahn “removed the tritium contained in a waxy substance inside the sights, and then, using a variety of pseudonyms, returned the sights to the store or manufacturer for repair—each time collecting another tiny quantity of tritium.” These purchases were not the only instances in which Hahn employed subterfuge to obtain radioactive material. Claiming to be a professor, he once wrote to a Czechoslovakian firm that sells uranium to commercial and university buyers, obtaining a few samples of material which contained uranium-235 and uranium-238. “Ignoring any thought of safety,” as Harper’s described it, he attempted to build a reactor using the radioactive material he had collected over the years, using a schematic in his father’s college chemistry textbook as his guide: [Hahn] took the highly radioactive radium and americium out of their respective lead casings and, after another round of filing and pulverizing, mixed those isotopes with beryllium and aluminum shavings, all of which he wrapped in aluminum foil. What were once the neutron sources for his guns became a makeshift “core” for his reactor. He surrounded this radioactive ball with a “blanket” composed of tiny foil-wrapped cubes of thorium ash and uranium powder, which were stacked in an alternating pattern with carbon cubes and tenuously held together with duct tape. While he never achieved the critical mass necessary for a self-sustaining reaction, Hahn certainly appeared to have accomplished the creation of some new fissile material: [Hahn] monitored his “breeder reactor” … with his Geiger counter. “It was radioactive as heck,” he says. “The level of radiation after a few weeks was far greater than it was at the time of assembly. I know I transformed some radioactive materials. Even though there was no critical pile, I know that some of the reactions that go on in a breeder reactor went on to a minute extent” … When his Geiger counter began picking up radiation five doors down from his mom’s house, David decided that he had “too much radioactive stuff in one place” and began to disassemble the reactor. He placed the thorium pellets in a shoebox that he hid in his mother’s house, left the radium and americium in the shed, and packed most of the rest of his equipment into the trunk of the Pontiac 6000. All of these events took place before the end of 1994, and perhaps they would have remained a secret to this day if Hahn had not stashed the remains of his nuclear reactor in that Pontiac. On 31 August 1994, police responded to complaints that Hahn was in a residential neighborhood “stealing tires from a car.” In their discussion with Hahn, the police ended up performing a search of the car and found: When they opened the trunk they discovered a toolbox shut with a padlock and sealed with duct tape for good measure. The trunk also contained over fifty foil-wrapped cubes of mysterious gray powder, small disks and cylindrical metal objects, lantern mantles, mercury switches, a clock face, ores, fireworks, vacuum tubes, and assorted chemicals and acids. The police were especially alarmed by the toolbox, which David warned them was radioactive and which they feared was an atomic bomb. The discovery of the radioactive contents of Hahn’s trunk “automatically triggered the Federal Radiological Emergency Response Plan, and state officials soon were embroiled in tense phone consultations with the DOE, EPA, FBI, and NRC.” After examining his mother’s property (which she had cleansed of the most radioactive material in advance of law enforcement searches of the property for fear she would lose her home), authorities decided that the site was to be an EPA clean-up operation: A Superfund cleanup took place between June 26 and 28 at a cost of about $60,000. After the moon-suited workers dismantled the potting shed with electric saws, they loaded the remains into thirty-nine sealed barrels placed aboard a semitrailer bound for Envirocare, a dump facility located in the middle of the Great Salt Lake Desert. There, the remains of [Hahn’s] experiments were entombed along with tons of low-level radioactive debris from the government’s atomic-bomb factories, plutonium-production facilities, and contaminated industrial sites. Hahn fell into a deep depression following this episode, according to Harper’s, which was likely exacerbated by his mother’s suicide in 1996. He enlisted in the armed forces and spent four years in the U.S. Navy followed by some time in the Marines Corps before returning to his home state of Michigan. In 2007 the FBI investigated claims that Hahn was storing radioactive material in his apartment. In an interview with the FBI, Hahn described his honorable discharge from the military and his struggles with paranoid schizophrenia in the years following his return home: Hahn advised that prior to joining the Navy in May, 1997, he got into trouble for stealing tires and rims from a vehicle. Hahn stated he was in the Navy for approximately five and a half years as a internal communication specialist as well as various other positions. Hahn said he then received his associates from Macomb Community College for Applied Science in Criminal Justice. Hahn advised that he then enlisted in the Marines in 2004. Hahn stated he was a truck driver for approximately a year and a half before he was honorably discharged. Hahn said after a few months living with his [REDACTED], Hahn moved to his current residence. Hahn advised that he does not currently have a job. Hahn stated he is on disability because he was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia. Hahn said he also has radiation poisoning from his prior contact with radioactive substances. Hahn advised that he is compliant with all his medications most of the time. Hahn stated he occasionally drinks while he is on his medications. Hahn ran into trouble with the law for stealing smoke detectors in 2007 as well, and he experienced repeated drug-related incidents in the years following. He died on 27 September 2016 at the age of 39, a death which was the result of alcohol poisoning, his father said: Citing a toxicology and autopsy report, Kenneth Hahn said his son was found with a dangerous level of blood alcohol content, 0.404, late in the evening on September 26, 2016 … Prior to his death, [Kenneth] Hahn accompanied his son to the Veterans Administration hospital for quarterly routine checkups. Medical staff there found no lingering ill effects from the earlier radiation exposure.

2true

Science, nuclear energy

21155

"Adam Putnam Says the giant African land snail ""carries human meningitis."

