By Michelle Chen in the Nation, May 2018 When you’re too sick to go to work, you shouldn’t be punished for taking time to recover. That simple truth has driven many cities to enact paid leave policies in recent years, guaranteeing paid sick days, or some kind of paid medical- and family-leave time, as standard workplace policy. But those vital policies are still not …
It’s time for public option in pharmaceuticals
Excerpt from Dana Brown and Thomas Hanna’s article In These Times, 12 May 2018 …a 2017 study from the Institute for New Economic Thinking revealed that over the ten-year period studied, the top 18 U.S. pharmaceutical companies spent more on share buybacks and dividends than R&D. Drug marketing—which is outlawed in all but one other country in the world—also accounts for more pharmaceutical company …
The Human Project, as the bioengineering of people, cities, streets and curbs converges, where do we locate the public sphere and data?
The Guardian, Smart cities need thick data, not big data, By Adrian Smith, Professor of Technology and Society at the Science Policy Research Unit at the University of Sussex, Wed 18 Apr 2018 Talking about noise in Plaça del Sol Photograph: Making Sense Residents living around Plaça del Sol joke that theirs is the only square where, despite the name, rain is preferable. …
Our wealthiest tell pollsters they value their health over their wealth. What about our health?
‘Lock ‘Em Up’: An Update for Our Opioid Age, by Sam Pizzigati, Our Great Divide, 19 Apr 2018 Wealthy people in the United States, a new survey out of the Swiss banking giant UBS has found, worry a great deal about health. Their own. What could we do to encourage more of these wealthy to worry — and care — about everyone’s health? Senator Bernie Sanders …
Novel antioxidant makes old blood vessels seem young again. Epstein bar virus related to MS, lupus, diabetes and more. And more people have died or been injured in mass school shootings in the US in the past 18 years than in the entire 20th century
Science Daily.com April 2018. Also see further down: Using a homemade, high-tech microscope, scientists have revealed how a cancer-causing virus anchors itself to our DNA. That discovery could pave the way for doctors to cure incurable diseases by flushing out viruses, including HPV and Epstein-Barr, that now permanently embed themselves in our cells Older adults who take a novel antioxidant that …
7 things to know about our taxes. Corporations pay less than 9% of US taxes already, and fewer than 3% of workers getting anything from those corporate tax breaks.
Lindsay Koshgarian posted Apr 17, 2018 1. Thanks to the Trump tax deal, taxes are way down for corporations and billionaires. In 2017, individuals and corporations were still paying taxes under the old system. The Trump tax plan that Congress passed in December 2017 hadn’t yet taken effect. In 2018, the rules have changed. The new tax plan favors billionaires and …
Kids are suing Gov. Rick Scott to force Florida to take action on climate change
By Alex Harris, aharris@miamiherald.com, April 16, 2018 Florida Gov. Rick Scott doesn’t talk about climate change. He notoriously declared “I’m not a scientist” when asked his thoughts on humanity’s well-documented impact on the warming planet, banned the phrase in his administration (a charge he denies) and backed up President Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw from the Paris accord. On Monday, an unusual group sued Scott for ignoring the …
After Soda Tax, Philadelphians 40 Percent Less Likely to Guzzle Sugar
By Katie O’Reilly, Apr. 12, 2018 Just two months after a tax of $0.015 per ounce of soda, energy drinks and other sugary beverages went into effect in the City of Brotherly Love, Philadelphians were already reaching for the sweet stuff significantly less often than their counterparts in nearby cities. A study published Thursday in the American Journal of Preventive …
The story behind the cell phone industry and health effects research on cell phones, prior to WHO 2011 classification of cell-phone radiation as a “possible” human carcinogen and the governments of Great Britain, France, and Israel to issue strong warnings on cell-phone use by children
on the global industry behind cell phones—and the industry’s long campaign to make people believe that cell phones are safe. Carlo’s story underscores the need for caution, however, particularly since it evokes eerie parallels with two of the most notorious cases of corporate deception on record: the campaigns by the tobacco and fossil-fuel industries to obscure the dangers of smoking …
Taking a longer, harder look at the research that shows that more equal societies also turn out to be safer societies
By Sam Pizzigati, Inequality.org, March 2018 Last month’s homicidal horror at Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida has Americans searching for answers to the most elemental question a parent can ever ask. How can we, Americans want to know, protect our kids? Overwhelming majorities of us, the polls tell us, feel that the answer involves some sort of meaningful limits on …