#Director At Atlanta Medical Clinic

[drtimothydembowskiatlantaga]

Dr. Timothy Dembowski Atlanta GA - Director At Atlanta Medical Clinic

Dr. Timothy Dembowski, Atlanta GA chiropractor, loves spending time with his wife and dog Kingston. He hopes to travel to every Caribbean Island. He also hopes to add Buena Aires, Japan, Antigua, Italy, and Spain to his list of places he's visited. Dr. Timothy Dembowski, Atlanta GA chiropractor, has traveled to most U.S. states, and hopes to get to Hawaii soon.

[lboogie1906]

Dr. Blanche Sellers Lavizzo (July 11, 1925 - August 29, 1984) was the first African American woman pediatrician in the state of Washington. She arrived in Seattle in 1956, with her husband Dr. Philip Lavizzo, a general surgeon. They had left medical practices in New Orleans to pursue a better future in the Pacific Northwest. She had been in private practice in pediatrics in Seattle until 1970 when she became the first medical director of the Odessa Brown Children’s Clinic. She became the mainstay of health care for children in the Central Area and it was she who gave the clinic its motto, “Quality care with dignity.”

An active force in the African American community, she served on the board of the Girls Club of Puget Sound and as president of the Seattle Chapter of Links, Inc. She contributed her time to many other community organizations including the Seattle Urban League, United Way of King County, and numerous health organizations.

Born in Atlanta, she was a friend and schoolmate of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Her father was the owner of one of Atlanta’s largest Black funeral homes. She graduated from Spelman College and Meharry Medical College. She received an MPH from the University of Washington. In 1991, a 1,953-acre park– formerly known as the Yesler Atlantic Pedestrian Pathway, which led to the clinic– was renamed the Dr. Blanche Lavizzo Park. #africanhistory365 #africanexcellence

[msclaritea]

What's Behind Rise in Girls' Report of Sadness, Sexual Violence?

WEBMD HEALTH NEWS

What's Behind Rise in Girls' Report of Sadness, Sexual Violence?

Written by Lucy Hicks , Kelly Wairimu Davis, MS

depressed looking teen girl

Feb. 14, 2023 – The recent discovery of a dramatic spike in the number of teen girls saying they've been victims of sexual assault could have a now-familiar cause: the COVID-19 pandemic.

The CDC reported Monday that teenage girls are experiencing record high levels of sexual violence, and nearly 3 in 5 girls report feeling persistently sad or hopeless.

The numbers were even worse for students who identify as LGBTQ+, nearly 70% of whom report experiencing feelings of persistent sadness and hopeless, and nearly 1 in 4 (22%) LGBTQ+ teens had attempted suicide in 2021, according to the report.

Protective factors, such as being in school and participating in various activities, were largely nonexistent for many teens during the pandemic, which could explain the spike in sexual violence cases, says Carlos A. Cuevas, PhD, clinical psychologist and Center on Crime Race and Injustice co-director at Northeastern University in Boston.

That -- on top of other mental, emotional, and physical stressors amid the COVID-19 crisis -- created an unsafe and unhealthy environment for some girls.

“Once people started to kind of come out of the pandemic and we started to see the mental health impact of the pandemic, there were waiting lists everywhere. So being able to access those resources became more difficult because we just had a boom in demand for a need for mental health services,” says Cuevas.

Teen girls are also more likely to be victims of sexual assault than teen boys, which could explain the why they are overrepresented in the data, Cuevas says.

If your child experiences sexual assault, there are a few things parents should keep in mind. For one, it's important that your child knows that they are the victims in the situation, Cuevas says.

“I think sometimes you still get kind of a victim blaming sort of attitude, even unintentionally,” he says. “Really be clear about the message that it's not their fault and they are not responsible in any way."

Parents should also look out for resources their child might need to work through any trauma they may have experienced. For some, that could be medical attention due to a physical act of assault. For others, it could be mental health services or even legal remedies, such as pressing charges.

“You want to give those options but the person who was the victim really is the one who determines when and how those things happen,” Cuevas says. “So really to be able to be there and ask them what they need and try to facilitate that for them.”

One more thing: Your teen sharing their sexual assault experiences on social media could result in several outcomes.

“Some teens will talk about this [sexual assault] and post on TikTok, Snapchat, and Instagram, and that means that they may get people giving feedback that's supportive or giving feedback that's hurtful,” says Cuevas. “Remember that we're talking about kids; they're not sort of developmentally able to plan and think, 'Oh, I may not get all the support that I think I'm going to get when I post this.'”

Goldie Taylor, an Atlanta-based journalist, political analyst and human rights activist, has her own history with sexual assault as a young girl. She experienced it as a 11-year-old, a story she shares in her memoir, The Love You Save.

When Taylor saw the news of the CDC study, she hurried to read it herself. She, too, see signs of the pandemic’s work in the report.

“While notably mental health continues to be a post-pandemic story given the issues surrounding quarantine, I also believe it fueled a renewed interest in seeking care— and measuring impacts on children,” Taylor says. “What was most startling, even for me, were the statistics around sexual violence involving young girls. We know from other studies that the vast majority of pregnancies among girls as young as 11 involve late teen and adult males.”

Unfortunately, Taylor says little has changed since her own traumatic experience as a child. There was little support available then. And now, she says, “there are far too few providers in this country to deal effectively with what can only be called a pandemic of sexual violence.”

The study's findings are indeed a stark reminder of the needs of our children, says Debra Houry, MD, MPH, the CDC's acting principal deputy director, in a press release about the findings.

"High school should be a time for trailblazing, not trauma. These data show our kids need far more support to cope, hope, and thrive," she says.

The new analysis looked at data from 2011 to 2021 from the CDC's Youth Risk and Behavior Survey, a semiannual analysis of the health behaviors of students in grades 9-12. The 2021 survey is the first conducted since the COVID-19 pandemic began and included 17,232 respondents.

Although the researchers saw signs of improvement in risky sexual behaviors and substance abuse, as well as fewer experiences of bullying, the analysis found youth mental health worsened over the past 10 years. This trend was particularly troubling for teenage girls: 57% said they felt persistently sad or hopeless in 2021, a 60% increase from a decade ago. By comparison, 29% of teenage boys reported feeling persistently sad or hopeless, compared to 21% in 2011.

Nearly one-third of girls (30%) reported seriously considering suicide, up from 19% in 2011. In teenage boys, serious thoughts of suicide increased from 13% to 14% from 2011 to 2021. The percentage of teenage girls who had attempted suicide in 2021 was 13%, nearly twice that of teenage boys (7%).

More than half of students with a same-sex partner (58%) reported seriously considering suicide, and 45% of LGBTQ+ teens reported the same thoughts. One-third of students with a same-sex partner reported attempting suicide in the past year.

The report did not have trend data on LGBTQ+ students because of changes in survey methods. The 2021 survey did not have a question about gender identity, but this will be incorporated into future surveys, researchers say.

Hispanic and multiracial students were more likely to experience persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness compared with their peers, with 46% and 49%, respectively, reporting these feelings. From 2011 to 2021, the percentage of students reporting feelings of hopelessness increased in each racial and ethnic group. The percentage of Black, Hispanic, and white teens who seriously considered suicide also increased over the decade. (A different CDC report released last week found that the rate of suicide among Black people in the United States aged 10-24 jumped 36.6% between 2018 and 2021, the largest increase for any racial or ethnic group.)

The survey also found an alarming spike in sexual violence toward teenage girls. Nearly 1 in 5 females (18%) experienced sexual violence in the past year, a 20% increase from 2017. More than 1 in 10 teen girls (14%) said they had been forced to have sex, according to the researchers.

Rates of sexual violence was even higher in lesbian, bisexual, gay, or questioning teens. Nearly 2 in 5 teens with a partner of the same sex (39%) experienced sexual violence, and 37% reported being sexually assaulted. More than 1 in 5 LGBTQ+ teens (22%) had experienced sexual violence, and 20% said they had been forced to have sex, the report found.

High school should be a time for trailblazing, not trauma. These data show our kids need far more support to cope, hope, and thrive.

Among racial and ethnic groups, American Indian and Alaskan Native and multiracial students were more likely to experience sexual violence. The percentage of white students reporting sexual violence increased from 2017 to 2021, but that trend was not observed in other racial and ethnic groups.

Delaney Ruston, MD, an internal medicine specialist in Seattle and creator of Screenagers, a 2016 documentary about how technology affects youth, says excessive exposure to social media can compound feelings of depression in teens — particularly, but not only, girls.

"They can scroll and consume media for hours, and rather than do activities and have interactions that would help heal from depression symptoms, they stay stuck," Ruston says in an interview. "As a primary care physician working with teens, this is an extremely common problem I see in my clinic."

One approach that can help, Ruston says, is behavioral activation. "This is a strategy where you get them, usually with the support of other people, to do small activities that help to reset brain reward pathways so they start to experience doses of well-being and hope that eventually reverses the depression. Being stuck on screens prevents these healing actions from happening."

The report also emphasized the importance of school-based services to support students and combat these troubling trends in worsening mental health. "Schools are the gateway to needed services for many young people," the report says. "Schools can provide health, behavioral, and mental health services directly or establish referral systems to connect to community sources of care."

