Opium Prohibition in Afghanistan
The ongoing U.S. presence in Afghanistan is plenty misguided on its own: our efforts likely increase rather than decrease Muslim antipathy toward the United States, and our track record of fostering democracy, capitalism, peace, or freedom via invasion and occupation is, to say the least, poor.
To make matters worse, we are complicating the mission by also trying to suppress opium production:
The United States spent more than $7 billion in the past 14 years to fight the runaway poppy production that has made Afghan opium the world’s biggest brand.
Beyond the usual arguments, American-inspired drug prohibition is especial...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - February 16, 2016 Category: American Health Authors: Jeffrey Miron Source Type: blogs
An 18-Year-Old Designs a Sign Language Messaging App
From high school prom-goer to founding CEO who’s raised hundreds of thousands of dollars, Mateusz Mach lives an exciting life. The 18-year-old designed and released an app last year—called Five—intended as a silly way to message friends with slang hand signals. That alone may not seem so astounding. However, Mach—who lives in Poland—is raising money now to transform Five into a useful tool for people with hearing loss.
He started this more serious project when app users in the deaf community told him his app allows them to communicate faster and in a language more natural to them than typing. They asked him to ...
Source: American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA) Press Releases - February 10, 2016 Category: Speech Therapy Authors: Shelley D. Hutchins Tags: News Hearing Assistive Technology hearing loss sign language Source Type: blogs
Part I: SEMBENE X BLACK GIRL X CAMP THIAROYRE: Domestic Slavery and Bioethics
Image: http://www.sembenefilm.com/The 2015 film, Semebene!, is a documentary about the late writer-director, Ousman Sembene, (1923-2007). His bioethics relevant filmography begins with his first film, Black Girl (1966) and finishes with his last work, Moolaadé (2004). The documentary, Sembene!, is directed by Samba Gadjigo and Jason Silverman. Samba was Sembene’s friend, colleague, and biographer. Sembene! was screened at the 38th Mill Valley Festival in October 2015. A stroke of programming genius also allowed patrons to view the recently restored Black Girl. Black Girl is one of the Wo...
Source: blog.bioethics.net - February 5, 2016 Category: Medical Ethics Authors: September Williams, MD Tags: Health Care syndicated Source Type: blogs
PART II: SEMBENE! X MOOLAADÉ X DESERT FLOWER: Female Genital Mutilation and Bioethics
Sembene! Theatrical Trailer https://vimeo.com/139538743Sembene! is a documentary co-directed by Samba Gadjigo and Jason Silverman. The filmmaking duo uses Sembene’s screen works to bracket the life events of African cinema’s founder. The ultimate illustration of capacity for complex socially relevant, visually compelling cinema lay in Sembene’s 2004 final film, Moolaadé (Magical Protection). This is a heart wrenching story of a woman named Collé living in a fictional, locked in time, Burkina Faso village.Collé’s is a polygamous family. She resists her daughter havi...
Source: blog.bioethics.net - February 5, 2016 Category: Medical Ethics Authors: September Williams, MD Tags: Health Care syndicated Source Type: blogs
What the President Should Do: End U.S. Support for the War in Yemen
Possibly the strangest foreign policy decision the Obama administration has made was their decision to support the Saudi-led war in Yemen. The White House has made quiet counterterrorism operations a key plank of its foreign policy agenda, and the administration includes a number of officials best known for their work on human rights issues, most notably Samantha Power. As such, the President’s decision to supply logistical, intelligence and targeting support for the Saudi-led coalition’s military campaign – a campaign which has been horrifically damaging to human rights inside Yemen, as well as detrimental to U.S. c...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - February 1, 2016 Category: American Health Authors: Emma Ashford Source Type: blogs
Persistent False Beliefs Hinder Progress Towards the Medical Control of Aging
Progress in gathering support for rejuvenation research has long been hampered by a number of widespread false beliefs. Every time we pitch someone unfamiliar with the topic, seeking material assistance in the long process of developing clinical treatments to control aging and thus extend life, the same initial hurdles must be overcome: the false belief that longevity assurance therapies would make people older for longer, not younger for longer; the false belief that overpopulation is inevitable if life spans increase; the false belief that only extremely rich people would benefit or have access to therapies. These are re...
Source: Fight Aging! - January 13, 2016 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Activism, Advocacy and Education Source Type: blogs
Eyes On The Final Prize: Integrating Services To Transform Global Health
As 2015 draws to a close, the global health community is examining the strides that have been made and how we can transform this progress into further gains across the public health spectrum.
The United Nation’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) for 2030 include SDG 3, a holistic goal for public health that aims to ensure healthy lives and promote wellbeing for all at all ages. It is with the backdrop of this collaborative, interconnected development landscape that two important meetings take place in Japan this week.
On December 16, a symposium on universal health care will bring together global leaders for a dial...
