Category Archives: healthcare

Dear America: Here’s Your Gun Solution — Human Parts — Medium

Here’s some common sense for you. I want gun ownership to be as boring and annoying as car ownership. I want you to go to some Department of Weapons and sit for hours. I want folks who own guns to prove their skill, their mental and physical health, and to be licensed and reviewed over the years just as happens with our driver’s licenses. You earn the right to own and drive a vehicle; earn the right to own and use a gun.Quibble with me over semantics if you want to; what is a “right” vs. what is a “privilege.” I’ll be busy with my friends and colleagues trying to prevent more unnecessary deaths.Gun ownership isn’t some inalienable right granted by God. Remember, the Constitution was written by men coming out of a long and bloody war near the end of the 18th century. It was written for their time.It also included the “right” to own a human being.Things change.Folks evolve.

Source: Dear America: Here’s Your Gun Solution — Human Parts — Medium

Why the Planned Parenthood shooting was always about Black lives

I craved an intersectional framework that acknowledged a linkage between these incidents. When it was reported that Dear had been taken into police custody alive – a harsh juxtaposition to the way McDonald and so many other Black people like him have been killed by police authorities almost on sight – a connection was made: in an anti-Black nation, white privilege and power dictates who lives and who dies. This is a necessary connection that cannot be understated. But it is an observation that reroutes us back to a discourse of Black Lives Matter that does not consider how an attack on Planned Parenthood is always also an attack on Black lives.The history of the problematic divides between race activism and gender activism, particularly the fight for access to reproductive health, is just as rich as the history of said movements themselves. It is no secret that despite the contributions of women and queer folks to strengthen their reach and impact, prominent racial justice movements – including the Abolitionist, Civil Rights, and Black Power movements – maintained male-dominated leadership structures and recognition. And even more disturbing, cases of sexual violence and assault against Black women have also been documented within those movements. From Clarence Thomas to Bill Cosby to R. Kelly, Black leadership and iconicity are continuously sheathed in male privilege and dominance, often at the expense of Black women. Even in the midst of the Chicago protests against the murder of McDonald, several Black women activists were physically and verbally assaulted by Black male elders and activists.Along a similar vein, eugenics supporter Margaret Sanger has left a nasty stain on the legacy of Planned Parenthood. It’s a stain that Planned Parenthood has let settle and concretize by failing to address how this history has residually lingered. Cecile Richards, a liberal white woman, is the current president and public face of Planned Parenthood. But Richards’ individuality aside, the political face of Planned Parenthood has also always been that of white, liberal femaleness. Creating a narrative that protects the reproductive rights of liberal, white women has often resulted in the erasure of the experiences, labor, and activism of the poor people of color that need the affordable services of Planned Parenthood the most. As a former patient, clinic escort, and employee of Planned Parenthood, I know firsthand just how alienating, discouraging, and violent this history can be for Black women attempting to do intersectional reproductive justice work.Intersectionality mattered then and it matters now. When we talk about Black lives mattering we are talking about the right and access of all of us (women, queer, and trans Black folks included) to seek the health treatment and care that determines whether or not we survive. When we talk about reproductive rights, we are talking about providing access and resources to those most economically and politically marginalized. So an act of domestic terrorism against an organization that provides reproductive health care services to economically disadvantaged communities is absolutely an attack on Black lives. If you think there can be a movement for Black lives while not supporting reproductive rights, you’ve missed the mark. If you think you can advocate for reproductive rights without a framework that prioritizes Black women, you have missed the mark.Before we knew that one of the victims was a Black veteran; and before we learned that Dear was given a choice to live – a choice that is too often denied to Black folks – the shooting at the Colorado Springs Planned Parenthood was about race.  There’s levels to this shit and we have to engage them all.

