Category: Health

by Brad Racino & Jill Castellano / inewsource / April 18, 2019

Tens of millions of people have volunteered their time and bodies to help create breakthroughs in medicine. You see the results with the pain relievers in your medicine cabinet, the vaccines that protect you from disease, the pacemakers that keep your heart beating and the innovations happening now with stem cells.

Yet the systems meant to protect those volunteers from harm are far from perfect, and research violations by Dr. Kang Zhang, an eye doctor at the University of California San Diego, show just how easily that well-intentioned framework can collapse. Zhang is the chief of eye genetics at UCSD and has a lab named after him

by Brad Racino, Lauren Mapp & Bella Ross / inewsource / April 3, 2019

More than 75 faculty members, staff and students at San Diego State University packed an open forum Wednesday, April 3, to demand answers of campus leadership about noxious odors that have sickened many since January.

Editordude: From an earlier post:

The odors arose from a chemical used during roof repairs to the Professional Studies and Fine Arts building, which was closed on March 13 — six weeks after the university was told of the problem and began air monitoring tests. Students and professors who occupied the building despite the smells said the university did a poor job of notifying them or giving them options. inewsource.com

by Cheryl Clark / inewsource / April 2, 2019

More than 80 women are suing Sharp Grossmont Hospital and Sharp Healthcare for videotaping them without their consent as they underwent painful and emotional obstetric surgeries, including C-sections.

According to the 15-page lawsuit, the operating room cameras in the La Mesa facility captured videos of about 1,800 women between July 17, 2012 and June 30, 2013. Plaintiffs’ attorneys said Sharp officials disclosed those numbers and dates during legal proceedings before the lawsuit was filed.

By David Mangone / Americans for Safe Access / February 13, 2019 |

WASHINGTON, DC – On February 13, The House Subcommittee on Consumer Protection and Financial Institutions held a hearing entitled “Challenges and Solutions: Access to Banking Services for Cannabis-Related Businesses.”

Twenty-three years have passed since California became the first state to legalize cannabis for medicinal purposes in 1996. Today, the adult use of cannabis is legal in 10 states and the District of Columbia.

By Dr. Carol Paris / Common Dreams

The surge in support for improved Medicare for All—now up to 70% in recent polling—has single-payer opponents ramping up their scare tactics. The Koch-funded Mercatus Center recently claimed that Medicare for all could only work with painful sacrifices from doctors, specifically by paying us Medicare’s current reimbursement rates, which are about 40% lower than private insurance.

If single payer would cost doctors so much, why do a majority of us

By Anna Daniels / San Diego Free Press

For the children of steel
The Atlantic recently ran an article about the long term impacts of the now largely defunct steel industry in Braddock, Pennsylvania. Braddock resident Tony Buba has produced a short documentary about the environmental racism that has created an overlooked health crisis among residents in the area, particularly among African Americans who were segregated in neighborhoods closest to the mills. The incidences of cancer and lung disease are shocking.

For those of us who lived in any one of the mill towns dotting the Monongahela River (Mon Valley) in southwestern Pennsylvania and lost loved ones to those diseases,

By Egberto Willies / Daily Kos

America needs a paradigm shift when it comes to how it deals with products that affect our moods, psyche, and our overall well-being. We must do so based on data instead of ideology, and deprogramming many will be difficult. But marijuana must be completely decriminalized.

Houston cannabis activist Ashley Miller appeared on Politics Done Right to bring awareness to many issues about marijuana, aka weed, aka cannabis. Her first goal was to dispel the notion that there are any valid reasons why marijuana is illegal. Second, she hoped to activate Americans both locally and throughout the country. As one listens to all the arguments and discourse about marijuana, there can only be one conclusion: the product should not be illegal.

By David Mangone / Americans for Safe Access

New research has been released that further highlights the potential role of medical cannabis in combating the Nation’s opioid crisis . Two studies, published on April 2nd by the Journal of the American Medical Association reveal a net decrease in opioid prescriptions in states with medical cannabis laws for Medicare and Medicaid populations.

The first study, conducted by researchers at the University of Georgia, found that states with active medical cannabis dispensaries saw 3,742,000 fewer daily doses per year filled for prescription opioids under Medicare Part D (typically enrollees are over 65) compared to states without medical cannabis programs. This decrease equates to about a 14% reduction in opioid prescriptions in states with medical cannabis laws.

By Retired OBcean

I belong to a Medicaid managed-care plan called Community Health Group. It covers me when I go to a local nonprofit clinic in my neighborhood. I really don’t have any complaints about the clinic’s service or of the plan.

The Plan – which has annual revenues of $1.2 billion – serves nearly 300,000 poor and disabled patients in San Diego County – all under a state contract funded entirely by taxpayers. Reportedly, Community Health Group has earned above-average ratings for patient care. But I just found out .

It’s heating up around the shuttered nuclear plant at San Onofre because locals are not happy with the plan to bury 3.6 million pounds of nuclear waste at San Onofre State Beach. There were protests recently in the nearest city, San Clemente, against this plan.

Meanwhile, a local group, Citizens Oversight, has submitted a formal petition to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission under NRC Regulations that govern how the nuclear industry handles spent nuclear fuel. They believe the containers of the toxic nuke spent fuel should be designed for 1,000 years rather than the current requirement of only 40 years.

Everybody is talking about San Onofre. In the current San Diego Reader, Don Bauder has a piece about how nuclear waste in the sand now will create a toxic ocean later. Sarah “Steve” Mosko, at Boogie Green writes there’s a ticking time bomb at San Onofre Nuclear Plant.

By Michael Steinberg

Do Nukes Kill?

While the decline of the nuclear power industry has become undeniable, one of the more significant aspects of this story still receives scant attention. In order to function, nuclear reactors generate radioactive materials and must release them into the air and water of surrounding communities. This doesn’t just happen during serious accidents as at Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima, but during day-to-day operations at nuke plants.

By Gary Headrick

I was recently asked to clear up some confusion about our nuclear waste strategy in an email thread between some good friends. I thought it might be worth sharing a refined version of my reply with you.

Also if you have not signed and shared our Petition yet, please do.

Here is the basic objective:

Delay the date for silos on the beach to get loaded with extremely radioactive waste.

This allows time to consider better alternatives that make us safer while deadly waste remains here cooling off for perhaps decades before it can be moved. We must deal with the fact that they are using canisters that can’t be monitored to prevent leaks, can’t be repaired