Category: Public Health

But They Still Suck

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So the Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure has sort of backed down:

The Susan G. Komen for the Cure Foundation announced Friday that it would revise a new policy that barred the organization from funding Planned Parenthood, a move that had thrust the breast cancer foundation into a national controversy.

Komen apologized “to the American public for recent decisions that cast doubt upon our commitment to our mission of saving women’s lives.”

The foundation said that Planned Parenthood would now be eligible to apply for grants. It did not, however, address other reasons Komen has cited for why it might choose not to approve such grants.

“Our original desire was to fulfill our fiduciary duty to our donors by not funding grant applications made by organizations under investigation,” a Friday statement said. “We will amend the criteria to make clear that disqualifying investigations must be criminal and conclusive in nature and not political. That is what is right and fair.”

“We will continue to fund existing grants, including those of Planned Parenthood, and preserve their eligibility to apply for future grants, while maintaining the ability of our affiliates to make funding decisions that meet the needs of their communities,” the statement continues.

What they are saying that they aren’t cancelling current grants, which they never said they would, and Planned Parenthood can apply for grants next year, but there are “no promises”.

There may be grants to Planned Parenthood next year, but they will eventually cut them off, assuming that these folks aren’t (hopefully) a dead corporatist charity walking.

Btw, in the, “It sucks when an angel pees down the barrel of your rifle,” department, a documentary, called “Pink Ribbons, Inc.,” is hitting theaters in Canada, and film festivals in the United States as I am typing this.

The film alleges that Komen is “Pink Washing” companies that are suspected of exposing the population to carcinogens that might cause breast cancer, among other things.

Boycott the Susan G Komen Foundation

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You’ve probably heard how the Komen foundation created trumped up reasons to defund Planned Parenthood.

What we also know now is that their senior management is a vipers den of ‘Phant political operatives, (their founder and CEO is a former Bush appointee) and failed right wing candidates, and (only a Wiki away) that they have aggressively harassed other non-profits in an attempt to prevent them from using the term “for the cure”.

What you may not know is that their top top public-health official resigned in protest over the decision, and that the board overruled the professional staff who recommended against defunding PP.

And finally, we have a report that they aggressively lobbied against the Breast & Cervical Cancer Prevention & Treatment Act because they wanted the money to go through them, they lobbied against single payer in Obamacare, and fought to neuter the Breast Cancer & Environmental Research Act, and they appear to be attempting to use this as a wedge in order to create a Republican political opening.

That, and the fact that Republicans want women to be punished for having sex, so they oppose birth control and things like the HPV vaccine.

I’m with what Atrios says:

It’s OK To Say You Suck

Just echoing what tbogg had already said, but what Komen has done is made it ok to point out that they kind of suck. And they kind of sucked before all this, but not many people ever want to rain on the pink paradise parade. They managed to associate their brand with a cause, and to criticize the brand was to criticize the cause.

Now we all get to say: you suck hard.

I don’t think that they realize is just how much scrutiny they will be getting as an organization now that they will no longer be seen as synonymous with the fight against breast cancer.

[on edit]
Well, now that their original explanation, that they cut off any organization under an official (trumped up in the case of PP) investigation, because they are continuing to give to Penn State, home of the pedophile friendly athletic department, which is under a legitimate investigation, they have a new alibi.

What Dan Savage Says…

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I don’t know how I missed this.

It is positively brilliant:

Bachmann and her ilk believe that woman who have sex—along with men who fail to purchase health insurance—deserve to die horrible deaths. That’s why they hate the HPV vaccine, that’s why they fought its introduction, that’s why they tell lies about it now. Because they want women to die.

Read the rest. It’s short.

It’s also true.

The majority of the people who who seek to criminalize abortion want to punish women for having sex, and anything that resembles freedom in their personal, in any way they can.

It’s an unalloyed evil that these folks see The Handmaiden’s Tale as a blueprint Rather than a warning.

Another Core Democratic Party Value Betrayed

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This one isn’t a surprise. Barack Obama has a long tradition of ambivalence to women’s reproductive rights.

He’s been uninterested in women’s issues since his days in the Illinois legislature.

