It's hard to know these days which way the proverbial worm is turning when it comes to shifts in drug policy. Election years tend to do that. Despite an historical turn of events in Central America which saw Presidents of drug trafficking nations come together to call for world wide decriminalization of drugs, in an effort to end the violence and corruption of the drug trade, the US continues to demur, absurdly claiming that the "War on Drugs" has been a success. Even stranger is Canada's recent announcement that they plan to follow the US model of a "tough on crime" approach to drug policy, which threatens to swell their correctional system in the same ways as in the US. Still, good news abounds with recent studies showing that LSD can cure alcoholism, psychedelics can cure PTSD, and cannabis smoking is not nearly as harmful as the prohibition governments claim. ~ CS
Google+ Presents:
It's Time To End The War On Drugs
To liberalise or prohibit, that is the question. And to answer it the masters of live debate have joined forces with the masters of web technology to create a never-seen-before combination of Oxford debating and Silicon Valley prowess.
Prohibitionists argue that legalising anything increases its consumption. The world has enough of a problem with legal drugs like alcohol and tobacco, so why add to the problem by legalising cannabis, cocaine and heroin?
The liberalisers say prohibition doesn’t work. By declaring certain drugs illegal we haven’t reduced consumption or solved any problem. Instead we’ve created an epidemic of crime, illness, failed states and money laundering.
Julian Assange and Richard Branson; Russell Brand and Misha Glenny; Geoffrey Robertson and Eliot Spitzer. Experts, orators and celebrities who’ve made this their cause – come and see them lock horns in a new Intelligence?/Google+ debate format. Some of our speakers will be on stage in London, others beamed in from Mexico City or Sao Paulo or New Orleans, all thanks to the “Hangout” tool on Google+.
The web will have its say, and so can you at the event in London. Be part of the buzz of the audience, be part of an event beamed across the web to millions. Come and witness the future of the global mind-clash at the first of our Versus debates, live at Kings Place
Source:
Intelligence 2 from Google +
North America
America's plague of incarceration
The message is (or should be deeply disturbing. Shouldn't the USA be ashamed at having the world's largest prison system and highest incarceration rate (754 per 100 000 people ? The richest country in the world has so many of its citizens in prison that it can't afford to house them with even basic minimum medical care (more than half of all prisoners have mental health or drug problems . Prison overcrowding itself has become so terrible in California, that in May, 2011, the US Supreme Court affirmed a lower court order that California release some 46 000 prisoners because of the inhuman conditions under which they were being held. In the Court's words, “A prison that deprives prisoners of basic sustenance, including adequate medical care, is incompatible with the concept of human dignity and has no place in a civilised society.”
Source:
"
A Plague of Prisons: The Epidemiology of Mass Incarceration in America,"
The Lancet.
International Women's Day: U.S. Must Address Impact of Mass Incarceration on Women.
More women are ending up behind bars than ever. Between 1980 and 1989, the number of women in U.S. prisons tripled. And the number of women in prison has continued to rise since. In the last 10 years, the number of women under jurisdiction of state or federal authorities
increased 21 percent to almost 113,000. During the same time period, the increase in the number of men in prison was 6 percentage points lower, at about 15 percent. The increase in women in the federal population was even larger- over 41 percent from 2000 to 2010.
Most women are incarcerated for nonviolent offenses. Over one-fourth are in prison for a drug offense, while 29.6 percent were convicted of a property crime. Addiction plays a large part in a number of women's property crimes, and a lack of available or appropriate treatment only serves to drive their contact with the justice system.
Source:
Justice Policy Institute
From Cell to Screen: The Story of Mumia Abu-Jamal -- Part I
Stephen Vittoria is that rare commodity in Hollywood today: a filmmaker with a conscience. To be more precise, a filmmaker with a strong political conscience. After making two feature films,>Black and White& Hollywood Boulevard (1996 , as well as three feature documentaries:Save Your Life -- The Life and Holistic Times of Dr. Richard Schulze (1998 ,;Keeper of the Flame (2005 and the award-winning art house hit One Bright Shining Moment: The Forgotten Summer of George McGovern (2005 , a portrait of the South Dakota senator who tried to unseat Richard Nixon from the White House in 1972.
