Weekly Pulse: Crisis Pregnancy Centers, Christine O'Donnell, Condoms, and Concussions

by: The Media Consortium

Wed Oct 20, 2010 at 11:17

by Lindsay Beyerstein, Media Consortium blogger

Crisis Pregnancy Centers (CPCs) in New York City may soon have to level with the public about their real agenda. At the Ms. Blog, Michelle Chen has an update on proposed legislation which would force CPCs in New York to disclose that they aren't reproductive health centers.

CPCs are anti-choice ministries that masquerade as full-service reproductive health clinics. They typically set up shop near real clinics to trick unwary clients. Real clinics dispense medical advice from doctors, nurses, and other licensed health care professionals. They are required to tell clients about the risks and benefits of all their treatment options. They don't push clients towards abortion or adoption. CPCs are typically staffed by volunteers. Instead of medical advice, they hand out over-the-counter pregnancy tests and medically inaccurate information about the risks of abortion. They use pseudoscience and high pressure sales tactics to derail as many women seeking abortions as they can.

Chen reports that if the bill becomes law, New York CPCs will have to post signs disclosing that "they do not provide abortion services or contraceptive devices, or make  referrals to organizations that do." If the facility lacks licensed on-site medical professionals, the center would have to inform prospective clients of this fact. This is an excellent piece of consumer protection legislation. If CPCs are honest about who they are and what they do, they should have no problem with the law.

Christine O'Donnell: not (just) a joke

In an essay for the Women's Media Center, organizer Shelby Knox explains why Delaware's Republican Senate candidate Christine O'Donnell represents more than an anti-masturbation punchline:

Not ironically, O'Donnell is a loyal disciple to the religious agenda  that equates sexuality, especially female sexuality, with evil and the  decline of humanity. [...] To most mainstream Americans, O'Donnell's concerted battle against solo  sexual pleasure in particular is so fringe, so bizarre, it's laughable.  Yet, those of us deeply familiar with the ideology of the extremist  right wing have long understood the condemnation of sex and sexual  pleasure for anything other than the purpose of conception within  marriage to be the underpinning of public policies that invite  (Christian) God and (big, big) government into our bedrooms.

Knox notes that the same underlying suspicion of human sexuality finds expression in more mainstream areas of American politics, like federally-funded abstinence-only education, which substitutes religious homilies and gender stereotypes for science-based sex ed. (I would add federal funding for some of the nation's aforementioned "crisis pregnancy centers" to Knox's list of examples of anti-sex religious ideology replacing science-based health services.)

This week, O'Donnell drew audible gasps from a crowd when she claimed that the separation of church and state isn't part of the U.S. Constitution, as Monica Potts reports for TAPPED.

O'Donnell may seem bizarre to the average voter, but Knox reminds us that she's pretty typical of a rising tide of anti-sex, anti-science conservatism that we ignore at our peril:

But more accurately she's the poster girl for more than 78 candidates  running this election season who share her anti-sex, anti-woman views.  These candidates believe abortion should be illegal in all cases,  without exception for rape and incest. Some have promised a GOP majority  would signal a return to funding failed abstinence-only policies. Ken  Buck, the GOP Senate candidate in Colorado, even went so far as to  refuse to prosecute a rape because the accuser had "buyer's remorse"  over an abortion he alleged she'd had a year before the assault.

Condoms and porn

A porn actor in California became the latest performer to test positive for HIV last week. His diagnosis sent shockwaves through the San Fernando Valley's porn industry because the actor was reportedly a star who worked with a lot of big names in an industry where condoms are the exception rather than the rule.

The case has reignited controversy over the fact that straight porn companies aggressively flout California law that mandates condoms on porn sets. The industry maintains that it doesn't need condoms because it has a rigorous testing program for talent. As I report in Working In These Times the industry is being allowed to investigate the HIV outbreak on its own, which is a little like asking BP to monitor oil spills. The same industry-allied non-profit that administers the tests, and does PR about how great the testing program is, also investigates cases of HIV in the industry. Does anyone else see a potential problem?

