Tag Archives: medical

16 Charts That Show the Shocking Cost of Gun Violence in America

by DanielleGUA Posted on April 15, 2015

Mother Jones

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By Julia Lurie and Jaeah Lee | Wed Apr. 15, 2015 06:00 AM ET

chapters

what does gun violence cost?
by the numbers
the survivors

The data below is the result of a joint investigation by Mother Jones and Ted Miller, an economist at the Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation. Based on Miller’s work identifying and quantifying the societal impacts of gun violence, the annual price tag comes to at least $229 billion a year (based on 2012 data). That includes $8.6 billion in direct spending—from emergency care and other medical expenses to court and prison costs—as well as $221 billion in less tangible “indirect” costs, which include impacts on productivity and quality of life for victims and their communities. (See the rest of our special investigation here.)

See more of our special investigation:

What does gun violence really cost?

8 survivors tell their stories

Watch: The cost of gun violence, in 90 seconds

More about our methodology and data

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16 Charts That Show the Shocking Cost of Gun Violence in America

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Science Is Ignoring its “Publication Pollution” Problem

by LillianM49 Posted on April 6, 2015

Mother Jones

In a damning op-ed published Friday, Arthur Caplan, a medical ethicist at NYU’s Langone Medical Center, called out scientists who are turning a blind eye to the scientific publishing industry’s “publication pollution problem.” At the root of the matter: pay-to-publish journals with weak or nonexistent pre-publication review standards that are “corroding the reliability of research.” As he wrote in the Mayo Clinic Proceedings, “neither the leadership nor those who rely on the truth of science and medicine are sounding the alarm loudly or moving to fix the problem with appropriate energy.”

Consider this recent experiment, as described in the (unfortunately paywalled) commentary:

Harvard researcher Mark Shrime recently wrote an article entitled “Cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs?: The Surgical and Neoplastic Role of Cacao Extract in Breakfast Cereals.” The fake authors he chose for the piece were Pinkerton A. LeBrain and Orson Welles. Shrime submitted this fake article to 37 journals. At last count, 17 had accepted the obviously phony, nonsensical paper. John Bohannon did the same thing with a completely phony paper, with even more depressing results in terms of peer reviewed acceptance to journals. The journals that took these gibberish-laden, concocted articles were scam, author-must-pay, profit driven entities that nevertheless have every appearance of being legitimate journals.

“Predatory publishers” create a seeming win-win situation: the publisher makes money and the author gets a journal article published—currency in the world of science and academia. The result?

Predatory, pay-to-publish, non-peer-reviewed journals flood disciplines with bad or fake science, making it hard, much as light pollution does, to see the real stars. Worse, publication pollution lessons the impact of legitimate science in the formation of public policy, undermining public health, weakening the overall value of legitimate publications in influencing policy, and creating opportunities for the continued power of crackpot views that corrode many areas of public life, such as vaccination, fluoridation, and the prevention and treatment of diseases, such as autism, AIDS, and cancer.

Jeffrey Beall, a University of Colorado librarian who wrote a similar op-ed in Nature in 2012, estimates these publishers make up a whopping 25 percent of all open-source journals. Beall maintains an ongoing list of “potential, possible, and probable” predatory publishers on his website, Scholarly Open Access. He’s identified over 1,300 such publishers and journals to date.

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Science Is Ignoring its “Publication Pollution” Problem

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Here’s the Birth of the Modern Anti-Vax Movement

by ShelliHollars Posted on February 2, 2015

Mother Jones

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A New York Times video takes a look at the birth of the belief that vaccinations can cause autism in young children:

It turns on a seminal moment in anti-vaccination resistance. This was an announcement in 1998 by a British doctor who said he had found a relationship between the M.M.R. vaccine — measles, mumps, rubella — and the onset of autism.

Typically, the M.M.R. shot is given to infants at about 12 months and again at age 5 or 6. This doctor, Andrew Wakefield, wrote that his study of 12 children showed that the three vaccines taken together could alter immune systems, causing intestinal woes that then reach, and damage, the brain. In fairly short order, his findings were widely rejected as — not to put too fine a point on it — bunk. Dozens of epidemiological studies found no merit to his work, which was based on a tiny sample. The British Medical Journal went so far as to call his research “fraudulent.” The British journal Lancet, which originally published Dr. Wakefield’s paper, retracted it. The British medical authorities stripped him of his license.

