Supporters of free universal health care can’t explain why U.K. citizen Mick Jagger had his life saving heart surgery in the U.S.
Supporters of free universal health care can’t explain why U.K. citizen Mick Jagger had his life saving heart surgery in the U.S.
I’ll explain it.
There is a tradeoff between time and money.
When something is “free,” it often comes with the “cost” of having to wait in line.
Mick Jagger knew that he could either get “free” heart surgery in the U.K. (where he is a citizen), at the cost of having to wait on a waiting list, or, he could get the surgery immediately by paying out of his own pocket to have his surgery in the U.S.
And he’s not the only one to understand this tradeoff between time and money.
When Robert Bourassa, the premier of Quebec, Canada, needed cancer treatment, he came to the United States and paid for his health care with his own money.
And when Canadian Liberal MP Belinda Stronach needed cancer treatment, she also came to the United States and paid for her health care with her own money.
And when Newfoundland and Labrador Premier Danny Williams needed heart surgery, he, too, came to the United States and paid for his health care with his own money.
Many liberals in the U.S. want the U.S. to adopt the same kind of universal health care that exists in Canada and the U.K. So here’s my question to those liberals: If the U.S. does adopt such a system, then where are the celebrities and politicians from other countries going to go when they need life saving health care?
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez doesn’t seem to know that there is actually an INVERSE correlation between billionaires and dangerous intestinal parasites
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez recently said that it was immoral to allow billionaires to exist when there are people who have ringworm.
She later said that she had meant hookworm, not ringworm.
Hookworm is transmitted to people when they walk barefoot in the feces of other people who are infected with hookworm.
And in the real world, there is actually an inverse correlation between the existence of billionaires, and the rate of hookworm infection.
According to wikipedia, this is how to prevent hookworm:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hookworm_infection
Hookworm infection
Prevention
The main lines of precaution are those dictated by good hygiene behaviors:
Do not defecate in the open, but rather in toilets.
Do not use untreated human excreta or raw sewage as fertilizer in agriculture.
Do not walk barefoot in known infected areas.
The places with the highest concentrations of billionaires, such as Manhattan, Silicon Valley, and Singapore, have very few or even zero cases of hookworm. (Although I will admit that San Francisco may be an exception to this trend, as an expert on global public health recently stated that the city’s high rate and tolerance of open defecation actually makes the city dirtier than third world countries. San Francisco is run so badly that the government spends $37,000 on each homeless person per year, and yet they still somehow manage to remain homeless. Can you imagine how much housing any city that wasn’t run by idiots could rent or buy for that much money?)
A long time ago, when there were no billionaires anywhere in the world, hookworm was very common all over the world.
Anyone who is truly against hookworm would be in favor of the existence of billionaires, not against it.
And that’s not even taking into account the charitable work of billionaires such as Bill Gates, which has saved huge numbers of lives.
And that also doesn’t take into account all the jobs that these billionaires provide, as well as the goods and services that these billionaires provide. For example, think of LEGO billionaire Kjeld Kirk Kristiansen and IKEA billionaire Ingvar Kamprad. Does anyone seriously want to argue that the world would be better off if the countries of western Europe had not allowed these two people to become billionaires?
Massachusetts government forces health insurance companies to pay for drug that costs $24,000 a year so gay men won’t have to wear condoms
I’m a libertarian. I don’t care what consenting gay adults do in the privacy of their own home.
But I do care about spiraling health care costs that, for decades, have been growing substantially faster than the rate of inflation.
There’s already a very low cost way for sexually active gay men to substantially reduce their risk of contracting HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. The Centers for Disease Control states:
When used the right way every time, condoms are highly effective in preventing HIV
But there’s a problem – at least to the people who work in the Medical Industrial Complex and make their living off of overinflated health care costs: condoms are very inexpensive. And low cost health care is the enemy of the Medical Industrial Complex.
To deal with this “problem” of low cost health care, the Massachusetts government has ordered insurance companies to pay for a drug called Truvada.
Truvada is a drug that sexually active gay men who don’t have HIV can take, which substantially reduces their risk of contracting HIV, even if they don’t wear a condom. It costs $24,000 a year.
So now, the very same Centers for Disease Control that says inexpensive condoms “are highly effective in preventing HIV,” is also saying that healthy, sexually active gay men who do not have HIV should switch to Truvada, which costs $24,000 a year.
The New York Times reports:
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention urges men and women at risk for H.I.V. infection to take Truvada daily. Studies have shown the drug to be extremely effective at blocking the virus…
… 80 percent of people who take Truvada are gay men
Given that the CDC already says inexpensive condoms are “highly effective in preventing HIV,” it’s absurd that the very same CDC is now urging people to switch to a drug that costs $24,000 a year.