"Young people are experiencing a level of distress that calls on us to act with urgency and compassion," Kathleen Ethier, PhD, director of the CDC's Division of Adolescent and School Health, says in a statement. "With the right programs and services in place, schools have the unique ability to help our youth flourish."

If Sexual Liberation for women is supposed to be a good thing, why are we seeing a huge rise in Teen Depression and Assault?

[martinhealthactivist]

Renewing Your Florida Laboratory License

The University of Florida Academic Health Center - the most comprehensive academic health heart within the Southeast - is dedicated to high-quality applications of training, analysis, patient care and public service. Florida shoppers may have entry to CSI’s full suite of testing services together with flow cytometry, FISH, IHC, cytogenetics, and molecular diagnostics. As an added benefit, shoppers may even have access to CSI’s Atlanta-based team of medical experts and superior testing technology. The Florida laboratory will also supply each global and C•TECH, tech-only, companies.

As of January 1, 2015, UHC will cease to pay physicians, clinical laboratories, and pathology teams for any tests that are not properly pre-notified or preauthorized by BeaconLBS on the time the doctor orders the lab check. It was ongoing violations of current Florida statutes by laboratories that triggered passage of the new legislation. “There already had been a variety of Florida laws— together with a provision within the scientific laboratory licensure chapter—that prohibit any individual from giving a physician kickbacks or any type of remuneration in return for referrals,” defined Smith. “Broad anti- kickback legal guidelines already exist in Florida and in federal law. At Bravera Health, our testing and integrated medical information are a key part of our care.

The director shall be accountable for the monetary sources of the college. It is thru analysis that faculty members advance their fields, college students improve their studying, and the university creates change for the advantage of our planet and all of its inhabitants. Florida Tech’s approach to lecturers is research-driven, high-tech and hands-on, permitting our college students to both achieve information and get actual experience making use of it.

A faculty-directed facility providing high-performance computing sources and help for analysis depending on large-scale computing. A hands-on heart to show anatomy and advanced surgical techniques and to reveal the newest in operative instrumentation. Resources, technical expertise and referral information to investigators developing and utilizing histology protocols in their florida laboratory own laboratories. A multidisciplinary laboratory involved within the study of cognitive and affective behaviors in people and the neural techniques that underlie them. Assistance in visualizing buildings of microscopic samples by carrying out imaging initiatives and person coaching. Offers transmission and scanning electron microscopy, epifluorescence microscopy, and confocal laser scanning.

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A thorough curriculum with online learning, lectures, every day lab classes, and hands-on medical experiences. The program teaches you to research quite lots of biological specimens and perform scientific checks with state-of-the-art equipment to report the results to physicians. Quality assurance testing is carried out on supplies which have already been accepted so as to ensure continuing compliance with specifications and certifications. In addition, the Chemistry Laboratory staff takes a lead function within the writing and revision of material specifications.

At Mayo Clinic, we strive to retain wonderful college students for employment and promotion. A concentration on sensible information and application the place you will practice under a extremely skilled group of medical lab professionals. You will train with professionals from the Department of Laboratory Medicine and Pathology. This is a superb alternative to train in one of many largest laboratories on the earth where hundreds of individuals work in over ninety specialty laboratories and carry out tens of millions of checks per yr. Insurance is accepted as fee for visits and providers at this clinic. A healthcare worker who violates the confidentiality provisions of the Florida Statutes commits a misdemeanor of the primary degree.

We service any dimension physician workplace, senior living facility, and residential well being agency. Helping healthcare organizations improve the effectivity of care supply with technology that connects information to decision-making in tangible, value-creating methods florida laboratory. Learn about our relationships and collaborations with tutorial hospitals on a wide variety of medical and scientific research. Innovations like our liquid biopsy blood check make personalised most cancers care a reality for extra people.

It is at these partner places that the lab portion will happen for the first three semesters of this system. During the fourth semester, college students will receive an internship placement at a partner hospital for forty hours every week. Acting on a criticism or a tip, AHCA investigators would arrive at a physician’s office and find that a laboratory firm had placed personnel within the physician’s workplace. It is in opposition to the agency’s regulations for labs to put personnel in a physician’s workplace to collect blood or other specimens, stated Craig Smith, the previous basic counsel for AHCA, which regulates scientific laboratories in the state.

In addition, our Medical Laboratory Sciences Program is a licensed coaching program by the State of Florida. For your comfort, diagnostic appointments and walk-ins are welcome. Our physicians even have the ability to request STAT outcomes for emergency situations. Graduating with a bachelor’s diploma in Clinical Laboratory Sciences from the University of West Florida could florida laboratory not fulfill licensure necessities for every state, particularly NY and CA. These procedures will help stop the cross-contamination of supplies handled within the laboratory.

[your-dietician]

Some pharmacies 'caught off guard' by early surge in flu cases and demand for antivirals

New Post has been published on https://medianwire.com/some-pharmacies-caught-off-guard-by-early-surge-in-flu-cases-and-demand-for-antivirals/

Some pharmacies 'caught off guard' by early surge in flu cases and demand for antivirals

Flu season is already off to an early start in the United States, with multiple states including Georgia and Texas reporting an unusually high surge this early in the season.

Influenza antivirals like Tamiflu have been gathering dust on the proverbial shelf for the last two years while the flu largely disappeared during the COVID-19 pandemic. Now, these are reportedly back in demand and at much higher levels than what was seen in October prior to 2020.

While there are no confirmed shortages of these flu antivirals, some experts worry that an early surge in prescriptions for medications like Tamiflu could put stress on pharmacies that did not order enough stock to meet demand this early in the season.

Where is flu increasing in the U.S.?

According to the latest data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, influenza activity is increasing in most of the country, with the Southeast and South-central regions reporting the highest levels of flu activity. Hot spot states include Texas, Georgia, Tennessee and South Carolina, per the CDC, and flu activity is also high in the District of Columbia and New York City. 

“Many of us, myself included, are anticipating a moderately severe flu season,” Dr. William Schaffner, professor of infectious diseases at the Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, Tennessee, told TODAY.

The dropping of mitigation measures like masking and distancing, coupled with lower population immunity due to reduced exposure to influenza viruses over the past few years, is sparking concern among experts, TODAY previously reported. What’s more, fewer flu shots have been administered at this point in the season than in 2021 and 2020, per CDC data. (Experts say the best time to get your flu shot is by the end of October.)

“There’s this concept out there right now going around — vaccine fatigue, where people are simply getting tired of recommendations and ideas that we all need to vaccinate,” Dr. Dhaval Desai, director of hospital medicine at Emory Saint Joseph’s Hospital in Atlanta, told TODAY.

In Texas — where flu cases typically ramp up in December or January — influenza activity began increasing as early as mid-September, Dr. Luis Ostrosky, an infectious disease specialist at UTHealth Houston and Memorial Hermann in Houston, told TODAY. “Undoubtedly, we’re having an early flu season, and the numbers are increasing very rapidly.”

Following national trends, the most frequently reported viruses in Texas are influenza A, and these cases are rising among both adults and children, said Ostrosky. “We are seeing some clusters in schools, but it is everywhere … in our emergency rooms, urgent cares, in the hospital, primary care clinics.”

Georgia, which currently has the highest flu rate of any state (aside from District of Columbia), is also experiencing an early uptick in cases this fall compared to previous seasons before the pandemic. “The biggest message that we can take from that right now is it’s really time to vaccinate,” Desai said.

In Tennessee, both flu cases and hospitalizations are on the rise. “We are already seeing patients being hospitalized with laboratory-confirmed influenza … substantially more than usual at this time of the year,” said Schaffner. “We’re about a month early.”

Tennessee is seeing a mixture of both influenza A viruses, H1N1 and H3N2, as well as some influenza B, Schaffner explained. “That’s a little unusual, because conventionally, you have a dominant strain if there’s going to be one, (but) it hasn’t sorted itself out yet.”

The timing, duration, circulating strains and severity of flu seasons tend to vary every year, according to the CDC. However, it’s clear that flu is ramping up earlier than typical pre-pandemic seasons.

How is this impacting demand for antivirals?

There are already reports that demand for flu antiviral medications is surging, and some pharmacies in hot spot states are scrambling to fill the higher-than-usual number of prescriptions for this early in the season, according to Ostrosky.

There are four FDA-approved antiviral drugs recommended for use by the CDC to treat flu this season: oseltamivir phosphate (brand name Tamiflu), zanamivir (Relenza), peramivir (Rapivab), and baloxavir marboxil (Xofluza).

According to GoodRx, a telemedicine platform that monitors flu cases through its Tamiflu tracker, prescriptions have surged recently. “Although it’s very early in the season, our initial data point shows that fills are higher at this time of year than they have been since 2013,” Tori Marsh, director of research at GoodRx, told TODAY. 

“So far, Tamiflu fills are 5.6 times higher than they were at the start of the flu season last year, and if we average the fill rates for the start of flu season in the previous nine years, this year is 3.3 times higher,” said Marsh, referencing a graph showing the weekly fill rate by flu season. Data from the CDC tell the same story, she added.

Flu antivirals work primarily to prevent complications, hospitalizations and mortality due to influenza, Ostrosky explained, but they can also lessen symptoms and shorten the duration of illness.

“The key is that they need to be given as early as possible in the viral phase of the disease when the virus is very actively replicating. That is usually within 48 hours of noticing symptoms,” said Ostrosky. If antivirals are taken after 48 hours, there’s still some effect, but it diminishes with time, Schaffner noted. 