November 3, 2011

Ag chief Adam Putnam says Florida's giant snail 'carries human meningitis'

Becky Bowers

"Florida is now home to a slime-oozing plant-chowing snail the size of a teacup Chihuahua, and Adam Putnam wants to make sure that's temporary. The giant African land snail can grow up to 8 inches, live nearly a decade, devour indiscriminately, lay 500 eggs at a time and snack on stucco for the calcium to build its shiny brown shell striped with cream. It's a backyard horror and an agricultural nightmare. Putnam, the state's agriculture commissioner, also says it carries disease. The 1,000-snail invasion of a South Florida neighborhood became news in mid September. It's the biggest outbreak reported since the 1960s, when the state spent $1 million over the course of a decade battling three smuggled-in snails of a Miami boy that became 18,000. Last weekend, CBS News Sunday Morning featured the snails along with other invasive species, from Illinois' Asian carp (fish) to Georgia's kudzu (plant). Southwest Miami homeowners described the ""disgusting,"" ""slithery,"" ""juicy"" pests. Putnam explained the public threat. ""With something like the snails we've got the trifecta,"" Putnam said. ""It carries human meningitis, so people are concerned. It eats 500 different plants, so agriculture's concerned. And it eats houses, so homeowners are very concerned."" Leaf- and stucco-chomping? Check. Just ask the snails' Miami neighbors. But disease-carrying? PolitiFact Florida decided to check it out. About that disease: Your brain and spinal column are protected by membranes called meninges. When they get inflamed, that's meningitis. Often there's a bacteria or virus that causes the swelling, but you might also hit your head, get cancer or take certain drugs and end up with the illness. Or get a fungus. Or a parasite. Around the world, giant African land snails are known for carrying a parasite, one that spends part of its life in rats, that can cause a rare form of meningitis. (Most people fully recover without treatment.) It's known as the rat lungworm, or Angiostrongylus cantonensis. Snails — and prawns and crabs and frogs — pick up baby rat lungworms from rat droppings. Other animals who chow down on tasty raw crab or frog legs or snail guts pick up the larvae and can end up with the brain infection. Animals can also get it from eating unwashed snail-slimed greens, or from rubbing snail mucus into their eyes or noses or mouths. That group includes humans. Who eats giant snails? Plenty of folks, if not so many in the United States. Just consider escargot, the tasty French preparation of smaller, corn-fed snails doused in butter, garlic and herbs. Their meatier big brothers are an important protein source in coastal Nigeria. You can order them in a New York restaurant for $10. But it's not cooked snails that are the problem — for the same reason most folks don't eat raw shrimp or raw meat in general, for that matter. You heat them first, to kill uninvited disease-causing guests. It's the undercooked or raw ones that can be a problem. And also other exposure to slime. Take two cases of meningitis in Louisiana: In one, an 11-year-old boy had eaten a small raw snail on a dare. In another, a 22-year-old had eaten two raw legs from a green tree frog — also on a dare. (Note to America's youth: Don't do dares!) Then there is Florida's infamous case of giant snail slime exposure last year, where an African holy man poured the stuff into mouths of followers hoping for healing. Instead, they got violently ill — though not of meningitis. In England, giant African land snails are novelty pets that live in terrariums and sometimes crawl on their owners. Where's the meningitis worry? Snails that don't have a chance to pick up baby rat lungworms can't give them to you. Pet snails that haven't lived in the wild don't carry the parasite, which require rats to complete their life cycle. No parasite-incubating rats, no rat lungworms. No snail-caused meningitis. The parasite is found in snails in the South Pacific, Asia, Australia and the Caribbean. It shows up in Hawaii and Puerto Rico, with sightings in Louisiana and Mississippi. Florida had its rat lungworm scare in 2003, when a gibbon at Miami Metrozoo suddenly fell ill. It could have been a sign the rat lungworm had made it into the state's rats, snails, frogs and shrimp. Or it could have simply been infected monkey food from overseas. The Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services dispatched a biologist, John Teem, to test snails around the zoo, said spokesman Sterling Ivey. He never found rat lungworm. He's tested some of the state's apple snails — an invasive species   — and hasn't found rat lungworm. This year, when the Southwest Miami neighbors started to notice their garden snails seemed larger and more prolific than normal, Teem tested those, too. Even in the giant African land snails, he didn't find rat lungworm. The state health department doesn't track meningitis caused by the parasite. Neither do the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It's exceedingly rare in the United States. Even in Hawaii, where the parasite's common, just five such cases in one year prompted academic study. On Sunday, TV-watchers saw Putnam, the state's agricultural authority, warn them on national television about the snail's triple threat: house-eating, plant-devouring and disease-carrying. He didn't mention the disease hasn't been found in the state — and where it's been found in America, it's exceedingly rare. Or that to get it, you've got to eat a raw snail or get its mucus in your eyes or nose or eat unwashed snail-slimed produce. Frequently, information sources point out that the giant African land snail can carry a meningitis-causing parasite. Putnam said, ""We've got the trifecta,"" and said the snail ""carries human meningitis."" He leaves out some crucial details — most importantly, that the parasite that causes the disease hasn't yet been found in the state. And for that,"

http://www.aphis.usda.gov/publications/plant_health/content/printable_version/pa_phgas.pdf, http://www.aphis.usda.gov/lpa/pubs/invasive/16asnail.html, http://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/10/12/04-0319_article.htm, https://www.cbsnews.com/8301-3445_162-20127579/the-threat-of-invasive-species/, http://www.aphis.usda.gov/plant_health/ea/downloads/GAS-FONSI-October2011.pdf, http://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/13/6/06-1541_article.htm, http://www.health.gov.tt/news/newsitem.aspx?id=64, http://www.aphis.usda.gov/publications/plant_health/content/printable_version/idcard_phgas.pdf, http://www.freshfromflorida.com/press/2011/09152011.html, http://www.kgw.com/video/featured-videos/Giant-snails-invade-southern-Florida-130032283.html, http://bukanewyork.com/Menu.html, http://www.cdc.gov/meningitis/index.html, https://cid.oxfordjournals.org/content/48/3/322.full, http://www.ajol.info/index.php/ajfand/article/viewFile/70449/58796, https://abcnews.go.com/blogs/headlines/2011/09/giant-african-snails-invade-miami-florida/, http://www.aphis.usda.gov/plant_health/plant_pest_info/gas/index.shtml, http://www.petsnails.co.uk/faq.html, http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/09/15/2409202/giant-snails-invade-miami-subdivision.html, http://articles.sun-sentinel.com/2010-03-11/news/fl-illegal-snails-santeria-20100310_1_snails-smuggled-search-warrant, http://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/17/7/pdfs/10-1822.pdf, http://www.cdc.gov/parasites/angiostrongylus/gen_info/faqs.html, http://www.ajtmh.org/content/85/4/685.abstract, https://snailbusters.wordpress.com/about/, http://www.honoluluzoo.org/african_land_snail.htm, http://www.dhh.louisiana.gov/offices/miscdocs/docs-249/annual/LaIDAnnual_EosinophilicMeningitis.pdf, http://www.amentsoc.org/insects/caresheets/giant-african-land-snails.html, http://www.idph.state.il.us/public/press04/5.6.04b.htm

