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Senate agrees on FDA overhaulLisa Mascaro | Washington | May 25 But the comity didn't last, and the FDA accord was quickly followed by another round of partisan fighting over President Obama's push to keep student loan interest rates low. On party-line votes, senators blocked Democratic and Republican efforts to prevent interest rates from rising this summer. Raja May 26, 2012 - 1:57am
Muslim leaders enlisted to help stamp out polioStephanie Nebehay | Geneva | May 24 Polio cases are at an all-time low worldwide, following its eradication in India last year, raising hopes but also fears about a threat of resurgence especially in sub-Saharan Africa unless remaining reservoirs of polio virus are stamped out. Raja May 24, 2012 - 5:25pm
Is Not Aging Anti-Evolution?That's the pretty interesting, if simplistic, question posed by The Atlantic:
Actor 212 May 22, 2012 - 9:19am
( categories: Economics: USA | Environment | Health Issues | Human Rights | Liberties | Media Criticism | MSM Criticism | Ruminations | Science )
Grasping at the Future of Brain-Computer InterfacesMay 19 In a more practical test, one woman was able to grab a thermos of coffee with the robotic arm and bring it to her lips for a drink. While many challenges remain to bring this technology to people who need it, the time will be measured in “years, not decades,” suggested study authors Leigh Hochberg and John Donoghue of Brown University and the Veterans Affairs Medical Center.
The work is part of the ongoing BrainGate pilot trial by researchers at the Rhode Island institutions nymole May 20, 2012 - 11:52pm
NHS 'should consider giving statins to healthy people'James Gallagher | May 16 The study of 175,000 patients, in the Lancet, said even very low-risk patients benefited from the medication. The Oxford researchers says the NHS should consider giving statins to healthy people. The NHS drugs watchdog, NICE, is reviewing the evidence. Raja May 18, 2012 - 2:28am
Why the Campaign to Stop America's Obesity Crisis Keeps FailingTheDaily Beast | May 7 The nation’s most powerful anti-obesity groups are teaming up for a new HBO documentary—but it pushes the same tired advice. Gary Taubes on the research they're ignoring. Tina May 11, 2012 - 5:29pm
( categories: Health Issues | USA: Domestic Issues )
Christie Vetoes Health Insurance ExchangeKate Zernike | Trenton, NJ | May 10 The Affordable Care Act, the federal law passed in 2010, requires most Americans to have health insurance and mandates states to have health care benefits exchanges to help them buy it. With the Supreme Court debating whether the health care law is constitutional, Mr. Christie said in his veto message that the exchange, approved in March, was “premature” and could impose “unnecessary obligations upon the state’s citizens.” “Indeed, the very constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act is cloaked in uncertainty, as both the individual mandate to procure health insurance as well as the jurisdictional mandate to establish an exchange may not survive scrutiny by the Supreme Court,” he wrote. Raja May 10, 2012 - 9:46pm
( categories: AgonistWire | Economics: USA | Health Issues | USA: Campaign 2012 | USA: Domestic Issues )
Trans Community Celebrates Groundbreaking Gender Identity LawMarcela Valente | Buenos Aires | May 10 Activists say the law, which was passed by the Senate late Wednesday, breaks new ground in the world because it allows transgender people to change their legal identity without first having to undergo sex change surgery or hormone therapy. But if they do decide to undergo physical changes, the new legislation guarantees them access to surgery or hormone treatment in both the public and private health care systems. Raja May 10, 2012 - 9:40pm
Massachusetts payment-reform bill would overhaul how health-care providers are paidSarah Kliff | Boston, MA | April 30 In the next few months, Massachusetts is expected to take up legislation that would overhaul how doctors, hospitals and other providers are paid. The forthcoming payment-reform bill is expected to include many incentives for hospitals to accept “global payments,” or a flat fee for all the care delivered for a specific person or group of people. The hope is to take away the financial incentives to provide more care when less might be equally effective. Raja May 1, 2012 - 12:26am
