Public Health

TTIP Will Destroy Public Health Care In The UK

June 24, 2015 BMA, www.bma.org.uk Educate! Health Care, Public Health

By BMA - Doctors have warned that public health medicine is under threat, to the detriment of the NHS and patients. They have criticised ‘wholesale’ reductions in medically qualified jobs in local authorities in England and cuts to public health funding. The BMA annual representative meeting also called for recognition of the importance of public health medical executives. Cornwall consultant radiologist John Hyslop said the professional voice of public health medicine was needed by commissioners and managers, but England was seeing the ‘unravelling’ of public health since it became the responsibility of local authorities as a result of the Health and Social Care Act 2012. He also expressed concern about what would happen in the future as more areas sought to emulate Manchester, which has embarked on a programme to devolve health and social care.

French Minister Seeks To Restrict Weed Killers

June 16, 2015 Sarah Caspari, www.csmonitor.com Educate! Food and Agriculture, France, Public Health

By Sarah Caspari in Christian Science Monitor - If Ecology Minister Ségolène Royal has her way, amateur gardeners in France will no longer be able to purchase weed-killers containing glyphosate, citing health concerns. "France must be offensive on stopping pesticides," Royal said of the herbicides on French television, according to Reuters. In a March report, the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer concluded that glyphosate was “probably carcinogenic to humans.” Originally developed in the 1970s by Monsanto under the name Roundup, glyphosate has been available in generic forms after the company's last commercial patent expired in 2000. Roundup remains the world's most widely used weed-killer, according to the IARC.

Abortion: A Right In Name Only?

June 13, 2015 Nan Little Kirkpatrick, www.truth-out.org Educate! Abortion, Public Health, War on women, Women’s health

A desperate pregnant woman emailed my office recently. She was in a tough spot: She had enough money to buy diapers for her baby, or food for herself, but not both. She wanted help to pay for an abortion. She faced a pregnancy she could neither afford to continue nor afford to terminate. This is typical of the stories I hear in my job as executive director of the Texas Equal Access Fund, which serves the northern half of Texas. Even sadder than her predicament was the fact that our organization only has enough money to support fewer than half of the thousands of people who call us asking for help. An abortion typically costs anywhere from $450 to $3,000, depending on factors including number of gestational weeks. The per capita household income for Texas is $26,327.

Leaked Text Shows Big Pharma Using TPP Against Global Health

June 11, 2015 Deirdre Fulton, www.commondreams.org Educate! Big Pharma, Finance and the Economy, Free Trade, Public Health, TPP

By Deirdre Fulton in Common Dreams - Bolstering long-held criticisms from public interest groups, newly leaked sections of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) show how Big Pharma is employing "an aggressive new form of transnational corporatism" to increase profits at the expense of global health. The TPP's "Healthcare Annex"—which seeks to regulate government policies around medicines and medical devices—would give big pharmaceutical companies more power over public access to medicine while crippling public healthcare programs around the world and "tying the hands" of the U.S. Congress in its ability to pursue Medicare reform and lower drug costs. President Barack Obama is trying to gain Fast Track approval from the U.S. House of Representatives as early as tomorrow, having already obtained it from the Senate, which would grant him increased power to push the TPP and other mammoth trade pacts through Congress.

Oil Trains Don’t Have To Derail To Be Hazardous, Doctors Warn

June 11, 2015 Dahr Jamail, www.truth-out.org Educate! Oil & Gas, Oil Trains, Public Health, Transportation

By Dahr Jamail in Truthout - In May, hundreds of doctors, nurses and health-care professionals from Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR) called on Washington Gov. Jay Inslee and Oregon Gov. Kate Brown to take a stronger position against proposed oil-by-rail shipping terminals in their respective states, in order to insure the health and physical security of families and communities there. Washington PSR describes itself as a group that promotes "peace and health for the human community and the global ecosystem by empowering members, citizens and policy makers to develop and model for the rest of the nation socially just and life-enhancing policies regarding nuclear issues, climate change, environmental toxins, vulnerable populations and other risks to human health." The group has sounded the alarm over what it sees as a direct health threat to the country stemming from the oil-by-rail system.

