Tag Archives: prevention

Congress passed around the blame for Flint’s lead crisis. John Oliver gives it right back to them.

Congress passed around the blame for Flint’s lead crisis. John Oliver gives it right back to them.

By on 18 Apr 2016commentsShare

America’s best Brit John Oliver took a brief pause from skewering presidential candidates Sunday to skewer Congress’ response to the Flint lead-poisoned water crisis. As Oliver points out, the crisis is hardly Flint’s alone: 2,000 municipal water systems in all 50 states show elevated levels of lead, which can contribute to brain damage, developmental difficulties, and lower IQs in children.

In response to this disaster, Congressional Republicans Rep. Mark Meadows (NC), Rep. Tim Walberg (MI), and Rep. Jason Chaffetz (UT) all have said that is it shocking — just shocking — that federal regulators could let something like this happen in the United States.

How does something like this happen in the United States?

As Oliver explains, it happens in part because of representatives like Meadows, Walberg, and Chaffetz, who voted to cut funding for government programs dedicated to cleaning up lead pollution.“You would think that our members of Congress would be onboard with doing more to fight lead poisoning.” Oliver said. Well, they aren’t, and Congress has only done its best to cut funding to other organizations that protect public health, like the Environmental Protection Agency and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Watch Oliver explain above.

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Congress passed around the blame for Flint’s lead crisis. John Oliver gives it right back to them.

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America’s Addiction to Prescription Pills Is Way Deadlier Than You Thought

Mother Jones

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A troubling poll published Tuesday shows the extent of America’s addiction to prescription painkillers. More than half of Americans now report a personal connection to painkiller abuse, 16 percent know someone who has died from an overdose, and 9 percent have seen a family member or close friend die.

“It shows that the issue affects a large share of people, over half the population,” says Bianca DiJulio, associate director for public opinion and survey research at the Kaiser Family Foundation, which conducted the survey. “And half say that it should be a top priority for their lawmakers.”

Researchers spoke by phone this month with more than 1,300 people aged 18 years and older across the United States, who were selected to match the demographic makeup of the country. White Americans were the most likely to report personal experience with the abuse of prescription painkillers, which include opioids such as Vicodin and OxyContin and benzodiazepines such as Xanax. Sixty-three percent of white respondents, 44 percent of black respondents, and 37 percent of Hispanics said they had either personally abused painkillers or knew someone who had taken painkillers without a prescription, been addicted to painkillers, or died of an overdose.

Overall, 56 percent of respondents reported a personal connection to painkiller abuse, with young and middle-aged Americans more likely to report familiarity with painkiller abuse than Americans aged 65 and older.

Kaiser Family Foundation

The United States is caught in “a prescription painkiller overdose epidemic,” according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Nearly 2 million Americans abused prescription painkillers in 2013, with 44 people dying from an overdose each day.

Drug overdoses, including deaths from prescription drug use, were the leading cause of accidental death in the United States in 2013. Among the respondents, “half thought the leading cause of accidental deaths was car accidents,” DiJulio says.

The issue, along with rampant heroin addiction, has reached such proportions that President Barack Obama last month announced steps to increase training for doctors who prescribe painkillers and expand access to treatment for drug addicts.

But Kaiser’s survey shows that, even as many Americans agree the government should act, there is no agreement as to how. Republicans in the survey were significantly more likely to say state governments should be in charge of responding to the epidemic, while Democrats saw this as the responsibility of the federal government.

Kaiser Family Foundation

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America’s Addiction to Prescription Pills Is Way Deadlier Than You Thought

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Antibiotics Are Spreading Like Crazy—and a Lot of Them Are About to Stop Working

Mother Jones

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In 1945, Sir Alexander Fleming won a Nobel Prize for his discovery of penicillin, which transformed modern medicine. Later that year, the bacteriologist issued a prescient warning: The miracle medicine could one day come with dangerous side effects. If antibiotics were overused, he told the New York Times, bacteria would develop resistance and spur a new generation of bugs impervious to the drugs’ power.

In the last 60 years, Fleming’s advice has gone largely unheeded. Antibiotic consumption continues to grow even as health officials around the world sound the alarm over rising numbers of resistant bacteria. Now, a new report from the Center for Disease Dynamics, Economics and Policy (CDDEP), a multidisciplinary research organization, paints a harrowing picture of where we stand in the arms race against antibiotic resistance. The main finding is grim: Antibiotic consumption rose by 30 percent between 2000 and 2010 and is expected to swell further as demand for drugs and mass-produced meat products grow around the world.