1mixture

Agriculture, Animals, Public Health, Florida, Adam Putnam,

30163

"Donald Trump once said ""I never understood why people like dogs. Dogs are disgusting."

September 12, 2018

The claim that he “hates dogs” appears to be based on shaky logic (he doesn’t own one and he insults people by comparing them to dogs) and relatively scant evidence (his ex-wife said he was “not a dog fan,” but she also said that he had no objection to sharing a bed with one). It is also contradicted by photographic evidence and first-hand accounts of Trump’s cheerful demeanor around dogs.

Dan MacGuill

In September 2018, a quotation emerged online which appeared to offer support for the widely-held perception that President Donald Trump doesn’t even like man’s best friend: dogs. A Facebook user posted a meme to that effect on 10 September 2018, quoting Trump as having said “I never understood why people like dogs. Dogs are disgusting”: We could find no evidence of Donald Trump’s ever having said this, despite checking newspaper archives, the archives of the New York Times (which has closely covered his career and pronouncements for several decades), the FactBase web site’s archive of interview and speech transcripts, and the Internet Archive’s “Trump Archive.” The quotation appears to be bogus. However, does it allude to a real dislike of dogs on the part of the 45th president? The perception that President Trump dislikes or even hates dogs is a widely-held one. An October 2017 article by Newsweek article made just such a claim, asking “Why does President Trump hate dogs?” As evidence that Trump felt this way about canines, the article pointed to three pieces of evidence variously cited in a series of similar articles about his alleged negative sentiments and comportment toward dogs. ‘Like a dog’ Robert Pattinson should not take back Kristen Stewart. She cheated on him like a dog & will do it again–just watch. He can do much better! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 17, 2012 The first piece of evidence is the fact that Trump often uses “dog” as an insult. A cursory glance at his Twitter history reveals a penchant for calling his perceived enemies or rivals “dogs,” or describing their failures or shortcomings in somewhat unusual canine similes: “choked like a dog,” “got fired like a dog,” “sweating like a dog.” However, this habit does not necessarily demonstrate a fervent dislike of actual dogs. It could just as plausibly be part of the president’s idiosyncratic way of speaking and writing, what the Huffington Post’s Nick Wing aptly described as a “lack of oratorical creativity.” The logic of the argument is as follows: Donald Trump compares people to dogs as a way of insulting them, therefore Donald Trump thinks being a dog is undesirable, so it must follow that Donald Trump hates dogs. However, if one were consistent in applying this logical framework to all simile-based insults (or praise), one would end up forced to make some pretty bizarre claims: that anyone who calls someone else a “rat” for being disloyal is thereby declaring their hatred for actual rats, that anyone who uses the word “snake” to criticize someone else’s duplicity must by necessity hate actual snakes, that anyone who praises someone as being a “wily old fox” must therefore have a love for that particular species, and so on. President Trump’s 2012 declaration that Robert Pattinson should not reunite with Kristen Stewart because “she cheated on him like a dog” is evidence of his idiolect, and might suggest he doesn’t fully understand how similes work. But that insult, along with all the others, is not sufficient evidence to conclude that he hates dogs. No dog in the White House The second piece of evidence cited by Newsweek (and others) is the fact that President Trump is the first occupant of the White House in more than a century not to own a dog. (According to the Washington Post, William McKinley was the last dog-free president before Trump.) Again, the logic of this argument collapses fairly easily. The absence of a dog from the White House (although unusual from a historical point of view) is not evidence that the president dislikes dogs. If one were consistent in drawing that conclusion from that premise, one would be forced to claim that the many millions of people who don’t keep pet dogs in their homes are motivated by a dislike of dogs, when clearly other reasons might be more primary: allergies, time constraints, frequent travel, and so on. In fact, President Trump has reportedly already given an explanation for why the First Family does not currently keep a dog at the White House: he’s just too busy. In the same Newsweek article whose headline read “Why does President Donald Trump hate dogs?” the president’s friend Lois Pope recounted how she identified a Goldendoodle named Patton as the perfect dog for the family and offered to arrange for the Trumps to adopt him: [Pope] came across the gentle teddy bear, and presented him to Trump and son Barron at the Mar-a-Lago, where she has been a member for 24 years. “I went through great trouble to find the perfect dog for Donald Trump,” she told Newsweek. “He would’ve been a perfect dog for any president.” Patton is hypoallergenic, loyal and beautiful, she said. But it seems Patton wasn’t destined for the White House — Pope said Trump told her he was too busy for a dog, and she, in turn, was actually relieved she wouldn’t have to give up the “lovable giant pup” with whom she had fallen in love. It is not intellectually supportable to speculate or conclude that the reason President Trump doesn’t keep a dog in the White House is because he doesn’t like them, when several plausible alternative explanations exist, and the president has already reportedly provided one (i.e., that he’s too busy). ‘Not a dog fan’ The third piece of evidence typically cited by those claiming Donald Trump hates dogs (including Newsweek) is arguably the strongest, but it is challenged by other available evidence. In her memoir Raising Trump, the president’s ex-wife Ivana Trump wrote that he only reluctantly agreed to allow her poodle Chappy to live with them in New York and claimed he was “not a dog fan”: So I spent my first month in New York exploring the city with my poodle at my side. Donald was not a dog fan. When I told him I was bringing Chappy with me to New York, he said, “No.” “It’s me and Chappy or no one!” I insisted, and that was that … I’ve told you about Chappy and his deep love for my chinchilla coat. He had an equal dislike of Donald. Whenever Donald went near my closet, Chappy would bark at him territorially. Newsweek cited that section as evidence that “the feeling was mutual” between the future president and his wife’s dog Chappy. However, the very next line in the book, omitted from the Newsweek article, added nuance to the picture of Donald Trump as a dog-hater who feuded with his wife’s pet poodle: “Despite their issues with each other, Donald never objected to Chappy’s sleeping on my side of the bed.” Donald Trump has gone on record stating his dislike for pitbulls, specifically, saying in a 2008 interview with radio host Howard Stern that: I’m not a big fan of pit bulls. I’ve known too many people who were badly hurt by pits. I know a girl who is beautiful who is taking care of a dog who was a pit bull. The dog ripped her apart. So I’m not a big fan. You know these people come out, “oh the poor dog the poor dog.” These are trained killers these dogs. However, we could not find any similarly negative statements about dogs in general, and we did find evidence which might indicate that, at the very least, Trump is not as averse to dogs as is widely believed. Evidence to the contrary From 2010 to 2015, the Westminster Kennel Club in New York kept an annual tradition in which the winner of the Westminster Dog Show would visit Donald Trump for a photo-op at his office in Trump Tower, as shown in photographs from 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013 and 2015 (below): In 2013, the Westminster Kennel Club even wrote on Facebook that Trump had a “genuine affection for dogs,” next to a photograph of him smiling and holding that year’s winner, “Banana Joe”: In 2017, the Associated Press spoke to several people associated with the Westminster Dog Show, who described Trump as being welcoming and at ease while spending time with the illustrious competition’s winners: People in the room for Trump’s visits, in those pre-presidential days, describe him as friendly and relaxed, smiling broadly while spending up to a half-hour with the victors. A self-confessed “germaphobe,” Trump didn’t seem bothered a bit by the close brushes with the dogs, either. …“He could not have been more engaging,” said [David] Frei, host of Westminster telecasts for 27 years. “He did not have any qualms.” Will Alexander, who was the handler for the 2015 champion “Miss P” and was interviewed by the Associated Press for its 2017 article, told us by phone that Trump seemed genuinely comfortable around the beagle during their 30- to 45-minute visit at Trump Tower, holding her and talking to her before and after the cameras were on him: He wanted to hold her right away. It wasn’t just for a photoshoot … I remember when he finally did put her down, he had some beagle hair on his suit — because beagles tend to shed quite a bit — and somebody went to wipe it off, but he told them to leave him alone, that it was fine. He didn’t come across to me as someone who didn’t like dogs … He seemed quite genuine about it … He seemed like he wanted her there, and he wanted to hold her and talk to her — he seemed quite comfortable with her. Conclusion Ultimately, we can’t say for certain how Donald Trump feels about dogs. However, at least as much evidence (if not more) suggests that he is comfortable around them as suggests that he finds them aversive, or even disgusting.

