Author Archives: SusannahGiles

These Antidepressants May Increase the Risk of Birth Defects

by SusannahGiles Posted on July 9, 2015

Mother Jones

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Babies born to women who took certain antidepressants during pregnancy may have an elevated risk of birth defects, according to a study published Wednesday in the medical journal BMJ.

Over the past few years, researchers have come to conflicting conclusions about the health impacts of taking common antidepressants called selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, or SSRIs, early in pregnancy. Some studies have found prenatal exposure to SSRIs to be associated with heart and brain defects, autism, and more, while others have found the risk to be minimal or nonexistent.

The BMJ study, led by researchers at the the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, shed light on the matter by analyzing federal data of 38,000 births between 1997 and 2009. Researchers interviewed the mothers of children with certain birth defects associated with SSRIs, asking if they took certain antidepressants during the first three months of pregnancy or the month prior to it. Unlike many previous studies, which looked at the effects of SSRIs as a group, the researchers looked at the health impacts of five specific drugs. They found that two drugs were associated with birth defects, while three of the drugs were not. Here are the details:

Sertraline (Zoloft): No increased risk of birth defects. (This was the most common of the five drugs, taken by forty percent of the women on antidepressants.)
Paroxetine (Paxil): Babies were between 2 and 3.5 more likely to be born with heart defects, brain defects, holes between heart chambers, and intestinal deformities.
Fluoxetine (Prozac): Babies were two times more likely to experience heart defects and skull and brain shape abnormalities.
Escitalopram (Lexapro): No increased risk of birth defects.
Citalopram (Celexa): No increased risk of birth defects.

Researchers are quick to note that even in the case of paroxetine and fluexetine, the absolute risk of these defects is still very small. If mothers take paroxetine early in pregnancy, for example, the chance of giving birth to a baby with anencephaly, a brain defect, rise from 2 in 10,000 to 7 in 10,000.

Some doctors worry that studies like this dissuade mothers who truly need mental health treatment from seeking it—particularly since the stress associated with depression in the mother can impact the health of the baby. Elizabeth Fitelson, a Columbia University psychiatrist who treats pregnant women with depression, described this tricky balance to the New York Times earlier this year: “For about 10 percent of my patients, I can readily say that they don’t need medication and should go off it,” she said. “I see a lot of high-risk women. Another 20 percent absolutely have to stay on medication—people who have made a suicide attempt every time they’ve been unmedicated. For the remaining 70 percent, it’s a venture into the unknowable.”

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These Antidepressants May Increase the Risk of Birth Defects

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Now that China and the U.S. have a climate deal, will India step up next?

by SusannahGiles Posted on November 14, 2014

Going for a hat trick?

Now that China and the U.S. have a climate deal, will India step up next?

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14 Nov 2014 2:48 PM

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Now that China and the U.S. have a climate deal, will India step up next?

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In the wake of news that China and the U.S. have struck a deal behind closed doors to limit greenhouse gas emissions, the world’s third largest emitter, India, is asking itself where it stands on the issue of emission caps, and whether it should be ready with a commitment for the U.N. climate conference in Paris in late 2015.

In past conversations about an international plan to tackle climate change, India often got lumped in with China. It has a similarly large, billion-plus population and a similarly growing appetite for fossil fuels. In the past, the two countries have together resisted emissions caps. So for India especially, China’s new commitment to peak its emissions by 2030 is a game changer.

Now that China has changed course, Indian policymakers are expected to try and distance their country from China in these discussions about carbon emissions. India still pollutes far less than China on the whole, the argument goes, and far less than countries like the U.S. and Australia per capita. At the same time, roughly a third of the country’s 1.2 billion people lack electricity, and the country’s carbon budget needs room to allow them to get it. An editorial in The Times of India argues today:

For [the] agreement to be implemented it is imperative that the US takes the lead in climate change mitigation. That’s not only because the US is among the highest per capita as well as historical emitters, but also because, more than any other country, it has the resources and innovative capacity to develop green technology. That said, the US-China deal also puts pressure on India to commit to emission caps of its own. India should accept the challenge while also decoupling itself from China.