“Antibiotic resistance is now clearly a problem in both the developed world and developing countries,” coauthor Ramanan Laxminarayan told National Geographic. “Things are about to get a lot worse before they get better.”

With the report, CDDEP also launched an interactive data visualization that shows antibiotic use from 69 countries. Additional charts also show antibiotic resistance rates of 12 different types of bacteria. For example:

One reason for the rising rates of resistance: Many developing countries that now have access to affordable antibiotics do not yet have the infrastructure to regulate them. The report highlights that 80 percent of antibiotics are consumed in communities and not in hospitals, and are often not prescribed by doctors. Many of the drugs being used are intended only for emergency cases. As Maryn McKenna reported in National Geographic:

Troublingly, that rising consumption worldwide takes in the most precious last-ditch drugs. Carbapenem use rose by 40 percent between 2000 and 2010, and the use of the very last-resort drug class polymixins rose by 13 percent. Sales of those drugs are rising fastest in India, Pakistan and Egypt, and many of those sales are retail, outside countries’ healthcare systems.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, of the roughly 2 million people in the United States afflicted every year with illnesses caused by antibiotic-resistant bacteria, 23,000 of them will die. These illnesses cost around $20 billion each year, and lead to an additional $35 billion in productivity losses.

In response to the imminent and growing threat of antibiotic resistance, this year, the White House launched the National Action Plan for Combating Antibiotic-Resistant Bacteria, which aims to cut down on overuse in the next five years. While it does offer a promising framework for better practices in health care, as my colleague Tom Phillpot reports, regulations fall short in one of the key areas of antibiotic overuse: agriculture. The meat industry consumes an unbelievable 80 percent of all antibiotics sold in the United States.

The Food and Drug Administration’s voluntary guidelines advise against the use of antibiotics for animal growth—but the industry continues to exploit regulatory loopholes and administer growing amounts of antibiotics to the animals we eat.

Worldwide, according to the report, more than 63,000 tons of antibiotics were given to livestock in 2010, and this number is only expected to grow. Over the next 15 years, as demand for meat grows around the world and small scale farms switch to mass production to keep up, animal consumption of antibiotics is projected to increase by 67 percent.

While the outlook on growing antibiotic use and the likelihood of increased resistance seems grim, the authors of the report offer six strategies that could help curb the issues before they get worse:

Reduce the need for antibiotics through improved water, sanitation, and immunization
Improve hospital infection control and antibiotic stewardship
Change incentives that encourage antibiotic overuse and misuse to incentives that encourage antibiotic stewardship
Reduce and eventually phase out subtherapuetic antibiotic use in agriculture
Educate and inform health professionals, policymakers, and the public on sustainable antibiotic use
Ensure political commitment to meet the threat of antibiotic resistance

Earlier this year, the World Health Organizations’ governing body, the World Health Assembly, called for its member countries to adopt policies that will curb antibiotic use by 2017. The report’s authors hope their findings will lead to stronger stewardship around the world.

“With support from WHO and the international community, this resolution could catalyze change—or, like similar resolutions over the past decade, it may be ignored,” they write. “The evidence in this report, documenting the seriousness of the problem and offering a successful approach to country level action, supports both the urgency and the feasibility of making progress in conserving antibiotic effectiveness.”

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Antibiotics Are Spreading Like Crazy—and a Lot of Them Are About to Stop Working

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Irradiated Food Sounds Like a Terrible Thing. It’s Actually Really Good.

Mother Jones

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Mattias Mackler

In 2002, the East Coast supermarket chain Wegmans introduced a line of packaged ground beef that had been irradiated with an electron beam to kill bacteria. Company executives expected the product to do well; a series of foodborne illness outbreaks had rendered Americans’ confidence in food safety dismally low. The launch came at the start of grilling season, and executives thought it would be a hit with people who liked their burgers rare but didn’t want to get sick from undercooked meat. The slogan: “Cook it the way you like it!”

But to their surprise, sales were unimpressive—and they remain so today, says Wegmans’ meat merchandising manager, Mark Spagnola. One reason might be the higher price: Irradiated beef can cost as much as 80 cents more per pound. But Wegmans’ customers are willing to pay a premium for other special foods, like organics. So more likely, it’s irradiation itself that put shoppers off. Many consumer surveys have found that people consider irradiation—which the federal government approved for some foods as early as the 1960s—creepy and unsafe. “Some people even think their food is going to be radioactive,” Spagnola says, “which is just totally not how this works.”