Most recently, we have the ruling by HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius overruling the FDA’s decision to make the Plan B morning after pill an over the counter medication.

Let’s be clear here. This is the first time ever that an HHS Secretary has overruled the FDA.

And Obama is fine with this:

President Obama, who took office pledging to put science ahead of politics, averted a skirmish with conservatives in the nation’s culture wars on Thursday by endorsing his health secretary’s decision to block over-the-counter sales of an after-sex contraceptive pill to girls under age 17.

The administration action inevitably raised questions about whether politics was trump in this instance — especially from disappointed supporters in the scientific and women’s rights communities. Mr. Obama, who had criticized how his predecessor made decisions on issues like contraceptives, sought to dispel that idea in remarks to White House reporters.

“I did not get involved in the process,” he quickly asserted.

Yes, while Barack Obama is getting his faux populist cred on for the upcoming election, he had nothing to do with this decision.

In the control freak factory that is the Obama administration, the idea that this decision was not thoroughly vetted by both the policy and political wonks is simply not believeable.

In fact, if the head of HHS made this decision without passing it up the chain, it justify their firing.

Mr. Obama said the decision was made by his secretary of health and human services, Kathleen Sebelius. On Wednesday, in a rare move, she overruled the Food and Drug Administration, which had recommended that the morning-after pill Plan B One-Step is safe and should be sold without a prescription to people under 17, just as it is now to those who are 17 and older.

“I will say this, as the father of two daughters: I think it is important for us to make sure that we apply some common sense to various rules when it comes to over-the-counter medicine,” Mr. Obama said.

“And as I understand it, the reason Kathleen made this decision was she could not be confident that a 10-year-old or an 11-year-old going into a drugstore should be able — alongside bubble gum or batteries — be able to buy a medication that potentially, if not used properly, could end up having an adverse effect. And I think most parents would probably feel the same way.”

Bullsh%$.

This is just too dangerous, but acetaminophen, which causes, “over 56,000 injuries, 2,500 hospitalizations, and an estimated 450 deaths per year,” kids can buy that at the drug store.

And of course the whole, “Using his daughters as political human shield thing,” is contemptible.

First, he is putting a barrier in that will likely force some girls to ask their rapist’s permission, second, even a couple of hour delay to get a prescription makes the drug less effective, and third, it’s a couple of orders of magnitude (at least) safer than pregnancy.

Once again, I am glad that I don’t live in a swing state, so I don’t have to vote for this hypocritical ratf%$#.

Yeah, not primarying him was such a good thing.

Deja Vu

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Congress is looking at declaring pizza a vegetable:

The Obama administration’s push to limit the starchy vegetables and tomato paste served to millions of children at school each day was derailed by lawmakers this week, in effect enabling school cafeterias to continue offering pizza and french fries.

………

The proposal also would have nixed the favorable treatment granted to tomato paste. Currently, an eighth of a cup of tomato paste is credited with as much nutritional value as half a cup of vegetables and thus counts as one vegetable serving. That enables food makers to better market their pizzas to schools.

………

Ordinarily, these type of issues would be hashed out as the USDA gathers comments from the public while finalizing the proposal. But several lawmakers made an end run around the process. They added amendments to block the two changes, on starchy vegetables and tomato paste, to agriculture spending bills moving through the Senate and House.

Late Monday, Senate and House negotiators reconciled the differences between their two spending bills and unveiled the final version, which included language to halt the potato and tomato paste changes.

Just like Ronald Reagan declaring ketchup, but the tomato(e)* is a fruit.

I’m expecting to see a Mr. Fusion powered DeLorean back on the big screen.

*It’s an homage to J. Danforth Quayle, who has more brains and common sense than any of the current ‘Phant hopefuls.

Trust the TSA, Episode XLVIX

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It turns out that their airport scanners cause cancer:

On Sept. 23, 1998, a panel of radiation safety experts gathered at a Hilton hotel in Maryland to evaluate a new device that could detect hidden weapons and contraband. The machine, known as the Secure 1000, beamed X-rays at people to see underneath their clothing.

One after another, the experts convened by the Food and Drug Administration raised questions about the machine because it violated a longstanding principle in radiation safety — that humans shouldn’t be X-rayed unless there is a medical benefit.