Concussions in the NFL

Football season is in full swing, but for Dave Zirin of The Nation and many other football fans, it's getting harder and harder to reconcile their love of the game with our growing awareness of the toll that it takes on players:

In August, to much fanfare, NFL owners finally acknowledged that  football-related concussions cause depression, dementia, memory loss and  the early onset of Alzheimer's disease. Now that they've opened the  door, this concussion discussion is starting to shape how we understand  what were previously seen as the NFL's typical helping of off-field  controversy and tragedy.

Zirin appends a list of over 30 players who have sustained concussions since the pre-season. Peter King of Sports Illustrated is calling for the NFL to start kicking excessively violent players out of the game, but Zirin says that's not enough to stem the tide of concussions. Devastating brain injuries can come from routine, legal hits. A lot of the cumulative brain trauma leaves players demented in their fifties is actually sustained during practice.

The carnage is built into the game. Concussions are unavoidable given anatomy of the human brain and the physics of huge guys crashing into each other. Helmets only help so much because they can't prevent the brain from smashing against the cranium. Zirin thinks football fans need to do a lot of soul searching. He argues that every fan should think hard about whether it's really that much fun to watch guys get their brains pulped in the name of sport. Zirin's not ready to give up football yet, but he thinks the gnawing guilt may eventually outweigh his love of the game.

Cephalon spokesdoc: "Maybe I am a pervert, I honestly don't know"

Mother Jones and Propublica have a blockbuster exposé of crooked doctors on pharmaceutical company payrolls. They found that a shocking number of "white coat sales reps" (doctors paid by pharmaceutical companies to sell drugs to other doctors) have checkered pasts and dodgy credentials.

For examples, in 2004, a court upheld a Georgia hospital's decision to fire Dr. Donald  Ray Taylor, an anesthesiologist who had a habit of giving vaginal and  anal exams to young female patients without documenting why. According  to court records, Dr. Taylor explained himself to a hospital official as  follows, "Maybe I am a pervert, I honestly don't know."

For reasons that are themselves murky, Dr. Taylor went on to become  the highest paid speaker for the pharmaceutical giant Cephalon, earning  $142,050 in 2009 and an an additional $52,400 through  June. It turns  out that Dr. Taylor is far from the only shady doc to  make big bucks as a shill for big pharma. The investigators found 250 pharma docs with serious blemishes on their records for such offenses as inappropriately prescribing drugs, providing poor care, or having sex  with patients. Some were just playing doctor on the pharma circuit, having lost their licenses.

This update brought to you by the Media Consortium, and the letter C.

This post features links to the best independent, progressive   reporting about health care by members  of The Media Consortium.  It  is free to reprint. Visit the Pulse  for  a complete list of articles on health care reform, or follow us on  Twitter. And for the best   progressive reporting on critical economy, environment, health care  and  immigration issues, check out The Audit,  The Mulch,   and The Diaspora. This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of  leading independent media outlets.

Weekly Pulse: Rotten Eggs, Drowsy Doctors, and Expensive Insurance

by: The Media Consortium

Wed Sep 08, 2010 at 12:56

by Lindsay Beyerstein, Media Consortium blogger

Tainted egg shell game

The Iowa chapter of the
Sierra Club is pushing state
regulators to investigate two factory farms and a feed mill linked to
this summer's massive recall of salmonella-tainted eggs, Lynda Waddington
reports in the Iowa Independent. The Sierra Club sent a strongly-worded
letter to Iowa Attorney General Tom Miller urging him to investigate
Wright County Egg, Hillandale Farms and the Quality Egg LLC feed mill. All
three firms were linked to the salmonella outbreak that sickened an
estimated 1200 people; and all three firms are linked to agro-baron Austin
"Jack" DeCoster.

Tom Philpott of Grist calls DeCoster a "habitual" environmental
offender and "one of the most reviled names in industrial agriculture." In
1996, the Department of Labor fined DeCoster Eggs $3.6 million for what
the then-Secretary of Labor described as "running an agricultural
sweatshop" and "treating its employees like animals." Over the years,
DeCoster enterprises racked up additional fines in other states. A
previous Attorney General of Iowa dubbed DeCoster a habitual offender for
water pollution. In 2002, five female employees at the DeCoster's Wright
County egg operation alleged that their supervisors had raped them and
threatened to kill them if they reported the crime. The company paid $1.5
million to settle the lawsuit.

