Tag Archives: doctors

EPA’s new environmental justice adviser is not down with its coal ash plan.

The legendary Stephen Hawking passed away early Wednesday in his Cambridge home.

Later in his life, Hawking channeled his famous intellect into averting Armageddon. “We face awesome environmental challenges: climate change, food production, overpopulation, the decimation of other species, epidemic disease, acidification of the oceans,” he wrote in an op-ed in 2016. “Together, they are a reminder that we are at the most dangerous moment in the development of humanity.”

While he predicted humans would need to find a new home on another planet to survive, he also wrote that “right now we only have one planet, and we need to work together to protect it.”

Hawking reportedly wanted his tombstone engraved with the famous equation for black hole entropy that he developed with colleague Jacob Bekenstein. “Things can get out of a black hole, both to the outside, and possibly, to another universe,” he said in a 2016 lecture. “So, if you feel you are in a black hole, don’t give up. There’s a way out.”

Doctors didn’t expect Hawking to live past 25 after he was diagnosed with ALS as a young man. He surpassed their expectations by 51 years. So if he beat the odds on his own, maybe the rest of us can take inspiration from him. As Hawking once said, “Climate change is one of the great dangers we face, and it’s one we can prevent if we act now.”

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EPA’s new environmental justice adviser is not down with its coal ash plan.

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IUD Sales Set to Soar After Trump Win

Mother Jones

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After Barack Obama was elected president in 2008, gun shops did a land office business selling firearms to folks who were convinced that Obama was going to take their guns away. Now the shoe is on the other foot:

Since Donald Trump became president-elect, many women in California say they’ve started looking into long-acting, reversible birth control methods, in case access to contraception or abortions is rolled back. Trump has not said he wants to restrict birth control, but he has spoken often of repealing Obamacare, which could have that effect.

Collins said 45 people were ahead of her in line when she called the clinic. “So I was not the only person with that idea,” she said.

Doctors and Planned Parenthood offices across the state report that in the last week an increased number of women have asked about IUDs. The devices are inserted once and some types could even outlast a two-term Trump presidency. Google Trends shows more searches for “IUD” on Nov. 10 than in the previous 90 days.

I suppose there’s no harm in this. Long-acting birth control is generally a good idea, and IUDs are an excellent choice for many women. Still, don’t be like the gun nuts. It’s possible that Trump could take executive action that rolls back birth control to the dark ages of 2013, but that’s about it. And he hasn’t given any indication that he even wants to do that.

Still, IUDs are great! And there’s a chance that a year from now you might have to pay more for them. Might as well get one now, I suppose. Especially if you work for Hobby Lobby.

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IUD Sales Set to Soar After Trump Win

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Early Warning: Another Medical Malpractice "Crisis" May Be on the Horizon

Mother Jones

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I have some bad news for you, though I admit it won’t be immediately obvious from this Wall Street Journal article:

Americans are starting to fight back against a wave of insurance-price increases on decades-old life policies.

Over the past year, several major insurers have notified tens of thousands of people of higher costs to keep their policies in force, with increases ranging from midsingle-digit percentages to more than 200%, according to financial advisers. To justify the increases, they blamed the impact on their investments from the Federal Reserve’s decision to keep interest rates lower for longer.

….“Companies are under a lot of pressure to boost returns in this low-interest-rate environment, and this is one lever they have,” said Scott Robinson, an associate managing director at Moody’s Investors Service….Life insurers have been among the companies hardest hit by the Fed’s policies, which have been mirrored by many central banks around the world. These firms earn much of their profit by investing customers’ premiums in bonds until claims come due.

So what’s the bad news, aside from the fact that a bunch of folks who bought life insurance are getting screwed? Just this: insurance company investments are doing poorly, and that means premiums have to go up. This hits life insurance first, but soon it will hit other types of insurance too—including medical malpractice insurance. This has happened three times in the past four decades, and in all three cases the result has been a tidal wave of claims that medmal suits are ruining the country and nuisance suits needs to be reined in.

The evidence is pretty clear that this isn’t true. The last time I looked, during the medmal crisis of 2003, it was quite clear that neither the number of medmal suits nor the amount of money paid out had changed much. What had happened was the usual: insurance company investments were doing poorly and they raised premiums to make up for it.

So if insurance companies are once again having portfolio problems, it’s a good guess that this will hit the medmal industry sooner or later, and premiums will go up. Doctors will start screaming, and Republicans will demand caps on malpractice payouts—something that does nothing to rein in nuisance lawsuits but does hurt trial lawyers badly. And trial lawyers give lots of money to Democrats.

Maybe we’ll dodge a bullet this time. But if we don’t, and medmal premiums start rising again, keep your ears open for all the usual bogus tort reform arguments. They’ll follow just as surely as the night follows the day.

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Early Warning: Another Medical Malpractice "Crisis" May Be on the Horizon

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Pentagon Won’t Prosecute Troops Involved in Deadly Strike on Afghan Doctors Without Borders Hospital

Mother Jones

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The Pentagon does not plan to prosecute any of the military personnel involved in a deadly airstrike on a hospital in Afghanistan last fall.

The announcement came as the Pentagon released its investigation, which provided new details about the circumstances that led to the attack.

The incident, in which a US aircraft bombed a Doctors Without Borders medical facility continuously for at least 30 minutes, left 42 civilians dead—including medical staff and patients. The attack destroyed the main building, including the emergency room and intensive care unit. Some patients were burned alive in their hospital beds.

After a six-month investigation, the Pentagon concluded 16 service members, including one general officer, “failed to comply with the law of armed conflict and rules of engagement.”