Source: Health Affairs Blog - December 17, 2015 Category: Health Management Authors: Eric Goosby Tags: Equity and Disparities Featured Global Health Organization and Delivery Public Health HIV/AIDS Japan malaria sustainable development goals TB United Nations universal health care Source Type: blogs
Africa Succeeds in Meeting Many Long-Term U.N. Development Goals
Over the past decade and half, Africa has made great strides toward meeting the United Nations' Millennium Development Goals, eight objectives that included halving extreme poverty rates, providing universal primary education, and ending the spread of HIV/AIDS by 2015. (Source: The RAND Blog)
Source: The RAND Blog - December 7, 2015 Category: Health Management Authors: RAND Corporation Source Type: blogs
Some Post-Thanksgiving Reasons To Be Thankful
In this post-Thanksgiving atmosphere, here is another installment in Human Progress’s series of posts on incremental (and sometimes revolutionary) ways in which our world is becoming a better place. This week we look at anti-aging drugs, falling maternal mortality deaths and death rates, prosthetic hands with a sense of touch and a potential breakthrough in air travel.
British Company to ‘Transform’ Air and Space Travel with Pioneering New Engine Design
BAE Systems has recently bought a minority stake of a small technology company called Reaction Engine. The support of BAE will allow Reaction Engine to continue...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - November 30, 2015 Category: American Health Authors: Marian L. Tupy Source Type: blogs
Sorry, it's been a while
Partly just that the zeitgeist is too depressing to even comment on. First, I'll cross-post this from Today in Afghanistan.The U.S. military has released its explanation for the assault on the MSF hospital in Kunduz. Of course it was all just a big mistake. To summarize:Afghan forces requested an airstrike, saying they were under fire. However, they did not provide map coordinates of the building they wanted to be attacked, they just "described its location."U.S. special forces passed on the description to the crew of the AC-130.The plane had been diverted from another mission and its crew was not familiar with Kun...
Source: Stayin' Alive - November 25, 2015 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
Paris Changed Nothing. We Still Have Every Reason to Welcome Syrian Refugees
This week, we’ve heard calls from all quarters to close our doors to the modest number of Syrian refugees President Obama proposed welcoming to the United States. Thirty governors have vowed to bar Syrian refugees from entering their states; the House of Representatives voted 289-137 to place impossibly tight restrictions on admission of refugees from Iraq and Syria; and 2016 presidential candidates disingenuously decried the possible influx of “100,000,” “200,000” or even “250,000” refugees that no one has proposed — remember Obama only called for letting in 10,000 Syrians next year.
But after the Paris ...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - November 23, 2015 Category: American Health Authors: A. Trevor Thrall Source Type: blogs
Syrian Refugees Don’t Pose a Serious Security Threat
Conclusion
The security threat posed by refugees in the United States is insignificant. Halting America’s processing of refugees due to a terrorist attack in another country that may have had one asylum-seeker as a co-plotter would be an extremely expensive overreaction to very minor threat. Resettling refugees who pass a thorough security check would likely decrease the recruiting pool for future terrorists and decrease the long-run risk.
The current refugee vetting system is multilayered, dynamic, and extremely effective. ISIS fighters or terrorists who are intent on attacking U.S. soil have myriad other options for do...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - November 18, 2015 Category: American Health Authors: Alex Nowrasteh Source Type: blogs
The Monetary Base and Total Reserves: Fed Confusions and Misreporting
Discussion Papers, IFDP 1058 (November 2012).
[13] Although the amount of these deposits rose from the neighborhood of $100 million prior to the financial crisis to as high as $11.2 billion afterwards, they have never exceeded 0.4 percent of the total monetary base. This series is labelled as WLFOL at FRED.
[14] Gara Afonso, Alex Entz, and Eric LeSueur, “Who’s Lending in the Fed Funds Market?” Federal Reserve Bank of New York Liberty Street Economics (December 2, 2013).
[15] The FRED time series for “other” deposits is labelled WOTHLB.
[16] For details on these FMU’s, see “Designated Financial Market Utilitie...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - November 7, 2015 Category: American Health Authors: Jeffrey Rogers Hummel Source Type: blogs
Meet Disruptive Woman to Watch: Kathy Martinez
In 2015, Americans celebrated the 25th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). But just as it is important to recognize that, for a quarter century, the law of the land has protected individuals with disability from discriminating, it is equally critical to acknowledge that there remains a significant employment gap in our society. Americans with disabilities are far less likely to be gainfully employed and far more likely to be reliant upon public assistance programs.
There is no greater champion in trying to change this paradigm than Kathy Martinez, a Disruptive Woman to Watch for 2016. Until Febr...
Source: Disruptive Women in Health Care - November 2, 2015 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: dw at disruptivewomen.net Tags: Advocacy Champions Disabilities Source Type: blogs
MPTs Combine Contraception With HIV And Other STI Prevention
The world became a better place recently when world leaders adopted the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), a milestone United Nations statement that will shape world policy for the next 15 years to reduce poverty and set us on a more equitable and sustainable trajectory. Sewn centrally into this extensive policy fabric is improving the status of women through expanding reproductive health and rights, achievements that clearly impact equity, educational attainment, and the well-being of women and families. Women’s ability to determine the timing and spacing of children and to avoid sexually transmitted infections (STIs...
Source: Health Affairs Blog - November 2, 2015 Category: Health Management Authors: Bethany Young Holt and Helen Rees Tags: Costs and Spending Drugs and Medical Technology Equity and Disparities Featured Global Health Long-term Services and Supports Public Health Quality family planning HIV/AIDS Reproductive Health sexually transmitted infections sustai Source Type: blogs