Here’s how it does work: At a special irradiation plant—there are just a handful in the United States—workers zap food with a machine similar to the kind that administers radiation to cancer patients. Most facilities use electron beams, but some irradiate with X-rays or gamma rays. While the dose of radiation is high, it doesn’t stay with the food—and workers are protected from it with safety gear and massive concrete walls. The result, says Michael Osterholm, a University of Minnesota foodborne illness expert who has studied irradiation extensively, is that it kills as many bacteria as cooking at high temperatures—but without any loss of taste. “Food irradiation shows absolutely no detrimental impact on the food,” he says.

Hundreds of studies have proved that irradiation neither adds compounds to food nor takes nutrients away—and that it can help prevent the foodborne illnesses that sicken 48 million Americans and kill 3,000 every year. The World Health Organization and the US Department of Agriculture have deemed the technology safe for food, as has the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which asserts that in addition to eliminating dangerous bacteria in human food, the technique could also be used to prevent the spread of disease in livestock through its feed.

Yet some food advocacy groups have campaigned vociferously against the technique. Food and Water Watch, for example, argues that it might induce manufacturers to zap food instead of maintaining a clean plant. “This could be a gateway to faster line speeds at meat facilities and sloppier handling practices,” says Patty Lovera, the organization’s assistant director. But Rick Holley, a food microbiologist and irradiation expert at the University of Manitoba, sees the technique as an extra tool, rather than a crutch; irradiation, he points out, doesn’t get rid of all bacteria, just most. “You can’t make bad food good using irradiation,” he says. “If your plant is dirty and not inspected and overtaxed, the food is going to be bad in a way that irradiation can’t fix.”

In fact, you’re probably already eating irradiated products. About a third of dried herbs and spices are irradiated to prevent salmonella, and imported fruits like mangoes and papayas are sometimes zapped to kill invasive insects. The technique is also used to sterilize medical equipment like gloves, bandages, and syringes, as well as personal-care products like contact lens solution and baby bottle nipples. Several European countries regularly irradiate all kinds of food; the French even do it to Camembert cheese so as to cut down on pathogens from raw milk. In South Africa, safari operators eat irradiated meat because it has a long shelf life, even in hot climates.

To be sure, the technology isn’t cheap—but that, says Harlan Clemmons, who runs an irradiation facility in Sioux City, Iowa, is mostly because it costs a lot of money to ship all that meat to the special plants. Although the equipment is expensive (about $18 million up front), Clemmons calculates that if meat processors did irradiation in-house, over time they could bring the cost down “to next to nothing.”

But that’s unlikely to happen anytime soon unless consumers start embracing the technique—which might require more public attention. In a 2005 study, 484 shoppers at grocery stores in four Texas towns were asked about their opinion of irradiated foods. Then they read material about how an electron beam works and watched a short video on the topic. Initially, about 18 percent of the shoppers described themselves as “doubters” or “rejecters” of irradiation. But after the statements and video, that number dwindled to just 3.8 percent. Osterholm likens the public mistrust of irradiation to the anti-vaccine movement. “We know that we could eliminate many food safety problems with this technique,” he says. “And yet people are still fighting it.”

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Irradiated Food Sounds Like a Terrible Thing. It’s Actually Really Good.

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John Boehner: "I’m Sorry, but a Gun Is Not a Disease"

Mother Jones

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Last week, after a shooter killed nine parishioners at a historic black church in Charleston, South Carolina, the House Appropriations Committee quietly voted on a bill to effectively block any funding for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to research the causes of gun violence in America. At a press conference last Thursday, a reporter from WNYC’s The Takeaway asked House Speaker John Boehner about the committee’s vote, which was just part of a decades-long string of Republican rejections of official efforts to study gun violence. Boehner responded with this familiar argument:

Listen, the CDC is there to look at diseases that need to be dealt with to protect the public health. I’m sorry, but a gun is not a disease. And guns don’t kill people; people do. And when people use weapons in a horrible way, we should condemn the actions of the individual, not blame the action on some weapon. Listen, there are hundreds of millions of weapons in America. They’re there. And they’re going to be there. They’re protected under the Second Amendment. But people who use weapons in an inappropriate or illegal way ought to be dealt with severely.

