#mortality reduction

[thetanningguru]

Shedding New Light on UV Exposure: Sunbed Health Benefits Finally Revealed

For years, we’ve been warned about the dangers of ultraviolet (UV) light exposure, particularly from sunbeds. However, a groundbreaking new study from researchers at the University of Edinburgh suggests that UV exposure may have more health benefits than previously thought, especially in countries with low sunlight like the United Kingdom. The Study at a Glance Published in the journal Health &…

[rabbivolesolo]

Two versions of my first reduction print! Based on a bit of self-deprecating stage banter from the end of the TMBG UK tour

[rabbitsonthemoon]

If I keep shoving nutrients into this body it'll give me enough energy to get through the day, right? Right?

This body: yesterday is history tomorrow is a mystery and today is also a mystery. fuck you. also, you're low on iron now.

[gaylittlefrogwizard]

Hank Green is dope af

i know people make these kinds of posts with fictional characters a lot but like. hank green truly is one of The Most Guys Ever. like. he's one of the earliest youtubers who is still on there. he's a 43-year-old tiktok star. he's a science educator. he got cancer and his response was to make a tier list of the press's coverage of his cancer announcement. the president of the united states sent him a message of support and he told the president that he was pissing out the cancer. years earlier he was diagnosed with ulcerative colitis and his response was to write a polka song about it. he created vidcon. he's the ceo of a company that produces a shitton of educational series (well, not acting ceo at the moment due to the aforementioned cancer). his guitar says "this machine pwns n00bs" on it. he invented 2D glasses. one of his earliest videos to get popular was about animal sex. between him and his brother, he was known as "the science one" (or "the music one") while his brother was "the writer one," and then he wrote two new york times bestselling novels. his most controversial opinion is that butt is legs. he's done so many things that there is a website dedicated to counting the number of days since he started a new thing. he and his brother use their internet following to (among other things) fight maternal/infant mortality in sierra leone. he has a baked bean furby. hes even bisexual

[reasonsforhope]

"India's efforts and progress in reducing preventable child deaths have been lauded as an "exemplar" by the United Nations, which cited the example of health initiatives such as Ayushman Bharat, and said the country has saved millions of young lives through strategic investments in its health system.

The United Nations Inter-agency Group for Child Mortality Estimation report, released Tuesday, cited the example of five “exemplar countries” in achieving child mortality reduction -- India, Nepal, Senegal, Ghana and Burundi -- highlighting diverse strategies that have accelerated progress in reducing preventable child deaths.

The report said these countries illustrate that with "political will, evidence-based strategies and sustained investments, even resource-constrained settings facing unique challenges can achieve substantial reductions in mortality, bringing the world closer to an end to preventable child deaths".

On India, the report said the country has made gains through health system investment...

The report highlighted that since 2000, India achieved an under-five mortality reduction of 70 per cent and a neonatal mortality reduction of 61 per cent, “driven by overlapping measures to increase health coverage, enhance available interventions and develop health infrastructure and human resources", the report said.

It cited the example of Ayushman Bharat, the world's largest health insurance scheme which provides annual coverage of nearly USD 5,500 per family per year.

It noted that every pregnant woman is entitled to free delivery (including caesarean section), and infant care provides free transport, medications, diagnostics and dietary support in public health institutions.

To ensure comprehensive coverage and equitable access to health services, India has strengthened infrastructure via the establishment of maternity waiting homes, maternal and child health wings, newborn stabilisation units, sick newborn care units, mother care units and a dedicated programme for birth defect screening, the report said...

“This ensures millions of healthy pregnancies and thriving live births each year. India has also prioritised the training and deployment of skilled birth attendants, such as midwives and community health workers, to provide appropriate maternal and child health services,” it said.

The report noted that additionally, data systems and digital surveillance of maternal, newborn and child health indicators are continuously improved to support evidence-based decision-making...

Other Countries that Did Well

The UN agency also said that several low and lower-middle-income countries have surpassed the global decline in under-five mortality since 2000.

Angola, Bhutan, Bolivia, Cabo Verde, India, Morocco, Senegal, Tanzania and Zambia have all cut their under-five mortality rate by more than two thirds since 2000.

In 2000, the country with the highest burden of under-five measles mortality was India, with only 56 per cent of infants vaccinated for measles and 189,000 deaths from measles.

By 2023, the infant measles vaccination rate had increased to 93 per cent, and under-five deaths due to the disease decreased by 97 per cent to 5,200 measles-related deaths...

Since 2000, child deaths [globally] have dropped by more than half and stillbirths by over a third, fuelled by sustained investments in child survival worldwide...

"Millions of children are alive today because of the global commitment to proven interventions, such as vaccines, nutrition, and access to safe water and basic sanitation,” UNICEF Executive Director Catherine Russell said.

-via India Today, March 27, 2025

[zabadi]

incredibly sick & tired of the way the phrase harm reduction is thrown around to mean you're morally obligated to vote for a murderer. You guys do not know what harm reduction means. Harm reduction is a concrete set of strategies with the goal of improving quality of life/reducing mortality rates for people who use drugs. these strategies include medication assisted treatment, needle exchanges, housing first programs, free prep. the underpinning thought process is not about "lesser evils" or voting for MURDERERS! It's about respecting the autonomy of homeless people, addicts, the (formerly) incarcerated, (you know, the most marginalized members of our society!) and meeting them where they are, treating them like people, taking into account what they want and how they want to get there. If they were, for instance, being bombed to hell by the president it would actually not be harm reduction to vote for the guy bombing them. You fucking soulless brain dead liberals.

[enarei]

one thing that very mildly annoys me about the way anglophones talk about DIY hrt with regards to its politicization is that there's an unspoken assumption that most of the time "DIY" refers not only to the context in which the patient acquires the medication but also its manufacture and distribution as being outside the purview of governamental regulation

when in fact to a huge share of the population not in the global north, medical prescriptions aren't actively enforced or required and the "DIY" of DIY hrt refers to people self medicating on "legal" hormones manufactured by big pharmaceutical companies which they acquired without passing through a medical institution

so a post about "harm reduction" in the context of DIY feminizing hrt can bemoan the use of that term with the understanding that it's implying an inherent risk attached to a tiny estradiol manufacturer's processes not being safe compared to "legal" sources, which is, in fact, wildly overblown, but there's also a very meaningful aspect that gets completely ignored that thousands upon thousands of people are subjecting themselves to elevated health risks by using elevated doses of ethynilestradiol found in birth control pills to transition. it's not that doctors never prescribe these or self-medicating is inherently dangerous, I myself have been prescribed Diane 35 by a private endocrinologist before, but there's a measurably higher mortality among self-medicating trans women in Brazil for example because people are using too much of the wrong type of hormones and they don't know it.

