All posts by nedhamson

Activist, writer, researcher, addicted to sharing information and facts.

I remember, Lema and Nour

Poetry for Palestine

.

view_1408902598

.

“My name is Lema, I am eight”

“My sister is Nour, she is five, her name means Light”

“I took her out to buy some sweets”

“They bombed us, alhamdulillah”

“I was injured with shrapnel, alhamdulillah”

“My sister is a martyr, alhamdulillah”

“My sister is a bird in Heaven, alhamdulillah”

“We want to live in dignity, like all people, alhamdulillah”

“I am from gaza, alhamdulillah”

“I support the Resistance, I love the Resistance, alhamdulillah”

* * *

Lema… Your few words shuttered my being

The flood of your silence uprooted me

The calmness of your screams  tormented my heart

The twinkle in your eyes, despite your wounds, haunted me

* * *

Lema, a singing of a Canary…soft and warm

Lema, a Psalm of David… A heart pure and serene

* * *

Stars in the highest are lost in bewilderment, listening to the echo of your pain

Sky kneeled down, sobbing and…

View original post 143 more words

Ebola, Experimental Drugs and Informed Consent: Should Those At Risk Simply Take What The Doctor Orders?

West Africans have nothing to fear from European nations and firms who want to experiment and maybe find a cure, for which they will charge billions? lol White Europeans and White Americans have never taken advantage of or lied to West Africans before have the? rotflol Tests on African-Americans without their informed consent were OK, until people found out what was really going on – giving men VD and seeing how long it took to die, giving massive radiation to dying people saying it might cure them, when they were really testing the amount of radiation soldiers might be able to endure before dying? wtf!

Ebola, Experimental Drugs and Informed Consent: Should Those At Risk Simply Take What The Doctor Orders?.

It seems that if we’re fortunate enough to find a drug that works, soon, treating Ebola will require trust that approximates a leap of faith (in medicine), and beneficence – that doctors will order and give these drugs because they think they’re more likely to help than harm those affected. Without that trust, we’ll be stuck, unable to give therapy to most people infected or at risk. Is it possible that meaningful consent can be a barrier to care?

Racist Newsweek’s Dehumanization of Africans and Monkey Meat Ebola Fearmongering | Global Research

The most definitive takedown of the Newsweek piece appeared at the Washington Post  website (8/25/14), where Laura Seay and Kim Yi Dionne place the article in a historical context:

Far from presenting a legitimate public health concern, the authors of the piece and the editorial decision to use chimpanzee imagery on the cover have placed Newsweek squarely in the center of a long and ugly tradition of treating Africans as savage animals and the African continent as a dirty, diseased place to be feared.

While Newsweek zeroed in on the wild game risk as being “all but but ignored by the popular press and public,” Seay and Dionne write: “The reason this ‘risk’ is ignored is because it is infinitesimally close to zero.”

During a BBC discussion of the story (8/26/14), host Nkem Ifejika noted that Ebola experts stress that the risks of Ebola exposure come from hunting and dissection–which would seem to undermine the point of  Newsweek‘s cover story. The magazine’s senior editor Elijah Wolfson responded by appearing to back away from the article’s premise:

I would say that the risk for contracting Ebola by eating or handling bushmeat that arrives in the U.S. through illegal importation is minimal. But that doesn’t mean it is a zero risk.

That’s a far cry from the message the magazine is telling us–unless they plan on rewriting that headline to say, “Not a Back Door for Ebola: Smuggled Bushmeat Is Unlikely to Spark a US Epidemic.” And replacing the chimp with a photo of a bat. As Seay and Dionne put it:

Newsweek’s piece is in the worst tradition of what journalist Howard French calls “Ooga-Booga” journalism: the practice of writing in exoticizing and dehumanizing ways about Africa.

via Newsweek’s Dehumanization of Africans and Monkey Meat Ebola Fearmongering | Global Research.

In 2014 UK – Shame on Cameron! Rickets returns as poor families find healthy diets unaffordable | Society | The Guardian

Dr John Middleton, from the FPH, said the calls would come in the faculty’s manifesto to be published next month and warned that ill-health arising from poor diets was worsening throughout Britain “through extreme poverty and the use of food banks”.

He saidthat obesity remained the biggest problem of food poverty as families are forced into choosing cheap, processed high fat foods just to survive. “It’s getting worse because people can’t afford good quality food,” he said. “Malnutrition, rickets and other manifestations of extreme poor diet are becoming apparent. GPs are reporting rickets anecdotally in Manchester, the East End of London, Birmingham and the West Midlands. It is a condition we believed should have died out.

“The vitamin deficiency states of gout, malnutrition being seen in hospital admission statistics are extreme manifestations of specific dietary deficiencies or excesses, but they are markers of a national diet which is poor. Food prices up 12%, fuel prices up double-figure percentages and wages down is a toxic combination, forcing more people to eat unhealthily.”

via Rickets returns as poor families find healthy diets unaffordable | Society | The Guardian.