In the wake of the mass shooting in Charleston, President Obama expressed frustration with Congress for not passing gun safety reforms, and underscored the immense and untold cost of gun violence. “Whether it’s a mass shooting like the one in Charleston, or individual attacks of violence that add up over time, it tears at the fabric of the community,” Obama told a room full of mayors two weeks ago. “It costs you money, and it costs resources. It costs this country dearly.”

Read more about the staggering costs of gun violence in this recent Mother Jones investigation.

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John Boehner: "I’m Sorry, but a Gun Is Not a Disease"

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A Superbug Nightmare Is Playing Out at an LA Hospital

Mother Jones

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In today’s terrifying health news, the LA Times reports that two medical scopes used at UCLA’s Ronald Reagan Medical Center may have been contaminated with the potentially deadly, antibiotic-resistant bacteria Carbapenem-Resistant Enterobacteriaceae (CRE). Two patients have died from complications that may be connected to the bacteria, and authorities believe that 179 more patients have been exposed.

Most healthy people aren’t at risk of catching a CRE infection, but in hospitals this bacteria can be quite dangerous: CRE kills as many as half of all people in whom the infection has spread to the bloodstream. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) are working with the CA Department of Public Health to investigate the situation, which is expected to result in more infections.

The problem isn’t just in Los Angeles, though. Last month USA Today reported that hospitals around the country struggle with transmissions of bacteria on these scopes—medical devices commonly used to treat digestive-system problems—and there have been several other under-the-radar outbreaks of CRE.

This is pretty scary stuff, considering that in the antibiotics arms race against bacteria, we are starting to fall behind. Due in large part to unnecessary medical prescriptions and overuse of antibiotics in our food supply, these superbugs are on the rise. In a study published last year that focused specifically on hospitals in the Southeastern United States, researchers reported that CRE cases had increased fivefold between 2008 and 2012.

As Mother Jones‘ Tom Philpott wrote recently, unless something changes, it will only get worse:

in a new report, the UK government has come out with some startling global projections. Currently, the report finds, 700,000 people die annually from pathogens that have developed resistance to antibiotics, a figure the report calls a “low estimate.” If present trends continue, antibiotic failure will claim 10 million lives per year by 2050, the report concludes. That’s more carnage than what’s currently caused by cancer and traffic accidents combined.

The CDC has, in recent years, amped up its efforts to contain the growth of antibiotic-resistant bacteria and ha developed a tool-kit to help educate both patients and medical practitioners. The Obama administration has increased funding in 2015 for CDC research into how to better detect these types of infections. It also expanded the National Healthcare Safety Network to track threats of superbugs and areas of antibiotic overuse.

But the CDC emphasizes that more must be done:

Can you imagine a day when antibiotics don’t work anymore? It’s concerning to think that the antibiotics that we depend upon for everything from skin and ear infections to life-threatening bloodstream infections could no longer work. Unfortunately, the threat of untreatable infections is very real.

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A Superbug Nightmare Is Playing Out at an LA Hospital

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California Bill Seeks to Get All Children Vaccinated

Mother Jones

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On the heels of an ongoing measles outbreak that has ignited a national debate over childhood vaccinations, California lawmakers introduced a bill on Wednesday seeking to put an end to the use of personal belief exemptions—which allow parents to opt out of vaccinating their children—in the state.

The proposed legislation would essentially require all school children to get vaccinated, unless immunization puts the child’s health at risk.

“We shouldn’t wait for more children to sicken or die before we act,” Rep. Richard Pan (D-Santa Monica) said at a press conference on Wednesday. “Parents are letting us know our current laws are insufficient to protect their kids.”

The current outbreak started in Disneyland and has since spread to 14 states, with at least 102 cases reported, according to the latest report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. California is one of 20 states that allow for such waivers, which public health officials have cited as a primary cause for the recent reemergence of the highly contagious disease. Only 92.3 percent of children in California are vaccinated, and many of the state’s more affluent neighborhoods report even lower rates.

While Gov. Jerry Brown previously signed bills permitting more parental choice on the matter, a spokesperson for the governor indicated he would be open to possible changes.

“The governor believes that vaccinations are profoundly important and a major public health benefit and any bill that reaches his desk will be closely considered,” Evan Westrup said.