however applicable "harm reduction" is here or the intent by people using it, the way in which it is being refuted by these sort of posts distorts the reality that poorly researched DIY *can* have greater risks than just getting mildly ill, regardless of whether the same is true for non-DIY approaches, people *can* be meaningfully harmed if they're not minimally informed about what they're taking, and it's not exactly surprising it is being framed that way given the scope in which it happens

[cabin13cappuccino]

Literally no way. I looked up the list of vaccines Nico would have had to get in order to be allowed into the United States for fic reasons and it's...not a short list. Like, it includes smallpox and yellow fever. Just to be granted a visa. Not to mention that infectious disease was still a major killer of children at the time- pertussis, flu, and tetanus vaccines were a few years away from being readily available when Nico went into the Lotus, and measles/mumps/polio/rubella vaccines weren't available until the 1950s/60s/70s. The March of Dimes was a huge campaign starting in 1938- he definitely saw that upon coming to America. Kiddo probably had friends die of polio and measles and definitely (from a statistical standpoint) lost extended family/family friends to the 1918 flu. (Random fun fact about me: my Italian great grandparents came to the US after losing one of their kids to the 1918 influenza pandemic.)

*Maybe* you could make the argument that Hazel might be slightly more hesitant, with rumors in New Orleans of some strange shot given to Black men in Alabama that made them and their families sick (i.e. Tuskeegee Syphilis Experiment) , but even then she would certainly have been exposed to the March of Dimes ads on the radio as well as having similar experiences to Nico re: knowing people who have died or been permanently disabled by (modern era) vaccine-preventable diseases.

Imagine how HYPE these two would be hearing that there is no polio in the US anymore- that it's almost gone from the entire world. That smallpox does. not. exist. anywhere. in. the. world. outside. of. two. freezers.

Out of everyone, Reyna might have the best case for being skeptical of mortal medicine from a historical/cultural perspective (hearing about oral contraceptive testing that was so unethical in the 1960s done on unsuspecting Puerto Rican women) coupled with her basically living out of the mortal world for a long time.

But honestly, the most likely candidates for anti-vax sentiments among demigods? The Grace siblings, particularly Jason. The privileged areas of California have been a hotbed of bringing measles and the like back since Wakefield published his fraudulent, conflict-of-interest-riddled paper in 1998 when the anti-vax movement really took off. Beryl Grace would have absolutely bought into the bullshit. Then Jason was taken away at age 2 and basically indoctrinated into the Roman "show no weakness" way...kinda can't blame him until he knows better. (I don't doubt Nico and Hazel can share some stories that drive home to Jason just how lucky he is to grow up in a time when people have forgotten just how horrifying vaccine-preventable diseases are. He's a reasonable guy.)

(I can see Thalia getting her immunizations updated as one of the first things she does upon running away to rebel against her mom.)

And remember, kids: being vaccine hesitant for intergenerational trauma/medical racism reasons is very different than being anti-vax, which is usually inextricably linked with being eugenicist to autistic people (especially kids). Get your fuckin immunizations!!

I’ve seen all the Will vaccinates Nico fics but has anyone considered… anti-vax Nico? Like Will is just losing his mind trying to get Nico to see he needs to get vaccinated asap so he doesn’t die of chicken pox or something and Nico’s just like “we have ambrosia and nectar for that, William. Don’t try that witchcraft on me.” Meanwhile Will is just crying like “it’s just science and medical advancements you silly child from the 1930s.”

I just think this would be hilarious.

[mariacallous]

It is hard to calculate all the good that Atul Gawande has done in the world. After training as a surgeon at Harvard, he taught medicine inside the hospital and in the classroom. A contributor to The New Yorker since 1998, he has published widely on issues of public health. His 2007 article in the magazine and the book that emerged from it, “The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right,” have been sources of clarity and truth in the debate over health-care costs. In 2014, he published “Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End,” a vivid, poetic, compassionate narrative that presents unforgettable descriptions of the ways the body ages and our end-of-life choices.

Gawande’s work on public health was influential in the Clinton and Obama Administrations, and, starting in November, 2020, he served on President Joe Biden’s COVID-19 Advisory Board. In July, 2021, Biden nominated him as the assistant administrator for the Bureau of Global Health at the U.S. Agency for International Development, where he worked to limit disease outbreaks overseas. Gawande, who is fifty-nine, resigned the position on the day of Donald Trump’s return to the Presidency.

When we spoke recently for The New Yorker Radio Hour, Gawande, usually a wry, high-spirited presence, was in a grave mood. There were flashes of anger and despair in his voice. He was, after all, watching Trump and Elon Musk dismantle, gleefully, a global health agency that had only lately been for him a source of devotion and inspiration. As a surgeon, Gawande had long been in a position to save one life at a time. More recently, and all too briefly, he was part of a vast collective responsible for untold good around the world. And now, as he made plain, that collective has been deliberately cast into chaos, even ruins. The cost in human lives is sure to be immense. Our conversation has been edited for clarity and length.

President Biden appointed you as the assistant administrator for global health at U.S.A.I.D., a job that you’ve described as the greatest job in medicine. You stepped down on Trump’s Inauguration Day, and he immediately began targeting U.S.A.I.D. with an executive order that halted all foreign aid. Did you know, or did you intuit, that Trump would act the way he has?

I had no idea. In the previous Trump Administration, they had embraced what they themselves called the “normals.” They had a head of U.S.A.I.D. who was devoted to the idea of development and soft power in the world. They had their own wrinkle on it, which I didn’t disagree with. They called it “the journey to self-reliance,” and they wanted to invest in Africa, in Asia, in Latin America, to enable stronger economies, more capacity—and we weren’t doing enough of that. I actually continued much of the work that had occurred during that time.

Tell me a little bit about what you were in charge of and what good was being done in the world.

I had twenty-five hundred people, between D.C. and sixty-five countries around the world, working on advancing health and protecting Americans from diseases and outbreaks abroad. The aim was to work with countries to build their systems so that we protected global health security and improved global outcomes—from reducing H.I.V./AIDS and other infectious diseases like malaria and T.B., to strengthening primary health-care systems, so that those countries would move on from depending on aid from donors. In three years, we documented saving more than 1.2 million lives after COVID alone.

Let’s pause on that. Your part of U.S.A.I.D. was responsible, demonstrably, for saving 1.2 million lives—from what?

So, COVID was the first global reduction in life expectancy in seventy years, and it disrupted the ability across the world to deliver basic health services, which includes H.I.V./AIDS [medications], but also included childhood immunizations, and managing diarrhea and pneumonia. Part of my target was to reduce the percentage of deaths in any given country that occur before the age of fifty. The teams would focus on the top three to five killers. In some places, that would be H.I.V.; in some places that would be T.B. Safe childbirth was a huge part of the work. And immunizations: forty per cent of the gains in survival for children under five in the past fifty years in the world came from vaccines alone. So vaccines were a big part of the work as well.

What was the case against this kind of work? It just seems like an absolute good.