Nonetheless, despite his being held in disgrace, the vaccine-autism link has continued to be accepted on faith by some. Among the more prominently outspoken is Jenny McCarthy, a former television host and Playboy Playmate, who has linked her son’s autism to his vaccination: He got the shot, and then he was not O.K. Post hoc, etc.

This is, of course, even crazier than it sounds. It’s one thing to be skeptical of the scientific community and its debunking of the Wakefield study. But it’s now 2015. MMR vaccines that contain thimerosal—the supposed cause of autism—have been off the market for well over a decade. Not one single child has gotten a dose of thimerosal since about 2002. And yet, autism rates haven’t gone down. They’ve gone up. You don’t need to trust scientists to see that, very plainly, thimerosal simply never played any role in autism. And there’s never been any reason to think that any other vaccine does either.

And yet, there’s apparently nothing that will convince certain parents of this. At least, if there is, no one has figured it out yet. Sigh.

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Here’s the Birth of the Modern Anti-Vax Movement

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3 Medical Conditions That Bacon Can Cure

by TrinaUccenoyuhd Posted on January 14, 2015

Mother Jones

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As we all know, the internet is obsessed with bacon. Physicians, however, are usually less bullish about the delicious yet notoriously artery-clogging treat. Until now: Over at the medical blog KevinMD, Dr. Jennifer Gunter combs the scientific literature and turns up three actual medical conditions that bacon can help treat:

  1. Nosebleeds. Last October, Stanford otolaryngologist Ian Humphreys developed a nasal tampon made out of bacon that cured a young girl’s bloody nose, an accomplishment for which he was awarded a 2014 Ig Nobel Prize in medicine. “Apparently the high salt content of bacon is believed to induce swelling which causes the blood vessels to constrict slowing the flow of blood and helping clotting,” writes Gunter. When Humphreys won the IgNobel, Robert Jackler, chair of Stanford’s otolaryngology department, told Stanford’s Scope medical blog, “We are squealing with pride.”
  2. An incredibly disgusting-sounding infection called furuncular myiasis in which the larvae of an insect called Dermatobia hominis nest in the human soft tissue or skin, resulting in boils and sometimes tissue destruction. Shudder. “The treatment largely consists of manually picking out the larvae with tweezers,” writes Gunter. “Apparently bacon fat can be used as bait to lure the larvae to the skin surface for faster and more effective removal.”
  3. Scabies. Apparently, bacon fat was once used in topical sulfur and salicylic acid creams used to treat this itchy and highly contagious skin infection. A 1991 study compared the bacon fat formulation to the more modern cold cream version and finds, Gunter writes, that “while the cold cream combination was 100% effective versus 88 percent for the bacon fat base the authors noted that the bacon fat concoction was 238 times less expensive than the cheapest scabicidal medication in the U.S.”

So there you have it: Bacon as medicine. Something to keep in mind if you have any left over after you make that gross bacon lattice thing for your Super Bowl party.

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3 Medical Conditions That Bacon Can Cure

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Tea Party Heartthrob Ben Carson Once Lived the Hobo Life Hopping Freight Trains

by DemetriusBruns Posted on January 6, 2015

Mother Jones

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Before he was a prospective 2016 Republican presidential candidate, Ben Carson was just another disaffected teenager who hopped freight trains in search of thrills.

Carson, a retired neurosurgeon who plans to make a final decision about running for president by the end of May, became a tea party favorite after ripping into President Obama at the National Prayer Breakfast in 2013. Since then, he has staked out far-right positions on issues like gay rights (which he believes are part of a Marxist plot), the AP US History curriculum (which he fears will be an ISIS recruiting tool), and the 2016 election itself (which he believes might be canceled due to a societal breakdown).

