Category Archives: Profiteering

Cynical? Me? Yep. The latest American doctor infected with Ebola is heading to Nebraska for treatment – The Washington Post

{The reason for transferring him from Massachusetts to Nebraska? So University of Nebraska Medical Center could get some publicity – aka: create public “currency” for same or more funding from governments (tax payers) and foundations. If just to give “better” care, why have a press conference}

The Nebraska hospital expects Sacra to arrive Friday morning. The Biocontainment Patient Care Unit is one of four of its kind in the United States, according to the hospital, and is the country’s largest. “We have been preparing for this type of event for a long time,” Jeffrey Gold, chancellor of the University of Nebraska Medical Center, said during a Thursday news conference. “It is not a surprise we are being called to serve in this way.”

Phil Smith, head of the special isolation unit at the Nebraska Medical Center, said that Sacra is in “reasonably stable shape, and able to get on the plane under his own power.”

Sacra, the medical director of the organization’s ELWA Hospital in Monrovia, decided to return to Liberia after another missionary doctor and another volunteer became ill with Ebola, Johnson said. Sacra had been working in the hospital for about a month, most recently caring for pregnant women.

via The latest American doctor infected with Ebola is heading to Nebraska for treatment – The Washington Post.

Stock price promo – Johnson & Johnson to Quicken Development of Ebola Virus Vaccine – WSJ

Will do nothing for this outbreak but they are hoping it will up their stock prices – profiting from a virus that most in advanced economies had ignored since 1970’s with first outbreak.

“Johnson & Johnson said the vaccine program is being accelerated to allow for clinical trials in humans in early 2015, after promising results in preclinical studies. The company previously had planned to conduct human trials nearly a year later in 2016. The company said the collaboration between Crucell and Bavarian Nordic would enable faster production of the doses necessary to start larger clinical trials.”

via Johnson & Johnson to Quicken Development of Ebola Virus Vaccine – WSJ.

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.

Immigration Talk with a Mexican American: TWINS: Arpaio and Ferguson’s Chief Thomas Jackson — Why Latinos Should PAY ATTENTION to what’s Happening in Ferguson Missouri

I’ve been reading the posts by these Far Right Wing sites. They are disgusting and racists, blaming Teenager Brown for his own murder. However those attacking young Mike are the same nutcases that support Arpayaso, the Tea Party, Ted Cruz and all the other crazy racists that HATE LATINOS, Blacks, Gays, Women and all minorities. They are using THE SAME LANGUAGE they use when they attack us.

They are blaming poor Mike Brown, the dead victim who cannot speak for himself.

They are blaming the civil protesters who are utilizing their 1st amendment rights to rally. Yet these right wing racist websites call them “animals” and “let them kill themselves.” You should read their despicable spew. (However, you don’t have to read their vile spew. I’ll report it so you don’t have to read their garbage!)

These are the same WORDS they use against LATINOS in Maricopa County / in Guadalupe!

These folks don’t believe in EQUALITY!

Their EQUALITY only encompasses WHITE MEN, not ALL PEOPLE – not ALL MINORITIES!

WE LATINOS NEED TO PAY ATTENTION TO WHAT’s Happening in Ferguson, Missouri.

via Immigration Talk with a Mexican American: TWINS: Arpaio and Ferguson’s Chief Thomas Jackson — Why Latinos Should PAY ATTENTION to what’s Happening in Ferguson Missouri.

Liberia getting multiple hits – Indians stuck in Ebola-hit Liberia as airlines cancel services – The Times of India

Kenya Airways is the latest carrier to suspend its flights to the Liberian capital of Monrovia and Sierra Leone’s capital Freetown due to the Ebola outbreak in West Africa. The airline will stop flying its planes to Liberia from Tuesday.

At present, only Brussels Airlines is operating. British Airways, Emirates, pan-African airline ASKY and smaller regional carrier Arik Air have restricted flights in the region.

Adding to the woes of the local and expatriate population is the escalating cost of essential commodities. The price of one particular variety of parboiled rice popular in Liberia — imported from India and the US — has doubled.

“We used to get a 25kg bag of parboiled rice at US$14. A month ago, it was $18; now it has touched $28,” says Shamshuddin, a garment businessman from Karnad, Mulki. According to him, the prices of rice and other commodities have increased because there are no vessels bringing them to Liberia.

via Indians stuck in Ebola-hit Liberia as airlines cancel services – The Times of India.

Transplant Brokers in Israel Lure Desperate Kidney Patients to Costa Rica – NYTimes.com

A broker who trades in human organs might seem a difficult thing to find. But Ms. Dorin’s mother began making inquiries around the hospital where she worked, and in short order the family came up with three names: Avigad Sandler, a former insurance agent long suspected of trafficking; Boris Volfman, a young Ukrainian émigré and Sandler protégé; and Yaacov Dayan, a wily businessman with interests in real estate and marketing.

The men were, The New York Times learned during an investigation of the global organ trade, among the central operators in Israel’s irrepressible underground kidney market. For years, they have pocketed enormous sums for arranging overseas transplants for patients who are paired with foreign donors, court filings and government documents show.

via Transplant Brokers in Israel Lure Desperate Kidney Patients to Costa Rica – NYTimes.com.

Missouri Unrest Leaves the Right Torn Over Views on Law vs. Order – NYTimes.com

{In the late 1950s and 1960s, Governors and sheriffs in Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, and Arkansas used the terms outside agitators and pinkos/reds/commies (communists) for those who advocated for ending segregated schools, stores, restaurants, rest rooms, buses, theaters, water fountains, as well as laws that kept Black Americans from voting, or seeking employment. So I guess, it is clear which side Sean Hannity is on: allow segregation, use dogs, fire hoses, chains, clubs, guns, gas, and false arrest on anyone who disagrees with official racial biases and profiling}

In much of the conservative news media, the protesters in Ferguson are being portrayed as “outside agitators,” in the words of Sean Hannity, the Fox News host.

via Missouri Unrest Leaves the Right Torn Over Views on Law vs. Order – NYTimes.com.

Israeli Occupation Forces wage campaign of mass arrests in Jerusalem this morning

{Have not yet learned that this type of control cannot go on forever – if for no other reasons than expenses and allocation of personnel – 30% of Israeli’s working as police and military?} Today at dawn the Israeli Occupation Forces launched a campaign of mass arrests all over Jerusalem. They arrested more than 60 Palestinians under the pretext that they participated in protests in solidarity with Gaza and that they threw stones and bottles to the IOF and settlers during clashes.

A large group of Israeli Occupation Forces raided several districts and villages in and around Jerusalem in the early morning, causing the outbreak of clashes with the youth in different areas.

via Israeli Occupation Forces wage campaign of mass arrests in Jerusalem this morning.