One case is that it could have been more efficient, right? Americans imagine that huge sums of money go to this work. Polls show that they think that a quarter of our spending goes to foreign aid. In fact, on a budget for our global health work that is less than half the budget of the hospital where I did surgery here in Boston, we reached hundreds of millions of people, with programs that saved lives by the millions. That’s why I describe it as the best job in medicine that people have never heard of. It is at a level of scale I could never imagine experiencing. So the case against it—I woke up one day to find Elon Musk tweeting that this was a criminal enterprise, that this was money laundering, that this was corruption.

Where would he get this idea? Where does this mythology come from?

Well, what’s hard to parse is: What is just willful ignorance? Not just ignorance—it’s lying, right? For example, there’s a statistic that they push that only ten per cent of U.S.A.I.D.’s dollars actually got to recipients in the world. Now, this is a willful distortion of a statistic that says that only ten per cent of U.S.A.I.D.’s funding went to local organizations as opposed to multinational organizations and others. There’s a legitimate criticism to be made that that percentage should be higher, that more local organizations should get the funds. I did a lot of work that raised those numbers considerably, got it to thirty per cent, but that was not the debate they were having. They’re claiming that the money’s not actually reaching people and that corruption is taking it away, when, in fact, the reach—the ability to get to enormous numbers of people—has been a best buy in health and in humanitarian assistance for a long time.

Now the over-all agency, as I understand it, had about ten thousand people working for it. How many are working at U.S.A.I.D. now?

Actually, the number was about thirteen thousand. And the over-all number now—it’s hard to estimate because people are being turned on and off like a light switch—

Turned on and off, meaning their computers are shut down?

Yeah, and they’re being terminated and then getting unterminated—like, “Oops, sorry, we let the Ebola team go.” You heard Elon Musk say something to that effect in the Oval Office. “But we’ve brought them back, don’t worry.” It’s a moving target, but this is what I’d say: more than eighty per cent of the contracts have been terminated, representing the work that is done by U.S.A.I.D. and the for-profit and not-for-profit organizations they work with, like Catholic Relief Services and the like. And more than eighty per cent of the staff has been put on administrative leave, terminated, or dismissed in one way or the other.

So it’s been obliterated.

It has been dismantled. It is dying. I mean, at this point, it’s six weeks in. Twenty million people with H.I.V., for example—including five hundred thousand children—who had received medicines that keep them alive have now been cut off for six weeks.

A lot of people are going to die as a result of this. Am I wrong?

The internal estimates are that more than a hundred and sixty thousand people will die from malaria per year, from the abandonment of these programs, if they’re not restored. We’re talking about twenty million people dependent on H.I.V. medicines—and you have to calculate how many you think will get back on, and how many will die in a year. But you’re talking hundreds of thousands in Year One at a minimum. But then on immunization side, you’re talking about more than a million estimated deaths.

I’m sorry, Atul. I have to stop my cool journalistic questioning and say: This is nothing short of outrageous. How is it possible that this is happening? Obviously, these facts are filtering up to Elon Musk, to Donald Trump, and to the Administration at large. And they don’t care?

The logic is to deny the reality, either because they simply don’t want to believe it—that they’re so steeped in the idea that government officials are corrupt and lazy and unable to deliver anything, and that a group of young twentysomething engineers will fix it all—or they are indifferent. And when Musk waves around the chainsaw—we are seeing what surgery on the U.S. government with a chainsaw looks like at U.S.A.I.D. And it’s just the beginning of the playbook. This was the soft target. This is affecting people abroad—it’s tens of thousands of jobs at home, so there’s harm here; there’s disease that will get here, etc. But this was the easy target. Now it’s being brought to the N.I.H., to the C.D.C., to critical parts of not only the health enterprise but other important functions of government.

So the National Institutes of Health, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and other such bureaucracies that do equal medical good will also get slammed?

Are being slammed. So here’s the playbook: you take the Treasury’s payment system—DOGE and Musk took over the information system for the Treasury and the payments in the government; you take over the H.R. software, so you can turn people’s badges and computer access on and off at will; you take over the buildings—they cancelled the leases, so you don’t have buildings. U.S.A.I.D.—the headquarters was given to the Customs and Border Protection folks. And then you’ve got it all, right? And then he’s got X, which feeds right into Fox News, and you’ve got control of the media as well. It’s a brilliant playbook.

But from the outside, at least, Atul, and maybe from your vantage point as well: this looks like absolute chaos. I’ve been reading this week that staff posted overseas are stranded, fired without a plane ticket home. From the inside, what does it look like?

One example: U.S.A.I.D. staff in the Congo had to flee for their lives and watch on television as their own home was destroyed and their kids’ belongings attacked. And then when they called for help and backup, they could not get it. I spoke to staff involved in one woman’s case, a pregnant woman in her third trimester, in a conflict zone. They have maternity leave just like everybody else there. But because the contracts had been turned off, they couldn’t get a flight out, and were not guaranteed safe passage, and couldn’t get care for her complications, and ended up having to get cared for locally without the setup to address her needs. One person said to me, as she’s enduring these things, “My government is attacking me. We ought to be ashamed. Our entire system of checks and balances has failed us.”

What’s been the reaction in these countries, in the governments, and among the people? The sense of abandonment must be intense on all sides.

There are broadly three areas. The biggest part of U.S.A.I.D. is the FEMA for disasters abroad. It’s called the Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance, and they bring earthquake response; wildfire response; response in conflicts, in famines. These are the people who suit up, and get assistance, and stabilize places where things are going wrong.

The Global Health Bureau, which I led, is the second-largest part of the agency, and that does work around diseases and health threats, as well as advancing health systems in low- and middle-income countries around the world. There’s coöperation on solving global problems, like stopping pandemics, and addressing measles outbreaks, and so on.

The third is advancing countries’ economies, freedom, and democracy. John F. Kennedy, when he formed U.S.A.I.D. in 1961, said that it was to counter the adversaries of freedom and to provide compassionate support for the development of the world. U.S.A.I.D. has kept Ukraine’s health system going and gave vital support to keep their energy infrastructure going, as Russia attacked it. In Haiti, this is the response team that has sought to stabilize what’s become a gang-controlled part of the country. Our health teams kept almost half of the primary health-care system for the population going. So around the world: stopping fentanyl flow, bringing in independent media. All of that has been wiped out completely. And in many cases, the people behind that work—most of the people we’re working with, local partners to keep these things going—are now being attacked. Those partners are now being attacked, in country after country.

What you’re describing is both human compassion and, a phrase you used earlier in our conversation, “soft power.” Describe what that is. Why is it so important to the United States and to the world? What will squandering it—what will destroying it—mean?