Those who benefit the most from flu antivirals are individuals at higher risk of flu complications, Ostrosky said: people over 65, people with compromised immune systems and people with underlying comorbidities, particularly pulmonary issues.

These also include children who are immunocompromised or have underlying conditions, including asthma, said Desai. (People should talk to their health care provider about which antiviral is right for them based on factors like age and health status, the experts noted).

Flu antivirals require a prescription from a doctor, but unlike with COVID-19 antivirals, you do not need a positive flu test to get a prescription, Ostrosky noted. “We pretty much prescribe it to anybody that has either documented or highly suspicious flu in the correct epidemiological context.”

“If somebody presents with an influenza-like illness (fever, sore throat, congestion) and the area is seeing high flu activity, that’s what we call a high pretest probability of flu,” said Desai. In these cases, patients at high risk are recommended to start treatment with Tamiflu right away while waiting for test results, he added. 

(Note: COVID-19 antivirals are a completely different medication and do not work to treat flu, Desai said).

Tamiflu can also be used for prevention when someone has been exposed to influenza or will be entering a setting with a lot of sick people. Flu antivirals are not a substitute for the flu vaccine, per Food and Drug Administration.

How could this impact pharmacies?

Although the FDA and CDC have not listed any official shortages, Ostrosky noted, the early surge in flu cases and subsequent surge in prescriptions for antivirals could be a potential issue for pharmacies that weren’t prepared for this level of demand in October.

“I believe it’s not a real problem of supply, but a problem of ordering and logistics. … Most pharmacies were expecting to order their stock later in the season, and this is catching them off guard,” said Ostrsoky. 

“Anecdotally, I’ve been hearing people that are having trouble getting the antivirals in the drugstore, or sometimes they’re offered the brand name instead of the generic, which seems to be more available,” said Ostrosky. Brand name medication may be more expensive depending on insurance coverage, he added, which could make the medication cost-prohibitive for some.

“Right now we don’t see a shortage of flu antiviral medications, (and) manufacturers have not reported a shortage in anything we can ascertain from the resources that we have access to,” Brigid Groves, senior director of practice and professional affairs at American Pharmacists Association, told TODAY in an interview. While it is possible that some pharmacies do not have their typical stock at this point, there is plenty of supply behind the scenes, Groves said.  

“Likely what happened is … because the ordering and use of (flu antivirals) hadn’t been quite as high the past couple of years, they didn’t get restocked on the pharmacy shelves right away,” said Groves, adding that she had not heard any reports of pharmacies experiencing issues placing orders for more stock.

Although it is unclear how this flu season will pan out, the experts noted that cases will only increase moving forward. In the U.S., flu season typically peaks between December or February, but severe activity can continue as late as May, per the CDC.

“Obviously, we’re only seeing the tip of the iceberg in our surveillance system,” Schaffner said.

As cases go up, “we are going to see an increase in demand for Tamiflu and any antiviral that’s on the market,” said Desai, especially among high-risk populations.

However, Groves reassured that supply should be able to meet demand: “We’ll start to naturally see more stock coming into pharmacies and getting onto the shelves.”

In the event of a possible shortage, Ostrosky speculated that this could warrant guidelines to prioritize access for people who benefit the most from antivirals in the high-risk groups.

“We don’t encourage patients to stock up or hoard medications, (and) we want to ensure that there is enough supply around for everyone, in particular for those (high-risk) patients,” said Groves. “It’s much more preferable for people to get assessed and then to get the medication that’s best for them.”

Getting a flu shot is the best way to prepare for flu season

The good news is that you can protect yourself from the flu and serious complications by getting the seasonal flu vaccine. The CDC recommends everyone ages 6 months or older get their flu shot by the end of October, but it can still offer protection if you get it later in the season.

“Now, it’s actually a great time to get your flu shot, because it’s going to be able to protect you throughout the duration of flu season,” said Groves. Getting your flu shot now gives your body enough time to build up immunity, Groves added, which is important if you live in a state where cases are already increasing.

“The worst case scenario we’re preparing for is the famous twindemic, where we would see both a large number of influenza cases and a new COVID surge,” said Ostrosky. A twindemic could put a severe strain on an already stressed health care system, Desai said, so it’s important to focus on prevention now.

All of the experts emphasize the importance of getting both a flu shot and the updated COVID-19 booster as soon as possible, and continuing to practice preventive measures like staying home when sick, masking in crowded indoor spaces, and practicing hand hygiene.

“The flu can be deadly. … It’s not something we want to mess around with,” Desai said. During seasons between 2010 and 2020, the flu caused anywhere between 12,000 to 52,000 deaths annually, according to the CDC.

“Vaccination is our main weapon right now,” Desai added.

Read full article here

[96thdayofrage]

A Black man walked free in February after spending 39 years in prison for crimes he did not commit after the Georgia Innocence Project and the local district attorney asked that his convictions be vacated “as unreliable and not in the interests of justice.”

Terry Talley, now 63, was just 23 when he was arrested, and ultimately received multiple life sentences for sex crimes committed on or near LaGrange College between February and July of 1981.

Following a multi-year expansive review of the cases conducted by the LaGrange Police Department and the GIP that began in 2017, Coweta Judicial Circuit District Attorney Herb Cranford Jr. joined GIP attorney Jennifer Whitfield to file a motion to vacate four of Talley’s convictions, according to the National Registry of Exonerations.

“Look where I’m at now,” Talley said outside of the Dooly State Prison upon his Feb. 23 release, The Atlanta-Journal Constitution reported. “A free man.”

Terry Talley, 63, was released from prison on Feb 23. (Photo: AJC/ YouTube)

The first attack took place on Feb. 7, 1981, in LaGrange, a town about 70 miles southwest of Atlanta, when a white LaGrange College student was attacked in her dormitory. The assailant choked her and put a pillowcase over her head and said, “If you tell anyone, I will kill you.” Days later, the student, who said she successfully resisted her attacker, reported the incident and identified him as a young Black man.

On Feb. 21, another white student was raped and sodomized in her dorm room. The woman was also choked and told “If you scream, I’ll kill you.” Police collected a pair of black gloves from the scene.

On Feb. 28, a student found a threating message on the windshield of her car, then received a phone call from someone she said sounded like a Black male, who told her, “I am on my way out there now.”

A 64-year-old woman was raped on April 19 inside her home about two blocks away from the location of a church where another student was choked and raped on June 24. The older woman identified her attacker as a Black man who was about 30 years old.

On June 30, a Black woman was assaulted while cleaning the Heart Clinic of the West Georgia Medical Center by a man who did not rape her because she was menstruating.

Then on July 21, an Asian woman called 911 saying she had again encountered a man she said had previously shown up to her home and attempted to offer her money for sex and enter before seeing her child and fleeing.

Police arrived and arrested the man, who was Talley. He admitted that he offered the woman money for sex and was charged with sexual battery.

Police then brought in the victims of the other attacks. The victim from April 19 identified Talley as her assailant by his voice, while the Feb. 21 victim also identified Talley. However, the victims from Feb. 7 and June 24 were unable to identify Talley.

He was charged in all attacks. At successive trials in November 1981 Talley was convicted for both the April 19 and June 24 attacks. Prosecutors did not reveal during the trial for the April 19 victim that she had a blood-alcohol level of .34 — more than four times the legal driving limit — during the attack. At the trial for the June 24 attack, the victim, who was previously unable to identify Talley in a lineup, testified that she was “positive” it was Talley had that her attacker had a “Negro smell.” Talley got sentences of life imprisonment plus 10 years for each of those cases.

Discouraged, Talley pleaded guilty to the Feb. 7 and Feb. 21 attacks and received life sentences for each. He was also sentenced to 10 years in the case of the Asian woman whose house he had gone to.

The Georgia Innocence Project took on Talley’s cases in 2008 and found through post-conviction DNA testing that he could not have been the rapist in the June 24 case. That conviction was vacated in 2013, although the indictment was not dismissed.

By 2017 the Georgia Innocence Project and the LaGrange Police Department began cooperating on a review of all of Talley’s cases. The new investigation also uncovered that a Black city employee who spent a lot of time on the campus had been the subject of complaints filed by female students alleging inappropriate conduct around the time of the attacks. The gloves found at the scene of the Feb. 21 attack appeared to be the same ones worn by the employee, but they had disappeared from the evidence by the time the new investigation was opened. The employee had not been included in any lineups. Prosecutors also violated Talley’s rights by not informing his defense about the worker, Talley’s attorneys say.

By 2020, the Georgia Innocence Project was able to hire a new investigator, when things began moving in Talley’s reopened case. The GIP found that the city employee who had been the subject of complaints around the time and place of the 1981 attacks had been suspended and fired over those complaints. Talley’s new lawyers shared their evidence with the local police and district attorney last year, and by this February police secured a warrant to obtain the DNA of the still unidentified former city worker (results of the testing are still pending). In light of the new evidence, DA Cranford joined GIP attorney Whitfield in a motion to vacate the convictions of four of the cases against him, and those charges were dismissed (Two of Talley’s convictions remain under review). Cranford also agreed not to oppose Talley’s release.

The GIP’s motion read in part: “Evidence that has come to light since Talley’s convictions now helps prove what Talley has always maintained. He is innocent of these crimes.”