Drowsy doctors

A coalition of public health activists is pushing the Occupational
Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) to regulate the work hours of
doctors in training. New proposed guidelines would limit the shifts of
first-year residents to 16 hours, but more senior trainees could be forced
to work shifts up to 28 hours. The group, which includes the Committee of
Interns and  Residents/SEIU Healthcare, the American Medical Student
Association,  and Public Citizen, says that's not good enough to protect
doctors or the public. As I explain in Working In These Times, research
shows that sleep deprivation is a major
preventable cause of medical errors, which is why the coalition wants to
see shifts for all residents capped at 16 hours.

Insurance
premiums soar

A new report from the Kaiser Foundation
Family shows that health insurance premiums continued to climb with
employers shifting an ever-greater share of the burden onto employees. A
family health insurance policy costs about $14,000 a year, with employees
shouldering 30% of that cost. Michelle Chen reports in ColorLines that
families that manage to hang onto their health insurance can't expect relief through health care
reform any time soon. The major reforms don't go into effect until 2014
and the biggest early beneficiaries will be those who are currently
uninsured rather than those who are already paying through the nose for
lousy coverage. The ultimate goal of comprehensive health care reform is
to reshape the health care and health insurance systems to bring costs
down across the board, but that's small consolation to workers who are
struggling to stay on top of their premiums right now.

Weekly Pulse: Joe Lieberman and the Opt-Out Revolution

by: The Media Consortium

Wed Oct 28, 2009 at 12:23

Progressives rejoiced when Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid announced this week that the final Senate health care bill would include a public option. The announcement was a major victory for left-wing Democrats.

Better yet, it would be a public option without a trigger. Earlier proposals called for a triggered public option which would only take effect if private insurers failed to bring down costs on their own. Under the opt-out compromise, the public option would come on line automatically (albeit not until 2013), but states would later have the option of quitting.

The jubilation was short-lived. Alex Koppelman of Salon explains:

Progressives didn't even get 24 hours to celebrate the victory they won in getting Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to include a version of the public option in his health care reform bill. The celebration was cut off Tuesday afternoon with the news that Sen. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., will vote with Senate Republicans to filibuster the legislation.

Health care is the most important domestic policy initiative of the Obama administration. Would Joe Lieberman really torpedo reform? The Senate leadership thinks Reid is bluffing, according to Steve Benen at the Washington Monthly.

I understand the argument. Lieberman loves attention and power. By threatening to join the Republican filibuster, he gets both-Democrats have to scramble to make him happy, since there's no margin for error in putting together 60 votes. Lieberman gets to feel very important for the next several weeks by making this threat less than 24 hours after Harry Reid stated his intentions, but that doesn't necessarily mean he wants to be known forever as The Senator Who Killed Health Care Reform.

I find it very easy to believe, however, that Lieberman is capable of doing just that. He left himself some wiggle room, but not when it comes to the public option-he's against it, no matter what, even with all of the compromises thrown in.

Senator Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) says that she will side with the Republicans to filibuster the bill "if she has to," as Evan McMorris-Santoro reports for TPM. Snowe was the only Republican to vote for the Finance Committee's health care bill.

Reid must walk a fine line. The administration really can't afford to alienate organized labor before the 2012 elections. Newly elected AFL-CIO President Ricahrd Trumka continues to push for his three core demands for health care reform: a public option, a mechanism to make employers pay their fair share, and no taxes on health care benefits. Last week, AFSCME President Gerald McEntee said that his union would oppose legislation that taxed benefits, but Trumka hasn't gone that far, as David Moberg reports at Working In These Times.

Finally, in other health-related news, Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), the division of the Labor Department that oversees workplace safety, has issued a sweeping new report condemning Nevada's state-level OSHA program. As I report for Working in These Times, the investigators found that NOSHA inspectors were being pressured by their superiors to write up employers on lesser charges, even when their repeat offenses killed workers.

This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about health care by members of The Media Consortium. It is free to reprint. Visit the Pulse for a complete list of articles on health care reform, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical economy, environment, health care and immigration issues, check out The Audit, The Mulch, and The Diaspora. This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of leading independent media outlets.

Axis of Evil, renewable resources and occupational health

by: revere

Fri Aug 01, 2008 at 10:08

The issue first poked its head above water on July 8 when my colleague Celeste Monforton over at The Pump Handle noticed something suspicious on the website of the Office of Management and Budget's Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA, pronounced oh-EYE-ra):