“I think this is really a slippery slope,” said Jill Lipoti, who was the director of New Jersey’s radiation protection program. The device was already deployed in prisons; what was next, she and others asked — courthouses, schools, airports? “I am concerned … with expanding this type of product for the traveling public,” said another panelist, Stanley Savic, the vice president for safety at a large electronics company. “I think that would take this thing to an entirely different level of public health risk.”

…………

Research suggests that anywhere from six to 100 U.S. airline passengers each year could get cancer from the machines. Still, the TSA has repeatedly defined the scanners as “safe,” glossing over the accepted scientific view that even low doses of ionizing radiation — the kind beamed directly at the body by the X-ray scanners — increase the risk of cancer.

“Even though it’s a very small risk, when you expose that number of people, there’s a potential for some of them to get cancer,” said Kathleen Kaufman, the former radiation management director in Los Angeles County, who brought the prison X-rays to the FDA panel’s attention.

…………

As for the TSA, it skipped a public comment period required before deploying the scanners. Then, in defending them, it relied on a small body of unpublished research to insist the machines were safe, and ignored contrary opinions from U.S. and European authorities that recommended precautions, especially for pregnant women. Finally, the manufacturer, Rapiscan Systems, unleashed an intense and sophisticated lobbying campaign, ultimately winning large contracts.

(emphasis mine)

You have to love the Security Theater Industrial Complex.

This ain’t about keeping us safe, it’s about extracting money from the 99% for the benefit of the 1% by creating an atmosphere of unreasoning fear.

Best Healthcare System in the World, My Ass!

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The USA is now 40th in the world in infant mortality:

Babies in the United States have a higher risk of dying during their first month of life than do babies born in 40 other countries, according to a new report.

Some of the countries that outrank the United States in terms of newborn death risk are South Korea, Cuba, Malaysia, Lithuania, Poland and Israel, according to the study.

Researchers at the World Health Organization estimated the number of newborn deaths and newborn mortality rates of more than 200 countries over the last 20 years.

Malaysia????

Malaysia has a better infant mortality record?

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot.

FWIW, this problem is largely driven by preterm births, which are in tern driven by lack of access to adequate prenatal care.

Paul Krugman has the Pictures on Life Expectancy

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Click for full size


So, it’s the former Confederacy…
And Indian Reservations

And it’s an interesting picture.

He notices that most of the counties in question are in the old south, where taxes are low, unions are under seige, and the social safety net is non existent.

He wryly observes that, “geography of the decline speaks for itself.”

I actually noticed something else, in some places, like the red spot in South Dakota, it corresponds to the Pine Ridge and other Indian reservations in that part of the state.

I understand why, if the our healthcare system is beginning to fracture, it makes sense that Indian reservations would where we see the first signs, given the history of the destruction of their culture, the mismanagement of their affairs by the BIA, etc.

Basically, the reservations were structured for a very long time as something like a penal colony and a red-headed step-child, so it’s not surprising that they would be ground zero for many forms of decay.

As to the old Confederacy, I think that it’s more a matter of choice.

Post-reconstruction, there was an embrace of myths and philosophies that serve to keep most of the population down.

This is why the South is beginning to resemble the 3rd world.

90% of All Nursing Home Patients End Up On Medicaid

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Which means that it’s an issue that the Republicans will use to scare old people, but Obama and the Congressional Democrats are negotiating draconian cuts in the program, because they have some sort of twisted political suicide pact thing going on:

This would be brutal for the poor, particularly in Republican states, but even in blue ones. Governors are champing at the bit to cut enrollment and increase cost sharing. State budgets are still strained, and Medicaid is among the highest expenditures. Much of Medicaid spending goes to keep poor seniors in nursing homes, so a lot of the cuts would get targeted there. Which means that you can call this the “Force Your Mother-in-Law to Move In With You Act.”