Green Economies Need Alliances B/W Labour & Indigenous People

June 5, 2015 Harsha Walia, www.ricochet.media Strategize! Capitalism, Environment, Imperialism, Indigenous People, Labor Unions, Land Rights, Public Health

By Harsha Walia in Ricochet.Media - The bold leadership of unions that revive principles of social unionism ensures that unions are not simply advocating mobility within capitalism and state structures, but are primary allies in the struggle against capitalism and imperialism. As Herman Rosenfeld, a former GM worker, writes, “Job security is key, but what kind of jobs? Is the job security strategy one that works against the interests of the rest of the working-class and First Nations peoples, or in partnership with them? Moving away from the narrow focus on the short-term sectoral interests of a relatively small group of workers, whose jobs are currently defined by their employers, is a critical way of building unions as fighters for the class as a whole, and for a different, sustainable, and hopefully anti-capitalist future.” Simply put, workers shouldn’t have to extract toxic sludge. Workers want and need clean air, clean water, and a more equitable future.

These Guys Want To Help Pay Your Medical Bills

June 3, 2015 Wendy Joan Biddlecombe, www.metro.us Create! Capitalism, Debt, Health Care, Public Health

By Wendy Joan Biddlecombe in Metro - Last year 64 million Americans had difficulty paying their medical debt, according to a report by the Commonwealth Fund, down from 75 million in 2012 and 73 million in 2010. Jerry Ashton and Craig Antico think they can put a dent in America’s medical debt crisis, and want to help those who really need to pay their bills, no strings attached. At face value, Ashton and Antico are perhaps unlikely advocates for those who owe medical bills. They have decades of experience as medical debt collectors. They recently launched RIP Medical Debt, a nonprofit, and accompanying initial crowdfunding campaign to raise $74,500 to purchase and absolve strangers’ medical debt. The goal for the first year is to raise $14 million, purchase $1 billion of medical debt and abolish it.

Is Blue Cross Blue Shield An Illegal Cartel?

May 30, 2015 Anna Wilde Mathews, www.pnhp.org Educate! Capitalism, Cartel, Corporatism, Health Care, Public Health

Blue Cross and Blue Shield health insurers cover about a third of Americans, through a national network that dates back decades. Now, antitrust lawsuits advancing in a federal court in Alabama allege that the 37 independently owned companies are functioning as an illegal cartel. A federal judicial panel has consolidated the claims against the insurers into two lawsuits that represent plaintiffs from around the country. One is on behalf of health-care providers and the other is for individual and small-employer customers. The antitrust suits allege that the insurers are conspiring to divvy up markets and avoid competing against one another, driving up customers’ prices and pushing down the amounts paid to doctors and other health-care providers.

Health Insurance Getting More Expensive With Less Coverage

May 25, 2015 Sarah Kliff, www.vox.com Educate! Economic Justice, Health Care, Public Health

If you ask any economist the main purpose of health insurance, the answer you'll probably get back is this: to protect against financial catastrophe. Yes, the free annual check-ups or discounted gym memberships that health plans sometimes offer are nice. But the real thing you're purchasing with your monthly premium is protection against financial ruin. You're paying for someone else to be on the hook for the big medical bills that can and will pile up in the case of serious illness or accident. Except, increasingly, insurance does not provide that type of protection. That's the main takeaway from a new Commonwealth Fund report on the "underinsured," or people who have health insurance that leaves them exposed to really big costs — and who appear to skip care due to the price.

Hawaiians Protest Chemical Poisons Sprayed In Their Communities

May 18, 2015 Mike Ludwig, www.truth-out.org Resist! Chemical Industry, Environment, Hawaii, Public Health

For the past three years, a growing coalition of activists and civic leaders on Kaua'i has been battling Syngenta and three other agrichemical companies - BASF, DuPont Pioneer and Dow AgroSciences - over toxic pesticides the companies spray as they field test and produce genetically engineered seeds, which are also known as genetically modified organisms or GMOs. The four companies spray thousands of gallons of pesticides labeled "restricted use" by the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) at their farms and test plots on Kaua'i each year. At least five of the 22 restricted-use pesticide formulas used on the island contain chemicals that have been banned in Switzerland due to environmental and human health concerns, but are perfectly legal in the United States as long as they are applied by licensed workers.