For his latest exploration into America's socio-political landscape, Vittoria joins forces with radio producer Noelle Hanrahan to bring Long Distance Revolutionary, the story of Mumia Abu-Jamal, to the screen. Born Wesley Cook in Philadelphia, Abu-Jamal made his name as a tireless writer and journalist during the racially-charged 1970s that often portrayed the City of Brotherly Love as anything but. With his intense coverage of the MOVE organization, a black empowerment group whose ongoing battle with the police and city hall came to a fiery end in 1985, Abu-Jamal become a constant thorn in the side of the city's powerful establishment. Things came to a sudden head for Abu-Jamal himself on the evening of December 9, 1981 when he was accused of murdering a Philadelphia police officer. He received a death sentence the following year, and has been on Pennsylvania's death row until early this year, when his death sentence was commuted to a life sentence in December, 2011.
Abu-Jamal's case remains one of the most controversial and heatedly debated in American legal history, with participants on both sides either protesting his innocence in the murder of Officer Daniel Faulkner or his absolute guilt with equal passion and more often, great vehemence.
Source:
Huffington Post
What’s In a Name? A Lot, When the Name is “Felon”
At a
recent conference of journalists at John Jay College, I raised an issue I have about language in the media: the frequent use of the word “felon” to describe a person who has been convicted of a crime.
“Felon” is an ugly label that confirms the debased status that accompanies conviction. It identifies a person as belonging to a class outside many protections of the law, someone who can be freely discriminated against, someone who exists at the margins of society.
In short, a “felon” is a legal outlaw and social outcast.
Source:
The Crime Report
Addiction: Medical Disease or Moral Defect?
Scientific theories that addiction hijacks the brain have just increased the stigma that they were meant to stop. At least in the moralistic bad old days, addicts were still viewed as having free will. Here's an alternative to both of these no-win approaches.
Source:
The Fix
Scientists Explore Hallucinogen Treatments for PTSD, Sex Abuse Victims
Mind-altering compounds, such as LSD and psilocybin, stirred controversy in the 1960s. As the counter-culture’s psychedelic drugs of choice, the widespread use - and abuse - of hallucinogens prompted tougher anti-drug laws.
The government in India has granted the rights to an indigenous pharmaceutical group to manufacture a generic version of the cancer treatment drug Nexavar.
For the first time, an Indian drugs firm has been approved to produce a medication under licence when the original's still patent-covered.
As a result of the agreement, the firm - Natco Pharma - is obliged to forward six per cent in royalties back to Bayer, which presently markets Nexavar alongside Onyx Pharmaceuticals.
Bayer, meanwhile - according to reports - isn't best pleased with the Indian government's move. "We are disappointed about this decision", company representative Sabrina Cusimano stated in comments made to the Associated Press. "We will see if we can further defend our intellectual property rights in India".
Nexavar Cancer Drug
Nexavar is the market name for sorafenib, an orally-taken medication now approved to treat two types of cancer - advanced hepatocellular carcinoma (liver cancer and advanced renal cell carcinoma (kidney cancer .
The kidney cancer approval came first, in 2005, when the US FDA declared its satisfaction with the product. It did the same for the drug as a liver cancer treatment two years later and, with clinical trials now in progress, thyroid cancer could be the next condition added to this approved treatment list.
Controversially, the drug's not available as a UK liver cancer treatment, after being rejected - on grounds of cost - by the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence in November 2009.
Natco Generic Nexavar Approval
The Natco generic Nexavar approval decision will see the production of drug copies priced at the equivalent of £112 for a box of 120: less than £1.00 each. This is dramatically cheaper than the original drug, with the same quantity presently priced at over 30 times that cost.
The Indian pharmaceutical firm believes that the drug's availability is key to the treatment of close to 9,000 cancer patients in India.
"This is a victory for Indian patients and for India's generic manufacturers, which are under attack", Natco Pharma's General Manager, Madineedi Adinarayana, stated according to the BBC, adding: "many more such cases will follow."
The first Pradaxa lawsuit was filed against drug manufacturer Boehringer Ingelheim last week on behalf of Bertha Bivens, who claims her mother died after suffering a gastrointestinal bleed that Pradaxa allegedly caused. Since the first lawsuit was reported, at least five more have been filed.