Given that India’s share of global carbon emissions last year was only 7% compared to China’s 28% and the US’s 14%, and that India is the lowest per capita emitter among major economies, New Delhi has a strong case for pitching for different standards.

India’s official thinking on climate change is a policy advanced by Manmohan Singh, who served as the country’s prime minister until earlier this year. Back in 2007, he declared at a G-20 summit in Germany that India’s per capita emissions will never exceed the average per capita emissions for developed countries. Right now, that affords India quite a bit of elbow room. If the U.S. and the European Union pull off the cuts they’re talking about, India would have a bit less leeway, though some in the Indian government believe that even then the country could continue increasing its emissions for 15 or 20 years beyond the 2030 cap China’s agreed to, and still be below the developed world’s per capita average.

Global Carbon Project

via

Vox

So emissions cuts, at the moment, don’t seem to be a policy priority for India. Here’s new Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s environmental minister, Prakash Javadekar, in an interview with The New York Times immediately after the September U.N. Climate Summit in New York:

“What cuts?” Mr. Javadekar said. “That’s for more developed countries. The moral principle of historic responsibility cannot be washed away.” Mr. Javadekar was referring to an argument frequently made by developing economies — that developed economies, chiefly the United States, which spent the last century building their economies while pumping warming emissions into the atmosphere — bear the greatest responsibility for cutting pollution.

Mr. Javadekar said that government agencies in New Delhi were preparing plans for India’s domestic actions on climate change, but he said they would lead only to a lower rate of increase in carbon emissions. It would be at least 30 years, he said, before India would likely see a downturn.

But there are also signs that India is looking for another path forward. Though the country’s coal use is increasing, it aims to double the amount of energy it gets from renewables by 2020. The new prime minister has shown a predilection for sustainable energy, particularly solar. Earlier this month, he reconstituted an almost-defunct panel tasked with guiding how the country deals with climate change adaptation and mitigation. On that panel is Rajendra K. Pachauri, head of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which recently advised that tackling poverty and tackling climate change are not mutually exclusive — in fact, it is difficult to do the former without doing the latter.

And the Modi administration has dropped hints that its position going into the U.N. Lima climate conference in a few weeks has not yet been finalized. “We are consulting experts, former negotiators, and civil society organisations in order to craft our position in Lima,” one government source told India’s Economic Times. So there may yet be room for cautious optimism that the third-biggest polluter will soon step forward with its own timeline for peaking and reducing emissions.

And if it doesn’t? A recent U.N. report modeled a way in which the world could avoid 2 degrees Celsius of warming while India’s emissions continue to grow as it hooks its impoverished people up to the grid. But for that to happen, China would have to stick to its commitment to let emissions peak at 2030, and the wealthier major polluters — the U.S., the E.U., Japan, and Russia — would have to take big steps to shift their sources of energy. Don’t bet on all that happening on schedule.

Regardless, the U.S.-China deal unexpectedly thrust India into the hot seat. Now, whether India likes it or not, the world will be watching closely — first, at the G-20 meeting in Brisbane this week, then at Lima next month and in the run-up to Paris next year — to see what steps it might take to turn down the temperature.

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Now that China and the U.S. have a climate deal, will India step up next?

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Northwestern’s Football Team Just Voted on Unionization. Here’s What Happens Next.

by SusannahGiles Posted on April 25, 2014

Mother Jones

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Northwestern University football players voted on unionization today following a push from current and former athletes, a regional labor board hearing in their favor, and a concerted effort by university officials to convince players to vote no. Now that ballots have been cast, the landscape of college sports has been…well, it’s pretty much the same. For now, at least.

While the votes have been cast, they will not be counted until the National Labor Relations Board headquarters in Washington, DC, rules on whether the athletes are employees, which could take months. The board’s Chicago region found that they were, but Northwestern appealed that decision. The university has been active in pushing players not to unionize: Football players received iPads and were thrown a party at a bowling alley the first day of practice, though Northwestern officials said it was unrelated to the upcoming union vote. Head coach Pat Fitzgerald emailed the team that they might not be able to trust a union, and that the downside of organizing is much bigger than the upside. “You have nothing to gain by forming a union,” he wrote, keeping with the school’s theme that players have plenty to lose but their chains.