The tools of foreign policy, as I’ve learned, are defense, diplomacy, and development. And the development part is the soft power. We’re not sending troops into Asia and Africa and Latin America. We’re sending hundreds of thousands of civilians without uniforms, who are there to represent the United States, and to pursue common goals together—whether it’s stemming the tide of fentanyl coming across the border, addressing climate disasters, protecting the world from disease. And that soft power is a reflection of our values, what we stand for—our strong belief in freedom, self-determination, and advancement of people’s economies; bringing more stability and peace to the world. That is the fundamental nature of soft power: that we are not—what Trump is currently trying to create—a world of simply “Might makes right, and you do what we tell you,” because that does not create stability. It creates chaos and destruction.

An immoral universe in which everybody’s on their own.

That’s right. An amoral universe.

Who is standing up, if anyone, in the Administration? What about Secretary of State Marco Rubio, whom you mentioned. What’s his role in all of this? Back in January, he issued a waiver to allow for lifesaving services to continue. That doesn’t seem to have been at all effective.

It hasn’t happened. He has issued a waiver that said that the subset of work that is directly lifesaving—through humanitarian assistance, disaster relief, and so on, and the health work that I used to lead—will continue; we don’t want these lives to be lost. And yet it hasn’t been implemented. It’s clear that he’s not in control of the mechanisms that make these things happen. DOGE does not approve the payments going out, and has not approved the payments going out, to sustain that work.

The federal courts have ruled that the freeze was likely illegal and unconstitutional, and imposed a temporary restraining order saying that it should not be implemented, that it had to be lifted—the payment freeze. Instead, they doubled down. And Marco Rubio signed on to this, tweeted about it earlier this week—that over eighty per cent of all contracts have now been terminated. And the remaining ones—they have not even made a significant dent in making back payments that are owed for work done even before Trump was inaugurated.

There’s always been skepticism, particularly on the right, about foreign aid. I remember Jesse Helms, of North Carolina, would always rail about the cost of foreign aid and how it was useless, in his view, in many senses. I am sure that in your time in office, you must have dealt with officials who were skeptical of the mission. What kind of complaints were you getting from senators and congressmen and the like, even before the Trump Administration took over in January?

It was a minority. I’ll just start by saying: the support for foreign-aid work has been recognized and supported by Republicans and Democrats for decades. But there’s been a consistent—it was a minority—that had felt that the U.S. shouldn’t be involved abroad. That’s part of an isolationist view, that extending this work is just charity; it’s not in U.S. interests and it’s not necessary for the protection of Americans. The argument is that we should be spending it at home.

They’re partly playing into the populist view that huge portions of the budget are going abroad, when that’s not been the case. But it’s also understandable that when people are suffering at home, when there are significant needs here, it can be hard to make connections to why we need to fight to stop problems abroad before they get here.

And yet we only recently endured the COVID epidemic, which by all accounts did not begin at home, and spread all over the world. Why was COVID not convincing as a manifestation of how a greater international role could help?

Certainly that didn’t convince anybody that that was able to be controlled abroad—

Because it wasn’t.

Because it wasn’t, right. And COVID did drive a significant distrust in the public-health apparatus itself because of the suffering that people endured through that entire emergency. But I would say the larger picture is—every part of government spending has its critics. One of the fascinating things about the foreign-aid budget, which has been the least popular part of the budget, is that U.S.A.I.D. was mostly never heard of. Now it has high name recognition, and has majority support for continuing its programs, whether it’s keeping energy infrastructure alive in Ukraine, stabilizing conflicts—whether it’s Haiti or other parts of the world—to keep refugees from swarming more borders, or the work of purely compassionate humanitarian assistance and health aid that reduces the over-all death rates from diseases that may yet harm us. So it’s been a significant jump in support for this work, out of awareness now of what it is, and how much less it turns out to cost.

So it took this disaster to raise awareness.

That’s human nature, right? Loss aversion. When you lose it is when you realize its value.

Atul, there’s been a measles outbreak in West Texas and New Mexico, and R.F.K., Jr.—who’s now leading the Department of Health and Human Services—has advised some people, at least, to use cod-liver oil. We have this multilayered catastrophe that you’ve been describing. Where could the United States be, in a couple of years, from a health perspective? What worries you the most?

Measles is a good example. There’s actually now been a second death. We hadn’t had a child death from measles in the United States in years. We are now back up, globally, to more than a hundred thousand child deaths. I was on the phone with officials at the World Health Organization—the U.S. had chosen measles as a major area that it wanted to support. It provided eighty per cent of the support in that area, and let other countries take other components of W.H.O.’s work. So now, that money has been pulled from measles programs around the world. And having a Secretary of Health who has done more to undermine confidence in measles vaccines than anybody in the world means that that’s a singular disease that can be breaking out, and we’ll see many more child deaths that result from that.

The over-all picture, the deeper concern I have, is that as a country we’re abandoning the idea that we can come together collectively with other nations to do good in the world. People describe Trump as transactional, but this is a predatory view of the world. It is one in which you not only don’t want to participate in coöperation; you want to destroy the coöperation. There is a deep desire to make the W.H.O. ineffective in working with other nations; to make other U.N. organizations ineffective in doing their work. They already struggled with efficiency and being effective in certain domains, and yet they continue to have been very important in global health emergencies, responding and tracking outbreaks. . . .

We have a flu vaccine because there are parts of the world where flu breaks out, like China, that don’t share data with us. But they share it with the W.H.O., and the result is that we have a flu vaccine that’s tuned to the diseases coming our way by the fall. I don’t know how we’ll get a flu vaccine this fall. Either we’ll get it because people are, under the table, communicating with the W.H.O. to get the information, and the W.H.O is going to share it, even though the U.S. is no longer paying, or we’re going to work with other countries and be dependent on them for our flu vaccine. This is not a good answer.

I must ask you this, more generally: You’re watching a President of the United States begin to side with Russia over Ukraine. You’re watching the dismantlement of our foreign-aid budget, and both its compassion and its effectiveness. Just the other day, we saw a Columbia University graduate—you may agree with him, disagree with him on his politics, but who has a green card—and ICE officers went to his apartment and arrested him, and presumably will deport him. It’s an assault on the First Amendment. You’re seeing universities being defunded—starting with Columbia, but it’ll hardly be the last, etc. What in your view motivates Donald Trump to behave in this way? What’s the vision that pulls this all together?

What I see happening on the health side is reflective of everything you just said. There is a fundamental desire to remove and destroy independent sources of knowledge, of power, of decision-making. So not only is U.S.A.I.D. dismantled but there’s thousands of people fired—from the National Institutes of Health, the C.D.C., the Food and Drug Administration—and a fundamental restructuring of decision-making so that political judgment drives decision-making over N.I.H. grants, which have been centralized and pulled away from the individual institutes. So the discoveries that lead to innovations in the world—that work has a political layer now. F.D.A. approvals—now wanting a political review. C.D.C. guidance—now wanting a political review. These organizations were all created by Congress to be shielded from that, so that we could have a professional, science-driven set of decisions, and not the political flavor of the moment.