“Today is such a blessing,” Talley said upon his release. “Words can’t describe how it feels to finally be free after all these years. I’m so thankful for my family, who kept me going all this time, and for the Georgia Innocence Project, who never gave up.”

GIP Executive Director Clare Gilbert spoke to the under current factors that likely influenced Talley’s conviction, “How does an innocent Black man get convicted of a series of brutally violent crimes that he did not commit? The answer lies in the power of unreliable eyewitness identification, a blinding determination by the State to convict, and systemic racial bias. Add to that an under-resourced public defender system, set in the 1980s Deep South, and you have an infallible recipe for wrongful conviction.”

[lastsonlost]

Crossing the divide

Do men really have it easier? These transgender guys found the truth was more complex.

In the 1990s, the late Stanford neuroscientist Ben Barres transitioned from female to male. He was in his 40s, mid-career, and afterward he marveled at the stark changes in his professional life. Now that society saw him as male, his ideas were taken more seriously. He was able to complete a whole sentence without being interrupted by a man. A colleague who didn’t know he was transgender even praised his work as “much better than his sister’s.”

Clinics have reported an increase in people seeking medical gender transitions in recent years, and research suggests the number of people identifying as transgender has risen in the past decade. Touchstones such as Caitlyn Jenner’s transition, the bathroom controversy, and the Amazon series “Transparent” have also made the topic a bigger part of the political and cultural conversation.

But it is not always evident when someone has undergone a transition — especially if they have gone from female to male.

“The transgender guys have a relatively straightforward process — we just simply add testosterone and watch their bodies shift,” said Joshua Safer, executive director at the Center for Transgender Medicine and Surgery at Mount Sinai Health System and Icahn School of Medicine in New York. “Within six months to a year they start to virilize — getting facial hair, a ruddier complexion, a change in body odor and a deepening of the voice.”

Transgender women have more difficulty “passing”; they tend to be bigger-boned and more masculine-looking, and these things are hard to reverse with hormone treatments, Safer said. “But the transgender men will go get jobs and the new boss doesn’t even know they’re trans.”

We spoke with four men who transitioned as adults to the bodies in which they feel more comfortable. Their experiences reveal that the gulf between how society treats women and men is in many ways as wide now as it was when Barres transitioned. But their diverse backgrounds provide further insight into how race and ethnicity inform the gender divide in subtle and sometimes surprising ways.

(Their words have been lightly edited for space and clarity.)

‘I’ll never call the police again’

Trystan Cotten, 50, Berkeley, Calif.

Professor of gender studies at California State University Stanislaus and editor of Transgress Press, which publishes books related to the transgender experience. Transitioned in 2008.

Life doesn’t get easier as an African American male. The way that police officers deal with me, the way that racism undermines my ability to feel safe in the world, affects my mobility, affects where I go. Other African American and Latino Americans grew up as boys and were taught to deal with that at an earlier age. I had to learn from my black and brown brothers about how to stay alive in my new body and retain some dignity while being demeaned by the cops.

One night somebody crashed a car into my neighbor’s house, and I called 911. I walk out to talk to the police officer, and he pulls a gun on me and says, “Stop! Stop! Get on the ground!” I turn around to see if there’s someone behind me, and he goes, “You! You! Get on the ground!” I’m in pajamas and barefoot. I get on the ground and he checks me, and afterward I said, “What was that all about?” He said, “You were moving kind of funny.” Later, people told me, “Man, you’re crazy. You never call the police.”

I get pulled over a lot more now. I GOT PULLED OVER MORE IN THE FIRST TWO YEARS AFTER MY TRANSITION THAN I DID THE ENTIRE 20 YEARS I WAS DRIVING BEFORE THAT.

Before, when I’d been stopped, even for real violations like driving 100 miles an hour, I got off. In fact, when it happened in Atlanta the officer and I got into a great conversation about the Braves. Now the first two questions they ask are: Do I have any weapons in the car, and am I on parole or probation?

Being a black man has changed the way I move in the world.

I used to walk quickly or run to catch a bus. Now I walk at a slower pace, and if I’m late I don’t dare rush. I am hyper-aware of making sudden or abrupt movements, especially in airports, train stations and other public places. I avoid engaging with unfamiliar white folks, especially white women. If they catch my eye, white women usually clutch their purses and cross the street. While I love urban aesthetics, I stopped wearing hoodies and traded my baggy jeans, oversized jerseys and colorful skullcaps for closefitting jeans, khakis and sweaters. These changes blunt assumptions that I’m going to snatch purses or merchandise, or jump the subway turnstile. The less visible I am, the better my chances of surviving.

But it’s not foolproof. I’m an academic sitting at a desk so I exercise where I can. I walked to the post office to mail some books and I put on this 40-pound weight vest that I walk around in. It was about 3 or 4 in the afternoon and I’m walking back and all of a sudden police officers drove up, got out of their car, and stopped. I had my earphones on so I didn’t know they were talking to me. I looked up and there’s a helicopter above. And now I can kind of see why people run, because you might live if you run, even if you haven’t done anything. This was in Emeryville, one of the wealthiest enclaves in Northern California, where there’s security galore. Someone had seen me walking to the post office and called in and said they saw a Muslim with an explosives vest. One cop, a white guy, picked it up and laughed and said, “Oh, I think I know what this is. This is a weight belt.”

It’s not only humiliating, but it creates anxiety on a daily basis. Before, I used to feel safe going up to a police officer if I was lost or needed directions. But I don’t do that anymore. I hike a lot, and if I’m out hiking and I see a dead body, I’ll keep on walking. I’ll never call the police again.

‘It now feels as though I am on my own’

Zander Keig, 52, San Diego

Coast Guard veteran. Works at Naval Medical Center San Diego as a clinical social work case manager. Editor of anthologies about transgender men. Started transition in 2005.

Prior to my transition, I was an outspoken radical feminist. I spoke up often, loudly and with confidence.

I was encouraged to speak up. I was given awards for my efforts, literally — it was like, “Oh, yeah, speak up, speak out.” When I speak up now, I am often given the direct or indirect message that I am “mansplaining,” “taking up too much space” or “asserting my white male heterosexual privilege.” Never mind that I am a first-generation Mexican American, a transsexual man, and married to the same woman I was with prior to my transition.

I find the assertion that I am now unable to speak out on issues I find important offensive and I refuse to allow anyone to silence me. My ability to empathize has grown exponentially, because I now factor men into my thinking and feeling about situations.

Prior to my transition, I rarely considered how men experienced life or what they thought, wanted or liked about their lives.

I have learned so much about the lives of men through my friendships with men, reading books and articles by and for men and through the men I serve as a licensed clinical social worker.

Social work is generally considered to be “female dominated,” with women making up about 80 percent of the profession in the United States. Currently I work exclusively with clinical nurse case managers, but in my previous position, as a medical social worker working with chronically homeless military veterans — mostly male — who were grappling with substance use disorder and severe mental illness, I was one of a few men among dozens of women.

Plenty of research shows that life events, medical conditions and family circumstances impact men and women differently. But when I would suggest that patient behavioral issues like anger or violence may be a symptom of trauma or depression, it would often get dismissed or outright challenged. The overarching theme was “men are violent” and there was “no excuse” for their actions.

I do notice that some women do expect me to acquiesce or concede to them more now: Let them speak first, let them board the bus first, let them sit down first, and so on. I also notice that in public spaces men are more collegial with me, which they express through verbal and nonverbal messages: head lifting when passing me on the sidewalk and using terms like “brother” and “boss man” to acknowledge me. As a former lesbian feminist, I was put off by the way that some women want to be treated by me, now that I am a man, because it violates a foundational belief I carry, which is that women are fully capable human beings who do not need men to acquiesce or concede to them.

What continues to strike me is the significant reduction in friendliness and kindness now extended to me in public spaces. It now feels as though I am on my own: No one, outside of family and close friends, is paying any attention to my well-being.

I can recall a moment where this difference hit home. A couple of years into my medical gender transition, I was traveling on a public bus early one weekend morning. There were six people on the bus, including me. One was a woman. She was talking on a mobile phone very loudly and remarked that “men are such a–holes.” I immediately looked up at her and then around at the other men. Not one had lifted his head to look at the woman or anyone else. The woman saw me look at her and then commented to the person she was speaking with about “some a–hole on the bus right now looking at me.” I was stunned, because I recall being in similar situations, but in the reverse, many times: A man would say or do something deemed obnoxious or offensive, and I would find solidarity with the women around me as we made eye contact, rolled our eyes and maybe even commented out loud on the situation. I’m not sure I understand why the men did not respond, but it made a lasting impression on me.

‘I took control of my career’

Chris Edwards, 49, Boston

Advertising creative director, public speaker and author of the memoir “Balls: It Takes Some to Get Some.” Transitioned in his mid-20s.

When I began my transition at age 26, a lot of my socialization came from the guys at work. For example, as a woman, I’d walk down the hall and bump into some of my female co-workers, and they’d say, “Hey, what’s up?” and I’d say, “Oh, I just got out of this client meeting. They killed all my scripts and now I have to go back and rewrite everything, blah blah blah. What’s up with you?” and then they’d tell me their stories. As a guy, I bump into a guy in the hall and he says, “What’s up?” and I launch into a story about my day and he’s already down the hall. And I’m thinking, well, that’s rude. So, I think, okay, well, I guess guys don’t really share, so next time I’ll keep it brief. By the third time, I realized you just nod.