Just by securing the right for players to vote on representation, though, union advocates say they’ve already won. “Today is special because college athletes exercised their rights under labor laws, rights the NCAA has fought hard to deny them,” said Ramogi Huma, president of the College Athletes Players Association, which will represent the players if they vote to unionize. “Today’s vote clearly demonstrates that amateurism is a myth and that college athletes are employees.”

The results of the vote will only matter if the NLRB upholds the decision that the football players are Northwestern employees. If players voted no, the status quo will remain and players will be free to vote again next year (and every year after that). If they voted yes, Northwestern will likely refuse to bargain, which would take the case to federal court, dragging the process out even longer.

It may be a slow march, but the fight for unionization—led by Huma and former Northwestern quarterback Kain Colter—is already paying dividends. Last week the NCAA removed restrictions on food for athletes, and president Mark Emmert told ESPN that the NCAA will likely vote on covering the difference between a scholarship and a full cost of college attendance, as well as adding an extra year of eligibility for players who are forced to sit out a year after transferring to another school. While those solutions aren’t exactly what the union has called for, they are the first of what will likely be many compromises as players and advocates keep the pressure on.

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Northwestern’s Football Team Just Voted on Unionization. Here’s What Happens Next.

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Sheriff’s Deputies Confirm Newsweek’s Bitcoin Quotes

by SusannahGiles Posted on March 8, 2014

Mother Jones

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Newsweek’s Leah McGrath Goodman claims that she’s located the reclusive Bitcoin inventor “Satoshi Nakamoto.” Earlier today, I suggested that (a) her primary piece of evidence was a brief conversation she had with Nakamoto in front of his home with sheriff’s deputies present, and (b) this could be pretty easily checked. Sure enough:

The San Gabriel Valley suburb of Temple City was inundated by reporters Thursday after Newsweek alleged resident Dorian Nakamoto was really “Satoshi Nakamoto,” the man behind the virtual currency. In the Newsweek article he is quoted as telling the reporter “I’m no longer involved in that and I cannot discuss it” while deputies are present.

….Capt. Mike Parker said he has spoken to both deputies who responded to the suspicious persons call on Feb. 20. He said “one of the two deputies had heard of bitcoins but only knew vaguely about them” prior to the call. He said the reporters’ statements and questions about Bitcoin prompted the conversation.

“Both sheriff’s deputies agreed that the quotes published in the March 6, 2014, Newsweek magazine Bitcoin article that were attributed to the resident and to one of the deputies were accurate.”

Count this as very big piece of evidence that Goodman’s reporting is accurate and that Temple City’s Dorian Nakamoto really is the inventor of Bitcoin. It’s not quite a smoking gun, but it’s getting there.

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Sheriff’s Deputies Confirm Newsweek’s Bitcoin Quotes

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Montana Prosecutor Allegedly Told Mother of 5-Year-Old Sexual-Assault Victim That "Boys Will Be Boys"

by SusannahGiles Posted on February 16, 2014

Mother Jones

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On Friday, the Department of Justice sent a letter to the Missoula County Attorney’s Office in Montana, alleging that it has found “substantial evidence” that prosecutors there systematically discriminate against female sexual-assault victims. According to the DOJ, the office considers sexual-assault cases involving adult women a low priority, often treats these victims with disrespect—quoting religious passages to one woman who reported assault, in a way that made her feel judged—and declines to prosecute some cases in which it has confessions or eyewitnesses, including a case in which Missoula police obtained incriminating statements from a man who admitted to having sexual intercourse with a mentally ill woman, who had asked him to stop.

“We uncovered evidence of a disturbing pattern of deficiencies in the handling of these cases by the County Attorney’s Office, a pattern that not only denies victims meaningful access to justice, but places the safety of all women in Missoula at risk,” wrote Acting Assistant Attorney General Jocelyn Samuels for the Civil Rights Division, in a statement on Friday.