Violence Against Women Act passes Senate after heated rhetoricDavid Grant | Washington | April 26 Fifteen Republicans joined every Democrat in voting for the measure. The passage reauthorizes a wide variety of services for abused women and men for five years. "This violence must end," said Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D) of Minnesota, one of the bill's main champions, on the Senate floor Thursday. "And so we all know that we can no longer stand and say it is someone else's problem. We can't let our own differences, minor that they may be on various provisions, get in the way." Raja April 26, 2012 - 6:39pm
( categories: AgonistWire | Global Women's Issues | Health Issues | USA: Campaign 2012 | USA: Congress | USA: Domestic Issues )
US struggles to contain mad cow falloutApr 22 The US Department of Agriculture on Tuesday reported the country's fourth-ever case of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), but stressed the outbreak was contained and no contaminated meat had entered the food chain. The infected dairy cow from central California, uncovered on Monday, "at no time presented a risk to the food supply or human health," officials insisted • Two S. Korea retailers suspend US beef sales over mad cow Tina April 25, 2012 - 10:28am
Transgender Employees Now Protected By Anti-Discrimination Law After 'Landmark' EEOC RulingWashington | April 24 Having earlier filed a complaint on behalf of Mia Macy, a California transgender woman denied a job, the Transgender Law Center issued the following statement, re-printed in The Miami Herald among other publications, on the ruling: Raja April 24, 2012 - 6:08pm
California bill would crack down on ‘ex-gay’ therapyDavid Edwards | Sacramento, CA | April 24 By a vote of 5-3, the state Senate Committee on Business, Professions and Economic Development advanced SB 1172, which would ban children under 18 from receiving so-called “ex-gay” therapies. Therapists would also have to provide adults receiving treatment with consent forms to warn them of potential dangers. “An individual’s sexual orientation, whether homosexual, bisexual, or heterosexual, is not a disease, disorder, illness, deficiency, or shortcoming,” the bill states. “Under no circumstances shall a patient under 18 years of age undergo sexual orientation change efforts, regardless of the willingness of a patient’s parent, guardian, conservator, or other person to authorize such efforts.” Raja April 24, 2012 - 3:30pm
A Master Bait And SwitchTo no one's surprise, health insurance companies will rape us for every last cent:
Actor 212 April 24, 2012 - 9:15am
How To DieMy Newshoggers colleague John Ballard re-upped his link to a thought provoking post, "How Doctors Die" today.
Steve Hynd April 23, 2012 - 1:49pm
( categories: Health Issues )
One in four Americans without health coverage: studyDavid Morgan | Washington | April 19 The study by the Commonwealth Fund polled 2,100 people aged 19 to 64 and found that 26 percent of non-elderly adults went without insurance -- a percentage that researchers said equals about 48 million people when measured against U.S. Census data. The Commonwealth Fund, a nonprofit organization that analyzes healthcare issues, said that seven in 10 of those who lost insurance spent a year or more without coverage, partly because plans sold on the individual market for health insurance were unaffordable. Raja April 19, 2012 - 4:49pm
Breast cancer rules rewritten in 'landmark' studyJames Gallagher | April 18 The categories could improve treatment by tailoring drugs for a patient's exact type of breast cancer and help predict survival more accurately. The study in Nature analysed breast cancers from 2,000 women. It will take at least three years for the findings to be used in hospitals. Raja April 18, 2012 - 5:44pm
( categories: AgonistWire | Health Issues )
Why French Parents Are Superior (in One Way)New York Times Motherlode Blog, By Karen Le Billon, April 13 Consider this: Our children are three times more likely to be overweight than French children. In fact, we lead the world in producing overweight children, but the French have one of the lowest rates of overweight children in the developed world. The causes of obesity are complex (lifestyle, physical activity, poverty, food insecurity, genetics and obesogenic chemicals all play a role). But what we eat is undoubtedly a factor. Because of poor eating habits, the current generation of American children will suffer far more health problems — and perhaps have a shorter life expectancy — than their parents. We may be teaching our kids to eat themselves into an early grave. Raja April 13, 2012 - 12:47pm
Eyewear for a digital worldFrom the Globe & Mail, by Adriana Barton Will all of the screens in our lives force everyone into glasses? For desk jockeys who stare at pixels all day, blurred vision, headaches and burning eyes are an occupational hazard with a name of its own: computer-vision syndrome. It’s a fancy term for computer-related eye strain. Although the symptoms are temporary, vision problems are a growing complaint among people who are glued to computers, smartphones and tablets, says the Canadian Association of Optometrists. Solutions at the link adrena April 10, 2012 - 9:15pm