0false

Politics, dogs, donald trump

13984

The LGBT community is more often the victims of hate crimes than any other recognized group.

June 23, 2016

"Lynch said, ""The LGBT community is more often the victims of hate crimes than any other recognized group."" It’s worth noting that there may be widespread underreporting of hate crime incidents in general. However, the best available research shows that the LGBT community is victimized at a higher rate than other minority groups, according to FBI data."

Amy Sherman

"The Orlando shooting massacre at the Pulse gay nightclub that led to the deaths of 49 victims has led to more national attention about hate crimes targeting the gay community. U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch spoke about the attack hours later on Fox News Sunday. ""I think we have to keep our eye on a larger picture here, which is the victims of this crime were from a community that is often marginalized and that, frankly, the LGBT community is more often the victims of hate crimes than any other recognized group,"" she said. Lynch is correct if we examine per capita rates for hate crimes, although there are some caveats about the data -- mainly that there are gaps in how law enforcement reports hate crimes. The FBI defines hate crimes as ""criminal offenses motivated, in whole or in part, by the offender’s bias against"" a particular group such as a religion, race or sexual orientation. Data on hate crimes A spokesman for Lynch said she was referring to an analysis by the New York Times published days after the Orlando shooting. Using data from the FBI and the U.S. Census, the newspaper compared hate crimes per capita in two years: 2005 and 2014. The newspaper found ""L.G.B.T. people are twice as likely to be targeted as African-Americans, and the rate of hate crimes against them has surpassed that of crimes against Jews."" Mark Potok, an expert on extremism at the Southern Poverty Law Center, did a similar analysis of 14 years of hate crime data in 2011. He found that LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) people are far more likely than other minority groups to be victimized by violent hate crimes. Potok examined the percentage of the population represented by these groups:  LGBT, Jews, blacks, Muslims, Latinos and whites. Then he compiled the total number of hate crimes against persons (excluding crimes against property) between 1995 and 2008. Then he compared the level of hate crime aimed at each group to the group’s percentage in the population to determine the rate of victimization. He found that LGBT people were victimized at 8.3 times the expected rate. Jews were victimized at 3.5 times the expected rate, blacks at 3.2 times, Muslims at 1.9 times, Latinos at 0.6 times, and whites at 0.2 times. An important caveat: There are several holes in the reporting of hate crimes to the FBI. Local law enforcement agencies voluntarily report their data to a state agency that compiles the information for the FBI. Some local agencies report no hate crimes or don’t submit a report. A study by the federal Bureau of Justice Statistics found that 60 percent of violent hate crime victimizations were not reported to police in 2012. A 2016 Associated Press investigation found that more than 2,700 city police and county sheriff's departments have not submitted a single hate crime report to the FBI during the past six years — about 17 percent of all city and county law enforcement agencies nationwide. Among the agencies that reported zero hate crimes in 2014 were several major cities, including Jacksonville, Miami and Tampa. Another way to look at the data about hate crimes rather than per capita is the sheer number of crimes. By that measure, there were more hate crimes against African-Americans than LGBT residents. But that’s not surprising since African-Americans represent about 13.2 percent of the population according to the U.S. Census, while the LGBT community represents about 2.3 percent of the population, according to a survey done by the Centers for Disease Control (other surveys found a slightly higher rate.) Why would LGBT be victimized at a higher rate Answering the question as to why the LGBT community would be victimized at a higher rate is more complex. Some of the crime, paradoxically, may be motivated by more widespread acceptance of gay rights. ""We are seeing lots more gay people getting married,"" said Jack Levin, a sociologist at Northeastern University and expert on hate crimes. ""I think what hate crimes represent is a reaction to that."" Some are motivated by fear. ""There is a visceral hatred against LGBT people in large part connected to fears about sexuality,"" Potok said. ""Sexuality is an incredibly fraught topic for some people and especially those people who fear they might have same-sex attraction themselves."" Law enforcement is still investigating the Orlando shooting, but based on information so far, experts said that the shooter appeared to be motivated in part by bigotry and self-loathing. Omar Mateen, who was married to a woman, regularly visited the gay nightclub and used gay dating apps, according to reports by patrons at the club. Our ruling Lynch said, ""The LGBT community is more often the victims of hate crimes than any other recognized group."" It’s worth noting that there may be widespread underreporting of hate crime incidents in general. However, the best available research shows that the LGBT community is victimized at a higher rate than other minority groups, according to FBI data.

