Tag Archives: ada

Guilty No More: Flossing Doesn’t Work

by cazatrovat Posted on August 2, 2016

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

After years of judgment from dentists and abandoned New Year’s resolutions, we may now say without shame: “No, I don’t floss.”

Despite dentists and federal health agencies recommending flossing for decades, the Associated Press looked at research from the Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Agriculture, and found little evidence that flossing actually helps keep your mouth clean.

Incredibly, reviewing studies that compared the effectiveness of using floss and brushing teeth to only brushing, the AP found most evidence was “weak” or “very low” that floss helps get rid of plaque.

The American Dental Association has already responded, saying it continues to recommend flossing once a day.

“Interdental cleaners such as floss are an essential part of taking care of your teeth and gums,” an ADA press release said. “Cleaning between teeth removes plaque that can lead to cavities or gum disease from the areas where a toothbrush can’t reach.”

The ADA provides a “seal of approval” to floss products that meet their safety and effectiveness standards, and charges manufacturers $14,500 for the initial evaluation, according to the AP. The ADA tells the AP it doesn’t profit from the evaluations, but the AP notes that companies are allowed to design their studies.

Many of the studies that best supported flossing, the AP found, didn’t test enough people, used outdated methods, or were too short to be conclusive. Notably, last year’s edition of the Dietary Guidelines for Americans removed flossing from its recommendations.

As one review of the literature on flossing put it: “The majority of available studies fail to demonstrate that flossing is generally effective in plaque removal.”

See the original article here – 

Guilty No More: Flossing Doesn’t Work

Posted in FF, GE, LG, ONA, oven, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Guilty No More: Flossing Doesn’t Work

New Study Suggests That ADA Works Pretty Well In Job Market

by QuinnHilderbran Posted on November 2, 2015

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

If you’re a hiring manage and you’ve been getting a lot of resumes lately, this might not have anything to do with an improving economy. It might instead be due to the blizzard of academic research that’s conducted by sending out thousands of resumes with tiny differences in order to figure out how hiring managers respond to race/college/political party/hobbies/etc. The latest experiment is to see how hiring managers respond to disabilities, and the results are more interesting than you might think. Here are the basic results:

No surprise here. If you indicate that you have any kind of disability, there’s less interest in hiring you, and these results are consistent across all sizes of companies—though they’re more pronounced in small companies—and across both private-sector and public-sector employers. But now take a look at this:

When it comes to getting an actual callback, small companies are far less likely to respond if you have a disability. But larger companies show little discrimination at all. In fact, many of them are more likely to call you back if you have a disability. The most dramatic difference is among government hiring managers: if you don’t have a disability, no callback. If you do have a disability, the rate of callbacks is the highest in the study. The authors provide the most obvious explanation:

Given that small employers are not subject to the ADA, this result suggests that small employers are engaging in discrimination while the ADA is constraining discriminatory behavior of medium and large employers. The story is complicated, however, by the lack of clear changes in employer responses at the ADA employment threshold…and by consideration of state DDL’s….This latter result may be due to a lack of knowledge of state laws among small employers, while the federal ADA is much better known. Large employers are more likely to have formal HR departments that will be aware of both the ADA and state requirements, and may be more likely to have prior experience in hiring people with disabilities so they are more comfortable in considering applicants with disabilities.

So the picture is complicated, but the most likely interpretation is that ADA has been fairly successful in the job market. If you pass a law that forbids discrimination, and then enforce it, you get results. It’s yet another example of big government working pretty well.

Excerpt from:

New Study Suggests That ADA Works Pretty Well In Job Market

Posted in FF, GE, LG, ONA, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on New Study Suggests That ADA Works Pretty Well In Job Market

The Americans With Disabilities Act Is Turning 25. Watch the Dramatic Protest That Made It Happen.

by DanaOFerrall Posted on July 25, 2015

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

Twenty-five years ago this weekend, the Americans With Disabilities Act was signed into law, officially outlawing discrimination against disabled people in employment, transportation, public accommodation, communications, and government services. The law was a long time coming: Activists had fought for decades against unequal access to jobs and exclusion from public schools. But the ADA might never have gotten to President George H.W. Bush’s desk were it not for a group of activists in wheelchairs who took matters into their own hands earlier that year.

On March 12, 1990, hundreds of people with disabilities gathered at the foot of the Capitol building in Washington to protest the bill’s slow movement through Congress. Dozens left behind their wheelchairs, got down on their hands and knees, and began pulling themselves slowly up the 83 steps toward the building’s west entrance, as if daring the politicians inside to continue ignoring all the barriers they faced. Among the climbers was Jennifer Keelan, an eight-year-old from Denver with cerebral palsy. “I’ll take all night if I have to!” she yelled while dragging herself higher and higher.

Here’s some footage of the protest, via PBS’s Independent Lens:

The Capitol Crawl, as it became known, made national headlines and pushed lawmakers to pass the ADA into law. When Bush finally signed the landmark bill, it was seen as one of the country’s most comprehensive pieces of civil rights legislation to date. But it was not a total cure-all, according to Susan Parish, a professor of disability policy at Brandeis University. The Supreme Court later watered it down, she says, in a series of decisions that created a narrow definition of disability.

In 2008, lawmakers passed amendments to strengthen the ADA, but Parish says people with disabilities have still struggled to gain equal access to employment, in part because employers are expected to comply with the law but do not have to follow reporting requirements. “I feel that the country needs a full-scale affirmative action program for people with disabilities,” she said in a recent interview.

President Obama issued an executive order in 2010 requiring the federal government to hire more people with disabilities. In a speech earlier this week, he said the West Wing receptionist, Leah Katz-Hernandez, is the first deaf American to hold her position. But despite some progress since 1990, he acknowledged, “We’ve still got to do more to make sure that people with disabilities are paid fairly for their labor, to make sure they are safe in their homes and their communities…I don’t have to tell you this fight is not over.”

Continue reading – 

The Americans With Disabilities Act Is Turning 25. Watch the Dramatic Protest That Made It Happen.

Posted in Anchor, FF, G & F, GE, LAI, Landmark, LG, ONA, PUR, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on The Americans With Disabilities Act Is Turning 25. Watch the Dramatic Protest That Made It Happen.