( categories: Health Issues )
U.S. teen pregnancy rates at an all-time low across all ethnicitiesMichelle Castillo | Washington | April 10 That's a 44 percent drop from 1991 to 2010. There were less [sic] teenage mothers in 2010 than any year since 1946. The effect is being seen across most groups. Hispanic teens, who normally have a higher birth rate than the rest of the population, reported less [sic] young birth mothers than ever before in 2010. While there are still 55.7 teen births in the Hispanic community for every 1,000 births, numbers declined 12 percent for Hispanic and American Indian or Alaskan Native teens. Rates dropped 13 percent for Asian and Pacific Islander mothers. Non-Hispanic white and non-Hispanic black teenage mother saw their rates drop of 9 percent. Raja April 10, 2012 - 5:11pm
Warning over medical implant attacksMark Ward | April 10 Security researchers have developed attacks that locate and compromise implants used to manage conditions such as diabetes and heart disease. One attack caught a radio signal that, if re-broadcast, would have switched off a heart defibrillator. Raja April 9, 2012 - 8:23pm
Healthcare In An Age Of CorporatismChris Hedges: "It is the very sad legacy of the liberal class that it proves in election cycle after election cycle that it espouses moral and political positions it will not pay a price to defend. And since we have no fight in us, since we will not punish politicians like Obama who betray our core beliefs, the corporate juggernaut rolls forward with its inexorable pace to cement into place our global neofeudalism." You don't get a progressive agenda by voting for whigs. Steve Hynd April 9, 2012 - 5:47pm
( categories: Health Issues )
The Case Against KidsIs procreation immoral? The New Yorker, By Elizabeth Kolbert, April 9 In 1832, Charles Knowlton, a doctor in Ashfield, Massachusetts, published a short book with a long title: “Fruits of Philosophy: The Private Companion of Young Married People, by a Physician.” Knowlton, who was thirty-one, was a “freethinker” and, by the standards of the Berkshires, an unusually adventurous soul. While attending the New Hampshire Medical Institute (now Dartmouth Medical School), he was too poor to pay for a dissecting class and so had liberated a corpse from a cemetery. For this, he was convicted of grave robbing and sentenced to sixty days in jail. In 1829, he wrote up his ideas about agnosticism in a tract and had a thousand copies printed at his own expense. Unable to find buyers in western Massachusetts, he took the copies to New York City, where he was arrested for peddling without a license. In “Fruits of Philosophy,” Knowlton took up the subject of sex, or population growth, which, at the time, amounted to much the same thing. Like Thomas Malthus, whose work he cited, Knowlton was worried about the hazards of fertility. Using nineteenth-century birth rates, he projected that the number of people on the planet would double three times every century. Unlike Malthus, who saw no remedy except plague or abstinence, Knowlton believed that a more agreeable solution was at hand. What he called the “reproductive instinct” need not actually lead to reproduction. All that was required was some ingenuity. “Heaven has not only given us the capacity of greater enjoyment, but the talent of devising means to prevent the evils that are liable to arise therefrom; and it becomes us, ‘with thanksgiving, to make the most of them,’ ” he wrote. Raja April 5, 2012 - 12:23pm
AIDS 'could be eliminated in our lifetime'March 31 When Francoise Barre-Sinoussi, Director of the Louis Pasteur Institute in France and winner of the Nobel Prize in 2008 for her discovery of HIV, first isolated the HIV virus in 1982, she had no idea she had stumbled onto the greatest epidemic of our time. "Initially, we thought only a small group of people were affected by the disease," Barre-Sinoussi told Al Jazeera. "Very naively, we did not realise the magnitude of the epidemic." She was right to be wary. Since then, 60 million people have been infected with HIV and over 30 million have died, akin to half the population of the United Kingdom. But Barre-Sinoussi was not easily disheartened. "I believe in science. If not now, in the long term, we will find other strategies. My dream is to see the end of HIV before I die." Raja April 4, 2012 - 6:39am
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