The creative department is largely male, and the guys accepted me into the club. I learned by example and modeled my professional behavior accordingly. For example, I kept noticing that if guys wanted an assignment they’d just ask for it. If they wanted a raise or a promotion they’d ask for it. This was a foreign concept to me. As a woman, I never felt that it was polite to do that or that I had the power to do that. But after seeing it happen all around me I decided that if I felt I deserved something I was going to ask for it too. By doing that, I took control of my career. It was very empowering.

Apparently, people were only holding the door for me because I was a woman rather than out of common courtesy as I had assumed. Not just men, women too. I learned this the first time I left the house presenting as male, when a woman entered a department store in front of me and just let the door swing shut behind her. I was so caught off guard I walked into it face first.

When you’re socially transitioning, you want to blend in, not stand out, so it’s uncomfortable when little reminders pop up that you’re not like everybody else. I’m expected to know everything about sports. I like sports but I’m not in deep like a lot of guys. For example, I love watching football, but I never played the sport (wasn’t an option for girls back in my day) so there is a lot I don’t know. I remember the first time I was in a wedding as a groomsman. I was maybe three years into my transition and I was lined up for photos with all the other guys. And one of them shouted, “High school football pose!” and on cue everybody dropped down and squatted like the offensive line, and I was like, what the hell is going on? It was not instinctive to me since I never played. I tried to mirror what everyone was doing, but when you see the picture I’m kind of “offsides,” so to speak.

The hormones made me more impatient. I had lots of female friends and one of the qualities they loved about me was that I was a great listener. After being on testosterone, they informed me that my listening skills weren’t what they used to be. Here’s an example: I’m driving with one of my best friends, Beth, and I ask her “Is your sister meeting us for dinner?” Ten minutes later she’s still talking and I still have no idea if her sister is coming. So finally, I couldn’t take it anymore, and I snapped and said, “IS SHE COMING OR NOT?” And Beth was like, “You know, you used to like hearing all the backstory and how I’d get around to the answer. A lot of us have noticed you’ve become very impatient lately and we think it’s that damn testosterone!” It’s definitely true that some male behavior is governed by hormones. Instead of listening to a woman’s problem and being empathetic and nodding along, I would do the stereotypical guy thing — interrupt and provide a solution to cut the conversation short and move on. I’m trying to be better about this.

People ask if being a man made me more successful in my career. My answer is yes — but not for the reason you might think. As a man, I was finally comfortable in my own skin and that made me more confident. At work I noticed I was more direct: getting to the point, not apologizing before I said anything or tiptoeing around and trying to be delicate like I used to do. In meetings, I was more outspoken. I stopped posing my thoughts as questions. I’d say what I meant and what I wanted to happen instead of dropping hints and hoping people would read between the lines and pick up on what I really wanted. I was no longer shy about stating my opinions or defending my work. When I gave presentations I was brighter, funnier, more engaging. Not because I was a man. Because I was happy.

‘People assume I know the answer’

Alex Poon, 26, Boston

Project manager for Wayfair, an online home goods company. Alex is in the process of his physical transition; he did the chest surgery after college and started taking testosterone this spring.

Traditional Chinese culture is about conforming to your elders’ wishes and staying within gender boundaries. However, I grew up in the U.S., where I could explore my individuality and my own gender identity. When I was 15 I was attending an all-girls high school where we had to wear skirts, but I felt different from my peers. Around that point we began living with my Chinese grandfather towards the end of his life. He was so traditional and deeply set in his ways. I felt like I couldn’t cut my hair or dress how I wanted because I was afraid to upset him and have our last memories of each other be ruined.

Genetics are not in my favor for growing a lumberjack-style beard. Sometimes, Chinese faces are seen as “soft” with less defined jaw lines and a lack of facial fair. I worry that some of my feminine features like my “soft face” will make it hard to present as a masculine man, which is how I see myself. Instead, when people meet me for the first time, I’m often read as an effeminate man.

My voice has started cracking and becoming lower. Recently, I’ve been noticing the difference between being perceived as a woman versus being perceived as a man. I’ve been wondering how I can strike the right balance between remembering how it feels to be silenced and talked over with the privileges that come along with being perceived as a man. Now, when I lead meetings, I purposefully create pauses and moments where I try to draw others into the conversation and make space for everyone to contribute and ask questions.

People now assume I have logic, advice and seniority. They look at me and assume I know the answer, even when I don’t. I’ve been in meetings where everyone else in the room was a woman and more senior, yet I still got asked, “Alex, what do you think? We thought you would know.” I was at an all-team meeting with 40 people, and I was recognized by name for my team’s accomplishments. Whereas next to me, there was another successful team led by a woman, but she was never mentioned by name. I went up to her afterward and said, “Wow, that was not cool; your team actually did more than my team.” The stark difference made me feel uncomfortable and brought back feelings of when I had been in the same boat and not been given credit for my work.

When people thought I was a woman, they often gave me vague or roundabout answers when I asked a question. I’ve even had someone tell me, “If you just Googled it, you would know.” But now that I’m read as a man, I’ve found people give me direct and clear answers, even if it means they have to do some research on their own before getting back to me.

A part of me regrets not sharing with my grandfather who I truly am before he passed away. I wonder how our relationship might have been different if he had known this one piece about me and had still accepted me as his grandson. Traditionally, Chinese culture sees men as more valuable than women. Before, I was the youngest granddaughter, so the least important. Now, I’m the oldest grandson. I think about how he might have had different expectations or tried to instill certain traditional Chinese principles upon me more deeply, such as caring more about my grades or taking care of my siblings and elders. Though he never viewed me as a man, I ended up doing these things anyway.

Zander Keig contributed to this article in his personal capacity. The opinions expressed in this are the author’s own and do not reflect the view of the Department of Defense.

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Old story worth a repost SOURCE

[drtimothydembowskiatlantaga]

Dr. Timothy Dembowski Atlanta GA - A Clinic Director | Atelier Bretagne Bzh

Dr. Timothy Dembowski, a chiropractic expert in Atlanta, GA, is known for his commitment to natural healing.

[drtimothydembowski]

Dr. Timothy Dembowski - A Seasoned Chiropractor

Dr. Timothy Dembowski, an experienced chiropractor and director of Atlanta Medical Clinic, excels in providing top-notch patient care. Outside the clinic, he’s an enthusiastic snowboarder and Cleveland sports fan, and he loves exploring new destinations.

[fireinmywoods]

Do you think Leonard McCoy is strictly qualified to be a CMO? What kinds of degrees and certifications do you think that role needs, and does he fill them despite being fairly young (and mad scientist-y). Is he as much of a genius prodigy as Jim? Or did Jim make it clear that he wasn't going anywhere without Bones as CMO and Starfleet Medical just... made it happen.

I think that, like many of the other green but highly capable officers who end up in control of the Enterprise by the end of her maiden voyage, Leonard is exceptionally bright and skilled at the core duties of his role - in his case, medical care and surgery.

It’s pverse canon that Leonard was a gifted child and skipped a couple grades, and while I’m obviously biased, I feel like this isn’t too hard to believe, especially since it also helps explain how tf AOS presents him as a fully-fledged doctor at age 28. (Under the current system in the U.S., it would be the exception to the rule for someone to complete residency before 30.)

(And while we’re on the subject, it’s interesting to me that by the mid-2200s, medicine and surgery seem to have basically melded into a single discipline. Which I suppose makes sense considering the technological advancements - when you can give a lady a pill to regrow a kidney, you’ve eliminated a lot of the details that require so many years of highly specialized training.)

Anyway, my personal backstory for Leonard is that he did his residency at the 23rd century equivalent of Grady Memorial Hospital in Atlanta, because 1) it makes sense that he would move back to Georgia for residency after graduating med school at Ole Miss, and 2) as a Level 1 trauma center and one of the biggest public hospitals in the country, Grady is the sort of place where a new doctor would get one hell of a crash course in trauma care. I have friends who did their med school training there, another who worked there as an ER doctor, and they’re definitely the people I’d want holding things down in the event of some catastrophic emergency.

I mean, just look at how Leonard reacts in the wake of the Narada’s attack and the violent death of his superior (and who knows how many others). That right there is a fella who has SEEN some shit.

Furthermore, I imagine that his time at SFM while attending the Academy would have given him the opportunity to scrub in on some higher-level surgeries. Compared to our 2250s Grady equivalent, SFM seems to be on the other end of the hospital spectrum - the kind of prestigious institution which does a lot of groundbreaking research and gets referrals for unique and challenging cases from other hospitals, as well as likely being the go-to for xenosurgery. There’s no reason to believe Leonard didn’t do quite well at SFM, and if anything, I think they probably would have wanted to keep him on rather than losing him to a starship.

Finally, we know that the reason Leonard was the one to inherit the CMO role from poor Dr. Puri is because he was already appointed as a senior medical officer, so it’s not like he was brought onto the ship as a lowly brow mopper and accidentally tripped his way into a senior role. (Unlike some stowaways-turned-captains I could mention.)