Donald Trump’s preference, which he’s expressed in those actions and many others, is that his whims, just like King Henry VIII’s, should count. King Henry VIII remade an entire religion around who he wanted to marry. And this is the kind of world that Trump is wanting to create—one of loyalty trumping any other considerations. So the inspectors general who do audits over the corruption that they seem to be so upset about—they’ve been removed. Any independent judgment in society that would trump the political whims of the leader. . . . The challenge is—and I think is the source of hope for me—that a desire for chaos, for acceding to destruction, for accepting subjugation, is not a stable equilibrium. It’s not successful in delivering the goods for people, under any line of thinking.

In the end, professionally organized bureaucracies—that need to have political oversight, need to have some controls in place, but a balance that allows decision-making to happen—those have been a key engine of the prosperity of the country. Their destruction will have repercussions that I think will make the Administration very unpopular, and likely cause a backlash that balances things out. I hope we get beyond getting to the status quo ante of a stalemate between these two lines of thinking—one that advances the world through incremental collective action that’s driven around checks and balances as we advance the world ever forward, and one in which a strongman can have his way and simply look for who he can dominate.

Right now, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., is the head of H.H.S. His targets include not only vaccine manufacturers but the pharma industry writ large. But he’s talked a lot, too, about unhealthy food in the American diet—to some extent, he’s not wrong. Do you see any upside in his role in pushing this so-called Make America Healthy Again idea?

Of course there is good. I mean, we as a country have chronic illness that is importantly tied to our nutritional habits, our exercise, and so on. But for all our unhealthiness, we’ve also had an engine of health that has enabled the top one per cent in America to have a ninety-year life expectancy today. Our job is to enable that capacity for public health and health-care delivery to get to everybody alive, I would argue, and certainly to get it to all Americans.

What’s ignored is that half the country can’t afford having a primary-care doctor and don’t have adequate public health in their communities. If R.F.K., Jr., were taking that on, more power to him. Every indication from his history is that this is an effort to highlight some important things. But how much of it’s going to actually be evidence-driven? He’s had some crazy theories about what’s going to advance chronic illness and address health.

I’d say the second thing is the utter incompetence in running things and making things work. They’ve utterly destabilized the National Institutes of Health, the Centers for Disease Control, the F.D.A.

Explain that destabilization—what it looks like from inside and what effects it’ll have.

One small example: DOGE has declared that all kinds of buildings are not necessary anymore. That includes the headquarters of the Department of Health and Human Services. They’re saying, “Oh, everybody has to show up for work now, but you won’t have a building to work in anymore.”

No. 2 on the list is F.D.A. specialized centers around the country. There’s a laboratory in St. Louis where they have specialized equipment for testing food and drugs for safety. And so that whole capability—to insure that your foods and your medications are able to be tested for whether they have contaminants, whether they are counterfeit—that’s a basic part of good nutrition, good medicine, that could be pulled away.

Whether it’s maintaining the building infrastructure, maintaining the staff who are being purged sort of randomly left and right, or treating them not like they’re slaves but actually bringing good work out of everybody, by good management—that is what’s not happening.

I have the feeling that you, even in a short time, loved being in the federal government. What I hear in our conversation is a sense of tragedy that is not only public but that is felt very intimately by you.

I did not expect that going into government would be as meaningful to me as it was. I went into government because it was the COVID crisis and I was offered an opportunity to lead the international component of the response. We got seven hundred million vaccines out to the world. But what I found was a group of people who could achieve scale like I’d never seen. It is mission-driven. None of these people went into it for the money; it’s not like they’ve had any power—

I assume all of them could have made more money elsewhere.

Absolutely. And many of them spent their lives as Foreign Service officers living in difficult places in the world. I remember that Kyiv was under attack about eight weeks after I was sworn in. I thought I was going to be working on COVID, but this thing was erupting. First of all, our health team, along with the rest of the mission and Embassy in Kyiv, had to flee for safety. But within a week they were already saying, “We have T.B. breaking out, we have potential polio cases. How are we going to respond?” And my critical role was to say, “What’s going to kill people the most? Right now, Russia has shut down the medical supply chain, and so nearly a hundred per cent of the pharmacies just closed. Two hundred and fifty thousand H.I.V. patients can’t get their meds. A million heart patients can’t get their meds. Let’s get the pharmacies open.” And, by the way, they’ve attacked the oxygen factories and put the hospitals under cyberattack and their electronic systems aren’t functioning.

And this team, in four weeks, moved the entire hospital record system to the cloud, allowing protection against cyberattacks; got oxygen systems back online; and was able to get fifty per cent of the pharmacies open in about a month, and ultimately got eighty per cent of the pharmacies open. That is just incredible.

Yes, are there some people that I had to deal with who were overly bureaucratic? Did I have to address some people who were not performing? Absolutely. Did I have to drive efficiency?

As in any work . . .

In every place you have to do that. But this was America at its best, and I was so proud to be part of that. And what frustrated me, in that job, was that I had to speak for the U.S. government. I couldn’t write for you during that time.

Believe me, I know!

I couldn’t tell the story. I’ve got a book I’m working on now in which I hope to be able to unpack all of this. It is, I think, a sad part of my leadership, that I didn’t also get to communicate what we do—partly because U.S.A.I.D. is restricted, in certain ways, from telling its story within the U.S. borders.

If you had the opportunity to tell Elon Musk and Donald Trump what you’ve been telling me for the past hour, or if they read a long report from you about lives saved, good works done, the benefits of soft power to the United States and to the world and so on—do you think it would have any effect at all?

Zero. There’s a different world view at play here. It is that power is what matters, not impact; not the over-all maximum good that you can do. And having power—wielding it in ways that can dominate the weak and partner with your friends—is the mode of existence. (When I say “partner with friends,” I mean partner with people like Putin who think the same way that you do.) It’s two entirely different world views.

But this is not just an event. This is not just something that happened. This is a process, and its absence will make things worse and worse and have repercussions, including the loss of many, many, maybe countless, lives. Is it irreparable? Is this damage done and done forever?

This damage has created effects that will be forever. Let’s say they turned everything back on again, and said, “Whoops, I’m sorry.” I had a discussion with a minister of health just today, and he said, “I’ve never been treated so much like a second-class human being.” He was so grateful for what America did. “And for decades, America was there. I never imagined America could be indifferent, could simply abandon people in the midst of treatments, in the midst of clinical trials, in the midst of partnership—and not even talk to me, not even have a discussion so that we could plan together: O.K., you are going to have big cuts to make. We will work together and figure out how to solve it.”

That’s not what happened. He will never trust the U.S. again. We are entering a different state of relations. We are seeing lots of other countries stand up around the world—our friends, Canada, Mexico. But African countries, too, Europe. Everybody’s taking on the lesson that America cannot be trusted. That has enormous costs.

It’s tragic and outrageous, no?