http://www.miamiherald.com/news/state/article84606052.html, http://www.adl.org/assets/pdf/combating-hate/FBI-Hate-Crime-Statistics-Comparison-2000-2014DK-2.pdf, http://www.adl.org/assets/pdf/combating-hate/HCSA-DNR-and-Zero-reporting-2014.pdf, https://www.fbi.gov/news/stories/2015/november/latest-hate-crime-statistics-available, https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/hcv0412st.pdf, http://www.miamiherald.com/news/state/florida/article84511132.html, https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/07/15/gay-lesbian-bisexual-cdc-survey/12671717/, https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/intelligence-report/2011/anti-gay-hate-crimes-doing-math, https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/table/PST045215/00, https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2016/jun/14/hillary-clinton/hillary-clinton-says-anti-muslim-hate-crimes-tripl/, https://bigstory.ap.org/article/8247a1d2f76b4baea2a121186dedf768/ap-patchy-reporting-undercuts-national-hate-crimes-count, https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/06/16/us/hate-crimes-against-lgbt.html, http://www.foxnews.com/transcript/2016/06/19/lynch-talks-gun-control-isis-threat-and-clinton-email-probe-sen-sessions-on/

2true

Gays and Lesbians, Crime, Florida, Loretta Lynch,

24314

Last week, the Supreme Court reversed a century of law that I believe will open the floodgates for special interests – including foreign corporations – to spend without limit in our elections.

January 27, 2010

Why Alito shook his head: Obama exaggerates impact of Supreme Court ruling on foreign companies