In a statement emailed to Mother Jones on Saturday, Missoula County Attorney Fred Van Valkenburg wrote, “I think that everything the DOJ is saying about our office is false. These people are as unethical as any I have ever seen. They obviously have a political agenda they want to push and the truth does not matter to them.” Van Valkenburg also told The Missoulian, “There was no effort whatsoever by the DOJ to in any way inform me before they made this thing public.” (A Justice Department spokeswoman told Mother Jones on Saturday that it has reached out to the Missoula County Attorney’s Office “more than a half-dozen times over the past 21 months in an attempt to reach an amicable resolution.” She added, “We remain confident in the integrity of our findings.”)

Attorney General Eric Holder launched its federal investigation into how Missoula authorities handle sexual-assault cases in the spring of 2012. Last year, following the investigation, the Justice Department recommended that the University of Montana and the Missoula Police Department beef up resources to combat rape, and entered into agreements with both offices. In December 2013, the DOJ recommended that the Missoula County Attorney’s Office enter a similar agreement. But since the Justice Department never issued a findings report for the prosecutor’s office—like it did with the university and the police—Van Valkenburg said there wasn’t sufficient evidence of wrongdoing to justify the demands. He also claimed that DOJ was overstepping its legal authority. This month, he declared that he was taking legal action against the DOJ, rather than make changes required by the settlement. Now, the Justice Department has released those findings, noting that the prosecutor’s office failed to provide documents, information, or access to staff during the investigation.

According to the Justice Department’s letter, in one instance, a deputy county attorney in Missoula allegedly quoted religious passages to a woman who’d reported sexual assault “in a way that the victim interpreted to mean that the Deputy County Attorney was judging her negatively for have made the report.” In another case, the Justice Department spoke to a woman whose daughter was sexually assaulted, at the age of five, by an adolescent boy, who was sentenced to two years of community service for the crime. A prosecutor handling the case allegedly told the mother that “boys will be boys.” Another sexual-assault victim discussing prosecution options was allegedly told by a deputy county attorney, “All you want is revenge.”

The Justice Department reported that some women claimed they declined to pursue prosecution because of negative reports they’d heard about the prosecutor’s office. A young woman who was gang-raped as a student at the University of Montana allegedly told the DOJ that her friend decided not to report her own rape to the police or prosecutors after hearing about her experience dealing with the prosecutor’s office. In another case, a clinical psychologist who had counseled numerous sexual-assault survivors in Missoula allegedly told the Justice Department that after she, herself, was sexually assaulted, she was reluctant to have her case prosecuted, given the “horrendous” stories she’d heard.

The Justice Department also determined that, after a review of police files, “in some cases…Missoula Police officers had developed substantial evidence to support prosecution, but the office without documented explanation, declined to charge the case.” According to the DOJ, in one case, police obtained a confession from a man who admitted to raping a woman while she was unconscious, and recommended that he be charged with rape and car theft. The prosecutor’s office allegedly declined to bring charges, citing “insufficient evidence.” In another case, a man admitted to having sex with a mentally ill woman, and said that at some point she asked him to stop and said that he was hurting her—but he wasn’t sure when he’d stopped. The police also recommended rape charges in that case, and the prosecutor declined to bring charges, according to the Justice Department. The DOJ determined that the prosecutor’s office declined to prosecute “nearly every case” involving nonstranger assaults on adult women who had a mental or physical disability, or who were intoxicated by drugs or alcohol.

The Justice Department noted that the prosecutor’s office has made some recent improvements to the office, including requiring deputy county attorneys to attend sexual-assault prosecution training sessions. But the DOJ said that the office still needs to make the “commonsense” improvements it recommended in December. Van Valkenburg told The Missoulian over the weekend that he plans to proceed with his lawsuit and “DOJ should respond to our lawsuit, rather than try to poison the well with this stuff.”â&#128;&#139; He also told Mother Jones the following in January: “The Missoula Police Department and our office have done a very good job of handling sexual-assault allegations regardless of what national and local news accounts may indicate.”

You can view the full DOJ letter here:

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Missoula County Attorney Letter 2/14/14 (PDF)

Missoula County Attorney Letter 2/14/14 (Text)

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Montana Prosecutor Allegedly Told Mother of 5-Year-Old Sexual-Assault Victim That "Boys Will Be Boys"

Posted in Anchor, FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, PUR, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Montana Prosecutor Allegedly Told Mother of 5-Year-Old Sexual-Assault Victim That "Boys Will Be Boys"