Source: Why the Planned Parenthood shooting was always about Black lives

Learning from Ebola: Why MERS needs to be taken seriously

As with Ebola, there are few, if any, tools currently available to use in the case of a major outbreak of MERS. Experts point to last spring’s crippling outbreak in South Korea — 186 cases, 37 deaths, hospitals closed to new admissions, all stemming from a businessman who came home sick from the Middle East — as evidence of the danger of underestimating the coronavirus.Because the MERS virus can be transmitted through coughs and sneezes, its spread could be even more difficult to stop than Ebola, which people only catch if they have contact with blood and body fluids.You can generally avoid someone else’s bodily fluids, if you know you need to. But breathing is not an optional endeavor.

Source: Learning from Ebola: Why MERS needs to be taken seriously

Eco-protesters delay German environment minister Hendrick′s train to Paris | News | DW.COM | 28.11.2015

As Hendrick’s train pulled into Frankfurt station on Saturday en route to the French capital, protesters chained themselves to the railway tracks, police said.Others descended by ropes onto the train, which stopped in Europe’s financial capital en route from Berlin where Germany’s environment minister and her 30-strong entourage had boarded.Hendricks and her team were traveling to Paris for the global climate change conference which gets underway on Monday.German journalist Harriett Wolf tweeted that as the demonstrators had refused to come down, officers had no choice but to climb onto the train’s roof.

Source: Eco-protesters delay German environment minister Hendrick′s train to Paris | News | DW.COM | 28.11.2015

Study shows European hospitals miss every other HIV infection | Vaccine News

“Hospitals would be able to diagnose almost twice as many people with HIV if they all adhered to the European guidelines on which people should be offered an HIV test,” Professor Jens Lundgren from the Department of Infectious Diseases at Rigshospitalet and Copenhagen University, said. “This is very unfortunate. When we fail to diagnose those living with HIV in time, they suffer more complications, their life expectancy is shortened and there is a greater risk that they may have transmitted the virus to others. This is why it’s important to diagnose as many people as possible, early on.”

Source: Study shows European hospitals miss every other HIV infection | Vaccine News

Climate Refugees and a Collapsing City | Inter Press Service

“Over the next two to three decades millions of people will no longer be able to live and earn their livelihoods from farming and fishing as they are now,” said Saleemul Huq, a senior fellow with the Climate Change Group of the International Institute for Environment and Development.Conversely, prolonged droughts are affecting arable land by causing soil erosion and damaging crops that depend on predictable monsoon patterns.The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) estimates 20 million people will be displaced in Bangladesh in the coming five years. That is more than the cumulative populations of Los Angeles, Chicago and New York City. And this should be very worrying.Even now, many of the half-a-million-plus people who move their families – along with their hopes – to Dhaka, are driven there by the effects of climate change.

Source: Climate Refugees and a Collapsing City | Inter Press Service

Rise in Early Cervical Cancer Detection Is Linked to Affordable Care Act – The New York Times

Researchers say there has been a substantial increase in women under the age of 26 who have received a diagnosis of early-stage cervical cancer since the health law came into effect in 2010.

Source: Rise in Early Cervical Cancer Detection Is Linked to Affordable Care Act – The New York Times

Scientists discover new antibiotic-resistant gene MCR-1 in China | News | DW.COM | 19.11.2015

A new gene rendering bacteria immune to an antibiotic has been found in China by a Lancet research team. Doctors worry that it could roll back decades of medical progress, as bacteria adapt to resist antibiotics.

Source: Scientists discover new antibiotic-resistant gene MCR-1 in China | News | DW.COM | 19.11.2015

E.coli has developed resistance to last-line of antibiotics, warn scientists – Telegraph

Bacteria like E.Coli have mutated to be resistant to our last-line of antibiotics and untreateable bugs may already be circulating in Britain, scientists have warned.Health experts have warned for years that antibiotic resistance could send medicine back to the dark ages, with even the smallest infections proving lethal.Currently, when all other drugs fail, doctors use polymyxins – such as colistin – as a last resort to treat bacterial infections like E.coli and those which cause pneumonia.

Source: E.coli has developed resistance to last-line of antibiotics, warn scientists – Telegraph