Louis Jacobson

"Editor's note, Dec. 27, 2018: In a recent column, former Democratic official and Washington Post columnist Ron Klain criticized this 2010 fact-check as having been ""wrongly"" decided. We published a response as to why we stand by the factcheck; read it here. On Jan. 21, 2010, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a landmark ruling striking down barriers to corporations spending money directly from their own treasuries to influence elections. The 5-4 decision in Citizens United vs. Federal Election Commission has drawn fire from President Barack Obama twice -- first in a weekly radio address and, now, during his State of the Union address. The president told a joint session of Congress on Jan. 27, 2010, that ""it's time to put strict limits on the contributions that lobbyists give to candidates for federal office. Last week the Supreme Court reversed a century of law that I believe will open the floodgates for special interests –- including foreign corporations –- to spend without limit in our elections. Well I don't think American elections should be bankrolled by America's most powerful interests, and worse, by foreign entities. They should be decided by the American people, and that's why I'm urging Democrats and Republicans to pass a bill that helps to right this wrong."" That's much the same argument he made in his Jan. 23 radio address, when he argued that ""even foreign corporations may now get into the act"" of spending ""an unlimited amount of special interest money"" for political purposes. We published an item on Jan. 26 -- one day before the State of the Union address -- that investigated whether the justices' ruling did in fact open the door to foreign companies spending freely on American campaigns. We're updating and expanding it now that Obama has mentioned this issue in his State of the Union address. First, some background. In Citizens United, the justices overturned previous decisions that prohibited, in the court's words, ""corporations and unions from using their general treasury funds to make independent expenditures for speech defined as an 'electioneering communication' or for speech expressly advocating the election or defeat of a candidate."" While corporations are still barred from giving directly to federal candidates, they are no longer forced to create political action committees in order to spend money on electioneering. A corporation, the justices held, may simply spend funds from its own accounts. Critics of the majority's opinion warned that allowing political spending by corporations could also undermine existing barriers to foreign corporate spending on elections. Current federal law -- legal eagles can find it at 2 U.S.C. 441e(b)(3) -- prevents ""a partnership, association, corporation, organization, or other combination of persons organized under the laws of or having its principal place of business in a foreign country"" from making ""directly or indirectly"" a donation or expenditure ""in connection with a Federal, State, or local election,"" to a political party committee or ""for an electioneering communication."" The majority opinion, authored by Associate Justice Anthony Kennedy, maintained that the court was not specifically overturning this barrier to foreign campaign spending, essentially saying that it was outside the scope of the opinion. ""We need not reach the question whether the Government has a compelling interest in preventing foreign individuals or associations from influencing our Nation's political process,"" the majority wrote. But in a strongly worded and sometimes bitter dissent, Associate Justice John Paul Stevens latched onto the question of campaign spending by foreign companies as an example of the majority opinion's shortcomings, bringing it up no fewer than three times. ""The notion that Congress might lack the authority to distinguish foreigners from citizens in the regulation of electioneering would certainly have surprised the Framers,"" said Stevens. He went on to quote Fordham University law professor Zephyr Rain Teachout's observation that the Framers' ""obsession with foreign influence derived from a fear that foreign powers and individuals had no basic investment in the well-being of the country."" (Teachout, incidentally, directed Internet organizing for Howard Dean's 2004 presidential campaign.) But passionate as his view is, Stevens' dissent holds no legal authority. Indeed, the legal experts we spoke to after Obama's radio address said that the president was overstating the immediate impact of the opinion. They said Obama was correct that the ruling could open the door to foreign companies spending on American campaigns, given the general direction of the majority's opinion. But because the majority justices didn't actually strike down the existing barriers on foreign companies -- in fact, they explicitly wrote that it fell beyond the boundaries of their decision -- our experts agreed that Obama erred by suggesting that the issue is settled law. Until test cases proceed and further rulings are handed down, Obama's claim about foreign campaign spending is a reasonable interpretation, and nothing more. ""Some people think that Kennedy's opinion in Citizens United logically leads there,"" said Robert Kelner, who chairs the election and political law practice group at the law firm Covington & Burling. ""Maybe it does, maybe it doesn't. We don't know for sure."" Brett Kappel, a political law specialist with the law firm Arent Fox, said the Citizens United opinion ""certainly could be read as declaring this provision unconstitutional, so I'd have to say the president's interpretation is correct -- but we won't really know for sure until a court rules on the issue."" Critics of the ruling -- including some readers who contacted PolitiFact after we posted our original analysis -- have zeroed in on one scenario in particular, ""that foreign corporations with U.S. subsidiaries are likely to be able to now spend unlimited amounts on American elections,"" in the words of the liberal blog Think Progress. In one theoretical example offered by the Web site Politico, ""even if Sony Corp. in Japan couldn't spend money directly for or against a candidate, the electronics company's American-based subsidiaries could."" According to Politico, the White House and Democratic lawmakers have been discussing legislation to mitigate the impact of the ruling, including directly addressing the question of how foreign companies should be treated. The scenario involving foreign-owned U.S. subsidiaries hinges on a quirk in the law that had seemed to be of little consequence, but which now may loom large. The federal law cited above -- 2 U.S.C. 441e(b)(3) -- defines U.S. companies as those incorporated under U.S. law or that have their headquarters here. It is silent on the treatment of companies that are incorporated and headquartered in the United States but are owned by foreigners. That uncertainty could indeed provide a loophole for spending unlimited amounts of money on politics. But even that interpretation is not a slam dunk. Federal Election Commission regulations say that a foreign national cannot ""direct, dictate, control, or directly or indirectly participate in the decision-making process"" for spending money for political purposes, a principle that could keep the critics' worst-case scenario from coming true, said Tara Malloy, an associate counsel with the Campaign Legal Center. What that FEC regulation means for political spending by a foreign-owned company is far from clear. So, if anything, uncertainties about how foreign-owned U.S. subsidiaries would be treated only further muddies the question. Based on our reading of the court's opinion and interviews with campaign law experts, we find that Obama has overstated the ruling's immediate impact on foreign companies' ability to spend unlimited money in U.S. political campaigns. While such an outcome may be possible, the majority opinion specifically said it wasn't addressing that point, and only further litigation would settle the matter once and for all. On July 27, 2011, we changed the name for the rating to ."

http://www.fec.gov/law/feca/feca.pdf, https://thinkprogress.org/2010/01/27/foreign-lobbying-elections/, http://www.supremecourtus.gov/opinions/09pdf/08-205.pdf, https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/weekly-address-president-obama-vows-continue-standing-special-interests-behalf-amer, http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0110/32060.html, http://cfr.vlex.com/vid/110-donations-expenditures-disbursements-510-19623173

0false

National, Corporations, Corrections and Updates, Supreme Court, Barack Obama,

6278

Chairs removed from Mott’s Flint campus after bedbugs found.

Mott Community College officials say bedbug-infested chairs have been removed from a student lounge on the Flint campus.

The college says the chairs were removed for treatment to kill the insects after they were found Thursday on the chairs in the Mott Memorial Building’s student lounge. MLive.com reports that the bedbug find on the Flint campus follows the discovery of bedbugs earlier this month in a high school classroom in the Carman-Ainsworth Community Schools, which is also in Genesee County. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the U.S. Department of Agriculture all consider bedbugs a public health pest. But unlike most public health pests, bedbugs are not known to transmit or spread disease. ___ Information from: The Grand Rapids Press:MLive.com, http://www.mlive.com

http://www.mlive.com,https://www.mlive.com/news/flint/2019/10/bed-bugs-found-on-chairs-at-mott-community-college.html

2true

Health, General News, Flint, Public health

39599

The story of an 11-year-old girl who has had menstrual bleeding since she was 8 and has also started lactating.   The eRumor says it is because she’s been drinking milk injected with rBST, a hormone given to cows to increase their milk production.  The eRumor focuses on Wal-Mart Great Value milk as a source of the rBST and recommends against feeding it to your family.  