Carson’s rags-to-riches story, as a one-time juvenile delinquent raised by a single mom who rose to the top of the medical profession, is at the core of his personal appeal. It has been the subject of a best-selling book and a feature-length movie. His youthful habit of hopping aboard moving freight trains is considerably less well known. But as Carson explained in his 2008 book, Take the Risk, he and his older brother, Curtis, began riding freight trains after moving back to Detroit from Boston for middle school:

We didn’t think twice about it at the time, and Mother certainly didn’t know about the risks we took, but just getting to and from school in our new neighborhood was a dangerous proposition. The fastest and most exciting way to commute was to hop one of the freight trains rolling on the tracks that ran alongside the route Curtis and I took to Wilson Junior High School. Curtis liked the challenge of fast-moving trains, tossing his clarinet onto one flatcar and then jumping to catch the railing on the very last car of the train. He knew if he missed his chance, he risked never seeing his band instrument again. But he never lost that clarinet.

Since I was smaller, I usually waited for slower trains. But we both placed ourselves in great danger we didn’t ever seriously stop to consider. Not only did we have to run, jump, catch the railing, and hold on for dear life to a moving freight train, but we had to avoid the railroad security who were always on the lookout for people hopping their trains.

They never caught us. And we never got seriously injured like one boy we heard of who was maimed for life after falling onto the tracks under a moving train.

As I reported in the January/February issue of Mother Jones, freight-hopping has always attracted a certain brand of (usually male) individualists who are skeptical of centralized authority. Carson’s Bo Keeley phase came to an end, however, after a run-in with a gang of racist youths. “We stopped after an encounter I had with a different threat as I trotted along the railroad tracks on my way to school along one morning,” he wrote. “Near one of the crossings, a gang of bigger boys, all of them white, approached me. One boy, carrying a big stick, yelled, ‘Hey, you! Nigger boy!'”

If elected, Carson wouldn’t be the first president with a hobo past. When Harry Truman was 18, he got a job with the Santa Fe Railroad, which required him to manage the migrant workers who rode the rails to do manual labor for the company. “Some of those hoboes had better educations than the president of Harvard University, and they weren’t stuck up about it either,” he later recalled.

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Tea Party Heartthrob Ben Carson Once Lived the Hobo Life Hopping Freight Trains

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Here’s the Pentagon’s Report of Michael Brown’s Autopsy

by MasonGoshorn Posted on December 9, 2014

Mother Jones

After Michael Brown was shot and killed by Officer Darren Wilson on August 9, his body was inspected three separate times: Once by the St. Louis County Office of the Medical Examiner; once, at the request of Brown’s family, by outside expert Dr. Michael Baden; and one more time by the Department of Defense’s Armed Forces Medical Examiner System, at the request of the US Department of Justice. The DOD’s report, released by the St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office on December 8, is below:

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DOD Medical Examiner’s report of Michael Brown (PDF)

DOD Medical Examiner’s report of Michael Brown (Text)

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Here’s the Pentagon’s Report of Michael Brown’s Autopsy

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Mitch McConnell Puts His Finger on the Pulse of the American People

by KCBCorinne Posted on November 7, 2014

Mother Jones

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Mitch McConnell says that repealing Obamacare outright is probably unrealistic, but Republicans will nonetheless try to chip away at it:

But with Mr. Obama sure to block any repeal bill passed in the Senate and Republican-controlled House, Mr. McConnell indicated that Senate Republicans will turn their attention to peeling back “pieces of it that are deeply, deeply unpopular with the American people.” He cited the law’s tax on medical devices, its requirement that big employers provide insurance to all workers clocking 30 hours a week or more or pay a fee, and its mandate that most Americans carry insurance or pay a fee.

Let me get this straight. McConnell thinks a 2.3 percent tax on manufacturers and importers of medical devices is deeply, deeply unpopular? He thinks a requirement that employers provide insurance for anyone who works more than 30 hours a week is deeply, deeply unpopular? He thinks the individual mandate is deeply, deeply unpopular?

OK, I’ll give him the last one. The individual mandate is moderately unpopular. Of course, it’s also crucial to the functioning of the law, and McConnell knows perfectly well that Obama won’t allow it to be repealed. So that leaves the device tax and the 30-hour rule. The former is mostly opposed by medical device lobbyists, while the latter is mostly opposed by medium-sized businesses who want the ability to cancel health coverage for workers merely by reducing their workweek to 39 hours. My wild guess is that neither of these things is deeply, deeply unpopular with the American people.