That is beautifully put. What I say is—I’m a little stronger. It’s shameful and evil. ♦

[ms-newvegas]

"What surprised us the most was the fact that women who do muscle strengthening had a reduction in their cardiovascular mortality by 30%," Gulati says. "We don't have many things that reduce mortality in that way."

"The take home message is – let's start moving," says Eric Shiroma, a prevention-focused researcher at the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, part of the National Institutes of Health, which provided grant support for the research.

Published March 11, 2024. Some good news for women’s health :)

[s0rr3l]

BLACK MYTH: WUKONG OC

Name: Lǐyú (carp)

Age: 25

Height: 5''11 ft/180 cm

Pronouns: They/Them

Story

A traveller out of time and space, Lǐyú finds themselves stranded on Black Wind Mountain, alone and at the mercy of its hostile inhabitants.

Taking pity, the Keeper of Black Wind Mountain takes them in and assigns them the position of <Shrine Caretaker>, a minor position that oversees the upkeep and maintenance of the various shrines within Black Wind Mountain.

Under the elder Keeper’s care, Lǐyú begins to familiarise themselves with their new circumstances through the Keeper's guidance. Inbetween duties, Lǐyú takes the time to learn and record the world about them in an effort to understand and survive.

This routine persists for several weeks, until the arrival of a certain monkey.

Lǐyú is an optional (Companion) to the [Destined One], who may join your party after accepting the request of the Keeper of the Black Wind Mountain.

Accepting Lǐyú as a (Companion) will unlock their personal quest <<Long Way From Home>>.

((More info about their stats/abilities below!))

Stats

Although physically weak, Lǐyú is a valuable companion of the Destined One and shows surprising tenacity against the challenges of this new world.

(Companion) Lǐyú has 5 stats to upgrade from LVL 1. Stamina Recovery Rate and Damage Reduction stats are unlocked after clearing Chapter 1 ‘Black Wind, Red Fire’.

Abilities

[Luck that goes against the Heavens]

Lǐyú's fortunes are known to dip and rise in unusual patterns.

While they often come across opportunities to gather precious materials, ingredients or equipment, it is always accompanied by mortal peril.

Their Luck is so unnatural that it defies the natural balance of the world, so fortuitous encounters often come with the risk of danger in an effort to suppress their Luck.

(Companion) Lǐyú has MAX LVL [LUCK].

Can inflict one of the following debuffs to enemies within their range: Increased Miss Rate, Reduced Critical Hit chance, Reduced Movement Speed, Reduced Resistance to the Four Banes

Grants one buff to allies, 2 buffs to Companions (for more information, please see BUFFS page)

Increase the rate of EQUIPMENT/LOOT drops and discovery of precious ingredients/materials

Due to their nature, (Companion) Lǐyú will influence the [Destined One]'s own [LUCK].

Warning: should Lǐyú enter the STRESSED state, their [LUCK] will start to indiscriminately target allies and foes alike.

Will attract enemy AGGRO within a certain radius if not using Stealth

Allies and Companions will be afflicted with one random debuff: Increased Miss Rate, Reduced Critical Hit chance, Reduced Movement Speed, Reduced Resistance to the Four Banes

Introduces random environmental hazards

It is recommended that the [Destined One] keep Lǐyú's STRESS to a minimum.

Skills

(Companion) Lǐyú should come equipped with the following skills prior to joining the [Destined One].

Shrine Caretaker: Taught the basic upkeep and care of shrine maintenance. Allows Lǐyú to access the hub-world like the [Destined One].

Stealth: the ability to sneak past lesser yaoguais. However, skill will increases STRESS on Lǐyú. Can be upgraded.

Additional skills can be attained or unlocked through the completion of quests or advancing the main storyline.

TIP: Lǐyú is purely a support type (Companion) with little to no attack skills and prone to causing unexpected changes to main storyline. May the [Destined One] keep this in mind.

Spells

Due to limited Mana, Lǐyú cannot perform any spells.

Upon the completion of the <<Teacher for a Day>> quest, Lǐyú can begin training to increase mana and unlock [Spells].

In Chapter 3 ‘White Snow, Ice Cold’, Lǐyú can trigger the optional side quest <<Teacher for a Day>> upon meeting (Companion) Zhu Bajie.

Curios

Due to limited space, can only equip one curio at a time.

Upon meeting the Yin Tiger or upgrading to Legendary quality armour, Lǐyú can increase their curio slot by +1.

Current slot:

Wind Chime: Rare quality. Found while exploring the ruins of an old temple at the bottom of the mountain. Slightly increases movement speed. “Hark, the wind rises! That yaoguai must be coming this way!”

Inventory

(Companion) Lǐyú starts off with 10 inventory slots. These are their starting equipment:

Journal: Never seems to run out of paper. Lǐyú can use this item to access daily observations, enemy weaknesses and important landmarks/discovered secret realm locations.

Gourd: unknown quality, gifted by Yuan Shoucheng. A mysterious item that will grow along with it's user, has yet to show any special abilities. Can be upgraded.

Backpack: unknown quality, bigger inside than out. Carries all of Lǐyú's belongings.

Smartphone: rare quality. A keepsake from Lǐyú's world. Interacting with this item with the [Destined One] can trigger side quest <<???>>. “What a marvelous device!”

Fruit Leather: peach-flavoured. A consumable item that can raise the [Destined One]'s favourability.

Equipment

(Companion) Lǐyú starts off with the following equipment:

Old Temple Garb: rare quality. Gifted by the Keeper of Black Wind Mountain, who claims it was left behind by the previous Shrine Caretaker.

Cotton wristwraps: common quality. Plain but sturdy, in surprisingly good condition.

Cotton legwraps: common quality. Plain but sturdy, in surprisingly good condition.

Sneakers: unknown quality, but undeniably tough. A foreign brand gifted by their best friend. Claims to be both water-proof and fire-proof.

Hoodie: rare quality. A limited edition print from Lǐyú's favourite brand. Offers no defensive abilities but brings a sense of comfort. Can decrease the rate of Lǐyú's STRESS.

Quest Objectives

<<Long Way From Home>>

Lǐyú's final objective is to return to their original world. This can be completed by first completing main quest <<Revive Sun Wukong>>

(This objective is an optional side quest available to the [Destined One]. It is not compulsory for the completion of main quest <<Revive Sun Wukong>>)

<<Hug Auntie>> (must complete main quest objective)

<<Eat hotpot with friends>> (must complete main quest objective)

<<Red String of Fate>>

Secret side quest that triggers randomly depending on the relationship status between (Companion) Lǐyú and the [Destined One].

To unlock post-game content, the [Destined One] must complete main quest objective <<Revive Sun Wukong>>.

Endings

There are currently three available endings depending on whether the [Destined One] will complete Lǐyú's personal quest <<Long Way From Home>>

<<Till We Meet Again>>

Normal ending. Lǐyú returns to their original world after the [Destined One] fufills their destiny.