Monsanto Weed Killer Poisoning Youth?

May 12, 2015 Mary Ellen Kustin and Soren Rundquist, www.alternet.org Educate! GMOs, Monsanto, Public Health, Youth

Genetically engineered crops, or GMOs, have led to an explosion in growers’ use of herbicides, with the result that children at hundreds of elementary schools across the country go to class close by fields that are regularly doused with escalating amounts of toxic weed killers. GMO corn and soybeans have been genetically engineered to withstand being blasted with glyphosate – an herbicide that the World Health Organization recently classified as “probably carcinogenic to humans.” The proximity of many schools to fields blanketed in the chemical puts kids at risk of exposure. But it gets worse. Overreliance on glyphosate has spawned the emergence of “superweeds” that resist the herbicide, so now producers of GMO crops are turning to even more harmful chemicals.

Federal Judge OKs Uranium Mining Next To Grand Canyon National Park

May 12, 2015 Indigenous Action, www.indigenousaction.org Educate! Clean Up the Mines, Environment, Indigenous People, Public Health

U.S. District Court Judge David Campbell denied a request to halt new uranium mining at the Canyon uranium mine, located only six miles from Grand Canyon National Park’s South Rim. The Havasupai tribe and a coalition of conservation groups had challenged the U.S. Forest Service’s decision to allow Energy Fuels Inc. to reopen the mine without initiating or completing formal tribal consultations and without updating an obsolete federal environmental review dating to 1986. At stake are tribal cultural values, wildlife and endangered species, and the risk of toxic uranium mining waste contaminating the aquifers and streams that sustain the Grand Canyon and Colorado River. “We are very disappointed with the ruling by Judge Campbell in the Canyon Mine case,” said Havasupai Chairman Rex Tilousi.

Transformer Explosion At Nuclear Plant Causes Oil Spill

May 11, 2015 Steve Lieberman and Matt Spillane, www.lohud.com Educate! Environment, New York (NY), Nuclear Energy, Public Health

The owners of Indian Point are planning to clean up several thousand gallons of oil that potentially spilled into the Hudson River after a Saturday night transformer explosion and fire. The fire, which began at 5:50 p.m., sent smoke billowing into the air and oil overflowing the plant's moat, said Neil Sheehan, a spokesman for the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. "The plant's fire suppression system automatically sprayed water on the transformer fire," Sheehan said Sunday. "Oil made its way into the drains and into the water. Several thousand gallons may have overflowed the transformer moat." The fire didn't cause the release of any radiation and didn't pose a threat to workers or the public, according to a statement by Entergy Corp, the owner of the nuclear power plant.

Campaign Against Glyphosate Steps Up In Latin America

April 30, 2015 Fabiana Frayssinet, www.ipsnews.net Resist! Food and Agriculture, Latin America, Public Health

After the World Health Organisation (WHO) declared glyphosate a probable carcinogen, the campaign has intensified in Latin America to ban the herbicide, which is employed on a massive scale on transgenic crops. In a Mar. 20 publication, the WHO’s International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) reported that the world’s most widely used herbicide is probably carcinogenic to humans, a conclusion that was based on numerous studies. Social organisations and scientific researchers in Latin America argue that thanks to the report by the WHO’s cancer research arm, governments no longer have an excuse not to intervene, after years of research on the damage caused by glyphosate to health and the environment at a regional and global level.

The “Shocking” Statistics Of Racial Disparity In Baltimore

April 29, 2015 Bill Quigley, www.commondreams.org Educate! Baltimore, Education, Inequality, Mass Incarceration, police brutality, Public Health, Racial Justice, Unemployment

Were you shocked at the disruption in Baltimore? What is more shocking is daily life in Baltimore, a city of 622,000 which is 63 percent African American. Here are ten numbers that tell some of the story. One. Blacks in Baltimore are more than 5.6 times more likely to be arrested for possession of marijuana than whites even though marijuana use among the races is similar. In fact, Baltimore county has the fifth highest arrest rate for marijuana possessions in the USA. Two. Over $5.7 million has been paid out by Baltimore since 2011 in over 100 police brutality lawsuits. Victims of severe police brutality were mostly people of color and included a pregnant woman, a 65 year old church deacon, children, and an 87 year old grandmother.

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