So I’m comfortable asserting that Leonard was already an outstanding physician and surgeon with a solid foundation of relevant experience when he first stepped onto the Enterprise. The CMO would need to be an excellent practitioner themselves and have the experience and expertise to advise the other providers working under them, and Leonard’s CV sets him up surprisingly well for that. Time in a trauma center would also have forced him to develop his ability to direct staff and lead a care team when shit hits the fan, and from what we see in the films, he appears to be pretty good at it.

The only thing which gives me pause are the managerial responsibilities one can assume would come along with the CMO position. I’d say the most analogous role to a starship CMO in modern day civilian medicine is that of medical director of a clinic or practice - and believe me, it takes a particular type of doctor to do well in that position. It’s a whole different skillset, and not everyone is cut out for it.

Managing his team in a crisis? Sure, yes, Leonard will knock that out of the park. Managing people day in and day out? Ehh. My man didn’t land that gig on the strength of his soft skills, you feel me?

That said, I’ve joked a lot about how Leonard must have joined up with Starfleet to escape such pesky nuisances as medical board review and ethics committees, but like…I’m only sort of joking, y'all. Sure, he might not do well as a medical director at my hospital with strict metrics to hit and JCo crawling up his ass about patient safety - but out in space, operating near the top of a strict pseudo-military hierarchy where he literally just gets to boss his staff around and they’re obliged to obey his commands? Hell yeah. I can see how he’d take well to that.

So to answer your question: do I believe Leonard McCoy was qualified to be CMO of the Enterprise when he assumed the role in 2258? Yes. Do I also believe Jim would have pitched a whole-ass fit if anyone tried to take Bones from him? Oh, god yes. It would’ve been a bloodbath. Better for the brass to let them both go and keep an eye out for a different, less aggressively bonded young doctor to fill McCoy’s shoes at SFM.

[pozmagazine]

Peter Stinner, a popular HIV tester, educator and activist in Atlanta, died of a heart attack August 16, 2020. He was at home with his husband, fellow HIV and LGBT activist Jeff Graham, at the time, reports Project Q. Stinner was 55.

He had worked as an HIV educator at Grady Health System’s Ponce de Leon Center for two decades.

“He gave people hope and introduced the clinic to our patients. In short, he armed them with knowledge while letting them know they had a team behind them,” Wendy Armstrong, a medical director at the center, told the newspaper. “He was compassionate, patient and able to explain the biology of HIV to anyone, no matter how long it had been since they had had a science class.”

[grootpoepjeplasjehoofd]

Problems with a government-created coronavirus test have limited the United States’ capacity to rapidly increase testing, just as the outbreak has entered a worrisome new phase in countries worldwide. Experts are increasingly concerned that the small number of U.S. cases may be a reflection of limited testing, not of the virus’s spread.

While South Korea has run more than 35,000 coronavirus tests, the United States has tested only 426 people, not including people who returned on evacuation flights. Only about a dozen state and local laboratories can now run tests outside of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta because the CDC kits sent out nationwide earlier this month included a faulty component.

U.S. guidelines recommend testing for a very narrow group of people — those who display respiratory symptoms and have recently traveled to China or had close contact with an infected person.

But many public health experts think that in light of evidence that the disease has taken root and spread in Iran, Italy, Singapore and South Korea, it’s time to broaden testing in the United States. Infectious disease experts fear that aside from the 14 cases picked up by public health surveillance, there may be other cases, undetected, mixed in with those of colds and flu. What scares experts the most is that the virus is beginning to spread in countries outside China, but no one knows whether that’s the case in the United States, because they aren’t checking.

“Coronavirus testing kits have not been widely distributed to our hospitals and public health labs. Those without these kits must send samples all the way to Atlanta, rather than testing them on site, wasting precious time as the virus spreads,” said Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.).

In a congressional hearing Tuesday, Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) pressed Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar on whether the CDC test was faulty. He denied that the test did not work.

But in a news briefing that was going on about the same time, Nancy Messonnier, director of the CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, said that she was “frustrated” about problems with the test kits and that the CDC hoped to send out a new version to state and local health departments soon.

“I think we are close,” she said. She said that the agency is working as fast as possible on the tests, but that the priority is making sure they are accurate.

Currently, she said, a dozen state and local health departments can do the testing, although positive results need to be confirmed by the CDC. She also said she hoped that tests from commercial labs would soon come online.

Messonnier said the agency was weighing widening its testing protocols to include people traveling to the United States from countries beyond mainland China, considering the rapid spread of the virus in other places in recent days.

The nation’s public health laboratories, exasperated by the malfunctioning tests in the face of a global public health emergency, have taken the unusual step of appealing to the Food and Drug Administration for permission to develop and use their own tests. In Hawaii, authorities are so alarmed about the lack of testing ability that they requested permission from the CDC to use tests from Japan. A medical director at a hospital laboratory in Boston is developing an in-house test, but is frustrated that his laboratory won’t be able to use it without going through an onerous and time-consuming review process, even if demand surges.

“This is an extraordinary request, but this is an extraordinary time,” said Scott Becker, the chief executive of the Association of Public Health Laboratories, which is asking the FDA for permission to allow the laboratories to create and implement their own laboratory-developed tests.

At one hospital in the Mid-Atlantic region, a patient who recently returned from Singapore, which has 90 cases, was admitted to the hospital with mild upper respiratory symptoms, according to a hospital official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to protect the patient’s privacy. The patient tested negative for flu. Because of underlying medical conditions, the person was at higher risk for severe illness if this was a coronavirus infection.

Even though clinicians suspected coronavirus, and treated the person for it and placed the patient in isolation, the patient was not tested.

“If this person had returned from mainland China, they would have been tested for coronavirus,” the official said. The patient recovered and was discharged to their home.

Testing also affects other aspects of care.

People with confirmed cases can enroll in clinical trials for therapeutics. For patients who need more intense care in a facility with a biocontainment unit, that facility can receive reimbursement from the federal government for care, the official said.

The CDC announced a week and a half ago that it would add pilot coronavirus testing to its flu surveillance network in five cities, a step toward expanded testing of people with respiratory symptoms who didn’t have other obvious risk factors. Specimens that test negative for flu will be tested for coronavirus. But that expanded testing has been delayed because of an unspecified problem with one of the compounds used in the CDC test. About half of state labs got inconclusive results when using the compound, so the CDC said it would make a new version and redistribute it.

To public health experts, the delays — and lack of transparency about what, exactly, is wrong with the test — are extremely concerning.

“We have over 700 flights every month between Hawaii and Japan or South Korea,” where the virus is spreading in the community, said Hawaii Lt. Gov. Josh Green, who is also an emergency physician. It’s unlikely that the CDC would allow state labs to accept a test from another nation, he said, but “this is an exceptional circumstance.”

In a letter to the FDA, the Association of Public Health Laboratories, which represents state and local laboratories, asked the agency to use “enforcement discretion” to allow the laboratories to create and use their own laboratory-developed tests.

“While we appreciate the many efforts underway at CDC to provide a diagnostic assay to our member labs … this has proven challenging and we find ourselves in a situation that requires a quicker local response,” said the letter, which was co-signed by Becker. “We are now many weeks into the response with still no diagnostic or surveillance test available outside of CDC for the vast majority of our member laboratories.”

Because a public health emergency has been declared, certified hospital laboratories that usually have the ability to internally develop and validate their own tests can’t use them without applying for an “emergency use authorization,” a major barrier to deploying the test.

“I think a lot of people, myself included, think it’s very likely this virus might be circulating at low levels in the United States right now. We can’t know for sure because we haven’t seen it,” said Michael Mina, associate medical director of clinical microbiology at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. He said the optimal testing scenario for flu is a 30-minute turnaround on a test, but right now, shipping samples to Atlanta to test for coronavirus means a 48-hour wait.

“A lot of hospitals are trying to do something similar, which is get a test up and running on an instrument, get it validated in-house,” Mina said. “I think all of us are coming to the same realization that we can’t do anything as long as this remains under the control of CDC and state labs.”

Marion Koopmans, a virologist at the Erasmus University Medical Center in the Netherlands, which has performed a few hundred tests on behalf of more than a dozen countries, said that developing a test for a new pathogen is complicated and involves refinement and a back-and-forth between researchers who are constantly learning from one another.

“That is typical for a new disease outbreak. No one actually knows how this works, so you really have to build these assays on the fly,” Koopmans said.

But as the United States is still struggling to ramp up its capacity, the coronavirus test was added to the sentinel flu surveillance system in the Netherlands two weeks ago. The test was recently rolled out to 12 high-performing molecular diagnostic laboratories in the Netherlands so that they can be ready to scale up if demand increases.

Part of the problem in the United States is the tension between regulations intended to ensure a high-quality standard for tests and the need to roll out diagnostic capabilities very quickly. No test is perfect, and with high stakes for missing or misidentifying a case, public health officials want to make sure that tests are as accurate as possible and are validated by labs that run them. But the slowness may also reflect years of underinvestment in public health infrastructure — and a bias toward developing treatments that may seem more appealing to the public.

“The public health system is not sufficiently built to surge very rapidly,” said Luciana Borio, the former director of Medical and Biodefense Preparedness Policy at the National Security Council and now a vice president at In-Q-Tel, a strategic investor that supports the U.S. intelligence community. “Over the years, when given limited dollars, we applied it toward vaccines and therapeutics, more so than diagnostic tests. I think there’s this idea: The diagnostic test is not going to save my life. But the fact is they underpin so much of the response and deserve a lot more attention.”