Keep in mind that fully half of all the coverage expansions in the Affordable Care Act come from a Medicaid expansion. A removal of MOE [maintenance of effort requirements, which prohibit states from gutting the program] would basically undercut that; even though the federal government would pick up all the costs of the Medicaid expansion, states want to reduce their current level, and so the coverage expansion will just unravel. Or, the feds will put the burden on the states, and the states will just opt out of it. You’re talking about millions and millions of beneficiaries losing their coverage.

Un-dirtyword-believably stupid, particularly when Medicaid is a vehicle for much of the theoretical improvements in coverage under Obama’s precious Affordable Health Care Act.

I’m beginning to think that, notwithstanding his intellect, Obama really is not interested in doing anything beyond checking off boxes on something that resembles a standardized test, whether it makes a difference or not.

Ironically, that is his education policy.

Welcome to the 3rd World

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In a significant portion of the United States, life expectancy is falling:

Women in large swaths of the U.S. are dying younger than they were a generation ago, reversing nearly a century of progress in public health and underscoring the rising toll of smoking and record obesity.

Nationwide, life expectancy for American men and women has risen over the last two decades, and some U.S. communities still boast life expectancies as long as any in the world, according to newly released data. But over the last decade, the nation has experienced a widening gap between the most and least healthy places to live. In some parts of the United States, men and women are dying younger on average than their counterparts in nations such as Syria, Panama and Vietnam.

Overall, the United States is falling further behind other industrialized nations, many of which have also made greater strides in cutting child mortality and reducing preventable deaths.

In 737 U.S. counties out of more than 3,000, life expectancies for women declined between 1997 and 2007. For life expectancy to decline in a developed nation is rare. Setbacks on this scale have not been seen in the U.S. since the Spanish influenza epidemic of 1918, according to demographers.

You can find the original article here.

There are some idiots out there who will suggest that it’s because we are too fat*, but the deltas in life expectancy have primarily been through eliminating infant and child mortality, as well as pregnancy related medical issues.

What is going on here is that our medical system is breaking down.

We are undergoing the same collapse of our medical system, albeit more slowly, that occurred towards the end of the USSR, and there was not an outbreak of obesity there.

We have aging and under maintained infrastructure, we are wasting our resources on endless wars and a bloated defense establishment, and we are descending into a morass of corruption and self dealing with no prospect of it being fixed (see Geithner, Tim).

It sounds an awful lot like the declining days of the USSR.

*He says that the same thing happened when we went from hunter-gatherer to farmer, but it misses little facts like:

  • The average hunter gatherer works about 20 hours a week, the farmer works 60+ hours.
  • The diet of a hunter gatherer is measurably better than that of a bronze or early Iron age farmer, because staple crops are typically less nutritionally complete.
  • Agriculture requires that people move next to bodies of water, and live there full time, exposing them to things like Malaria, etc.


What really happened is that people could no longer be hunter gatherers because there was not enough land. You need something like 5 square km/year to support a single hunter gatherer, and once population crosses that threshold you move to herding, and eventually to farming, because the alternative is starvation.
life expectancies falling

If You Think that Vermont Will Get a Waiver, You Are Smoking Some Good Shit

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The state of Vermont is seeking a waiver to allow it to set up a single payer healthcare system:

On February 8, newly inaugurated Democratic Gov. Peter Shumlin unveiled his plan for a publicly funded single-payer healthcare system, which was introduced into the state’s legislature. If enacted, which appears likely, it will be the first system of its kind in the United States and Vermont would become the first state to abolish most forms of private health insurance.

………

The state cannot “get this done,” however, unless it receives a waiver from the federal government to bypass the federal reform legislation. Shumlin thinks that won’t be a problem; Vermont’s entire congressional delegation—Sens. Bernie Sanders (I) and Patrick Leahy (D) and Rep. Peter Welch (D)—support the single-payer effort and introduced a measure to allow states to receive waivers from federal reform requirements as soon as 2014, as long as they cover as many uninsured people as federal law would. (They currently have to wait until 2017.) On February 28, President Barack Obama told state governors he would support the earlier date.

If anyone out there thinks that Barack Obama look at the nsurance industry, and take off the knee pads and put away his ChapStick in order to allow Vermont to render health insurers irrelevant, you are delusional.

I Knew This in 1968

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It has been announced a new study has shown that male circumcision reduces cervical cancer risks for their partners:

Circumcising men can reduce cervical cancer risk in women, a new study shows.