Also on Wednesday, Senators Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein released a joint statement calling upon California officials to consider tightening the state’s vaccination policies and ending the both personal belief and religious exemptions.

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California Bill Seeks to Get All Children Vaccinated

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Even If Your Kid Doesn’t Get Measles, It’s Gonna Cost You

Mother Jones

Measles is not only highly contagious, it’s expensive to contain—especially for cash-strapped local governments. Researchers at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) calculated that outbreaks in 2011—a total of just 107 cases—cost state and local taxpayers up to $5.3 million. That may not seem like a lot, but with more than triple that number of cases last year, and a growing number of unvaccinated children, the costs are really going to add up.

More stories on vaccines and outbreaks:


Vaccines Work. These 8 Charts Prove It.


Map: The High Cost of Vaccine Hysteria


How Many People Arenâ&#128;&#153;t Vaccinating Their Kids in Your State?


Measles Cases in the US are at a 20-Year High. Thanks, Anti-Vaxxers.


This PBS Special Makes The Most Powerful Argument For Vaccines Yet


Mickey Mouse Still Stricken With Measles, Thanks to the Anti-Vaxxers


If You Distrust Vaccines, You’re More Likely to Think NASA Faked the Moon Landings

In 2014, there were 23 outbreaks in the United States and 644 confirmed cases—the most since the disease was declared all but eliminated back in 2000. And at last count, there were 66 cases in six states and Mexico linked to the Disneyland outbreak, which began in December and may be far from over.

Despite whatever nonsense Dr. Bob Sears might spout, measles is no joke. The CDC has released an official health advisory warning public health departments and health care facilities of the need for greater vaccine coverage and the “importance of a prompt and appropriate public health response to measles cases and outbreaks.” State and local health agencies are ramping up efforts to contain it, especially in California, which has the most cases. Some have even begun enforcing quarantines. And all of this, as the CDC notes, costs money:

Due to its high infectiousness and the potential severity of complications, a measles outbreak often constitutes a serious public health event entailing a vigorous response from local public health departments and can involve multiple states and counties…As a result of the amount of effort and resources reallocated to the outbreak response, the economic toll in these public health departments could be significant.

The problem is expected to get worse, and more expensive, thanks to the growing numbers of people who, based on discredited science or religious convictions, refuse to have their children vaccinated.

The CDC’s 2011 report highlighted the opportunity costs associated with outbreaks, which divert resources that could be used to manage other public health problems. What’s more, especially when it involves such a communicable disease, an outbreak can create major headaches for hospitals and clinics. Thirty babies, for instance, were recently placed on home quarantine after a deliberately unvaccinated child with measles was found to have passed through the same department at the Kaiser medical center in Oakland, California.

Sherri Willis, a spokeswoman for the Alameda County Public Health Department (which has jurisdiction over Oakland) says 20 of the babies have since been cleared. But, with six confirmed cases in the county so far, investigations into who measles patients have come into contact with have become the agency’s priority. The department has had to shift its entire focus. “We are now tracking hundreds of people who came in to contact with the six cases,” she says. “It is extremely time consuming.”

Outbreaks can also stretch the resources of police departments, which have to enforce quarantines, not to mention schools and universities, which can serve as incubators. The costs are compounded, the CDC notes, by the duration of the outbreak and the number of potentially susceptible contacts a patient has had—a number that can be very high in communities where a lot of parents fail to vaccinate their children.

The World Health Organization has also stressed the financial burden of measles in comparison with the much lower cost of vaccinating people. “Complacency and unfounded scares about vaccine safety have led to a situation where measles is just waiting to strike in many countries,” Guenael Rodier, director of the Division of Communicable Diseases, Health Security and Environment at WHO/Europe, noted in a 2013 press release. “These countries could find they are hit hard economically. Scrimping on vaccination is a very expensive decision.”

Though its still unclear the extent to which the current outbreak will affect local health agencies in the longer term, Willis emphasizes that vaccine coverage in recent years has been slipping, and that parents need to step up and get real. “Measles is a vaccine-preventable disease,” she says. “The vaccine is safe. The vaccine is effective. The issue here is for people to take this disease seriously.”

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Even If Your Kid Doesn’t Get Measles, It’s Gonna Cost You

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More women are choosing more effective birth control — here’s why it matters

More women are choosing more effective birth control — here’s why it matters

By on 15 Dec 2014commentsShare

Good news for people who want to have sex without the whole making-a-baby hassle: The percentage of women choosing LARC (long-acting reversible contraption) methods in the United States is at an all-time high!