Those individuals got administrative sanctions but will not face criminal charges, announced General Joseph Votel, commander of the US Central Command.

Some were members of the air crew that carried out the strike and others were members of the Army Special Forces unit that called in air support. Five of the service members were ordered out of Afghanistan and the general officer was removed from command. Others were sent to counseling, ordered to take retraining courses, and issued letters of reprimand—which can prevent future promotions.

A Doctors Without Borders (also known as Médecins Sans Frontières) official said the organization hasn’t had time to review the full investigation but the sanctions that have been announced so far are insufficient.

“The administrative punishments announced by the US today are out of proportion to the destruction of a protected medical facility, the deaths of 42 people, the wounding of dozens of others, and the total loss of vital medical services to hundreds of thousands of people,” Doctors Without Borders press officer Tim Shenk said in a statement.

“The lack of meaningful accountability sends a worrying signal to warring parties, and is unlikely to act as a deterrent against future violations of the rules of war,” he said.

The organization also renewed its call for an independent investigation by the International Humanitarian Fact-Finding Commission into whether the incident constitutes a war crime. General Votel emphasized that the investigation concluded that no war crime had taken place because the targeting of the hospital had been unintentional. The report calls the bombing a “tragic incident” caused by “a combination of human errors, compounded by process and equipment failures.”

The investigation also revealed new details about the bombing:

The aircrew was supposed to be targeting a nearby building, which had been overrun by Taliban fighters.
When the crew was en route to its target in Kunduz, the aircraft flew off course.
Due to technological and communication failures, the air and ground crew mistakenly identified the hospital as the intended target.
Even though the hospital was on the military’s no-strike list, the aircrew didn’t have access to that list during their flight.

The US government also announced that it has offered condolence payments to more than 170 individuals and families affected by the strike, and the Department of Defense has committed to spend $5.7 million to help rebuild the hospital.

You can read the Pentagon’s summary of its findings here.

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Pentagon Won’t Prosecute Troops Involved in Deadly Strike on Afghan Doctors Without Borders Hospital

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A Week of Slaughter in Aleppo Also Destroyed One Of Its Hospitals

Mother Jones

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On Wednesday night, two missiles from the Assad regime’s Syrian Arab Air Force struck the Al Quds hospital in Aleppo, killing at least 14 medical staff and patients, including one of the last pediatricians who still worked in Syria’s largest city. Within 24 hours of the attack, widespread airstrikes and shelling in the area killed at least another 60 people, bringing Syria’s death toll for the week to around 200. Rescue workers from Syria Civil Defense, which lost five of its own members when targeted strikes hit one of its centers earlier in the week, report that they are “still dragging people from the rubble.”

“This devastating attack has destroyed a vital hospital in Aleppo, and the main referral center for pediatric care in the area,” wrote Muskilda Zancada, Doctors Without Borders’ head of mission for Syria, in an online statement. “Where is the outrage among those with the power and obligation to stop this carnage?”

In Syria’s five-year-old war that has claimed hundreds of thousands of lives, the attack on the Doctors Without Borders-supported Al Quds hospital is part of a broader pattern of Bashar Al-Assad’s systematic targeting of civilian infrastructure. Airstrikes on civilian neighborhoods and medical facilities are the norm, despite being illegal under international law. The United Nations estimates that at least half of Syria’s medical facilities have been destroyed. A report from the Syrian American Medical Society (SAMS) from February 2015 estimated that some 600 medical professionals had been killed in the fighting, a figure that doesn’t account for the past year of the conflict.

“Compounding this tragedy is that the dedication and commitment of the staff of Al Quds, working under unimaginable conditions, has been unwavering throughout this bloody conflict,” said Zancada. A press release from SAMS this morning said that Mohammed Wasim Moaz, the last remaining pediatrician in the eastern part of Aleppo, was considered “one of the best pediatricians left in Syria.”

This week’s increased attacks on Aleppo come amid what was supposed to be a partial ceasefire in Syria, but which has all but collapsed. Staffan de Mistura, the UN envoy for Syria, characterized the talks as “barely alive,” the Guardian reports. “How can you have substantial talks when you have only news about bombing and shelling?” he asked.

Meanwhile, many believe the situation in Aleppo will only get worse in coming weeks, with reports of a military buildup around Aleppo that some fear will result in the government’s attempt to embark on a complete siege of the city’s civilian neighborhoods.

“Wherever you are, you hear explosions of mortars, shelling and planes flying over,” said Valter Gros of the International Committee of the Red Cross in a statement yesterday. “There is no neighborhood of the city that hasn’t been hit. People are living on the edge. Everyone here fears for their lives and nobody knows what is coming next.”

In videos of the ongoing violence posted online, rescue workers drag bodies—including those of children—from collapsed buildings, old men sob, residents race injured victims away in cars, and a terrified young girl in pigtails cries quietly in the arms of a man.

A week before the most recent onslaught, Syria Civil Defense—a volunteer organization established in 2013 that attempts to provide help to victims of the massive bombing campaigns—posted a heartbreaking tweet, as new rounds of airstrikes began hitting Aleppo following a brief respite from the fighting under the ceasefire. The tweet foreshadows what appears to be yet another bloody chapter in Syria’s war:

“We return to work with sadness and heavy hearts,” Syria Civil Defense reported a few days later. As the UN warns of a “catastrophic breakdown“—noting that in the past 48 hours, one Syrian has been killed every 25 minutes—the worst may still lie ahead.

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A Week of Slaughter in Aleppo Also Destroyed One Of Its Hospitals

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