Pradaxa (dabigatran is a blood thinning medication first approved in 2008 by the European Commission for treatment of post-knee surgery and atrial fibrillation. Two years later in October, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved Pradaxa for treatment of atrial fibrillation, a condition in which a dysfunctional heartbeat leads to blood clot formulation. These blood clots may cause serious and even deadly conditions if left untreated. For example, a blood clot can cause a stroke if it travels to the brain or a pulmonary embolism if it travels to the lungs.
Shortly after FDA approval, a flood of complaints was filed linking Pradaxa to a number of adverse side effects including gastrointestinal bleeding, internal bleeding, brain hemorrhaging, heart attack, and death. The FDA has not issued a recall, but it has begun to investigate the reported internal bleeding occurrences.
Some researchers pose the argument that Pradaxa’s side effects may be reversible if it contained a reversing agent present such as the one in Warfarin, a traditional and competing blood thinner. Other researchers believe that the reported adverse side effects are caused by healthcare professionals’ improper dosing.
Pradaxa is included in a class of drugs called direct thrombin inhibitors that work by preventing the functionality of the enzyme that causes blood cells to form clots.
In the case Bivens vs. Ingelheim , Bivens alleges that her mother was prescribed Pradaxa in January of 2011 and died from gastrointestinal bleeding three months later. As of November 2011, more than 260 deaths linked to Pradaxa were reported. The majority of these are associated with intense bleeding events.
 |
A coalition of consumer advocacy groups, health organizations, and food and nutrition groups has officially called on the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA to enact new labeling requirements for foods that contain added sugars. The Environmental Working Group ... |
Foodborne illness outbreaks linked to imported food appeared to rise between 2009 and 2010, according to a new analysis released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Wednesday.
CDC reported that half of the foods implicated in outbreaks were imported from "areas which previously had not been associated with outbreaks." The research was presented at the International Conference on Emerging Infectious Diseases in Atlanta. "It's too early to say if the recent numbers represent a trend, but CDC officials are analyzing information from 2011 and will continue to monitor for these outbreaks in the future," said Hannah Gould, Ph.D., an epidemiologist in CDC's Division of Foodborne, Waterborne and Environmental Diseases and the lead author of the study.
The report looked at outbreaks reported to CDC's Foodborne Disease Outbreak Surveillance System from 2005 to 2010 and then parsed out which implicated foods were imported.
CDC researchers found that in that five-year period, 39 outbreaks and 2,348 illnesses were linked to imported food from 15 countries. Of those outbreaks, 17, or almost half of them occurred in 2009 and 2010.
The review found that fish was the most common culprit, with 17 outbreaks total. The second most common food group was spices, the report said six outbreaks were tied to spices, including five from fresh or dried peppers.
Where exactly were these imported foods from? CDC reported that nearly 45 percent of the foods tied to outbreaks came from Asia.
"As our food supply becomes more global, people are eating foods from all over the world, potentially exposing them to germs from all corners of the world, too," Gould said.
David Acheson, former associate commissioner of foods at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration who now consults for the food industry, said the results of CDC's review were not all that surprising considering the United States is not only importing more food, but more high risk items like seafood, spices and produce.
According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Economic Research Service (ERS , food imports grew from $41 billion in 1998 to $78 billion in 2007 and most of that growth was in produce, seafood and processed food products. It's now estimated that as much as 85 percent of the seafood consumed domestically is imported and, depending on the season, as much as 60 percent of fresh produce is imported.
On the whole, ERS estimates that 16 percent of all of the food Americans eat each year is imported.
In CDC's release on the review, it noted that the findings "likely underestimate the true number of outbreaks due to imported foods, as the origin of many foods causing outbreaks is either not known or not reported."
"We need better - and more - information about what foods are causing outbreaks and where those foods are coming from," said Gould. "Knowing more about what is making people sick, will help focus prevention efforts on those foods that pose a higher risk of causing illness."
Food safety experts and public health officials have been working to improve food attribution data so more can be understood about which foods are high risk, where contamination occurs in the supply chain, and how it can be prevented.
Acheson noted that it's not necessarily an issue of whether food is imported or not, but whether producers are focused on prevention.
"Let's not forget that there is also plenty to focus on domestically - such as the recent major Listeria outbreak and not move all the emphasis onto imported foods," he said in an email. "This is part of the reason why [The Food Safety Modernization Act] has focused so much on preventive controls for imported foods and why FDA has changed their model away from relying just on port of entry inspections."
No comments:
Post a Comment