March 17, 2015

Young girl with serious health problems from Wal-Mart milk

Rich Buhler & Staff

There is controversy over rBST, which stands for recombinant bovine somatotropin. It is an artificial growth hormone used in cows. We’ve not found the family of Marissa, the 11-year old girl referenced in the eRumor. If she is real her family’s suspicions are worthy of consideration but do not constitute proof that what they describe has been caused by ingesting milk from Wal-Mart. There are other conditions that can cause early menstruation such as hypothyroidism. Also, although there are fears, there is not scientific agreement about whether rBST is harmful to humans. RBST is a synthetic version of bST or BGH, a natural growth hormone in cows which, among other things, affects the amount of milk produced by a dairy cow. Use of bST to increase milk production has been around since the 1930’s then along then the synthetic version came into popularity. Critics of the use of rBST say that it is banned for use in cattle in virtually every major country in the world except the United States. They point out that there is an increase in health problems in cattle that produce the most milk so the use of rBST should be avoided on that ground. Supporters say rBST helps dairy farmers with better milk yield and that there has not been any proof that the hormone causes problems in humans. It is approved for use by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Although this eRumor focused on Wal-Mart milk there are several different milk companies that use cattle treated with rBST and Wal-Mart also sells milk from cows that are not injected with it. Because of the controversy over rBST a lot of the milk products without it are labeled as such and are not hard to find. In March, 2008, Wal-Mart announced that rBST will no longer be found in milk from either Wal-Mart or Sams Club. Updated 3/25/08 Comments

https://www.truthorfiction.com/category/animals/, https://www.truthorfiction.com/category/household/, https://api.whatsapp.com/send?text=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.truthorfiction.com%2Fwal-mart-milk%2F, https://www.truthorfiction.com/category/health-medical/, https://www.truthorfiction.com/category/medical/, https://www.truthorfiction.com/vicks-vaporub/, https://www.truthorfiction.com/wyoming-rfid-chips-students-102113/, https://www.truthorfiction.com/category/food/, https://www.linkedin.com/cws/share?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.truthorfiction.com%2Fwal-mart-milk%2F, https://twitter.com/intent/tweet?text=Young+girl+with+serious+health+problems+from+Wal-Mart+milk-Unproven%21&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.truthorfiction.com%2Fwal-mart-milk%2F&via=erumors, https://www.reddit.com/submit?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.truthorfiction.com%2Fwal-mart-milk%2F, https://www.truthorfiction.com/author/truthorfiction/, https://www.facebook.com/share.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.truthorfiction.com%2Fwal-mart-milk%2F

3unproven

Animals, Food / Drink, Health / Medical, Household, Medical

33315

The FDA recently discovered that the Arizona Beverage Company uses human urine in many of their products.

April 20, 2015

A disclaimer at the bottom of the web site’s pages states that Huzlers is “the most notorious urban satirical entertainment website with the most shocking headlines and articles.”

Snopes Staff

On 19 April 2015, the Huzlers web site published an article reporting that the Arizona Beverage Company was using human urine in many of their AriZona Tea products: Upon being unexpectedly inspected a few days ago, FDA inspectors visited five of AriZona’s biggest factories in the United States and what they discovered was shocking. They discovered thousands of gallons of large industrial containers containing human urine. But what was the urine doing in an AriZona tea factory? According to the FDA, urine has been suspected to be used in AriZona products for a years and it is what gives it its signature flavor, surprisingly. About 6% of AriZona cans are made up of human urine. This report could be debunked simply by checking its source: Huzlers, a well known fake news site. Huzlers posts made-up stories about a variety of topics, such as the fictitious tale of a man selling his 4-year-old for a new Apple Watch, but they have a penchant for publishing fake news about the FDA. In September 2014, they penned a hoax article about cocaine in cans of Coors Light beer, and in October 2014 they published a fake story about semen being found in Starbucks Frappuccinos.

0false

Media Matters, arizona tea, huzlers

9135

Vegetarian diets almost twice as effective in reducing body weight, study finds

June 14, 2017

This news release prepared for the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine describes a randomized controlled trial involving 74 people with type 2 diabetes that studied the effects of a vegetarian diet on weight loss. The release describes the weight loss effects of the vegetarian diet in comparison to a conventional anti-diabetic diet but it neglects to mention the exercise component of the intervention. This omission makes it seem as if the weight loss effects were solely due to dietary changes. While it’s true that diet was the only major difference between the vegetarian and conventional diet groups, other factors such as exercise may have contributed to the beneficial weight effects in both groups. The release also neglects to inform readers how long the study lasted — a very big hole. According to the published paper, changes in fat distributions were statistically significant at 3 months but were non-significant at 6 months. Weight loss is commonly recommended for people with diabetes because it can help manage the symptoms of their disease. It’s also commonly recommended for those at high risk of diabetes to help prevent it. Given the importance of dietary changes in preventing and managing diabetes, research demonstrating the effectiveness of certain diets can greatly influence dietary choices. This could be problematic if the evidence on which these choices are based is premature, which this evidence appears to be.