While the percentage of women using contraception has not changed since 2006, the percentage of those using LARCs (which include IUDS, or intra-uterine devices, and hormonal implants) in the United States has gone up. In 2002, 2.4 percent of American contraceptive users chose LARC methods, but new data from the Center for Disease Control and Prevention shows that figure has grown to 7.2 percent — and calculations from the Guttmacher Institute indicate that it could be closer to 12 percent. However, U.S. LARC usage is still significantly lower than the international average; 25 percent of global contraceptive users choose IUDs alone.

Why does this matter? Well, LARCs are more effective than any other reversible form of contraception, with a success rate of approximately 99 percent. Why? No matter how cautious you are with a method of birth control that’s susceptible to human error, mistakes can happen. Ask any woman who has some experience with birth control if she’s forgotten to take a pill, or had a condom break (I’m raising both hands). With an IUD or hormonal implant, however, a woman may never have to think about getting pregnant after the implantation procedure — until she chooses to get the device removed, of course. Recently, the American Academy of Pediatrics came out in support of doctors recommending LARC methods for teen patients seeking contraception.

The increase in LARC usage could have something to do with the fact that the Affordable Care Act covers contraceptive methods without out-of-pockets costs for many, many women. Another fun fact: Between 2008 and 2011 — as LARC usage began to increase most sharply — the abortion rate dropped 13 percent. In a country where the rate of unintended pregnancy (51 percent, in case you forgot) is higher than the global average, this trend toward more reliable forms of birth control is not a small deal.

What a wacky idea — remove barriers to birth control, and women will choose safe, effective methods of contraception! Hard to believe this has never occurred to anyone before!

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More women are choosing more effective birth control — here’s why it matters

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Don’t Let the Rolling Stone Controversy Distract You From the Campus Rape Epidemic

Mother Jones

Questions continue to mount about the veracity of the explosive Rolling Stone article on an alleged gang rape at the University of Virgina. On Friday, the UVA fraternity allegedly involved released a statement disputing details of the story, and Rolling Stone published a note to readers acknowledging that it failed to vet the story adequately. Nevertheless, the serious problem with sexual assault on America’s college campuses cannot be denied, as the data below shows. (Read the initial version of this article here.)

Sources

“1 in 5 undergraduate women…”: Christopher P. Krebs, Christine H. Lindquist, Tara D. Warner, Bonnie S. Fisher, and Sandra L. Martin; “College Women’s Experiences with Physically Forced, Alcohol- or Other Drug-Enabled, and Drug-Facilitated Sexual Assault Before and Since Entering College” (link)

“Of the undergraduate women who are sexually assaulted while in college…”: Christopher P. Krebs, Christine H. Lindquist, Tara D. Warner, Bonnie S. Fisher, and Sandra L. Martin for the National Institute of Justice; “The Campus Sexual Assault Survey” (PDF)

“Women are more likely to be sexually assaulted…”: “The Campus Sexual Assault Survey” (PDF)

“4 percent of undergraduate men…”: “The Campus Sexual Assault Survey” (PDF)

“2.5 percentof male undergrads admit…”: “The Campus Sexual Assault Survey” (PDF)

“63 percent of college men who admit…”: David Lisak and Paul M. Miller, “Repeat Rape and Multiple Offending Among Undetected Rapists” (PDF)

“85 percent of college sexual assault victims…”: “The Campus Sexual Assault Survey” (PDF)

“More than 1/4 of victims say…”: “The Campus Sexual Assault Survey” (PDF)

“Frat members who took part in a rape prevention program…”: John D. Foubert and Bradford C. Perry, “Creating Lasting Attitude and Behavior Change in Fraternity Members and Male Student Athletes” (PDF)

“Before college, sexual assault perpetration rates…”: John D. Foubert, Johnathan T. Newberry, and Jerry L. Tatum, “Behavior Differences Seven Months Later: Effects of a Rape Prevention Program” (link)

“4 percent of college sexual assault victims report…”: “The Campus Sexual Assault Survey” (PDF)

“Percentage of assailants who are disciplined…”: “The Campus Sexual Assault Survey” (PDF)

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Don’t Let the Rolling Stone Controversy Distract You From the Campus Rape Epidemic

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