<<Promise>>

Secret Ending. Unlocked after the successful completion of the following side quests:

<<Long Way From Home>>

<<Red String of Fate>>

<<Fishbowl>>

Secret Ending. Unlocked after the successful completion of the following side quests:

<<Red String of Fate>>

<<???>>

Depending on the [Destined One]'s actions during CHAPTER 3, can trigger side quest <<???>>

(To achieve this ending, the [Destined One] must fail to complete side quest <<Long Way From Home>>)

[kitchen-light]

A few days prior, at a Q&A after one of my readings, a young man in the audience raised his hand: Do you believe in ghosts? “Well, that depends.” I told him. “What is a ghost?” What I love most about ghost stories is their malleability. A ghost can be a heart beating beneath a floorboard. A father, appearing to his son to beg for vengeance. A party dress worn by your husband’s first wife, which you, the new wife, now don. A ghost can be a house, or a mirror, or a shadow. It would be reductive to define ghost-hood as simply a deceased person’s spirit appearing in the mortal realm. So then, how do we define a ghost? I personally have one, simple definition: a ghost is a manifestation of longing.

GennaRose Nethercott, from her essay ““A Ghost Is a Memory.” On Bodies, Belief, and the Places Ghost Stories Live”, published in Lit Hub, October 31, 2022

[chiiroptereh]

[Please zoom in, there's a lot of detail! And a massive file size...ouch]

Hi guys, long time no post! Been working on Art Fight and life stuff, but I've got something kinda fun for you.

This is a compilation exploring how a mortal Bill may interact with our world if there were still some kinda Euclidean instincts buried in there. Y'know, before the Book of Bill ruins all my headcanons >:P (EDIT: IT HAS BEEN READ. YAHOOOOOO)

Also quite an experimental piece as you can probably tell. Lots of details on both said headcanons and the art stuff under the cut, but I invite you to study the colorful texture yourself beforehand and think about what it might be representative of, just for fun because I got some really cool answers from my friends when asked :]c

TL;DR: the headcanon is that Euclideans have exceptional eyes for geometry. They find things like symmetry, tessellating patterns, graphs and fractals very aesthetically pleasing. If pushed into our 3D world, they feel comforted by the familiarity flat objects/spaces bring, as well as high-contrast patterns. Shadows especially are a familiar dimensional reduction that may bring them much comfort.

Bill would surely not be happy about these inclinations, constant reminders of a past long gone, but I'm not sure he's even aware of them here :P I think his ego gets in the way to the point where he just views these interests as common sense, which, of course, us lame humans just don't understand because we aren't nearly as cool as him. Of course he likes perfectly symmetrical leaves and staring at the kitchen floor, it's called taste, look it up!

And yet, he can't seem to shake the strange sense of melancholy he gets from viewing his own shadow.

~ End of TL;DR, long version below! ~

🔺 Headcanon Development

So, the catalyst of this idea was in relation to my friend and I's AU ( @love-triangles-au ). TL;DR, Bill's brought back mortal, meets another triangle named Y.V. (it's his hand holding the paper in the piece, actually), at some point they fall in yaois together, you know how it is. And, in writing a pair of triangles (or, more broadly, writing from the perspective of a different species), something I've had to consider was that you really can't get much further removed from a human being than sentient geometry.

The anatomical aspect was mostly figured out (see my piece on Bill's eye-mouth), but I wanted to consider what psychological differences might be at play. I wanted them to be weirder, more alien, double-so for Bill. At first I explored these possibilities through the lens of Bill and Y.V.'s relationship, specifically the question "what might a triangle find appealing about another triangle?"

Well, really the only things that came to mind were straight lines and symmetry, anything related to the geometric form of such a creature. That's more-or-less where that ended until the thought struck me that there's no reason this aesthetic appreciation couldn't extend to the rest of the environment, and then further when I realized, "wait, this is a species that is designed to live in a 2D environment. Like, they should seriously be really weird. I need to push this like 200% more."

So...yeah! I did some thinking and brainstorming with others and came up with a pretty long list of things a Euclidean in our world may be inclined to enjoy or find some level of comfort in. It's worth noting again that in this piece specifically this is a mortal/powerless Bill, so he can't really escape this Earthly environment. IF he's aware of these instincts at all (and that's a big "if"; when have you last been cognizant of your own instincts let alone known where they were stemming from?) I think he'd have snuffed them out in immortality and/or purposefully gone against them; he doesn't take kindly to being told what to do.

In order from left-to-right, top-to-bottom, here's an explanation for each!:

Flat objects such as paper are something he may find particularly engaging. It's basically 2D!

Tessellations are especially fascinating, and our world has them everywhere in the form of tile floors. Symmetry and such a predictable pattern...as the infinity of the starry sky might for us, the infinite potential of tessellations might invoke a similar sense of awe in him. Add on the maximum contrast of black on white kitchen tiles and the forms are only even better defined! A sensitivity to contrast would be very helpful for a 2D being navigating their environment.

Fields are flat and open, much like Euclydia itself. Laying flat may make him feel a little more at home.

More tessellation in the honeycomb of hymenopterans (bees, wasps and friends)! It helps that pain is hilarious.

The city is an absolute treasure trove. Rectangular buildings, precise architecture, square sidewalks and straight lines abound...he may as well be looking at a rainbow or an art gallery! I think a Euclidean's brain is very fine-tuned to mathematics, especially in regards to trigonometry. What may appear to be a straight painting might appear obnoxiously crooked to him.

Zebras are high-contrast :]

Another flat surface, another relaxing space <3

I think graphs are about as high as high art gets to most Euclideans.

I've touched on shadows before, and for good reason; truly they must be something borderline magical to the Euclidean and perhaps bitterly nostalgic.

This one kinda speaks for itself. Dweeb.

🎨 The Artsy Stuff

Lately I've been trying to find ways to fit more color into my work, as color is perhaps one of my favorite things in the world. My wardrobe is rather garish; my dad jokes that you could see me from space. My fursona is obnoxiously bright for a reason -- I feel my soul is a very colorful one!

I also realized recently that I don't actually know the exact style that speaks to me. I could talk about the phenomenon of the "style crisis" that many artists have all day, but in my mind the best cure for this feeling is to go against it entirely and begin stealing as much as possible.

So, I've tried to keep an eye out for more sources of inspiration everywhere I go, physical and digital. I've tried to train my mind into making a habit of considering, "can I do anything with this?" everywhere I go, and it recently paid off!

The glittery rainbowy texture you see plastered all over Billiam is this one, a photo-manipulated set of fruit stickers. I must confess I've been obsessed with this image for the past 72 hours, and this seemed like a good excuse to try it out!

