Wednesday, February 23rd, 2011
, - Agence France-Presse (France)
Stephan: This is a decision whose implications will only become clear in the coming years, as more law develops around it. So this is a beginning not an end.
WASHINGTON — Vaccine makers are protected from lawsuits, the Supreme Court ruled Tuesday, dashing the hopes of a US couple who had sought monetary damages after their daughter fell ill after a round of routine childhood inoculations.
By a 6-2 vote, the US high court, in an opinion by written Justice Antonin Scalia, rejected the family’s argument that they should allowed to sue drug maker Wyeth for not making a safer vaccine.
The case concerned Hannah Bruesewitz, who as a six-month-old infant received a series of injections to protect her against diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis, the illness also known as whooping cough.
The family, from the northeastern state of Pennsylvania, found that after the third injection, the cognitive development of their now-teenaged daughter slowed dramatically and she developed seizures and other health problems that continue to this day.
The family insists that the girl’s medical problems were a side-effect of the vaccine; Wyeth, the manufacturer, over the years has steadfastly denied any link exists between the girl’s condition and its vaccine.
The US high court ruled that the vaccine maker, which is owned by Pfizer Inc, the world’s largest pharmaceutical company, is not subject to the liability laws that govern some other products.
The court ruled […]
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Wednesday, February 23rd, 2011
HOPE YEN and JOHN RABY, - Agence France-Presse (France)
Stephan: This is the first of the three internal migrations we are going to experience. The others will result from sealevel rise, and drought and extreme heat in the Southwest. If wind energy is centralized a small reverse will be migration into the center corridor of states to service that industry.
WELCH, W.Va. — Nestled within America’s once-thriving coal country, 87-year-old Ed Shepard laments a prosperous era gone by, when shoppers lined the streets and government lent a helping hand. Now, here as in one-fourth of all U.S. counties, West Virginia’s graying residents are slowly dying off.
Hit by an aging population and a poor economy, a near-record number of U.S. counties are experiencing more deaths than births in their communities, a phenomenon demographers call ‘natural decrease.’
Years in the making, the problem is spreading amid a prolonged job slump and a push by Republicans in Congress to downsize government and federal spending.
‘You’re the anchors of our Main Streets,’ President Barack Obama told small business leaders in Cleveland on Tuesday. ‘We want your stories - your successes, your failures, what barriers you’re seeing out there to expand. .How can America help you succeed so that you can help America succeed?’
Local businesses in Welch began to shutter after U.S. Steel departed McDowell County, which sits near Interstate 77, once referred to as the ‘Hillbilly Highway’ because it promised a way to jobs in the South. Young adults who manage to attend college - the high-school dropout rate is 28 percent, compared with about 8 […]
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Wednesday, February 23rd, 2011
MARY JO PITZI, - The Arizona Republic
Stephan: This is another example of the sleight-of-hand tactics extremists practise. There is no problem but the fix will lay the ground work for other avenues of assault. It is of the same character as the attempt to end collective bargaining on the basis of debt.
Arizona is one step closer to making it illegal to perform abortions based on the gender or race of the fetus – a move that critics say is a solution in search of a problem.
But a majority of the Arizona House of Representatives on Monday agreed that there should be safeguards against such a procedure and passed House Bill 2443 a 41-18 vote.
The measure now moves to the Senate for consideration.
The bill’s sponsor, Rep. Steve Montenegro, R-Litchfield Park, said the law was needed to protect against ‘bigotry and prejudice.’ He pointed to a 2010 Economist magazine article on ‘gender-cide’ – which documented a bias against female babies – and a Planned Parenthood study that he said concluded that 42 percent of Black babies are aborted as reasons why the legislation is needed.
But the magazine article focused on practices in China and India, and Montenegro could not immediately provide the Planned Parenthood study, which he said was based on national statistics.
Democrats said the legislation was not needed. There’s no evidence health-care providers are aborting babies because of their race or gender, said Rep. Matt Heinz, D-Tucson, a physician.
Most abortions happen during the first trimester, when a baby’s gender is not known, […]
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Tuesday, February 22nd, 2011
Stephan: More ideology over facts. The result: you are going to end up paying significantly more for whatever health care you can find that you can afford.
The House voted Friday to block funding for the health care law in several ways – starting the countdown to the defunding clash with Senate Democrats and President Barack Obama.
As expected, lawmakers approved Rep. Denny Rehberg’s amendment to the continuing resolution, which bars all payments to ‘any employee, officer, contractor, or grantee of any department or agency
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Tuesday, February 22nd, 2011
MICHELLE GOLDBERG, - The Daily Beast
Stephan: Reality confronts ideology. The attack on Planned Parenthood using ideology rather than facts is part of the cancer devouring us. Women throughout America are going to have to go into the streets, I am afraid, in order to protect their right, indeed, their power to control their own bodies.
Michelle Goldberg is a journalist based in New York. She is the author of The New York Times bestseller Kingdom Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism and The Means of Reproduction: Sex, Power and the Future of the World, winner of the 2008 J. Anthony Lukas Work-in-Progress Award and the Ernesta Drinker Ballard Book Prize.
The House may have voted to strip Planned Parenthood of funding, but the personal stories from Gwen Moore and Jackie Speier about an unplanned pregnancy and an abortion inspired women everywhere. The two congresswomen tell Michelle Goldberg why they decided to speak out.
In the end, Reps. Gwen Moore (D-WI) and Jackie Speier (D-CA) probably didn’t sway any votes by sharing their personal stories on the House floor on Thursday night. On Friday, 240 of 241 House Republicans voted to strip Planned Parenthood, the nation’s leading provider of reproductive health care, of government funding.
Article – Goldberg Speier Rep. Jackie Speier (D-Calif) talked about her abortion on the House floor on Thursday night during a debate on a proposal to cut federal funds for Planned Parenthood. (Charles Dharapak / AP Photo)
Nevertheless, when Moore stood up to talk about being an 18-year-old with an unplanned pregnancy, and Speier described having a second-trimester abortion after a wanted pregnancy went wrong, the effect was electrifying. With their candor, the two congresswomen inspired women all over the country and pierced through the sanctimonious abstractions dominating the debate. At least half of women have an unintended pregnancy at some point in their lives, and nearly a third […]
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