The White male christofascist Republicans that the people of Texas chose to put into office want women to get the message: “You are a subordinate gender that is supposed to be obedient. We control your body, and you better listen and learn that.”
Christofascist Republican Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton Credit: Mandel Ngan / AFP / Getty
Texas has sued a New York doctor for prescribing abortion pills to a woman near Dallas, launching one of the first challenges in the US to shield laws that Democrat-controlled states passed to protect physicians after Roe v. Wade was overturned.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton filed the lawsuit on Thursday in Collin County, and it was announced Friday.
Such prescriptions, made online and over the phone, are a key reason that the number of abortions has increased across the US even since state bans started taking effect. Most abortions in the US involve pills rather than procedures.
Mary Ruth Ziegler, a law professor at the University of California, Davis, School of Law, said a challenge to shield laws, which blue states started adopting in 2023, has been anticipated.
And it could have a chilling effect on prescriptions.
“Will doctors be more afraid to mail pills into Texas, even if they might be protected by shield laws because they don’t know if they’re protected by shield laws?” […]
“Americans spend more time living with diseases than people from other countries, according to a new study.” What more needs to be said? To quote from the JAMA paper: “Gains in life expectancy across global populations are recognized as a societal achievement.1 Increased lifespan, however, does not necessarily mean a longer healthy life.2 In considering quality of life, healthy longevity is increasingly underscored.3 To this end, characterizing healthspan—years lived in good health—would be valuable.1To see the actual JAMA paper: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2827753
Women in the US spend more years sick than men, the study finds. Credit: Jakub Porzycki / NurPhoto / Getty
Americans spend more time living with diseases than people from other countries, according to a new study.
On Wednesday, the American Medical Association published its latest findings, revealing that Americans live with diseases for an average of 12.4 years. Mental and substance-use disorders, as well as musculoskeletal diseases, are main contributors to the years lived with disability in the US, per the study.
Women in the US exhibited a 2.6-year higher so-called healthspan-lifespan gap (representing the number of years spent sick) than men, increasing from 12.2 to 13.7 years or 32% beyond the global mean for women. Americans spend more time living with diseases than people from other countries, according to a new study.
On Wednesday, the American Medical Association published its latest findings, revealing that Americans live with diseases for an average of 12.4 years. Mental and substance-use disorders, as well as musculoskeletal diseases, are main contributors to the years lived with disability in the US, per the study.
Another horror story about the American illness profit system and the UnitedHealthcare/Optum conglomerate. I understand why Congress does nothing to remedy this abuse; they are mostly whores owned by illness-profit corporations. What I don’t understand is why millions of Americans voted for Republicans who are going to make this awful healthcare system even worse. Are so many of us that stupid and ill-informed? Why aren’t millions of us out in the streets demanding the United States establish universal birthright single-payer healthcare as the rest of the world’s developed democracies have done?
Credit: Adam Berry / Getty
There was a time when Sharelle Menard thought her son would never be able to speak. She couldn’t soothe Benji when he cried, couldn’t read him books he could follow, couldn’t take him out in public. “The screaming, and screaming, and screaming,” she said. “He would get so frustrated because he couldn’t communicate.”
Benji was nearly 3 when he was diagnosed with severe autism and soon after started a specialized therapy to help him develop basic skills. After two years in treatment, his murmuring gave way to small words, with “bubbles” among the first. To celebrate, Menard powered up a bubble machine she found at the dollar store, and for hours, they watched the iridescent orbs drift over their porch.
Menard, who is raising Benji alone in south-central Louisiana, began to picture a future for her son that diverged from the stories she’d heard about some kids with similar diagnoses, who grew up still unable to manage their frustrations and had to live in nursing homes or institutions.
Here is what I think is a very insightful commentary on what is going to happen starting 21 January when the United STates becomes an authoritarian oligarchy instead of a democracy. All the weak-minded Trump voters are about to discover what they have done to themselves as they, and the rest of us, experience the worst and most biased government in over a century.
In 1935, President Franklin Roosevelt created Social Security, an insurance contract between Americans and the federal government that pays out on certain life events. As a financial safety net, social security protects Americans from what Roosevelt called the “hazards and vicissitudes of life.”
Roosevelt’s plan has been vital to the American people, and has delivered payments on time, for generations. Today, 180 million employees are paying in, and 87 million people are receiving retirement and disability benefits under the program.
Due to fluctuating demographics and other factors, payouts under Social Security now exceed pay-ins, and most analysts agree adjustments are needed to keep the program afloat. With the help of Elon Musk, Republican lawmakers, who will soon hold majorities in the House and Senate, will try to cut guaranteed benefits instead of increasing the program’s revenue.
When billionaires slash programs to fund their own tax cuts
GOP legislators are toying with reducing payouts under the system, including raising the retirement age and other benefit cuts. As one GOP representative recently
You’ve probably never heard of “mirror life” microbes. I had heard of them, and read a paper on on this research, but had not understood the threat to all life on Earth they represented. We are about to see if greed trumps the safety of life on this planet.
The DNA of all living organisms is made from ‘right-handed’ nucleotides, while proteins, the building blocks of cells, are made from ‘left-handed’ amino acids. Credit: Leigh Prather / Alamy
World-leading scientists have called for a halt on research to create “mirror life” microbes amid concerns that the synthetic organisms would present an “unprecedented risk” to life on Earth.
The international group of Nobel laureates and other experts warn that mirror bacteria, constructed from mirror images of molecules found in nature, could become established in the environment and slip past the immune defences of natural organisms, putting humans, animals and plants at risk of lethal infections.
Although a viable mirror microbe would probably take at least a decade to build, a new risk assessment raised such serious concerns about the organisms that the 38-strong group urged scientists to stop work towards the goal and asked funders to make clear they will no longer support the research.
“The threat we’re talking about is unprecedented,” said Prof Vaughn Cooper, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Pittsburgh. “Mirror bacteria would likely evade many human, animal and […]