I worried throughout the process if it might be so abstract that it loops back around to being horribly deliberate, if that makes sense -- like each sparkle was not a piece of a whole but rather an object in itself -- but it seems like that hasn't been a problem, so I'm grateful for that :Dc

I hope it can dazzle and delight you as it does me, but as long as you find it fascinating at the very least then I consider it a success! I really enjoyed hearing my friends' interpretations while workshopping it, and got tons of amazing answers from opal to kaleidoscope to fossilized bone marrow! I truly believe that the best art has some room for interpretation and it really excites me to be surrounded by that kind of creative energy that follows said pieces. That definitely adds to my pride in this work. It's weird, it's colorful, it's detailed and yet ambiguous. I'm feeling pretty autistic about it

Alright, I think that's about it. Thanks for listening!

[txttletale]

Hi! Do you think you could link me to some resources about the problems/ evils of the EU? Would love to find some but it's hard to know what's reliable when I have no base knowledge in this area + you seem very well informed :)

sure. let's start with what the EU does to its own member states--in 2009, the EU bailed the greek government out of severe debt on the condition that they establish brutal austerity measures, cutting public spending and welfare. these measures served to immiserate and destroy the lives of thousands of greek people:

Greek mortality has worsened significantly since the beginning of the century. In 2000, the death rate per 100,000 people was 944.5. By 2016, it had risen to 1174.9, with most of the increase taking place from 2010 onwards.

[forbes]

Since the implementation of the austerity programme, Greece has reduced its ratio of health-care expenditure to GDP to one of the lowest within the EU, with 50% less public hospital funding in 2015 than in 2009. This reduction has left hospitals with a deficit in basic supplies, while consumers are challenged by transient drug shortages.

[the lancet]

The homeless population is thought to have grown by 25 per cent since 2009, now numbering 20,000 people.

[oxfam]

the most brutal treatment, however, the EU of course reserves for migrants from the global south. the EU sets strict migration quotas and uses its member states as weapons against desperate people fleeing across the mediterranean. boats are prevented from landing, migrants that do make it to land are repelled with brutal violence, and refugees are deported back to countries where their lives are in lethal danger. these policies have led to many, many deaths--and the refugees and migrants who do survive are treating fucking inhumanely.

After a perilous journey across the desert, Abdulaziz was locked up in Triq al-Sikka, a grim prison in Tripoli, Libya. Why? Because the EU pays Libyan militias millions of euros to detain anyone deemed a possible migrant to Europe [...] A leaked EU internal memorandum in 2020 acknowledged that capturing migrants was now “a profitable business model” [...] in Triq al-Sikka and other detention centres, “acts of murder, enslavement, torture, rape and other inhumane acts are committed against migrants”, observed a damning UN report.

[the guardian]

Volunteers have logged more than 27,000 deaths by drowning since 1993, often hundreds at a time when large ships capsize. These account for nearly 80% of all the entries.

[the guardian]

Refugees and asylum seekers were punched, slapped, beaten with truncheons, weapons, sticks or branches, by police or border guards who often removed their ID tags or badges, the committee said in its annual report. People on the move were subject to pushbacks, expulsion from European states, either by land or sea, without having asylum claims heard. Victims were also subject to “inhuman and degrading treatment”, such as having bullets fired close to their bodies while they lay on the ground, being pushed into rivers, sometimes with hands tied, or being forced to walk barefoot or even naked across a border.

[the guardian]

In September, Greece opened a refugee camp on the island of Samos that has been described as prison-like. The €38m (£32m) facility for 3,000 asylum seekers has military-grade fencing and CCTV to track people’s movements. Access is controlled by fingerprint, turnstiles and X-rays. A private security company and 50 uniformed officers monitor the camp. It is the first of five that Greece has planned; two more opened in November.

[the guardian]

i could go on. i could cite dozens more similarly brutal news stories about horrific mistreatment, or any of the dozens of people who have killed themselves in the custody of border police under horrific conditions. the EU is a murderous institution that does not care about the lives of refugees and migrants or about the lives of the citizens of any member state that is not pursuing a vicious enough neoliberal political program

[argumate]

By the time these results emerged, however, Keys’ hypothesis had already gained widespread acceptance among his colleagues, including, importantly, leadership at the National Institutes of Health (NIH). By the late 1960s, a bias in favor of the diet-heart hypothesis was strong enough that researchers with contrary results found themselves unable or unwilling to publish their results. For instance, the largest test of the diet-heart hypothesis, the Minnesota Coronary Survey, involving 9057 men and women over 4.5 years, tested a diet of 18% saturated fat against controls eating 9%, yet did not find any reduction in cardiovascular events, cardiovascular deaths, or total mortality. Although the study had been funded by the NIH, the results were not published for 16 years, after the principal investigator, Ivan Frantz, had retired. Frantz is reported to have said that there was nothing wrong with the study; ‘We were just disappointed in the way it came out’. Frantz's decision not to publish his results in a timely manner resulted in these contradictory data not being considered for another 40 years.

20th century might have been different if we had figured out how to fix the aversion to publishing negative results!

once we "know" that something is true we become peculiarly reluctant to propagate evidence that it isn't.

[reasonsforhope]

Article

The number of children dying under five years of age declined by two thirds over the past two decades in Southern Asia, according to new mortality estimates released by UNICEF, the World Health Organization (WHO), the United Nations Population Division and the World Bank Group. Southern Asia includes nine countries: Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Iran, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka.

The report reveals that the number of child deaths under 5 years of age decreased from 5 million in 1990 to 1.3 million in 2022.  The report also shows that Southern Asia’s under five mortality rate, or the probability that a child would die before five years of age, reduced by 72 per cent since 1990, and 62 per cent since 2000.

“We have made heartening progress to save millions of children’s lives since 1990.  These aren’t just numbers on a page – these are children’s lives saved, sons and daughters, brothers and sisters. This success is largely due to investments in trained health workers, improvements in newborn care, treatment of childhood illnesses and vaccinations for children against deadly diseases,” said Sanjay Wijesekera, UNICEF Regional Director for Southern Asia. “This progress shows us that change is possible. These lives saved are testament to the engagement and will of governments, local organizations, health care professionals such as skilled birth attendants, parents, and families to save the most vulnerable children.” ...

Despite this progress, however, much more needs to be done...

The report also reveals that progress among countries is uneven. Three countries (Iran, Sri Lanka and Maldives) have achieved the SDG 2030 target for under five child mortality reduction and four are on track to meet the target (India, Bangladesh, Bhutan and Nepal). For example, Bangladesh’s neonatal mortality rate decreased from 66 deaths per 1,000 live births in 1990, to 17 deaths per 1,000 live births in 2022.

However, in Pakistan and Afghanistan, urgent action is required to accelerate their annual rates of reduction substantially to meet 2030 targets...

“We call on governments across the region to invest in simple solutions such as having trained birth attendants at every birth, ensuring that all newborns have essential care, better care of small and sick newborn babies, medicines, clean water, electricity, and vaccines to save lives. Every child has the right to healthcare.”

-via UNICEF, March 14, 2024