The study involved more than 1,200 HIV-negative, heterosexual couples living in Uganda, where circumcision of male adults is increasingly encouraged as a means of slowing the spread of HIV/AIDS.

Half the men received the surgical procedure at enrollment and the other half were scheduled for circumcision after their participation in the trial ended.

Two years later, the female partners of the men who remained uncircumcised were more likely than the partners of the circumcised men to be infected with human papilloma virus (HPV) types most often associated with cervical cancer.

When I was about 6 years old, I remember discussing the correlation between uncircumcised partners and cervical cancer, though that was prior to the understanding of the correlation between HPV and cervical cancer.

This has been known for something like 100 years.

Jenny McCarthy Can Kiss My Shiny Metal Ass*

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Steven Wakefield’s now discredited paper in Lancet claiming a tie between autism and vaccines is now more than just a zealot doing bad science.

Brian Deer of the British Medical Journal reveals that it was outright fraud:

In the first part of a special BMJ series, Brian Deer exposes the bogus data behind claims that launched a worldwide scare over the measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine, and reveals how the appearance of a link with autism was manufactured at a London medical school.

………

Unknown to Mr 11, Wakefield was working on a lawsuit, for which he sought a bowel-brain “syndrome” as its centrepiece. Claiming an undisclosed £150 (€180, $230) an hour through a Norfolk solicitor named Richard Barr, he had been confidentially 8 put on the payroll two years before the paper was published, eventually grossing him £435 643, plus expenses.

(emphasis original)

Now the question is when he goes to jail for fraud, though if I were the prosecutor, I would add felony murder to the bill of indictment as well.

*Jenny McCarthy is a big antivaxxer.

Good News on the Legislative Front Today

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The repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell was signed into law, the Senate passed the START arms control treaty, and a new food safety bill that gives the FDA the power to order recalls passed the house and is heading to the President’s desk.

I still don’t see any gazillion dimensional chess here, but it’s a good day.

BTW, since the bill gives the military fairly broad discretion in how the ban is phased in, I would take even money that separations from the military will be continuing into 2012, because Obama won’t push the military on this.

Teabaggers Hate Puppies

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No, I’m serious. I’m not joking, and it’s not The Onion.

I mean that they have come out in favor of abusive puppy mills in Missouri.

Why are they doing this? Because puppies are just like cattle to Teabaggers, because, I guess, They Eat Puppies!!1!!

Again, really, I’m not joking:

A conservative group in Missouri is picking up the backing of the Tea Party and Joe The Plumber in its quest to stop the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) and other animal rights groups from passing “radical” anti-puppy mill legislation.

………

The Alliance For Truth also has the support of some better-known conservative activists, like Joe ‘The Plumber’ Wurzelbacher, who wrote on the Alliance For Truth site that the HSUS is “cowardly hiding behind animal cruelty, lying to our citizens and taking our constitutional rights away – one state at a time.”

He continues:

This bill forces breeders to limit the number of dogs they can own – regardless of care. Think about this a minute . . . . Should the government have the right to limit the number of houses a realtor can sell? Or the number of cattle a rancher can raise?

To serve puppies, it’s a cookbook!!!!!

<Facepalm>

Tobacco Regulations Largely Upheld By Court

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Big tobacco had a minor win, the judge said that the FDA could not the use of color and graphics in their advertisements, which is pretty much in line with the law as I understand it for “corporate free speech,” but allowed a ban on using merchandise and sponsorships to stand:

The judge struck down some modest restrictions on color and graphics in tobacco and on labels that tobacco companies said violated their free speech rights.

U.S. District Judge Joseph McKinley approved bans on sponsorships of athletic, cultural and social events and the use of tobacco imagery on such things as caps and T-shirts, rejecting the companies’ argument that the ban was too broad and failed to differentiate between adults and children.

He also upheld a requirement that warning labels cover half of the front and back of the packaging of tobacco products.

So, their package will be dominated by warning labels, and they cannot sponsor events or hand out ball caps, but they can use pictures and color on the labels.

Pretty much a win for the government.