[your-dietician]

Post-mastectomy pain made her feel ‘on fire.’ Nerve freezing offered relief

New Post has been published on https://medianwire.com/post-mastectomy-pain-made-her-feel-on-fire-nerve-freezing-offered-relief/

Post-mastectomy pain made her feel ‘on fire.’ Nerve freezing offered relief

Jessica Zabel shut the door on her breast cancer returning when she chose to have a preventive double mastectomy, but another nightmare was just beginning.

She started to feel constant pain on her rib cage under her armpit. It was on the side of one of her reconstructed breasts, but felt different from surgical pain or the pain from a broken bone.

“I just felt like I was on fire, like someone was holding a torch to my skin. Nothing made it better, and even just my clothes touching me was just unbearable,” Zabel, 39, who lives in Jupiter, Florida, told TODAY.

“The best way I could describe it is like if you burn yourself really bad and the next day when you get in the shower just that little bit of warm water makes it feel like on fire.”

Studies show 20% to 30% of women develop post-mastectomy pain syndrome (PMPS) after surgery, and the nerve pain — in the chest wall, armpit or arm — doesn’t go away over time, according to the American Cancer Society. Some estimates put the number even higher, 60% or more.

It happens when a nerve is damaged, stretched or irritated during a mastectomy, lumpectomy or an axillary dissection, when doctors look to see if the cancer has spread to lymph nodes in the armpit, said Dr. J. David Prologo, director of interventional radiology services at Emory Johns Creek Hospital near Atlanta.

“There are a lot of nerves that run through there, so it’s a well-established problem post-mastectomy,” said Prologo, an associate professor at Emory University School of Medicine.

He specializes in treating all kinds of nerve pain with cryoablation — a treatment that freezes nerves to prevent them from sending signals of agony to the brain. “I see patients in desperate pain every day,” Prologo said. The technique has been around for a decade, but it’s just recently been used to treat women with PMPS, he noted, calling himself a pioneer in the field. One of his patients is Jessica Zabel.

‘I was so fed up with everything’

In 2012, Zabel was relaxing on the couch when she adjusted her tank top and felt a lump in her breast. She was diagnosed with a very early form of breast cancer and underwent a lumpectomy, but the mom of two kept dreading the possibility of more tumors.

“It seemed like every time I went for a scan, there was a new little spot that needed to be biopsied, and I just didn’t want it hanging over my head at such a young age, with such a young family,” she said.

So in 2014, Zabel chose to have a prophylactic bilateral mastectomy, when both breasts are removed. “Let’s just not ever have to worry about this again,” she recalled thinking. “But it wasn’t so simple.”

She expected to have pain after the surgery, but found it never went away. Zabel described it as a constant, life-disrupting burning sensation. She tried nerve calming drugs, but couldn’t tolerate the side effects. She was prescribed opioid pain medication, but was concerned she needed more and more of it, and hated the way it made her feel.

“I just didn’t feel like myself. I felt altered. I kind of walked around all day feeling like I had had a few drinks. I felt sleepy and really grumpy,” Zabel said.

To avoid pain meds, she tried physical therapy, lidocaine patches, nerve block injections and surgical interventions, but nothing helped. Zabel couldn’t work or attend her kids’ school functions, and by the time she found out about the clinical trial to use cryoablation for PMPS at Emory University, she was out of hope.

“I was so fed up with everything. I was so sick and honestly just afraid one of those days I wasn’t going to come back home to my family,” she recalled of her mental state at the time.

Freezing the nerve

Cryoablation involves passing a needle, guided by a CT scan, to the damaged nerve to deliver extreme cold, which stops the nerve from sending pain signals. The minimally invasive outpatient treatment takes about 20 minutes and leaves no scar, Prologo said. Patients are awake but given sedation to feel relaxed and comfortable.

Besides shutting off the pain signal, the goal of the freezing is to degenerate the nerve so that it regenerates in the next six to eight months as “brand new” without the damage that caused it to go haywire, Prologo noted.

In a clinical trial of 14 women with PMPS, Prologo and his colleagues targeted one particular nerve — the intercostobrachial nerve in the armpit area — with cryoablation. Over 180 days after the procedure, the researchers saw significant improvements in patients’ self-reported average pain, worst pain and their quality of life, he said.

Because it’s a new application of an existing technique, there are no additional approvals required, and Prologo makes the procedure available to women now.

Zabel has received the treatment four times since 2018. That’s because she had more than one source of nerve pain, which Prologo targeted one by one, he said. She described it as a gradual improvement that ultimately led to a “night and day” difference, rating her daily pain level at 7 or 8 out of 10 before the treatment compared to 3 out of 10 on most days now.

She’s working full time as a seafood distributor, is caring for her kids and doing most of the things that she enjoys, she said. She hopes she’ll continue to improve.

“My main goal since the first day that this started was just to have my normal life back,” Zabel said.

“I’m not taking any pain meds — or very, very rarely. … I’m just thankful to be functioning and able to travel with my kids, drive them to school every day and just be present in their lives.”

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Charles Drew

Charles Richard Drew (June 3, 1904 – April 1, 1950) was an American surgeon and medical researcher. He researched in the field of blood transfusions, developing improved techniques for blood storage, and applied his expert knowledge to developing large-scale blood banks early in World War II. This allowed medics to save thousands of lives of the Allied forces. As the most prominent African American in the field, Drew protested against the practice of racial segregation in the donation of blood, as it lacked scientific foundation, and resigned his position with the American Red Cross, which maintained the policy until 1950.

Early life and education

Drew was born in 1904 into an African-American middle-class family in Washington, D.C. His father, Richard, was a carpet layer and his mother, Nora Burrell, trained as a teacher. Drew and three of his four younger siblings grew up in Washington's largely middle-class and interracial Foggy Bottom neighborhood. From 1920 until his marriage in 1939, Drew's permanent address was in Arlington County, Virginia, although he graduated from Washington's Dunbar High School in 1922 and usually resided elsewhere during that period of time.

Drew won an athletics scholarship to Amherst College in Massachusetts, from which he graduated in 1926. An outstanding athlete at Amherst, Drew also joined Omega Psi Phi fraternity as an off-campus member; Amherst fraternities did not admit blacks at that time. After college, Drew spent two years (1926–1928) as a professor of chemistry and biology, the first athletic director, and football coach at the historically black private Morgan College in Baltimore, Maryland, to earn the money to pay for medical school.

Drew attended medical school at McGill University in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, where he achieved membership in Alpha Omega Alpha, a scholastic honor society for medical students, ranked second in his graduating class of 127 students, and received the standard Doctor of Medicine and Master of Surgery degree awarded by the McGill University Faculty of Medicine in 1933.

Drew's first appointment as a faculty instructor was for pathology at Howard University from 1935 to 1936. He then joined Freedman's Hospital, a federally operated facility associated with Howard University, as an instructor in surgery and an assistant surgeon. In 1938, Drew began graduate work at Columbia University in New York City on the award of a two-year Rockefeller fellowship in surgery. He then began postgraduate work, earning his Doctor of Science in Surgery at Columbia University. He spent time doing research at Columbia's Presbyterian Hospital and gave a doctoral thesis, "Banked Blood," based on an exhaustive study of blood preservation techniques. He earned a Doctor of Science in Medicine degree in 1940, becoming the first African American to do so.

Blood for Britain

In late 1940, before the U.S. entered World War II and just after earning his doctorate, Drew was recruited by John Scudder to help set up and administer an early prototype program for blood storage and preservation. He was to collect, test, and transport large quantities of blood plasma for distribution in the United Kingdom. Drew went to New York City as the medical director of the United States' Blood for Britain project. The Blood for Britain project was a project to aid British soldiers and civilians by giving U.S. blood to the United Kingdom.

Drew started what would be later known as bloodmobiles, which were trucks containing refrigerators of stored blood; this allowed for greater mobility in terms of transportation as well as prospective donations.

Drew created a central location for the blood collection process where donors could go to give blood. He made sure all blood plasma was tested before it was shipped out. He ensured that only skilled personnel handled blood plasma to avoid the possibility of contamination. The Blood for Britain program operated successfully for five months, with total collections of almost 15,000 people donating blood, and with over 5,500 vials of blood plasma. As a result, the Blood Transfusion Betterment Association applauded Drew for his work.

American Red Cross Blood Bank

Out of Drew's work, he was appointed director of the first American Red Cross Blood Bank in February 1941. The blood bank being in charge of blood for use by the U.S. Army and Navy, he disagreed with the exclusion of the blood of African-Americans from plasma-supply networks. In 1942, Drew resigned from his posts after the armed forces ruled that the blood of African-Americans would be accepted but would have to be stored separately from that of whites.

Academic career

In 1941, Drew's distinction in his profession was recognized when he became the first African-American surgeon selected to serve as an examiner on the American Board of Surgery.

Drew had a lengthy research and teaching career, returning to Freedman's Hospital and Howard University as a surgeon and professor of medicine in 1942. He was awarded the Spingarn Medal by the NAACP in 1944 for his work on the British and American projects. He was given an honorary doctor of science degree, first by Virginia State College in 1945 then by Amherst in 1947.