But they are unpopular with interest groups that Republicans care about. So they’re on the chopping block.

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Mitch McConnell Puts His Finger on the Pulse of the American People

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In U.S. Cleanup Efforts, Accident at Nuclear Site Points to Cost of Lapses

by Myrna Posted on October 29, 2014

As the United States aims to correct years of mishandling radioactive materials, the price of reopening a New Mexico waste repository could top $551 million. Jump to original:   In U.S. Cleanup Efforts, Accident at Nuclear Site Points to Cost of Lapses ; ; ;

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In U.S. Cleanup Efforts, Accident at Nuclear Site Points to Cost of Lapses

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All that light pollution is wasting energy AND making you sick

by PriscilBohn Posted on October 24, 2014

All that light pollution is wasting energy AND making you sick

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23 Oct 2014 8:23 PM

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If you stood at the heart of Hong Kong in the middle of the night and looked up, the sky would be about 1,000 times brighter than it’d be in the countryside.

Not all of us are living in cities that huge, or that utterly blinding — Hong Kong has been dubbed “the most light-polluted city in the world.” Still, researchers claim “light pollution” is not only wasting a lot of energy, but it could also be impacting our health.

According to Harvard Medical School neuroscientist Steven Lockley, this whole life-after-dark habit we’ve got is really messing with our natural rhythms. “Every day we don’t go to bed at dusk, we experience what Lockley calls ‘mini jetlag,’” reports The Guardian. And prolonged mini jetlag could even be “carcinogenic;” one study found that female workers on the night shift are more likely to develop breast cancer.

To add insult to injury, a lot of the excess light is superfluous:

“As a society we need to think, do we really need some of these amenities that are putting light pollution into the environment?” Lockley says. “Do we need 24/7 garages, do we need 24/7 supermarkets, do we need 24/7 TV? It was only in 1997 that the BBC turned off and there was the national anthem and we all went to bed.”

OK, so maybe everything would be a lot more beautiful and a lot less cancer-causing if we didn’t live in these blazing urban centers and instead went to bed with the sun like our well-rested ancestors. But since most of us do live in cities, then perhaps more places should take a page from Los Angeles, whose fleet of LED street lamps save the city almost $10 million annually in energy and maintenance costs.

Because LED technology also makes it easier to install smart things like color-changing lights and motion sensors, it could both reduce our carbon footprint and make it a little less likely to have that annoying streetlamp flooding our bedroom window. But would it make us less likely to be up ’til the wee hours eating cookies and watching Netflix? Hmmmm.

Source:
Urban light pollution: why we’re all living with permanent ‘mini jetlag

, The Guardian.

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All that light pollution is wasting energy AND making you sick

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Rwanda Hits Back at America’s Ebola Paranoia

by BradyT03jjkzycx Posted on October 21, 2014

Mother Jones

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Rwanda will be begin screening all Americans entering the country for Ebola, regardless if they’re exhibiting symptoms or not, government officials in the East African nation announced Tuesday. Coincidence? The new measure comes just days after two Rwandan students were denied enrollment at a New Jersey school over Ebola fears, even though Rwanda has had zero cases of Ebola. The United States, on the other hand, has had three confirmed cases. Rwanda is also more than 2,500 miles from the closest Ebola outbreak in West Africa.

The US Embassy in Rwanda explains the situation:

On October 19, the Rwandan Ministry of Health introduced new Ebola Virus Disease screening requirements. Visitors who have been in the United States or Spain during the last 22 days are now required to report their medical condition—regardless of whether they are experiencing symptoms of Ebola—by telephone by dialing 114 between 7:00 a.m. and 8:00 p.m. for the duration of their visit to Rwanda (if less than 21 days), or for the first 21 days of their visit to Rwanda. Rwandan authorities continue to deny entry to visitors who traveled to Guinea, Liberia, Senegal, or Sierra Leone within the past 22 days.

Although there’s no way to tell if the screenings are indeed motivated by retaliation for the ignorant panic displayed by the New Jersey school, this sure is an interesting turn of events.

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Rwanda Hits Back at America’s Ebola Paranoia

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