Chioma Ihekweazu, PhD, MPH,Dan Mayer, MD,Kathlyn Stone

There may be cost implications in maintaining a balanced vegan or vegetarian diet. This is especially true for people whose conventional meat-based diet currently includes a lot of processed foods and they find they need to shop for expensive veggie burgers and soy-based meals at the Whole Foods or Trader Joe’s to round out their vegetarian diet. It would have been good if the release had at least mentioned there may a cost consideration. This release describes the weight loss benefits of a vegetarian diet in terms of average weight lost. It states that participants in the vegetarian diet group lost an average of 6.2 kilograms in comparison to participants in the conventional diet group who lost an average of 3.2 kilograms. It also claims those on the vegetarian diet lost more subfascial and intramuscular fat than those on a conventional diet. The release never tells us how long the study lasted, you have to go to the published report for that. When we did, it wasn’t clear whether the weight loss was maintained at 6 months and beyond. It is very common for weight-loss studies to show that initial weight loss is greater than later weight loss, especially when there is no blinding involved. The release may encourage people to embark on a vegetarian diet without enough knowledge of the potential downsides. Without careful meal planning, people on vegetarian diets risk not getting enough protein, vitamin B-12, iron, zinc, omega-3 fatty acids. A brief mention of these challenges would have been helpful. While the news release mentions that this was a randomized controlled trial, it does not go into detail about how various study characteristics may have impacted the findings. Most notably, it does not discuss how well participants adhered to the prescribed diets, or that the sample size was relatively small. It doesn’t say how long the study lasted. It’s well known that short-term weight loss results are difficult to maintain over the long term. The release also doesn’t mention that there was an exercise component in the trial and the role that exercise played in contributing to weight loss among study participants. In the published study, the researchers noted: “Our data stress the importance of exercise in weight loss programs to preserve lean mass.” There was no evidence of disease mongering in this release. However, the fat measures are surrogate markers, which are not necessarily indicative of long term improvement in diabetes, specifically outcomes like death, blindness, leg loss and neuropathy. The release did not discuss the funding source for the research. However, the organization that the researchers are representing is the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, a group that is a proponent of vegetarian and vegan diets and of dietary management of diseases (where appropriate). The release does mention one alternative to the vegetarian diet — the anti-diabetic conventional diet which adheres to official recommendations of the European Association for the Study of Diabetes. The release makes no statement about availability, but it seems at first blush that the diet would be readily available. Then again, perhaps that’s not the case since people who eat a conventional diet containing a lot of processed foods are very likely to turn to processed foods for their vegan or vegetarian meals, as well. Prepared vegetarian foods might be hard to find and expensive, not to mention not very tasty to everyone. To help clarify, the release could have pointed to resources that would help readers eat like participants in the study. The release describes what the study set out to do — measure changes in weight and in subfascial and intramuscular fat and how these change can impact metabolism. But the study isn’t novel. Numerous studies have been conducted on the effects vegetarian diets have on different types of body fat as well as weight and metabolism. The release doesn’t rely on sensational, unjustified language. It does, however, overstate the findings of the research. The first sentence reads: “Dieters who go vegetarian not only lose weight more effectively than those on conventional low-calorie diets but also improve their metabolism by reducing muscle fat, a new study published in the Journal of the American College of Nutrition has found.” This is a definitive statement and at no point in the rest of the release does it state that additional research is needed to confirm the findings.

https://www.healthnewsreview.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/iStock_000009061060_Small.jpg,http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/07315724.2017.1302367

0false

Taylor & Francis Group,vegetarian diet,weight loss

4560

Bangladesh grapples with country’s worst dengue outbreak.

Bangladesh is facing its worst-ever dengue fever outbreak as hospitals are flooded with patients, putting a severe strain on the country’s already overwhelmed medical system.

Abdur Rahman Jahangir

The mosquito-borne viral infection has spread across the country, with 61 out of 64 districts reporting dengue cases by late Tuesday. The government has confirmed 15,369 dengue cases since Jan. 1. Of those, 9,683 patients were diagnosed between July 1 and July 30. As of Tuesday, about 4,400 patients, including many children, were undergoing hospital treatment. There have been 14 deaths. Officials from Dhaka, the overcrowded capital and the epicenter of the outbreak, have struggled to contain it, drawing criticism and spreading panic among some residents. Dengue is found in tropical areas around the world and is spread by a type of mosquito that mainly lives in urban areas. The virus causes severe flu-like symptoms, and while there is no specific treatment for the illness, medical care to maintain a person’s fluid levels is seen as critical. There are fears that the situation in the countryside will worsen as many residents of the city travel to villages to celebrate Eid-ul-Adha next month. Infected humans can serve as a source of the virus for uninfected mosquitoes. Ayesha Akhter, assistant director at the Directorate General of Health Services under the Ministry of Health, said an outbreak of dengue has accompanied every monsoon since 2000, but this year’s situation is the worst. A DGHS study identified a six-fold increase in the Aedes aegypti mosquito population in four months in Dhaka as the primary cause of the larger-than-average outbreak. Earlier this month, the World Health Organization said the dengue situation in Bangladesh was “alarming but not out of control.” Other countries in Asia are also facing a surge in dengue cases this year, including Thailand, where 53,699 cases and 65 deaths were reported as of July 23. Nevertheless, with dengue cases soaring in recent weeks, Dhaka hospitals have been running out of room and manpower to treat new patients. Prof. Abul Kalam Azad, director general of DGHS, said they had asked the hospitals to increase beds for dengue patients and to open dengue wards. The government also halved the charges for diagnosing dengue and directed public and private hospitals, clinics and diagnostic centers to do the same. Dhaka Medical College Hospital, the largest hospital in the country, opened a special ward for dengue patients, said A.K.M. Nasir Uddin, its director general. Prof. Uttam Kumar Barua, director of Shaheed Suhrawardy Medical College and Hospital, another major public hospital in Dhaka, said they were relying on senior medical students to assist doctors in the face of so many patients. “We don’t have manpower, logistic support and technicians as much as needed. That’s why we are having too much pressure. We have three times more patients than our bed capacity,” Barua said. He said they were admitting every dengue patient who entered the hospital but could not provide beds or even seats for everyone, adding that many had been asked to wait in hospital corridors and verandas. Champa Begum took her 8-month-old to Shaheed hospital on Wednesday. “I have other kids. I go to work leaving this one to another child. I have no way but to work,” she said. “I can’t take care of this child properly. This child is laid down anywhere. My home is above dirty water. That how this one was bitten and got dengue.” On Tuesday, Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina called for concerted efforts to fight the illness. “The government is working to tackle dengue,” she told an emergency meeting of her ruling Awami League party via teleconference from London, where she was on an official visit. “I urge everyone to keep their houses and surrounding areas clean. That will save us from the disease,” she said. The country’s opposition parties and urban planning experts blamed the central and local government’s lack of preparedness for the rise in dengue cases. People have taken to Facebook to vent their anger about city authorities’ failure to control dengue-carrying mosquitoes.

2true

Dhaka, Dengue fever, Bangladesh, International News, General News, Health, Asia Pacific