Personal life

In 1939, Drew married Minnie Lenore Robbins, a professor of home economics at Spelman College in Atlanta, Georgia, whom he had met earlier during that year. They had three daughters and a son. His daughter Charlene Drew Jarvis served on Council of the District of Columbia from 1979 to 2000, was the president of Southeastern University from 1996 until 2009 and was a president of the District of Columbia Chamber of Commerce.

Death

Beginning in 1939, Drew traveled to Tuskegee, Alabama to attend the annual free clinic at the John A. Andrew Memorial Hospital. For the 1950 Tuskegee clinic, Drew drove along with three other black physicians. Drew was driving around 8 a.m. on April 1. Still fatigued from spending the night before in the operating theater, he lost control of the vehicle. After careening into a field, the car somersaulted three times. The three other physicians suffered minor injuries. Drew was trapped with serious wounds; his foot had become wedged beneath the brake pedal. When reached by emergency technicians, he was in shock and barely alive due to severe leg injuries.

Drew was taken to Alamance General Hospital in Burlington, North Carolina. He was pronounced dead a half hour after he first received medical attention. Drew's funeral was held on April 5, 1950, at the Nineteenth Street Baptist Church in Washington, D.C.

Despite a popular myth to the contrary, once repeated on an episode ("Dear Dad... Three") of the hit TV series M*A*S*H, Drew's death was not the result of his having been refused a blood transfusion because of his skin color. This myth spread very quickly since during his time it was very common for blacks to be refused treatment because there were not enough "Negro beds" available or the nearest hospital only serviced whites. In truth, according to one of the passengers in Drew's car, John Ford, Drew's injuries were so severe that virtually nothing could have been done to save him. Ford added that a blood transfusion might have actually killed Drew sooner.

Legacy

In 1976, the National Park Service designated the Charles Richard Drew House in Arlington County, Virginia, as a National Historic Landmark in response to a nomination by the Afro-American Bicentennial Corporation.

In 1981, the United States Postal Service issued a 35¢ postage stamp in its Great Americans series to honor Drew.

Charles Richard Drew Memorial Bridge, spanning the Edgewood and Brookland neighborhoods in Washington, D.C.

USNS Charles Drew, a dry cargo ship of the United States Navy

Parc Charles-Drew, in Le Sud-Ouest, Montreal, Quebec, Canada

In 2002, scholar Molefi Kete Asante listed Drew as one of the 100 Greatest African Americans.

Numerous schools and health-related facilities, as well as other institutions, have been named in honor of Dr. Drew.

Medical and higher education

In 1966, the Charles R. Drew Postgraduate Medical School was incorporated in California and was named in his honor. This later became the Charles R. Drew University of Medicine and Science.

Charles Drew Health Center, Omaha, Nebraska

Charles Drew Science Enrichment Laboratory, Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan

Charles Drew Health Foundation, East Palo Alto, California, 1960s-2000, was the community's only clinic for decades.

Charles Drew Community Health Center, located in Burlington, NC near the site of the old Alamance County hospital.

Charles Drew Pre-Health Society, University of Rochester

Charles R Drew Wellness Center in Columbia, South Carolina

Charles R. Drew Hall, an all-male freshman dorm at Howard University, Washington D.C.

Charles Drew Memorial Cultural House, residence at Amherst College, his alma mater

Charles Drew Premedical Society at Columbia University, New York

K-12 schools

Charles R. Drew Middle School & Magnet school for the gifted, opened 1966 Los Angeles Unified School District https://drew-lausd-ca.schoolloop.com/

Charles R. Drew Middle School Lincoln Alabama operated by Talladega County Schools

Charles R. Drew Junior High School, Detroit, Michigan

Dr. Charles R. Drew Science Magnet School, Buffalo, NY

Charles R. Drew Elementary School, Miami Beach and Pompano Beach, Florida

Bluford Drew Jemison S.T.E.M Academy, Baltimore (closed in 2013)

Bluford Drew Jemison STEM Academy West, a Middle/High School in Baltimore, Maryland

Dr. Charles R. Drew Elementary School, Colesville, Maryland

Charles Drew Elementary School, Washington, DC

Charles R. Drew Elementary School, Arlington, Virginia

Dr. Charles Drew Elementary School, New Orleans, LA

Charles R. Drew Charter School opened in August 2000 as the first charter school in Atlanta, Georgia. This is the setting for the 2015 Movie Project Almanac.

Dr. Charles Drew Academy, Ecorse, MI

Charles R. Drew Intermediate School, Crosby, Texas

Dr. Charles Drew Elementary School, San Francisco, Ca.

Charles Richard Drew Intermediate School / Charles Richard Drew Educational Campus, Bronx, New York

[sciencenewsforstudents]

When doctors and scientists come to his table at national cancer meetings, Michael Singer says he feels a bit like a caged specimen. “They look at me with that bewildered look, ‘oh, so this is what a male breast cancer patient looks like,’ ” quips the retired 59-year-old from the Bronx, N.Y.

With many diseases, women receive procedures and drugs that were largely tested in men. Breast cancer has the opposite problem: Men make up less than 1 percent of breast cancer cases and often receive treatment based on data collected in women.

What’s more, breast cancer in men has been rising. Diagnoses have gone from 0.85 per 100,000 men in the United States in 1975 to 1.21 per 100,000 in 2016. This year, an estimated 2,670 U.S. males will develop the disease. And a new analysis confirms what smaller studies have suggested: Men with breast cancer fare worse than their female counterparts.

The study, published September 19 in JAMA Oncology, is the largest of its kind. It analyzed registry data on 1,816,733 U.S. patients — including 16,025 men — who were diagnosed with breast cancer from January 2004 to December 2014. At three and five years after diagnosis, as well as at the end of the study period, men had lower survival rates than women. The disparity remained “even after we adjusted for known contributing factors including clinical predictors, socioeconomic status and access to care,” says Xiao-Ou Shu, an epidemiologist at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville who led the research.

To Laura Esserman, a breast oncologist at the University of California, San Francisco, who wasn’t involved with the study, “the most striking thing is that there was a difference in treatment.” Case in point: Although 84.5 percent of the male breast cancer patients were “hormone-receptor positive” — meaning their tumors grow in response to estrogen or progesterone — only 57.9 percent of those men received standard-of-care endocrine therapy —  drugs that stop hormones from helping breast cancer cells grow. By comparison, only 75.8 percent of female breast cancer patients were hormone-receptor positive, yet 70.2 percent of them got endocrine therapy.

Consistent with past analyses, the new study also found that male breast cancer patients were older when diagnosed, and more likely to have advanced disease, compared with women.

Singer isn’t surprised. Unlike women, who are taught to do breast exams on themselves and advised to have regular mammograms, “guys never touch themselves there,” he says. “We’re never trained to look for early warning signs.”

When Singer noticed a lump below his left nipple, months passed before he brought it up with his doctor in December 2010. “I was embarrassed,” he says. “I was ignoring it and hoping it would go away.” Weeks later, he learned it was Stage 2 breast cancer and got a mastectomy.

About 2,670 men in the United States will be diagnosed with breast cancer this year. Michael Singer (shown) was diagnosed with the disease in 2010. CREDIT: TOM PICH PHOTOGRAPHY

“There are some real barriers for lesions to be found in a timely way,” says Esserman, who heard Singer speak at a breast cancer charity event in September. “His talk really made me more aware of that, and how important it is to make people feel comfortable bringing this to the attention of their physicians and not be embarrassed.”

In addition to shame about having a “woman’s disease,” Esserman says routine screening, which is done only in women and tends to detect earlier-stage disease, could explain some of the gender disparity in treatment outcomes.

Another contributing factor could be compliance with follow-up treatment. After primary treatment, many breast cancer patients get assigned a 5- to 10-year regimen of tamoxifen. This daily pill reduces the risk of cancer recurrence, but also carries side effects such as mood swings, nausea, hot flashes and loss of sex drive. “Right there, you’re going to lose most men,” Singer says.

Even if compliance were not an issue, some experts note that the molecular pathways that produce endocrine’s effects differ between the sexes, and male breast cancer patients could have alternative pathways to drive tumor growth. That means hormone therapies might not work as well in men, says Xiaoxian Bill Li, a breast pathologist at Emory University in Atlanta whose smaller 2017 study indicated that male breast cancer patients have worse outcomes than females, especially for early-stage disease.

To expand treatment options, the Food and Drug Administration issued a draft guidance in August encouraging drug companies to include men in breast cancer studies. (Last year, the FDA released a guidance document to motivate inclusion of pregnant women (SN: 5/30/18) in clinical trials.) And when clinical trial data is scant, the agency occasionally considers other sources of information. In April, for instance, the FDA expanded the indications for the breast cancer drug palbociclib to include men, based on electronic health records and post-marketing data related to patients’ real-world experiences.

Recently, the agency approved several breast cancer drugs for both men and women even though the clinical trials had no male participants, because the drugs weren’t expected to behave differently between genders, says Richard Pazdur, director of the FDA’s Oncology Center of Excellence.

“This is huge,” Singer says. This is “proof that the tide is turning, that we matter.”

[drtimothydembowskiatlantaga]

Dr. Timothy Dembowski Atlanta GA - A Natural Healing Expert

Dr.Timothy Dembowski is a chiropractor and clinic director in Atlanta, GA. He is an expert in natural healing and is committed to offering alternatives to drugs and surgery. His clinic's motto is to offer legit options to those in need, especially those suffering from neuropathy, or leg/back/knee pain.