Clearly, the CDC, as well as the government of Massachusetts, are both aligned with the Medical Industrial Complex, whose goal is to make health care more expensive, not less expensive.
Pittsburgh synagogue shooter tended to by Jewish doctors and nurses, officials say
Pittsburgh synagogue shooter tended to by Jewish doctors and nurses, officials say
October 29, 2018
PITTSBURGH — Jewish doctors and nurses at Allegheny General Hospital in Pittsburgh put their personal feelings aside to help save the life of the man who allegedly claimed he wanted to “kill all the Jews” as he opened fire at a synagogue and murdered 11 worshipers.
Robert Bowers, 46, was shot multiple times himself and taken to AGH. In addition to killing eight men and three women, he wounded six other people, including four police officers, before surrendering Saturday.
“He was taken to my hospital and he’s shouting, ‘I want to kill all the Jews’,” Dr. Jeffrey Cohen, president of Allegheny General Hospital and a member of the Tree of Life Synagogue, told ABC. “The first three people who took care of him were Jewish.”
Another nurse, whose father is a rabbi, “came in from a mass casualty drill and took care of this gentleman.”
Cohen was one of the first people on the scene. He lives in the neighborhood and heard gunfire from his house.
“I was standing there…and you could start hearing very quickly what was going on,” he said.
Just like the first responders who rushed into danger, Cohen credits his doctors, nurses and staff for stepping up.
“We are here to take care of sick people. We’re not here to judge you. We’re not here to ask ‘Do you have insurance or do you not have insurance?’ We’re here to take care of people who need our help,” he said.
Cohen says he and Bowers had a brief conversation at the hospital.
“When I stopped in, I asked him how he was doing. Was he in pain? And he said, ‘No. He was fine,’” Cohen said.
Cohen says Bowers then asked him who he was.
“I said I’m Dr. Cohen, president of the hospital. Then I turned around and left,” he said. “The FBI agent who was guarding him said, ‘I don’t know if I could have done that.’ And I said, ‘If you were in my shoes, I’m sure you could.’”
Bowers was discharged from the hospital Monday morning and arrived at the federal courthouse in downtown Pittsburgh around noon.
He faces 11 counts of criminal homicide, six counts of aggravated assault and 13 counts of ethnic intimidation in addition to federal counts that include weapons offenses and hate crime charges. Federal prosecutors are expected to seek the death penalty against him.
Medical school cancels honor society because whites and Asians were earning better grades than blacks and Latinos
According to this article from NPR, at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City, in order to get into the Alpha Omega Alpha honor society, you have to be in the top 25% of your graduating class.
The school is eliminating the honor society because not enough blacks and Latinos were graduating in the top 25%.
I’m not sure how getting rid of this honor society makes anyone better off.
On the contrary – I see this as just one more example of the dumbing down of America’s educational system.
As to the issue of why blacks and Latinos are underrepresented in the top 25%, my guess is that the school has lower admissions standards for blacks and Latinos than for everyone else. I could be wrong. And I’d be curious to hear anyone else explain a different reason in the comment section.
A Medical School Tradition Comes Under Fire For Racism
September 5, 2018
Senior medical student Giselle Lynch has plenty of accomplishments to list when she applies for a coveted spot in an ophthalmology residency program this fall.
But one box she won’t be able to check when she submits her application is one of the highest academic awards medical students can receive, election to the honor society Alpha Omega Alpha.
It’s not because she didn’t excel. It’s because her medical school, the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City, put a moratorium on student nominations because it determined the selection process discriminates against students of color.
The award is open to the top 25 percent of a medical school’s graduating class and can be a valuable career boost, making students more competitive for desirable residencies and jobs.
Icahn administrators say the disparities in the selection process reflect deeper issues of racial inequality in medical education.
“AOA perpetuates systems that are deeply flawed,” says Dr. David Muller, the dean for medical education at Icahn. “We can’t justify putting people who are historically at a disadvantage at an even greater disadvantage. It just doesn’t seem fair to dangle in front of our students an honorific that we know people are not equally eligible for.”
Over the past five years, around 3 percent of students chosen for the distinction at Icahn were from a racial background that is underrepresented in medicine, which includes blacks and Latinos. In that same period, about 18 percent to 20 percent of each graduating class at Icahn came from those groups.
The school made the change after Lynch led a group of fellow students in an effort to fight inequality at Icahn. The students collected data on how many students from underrepresented minorities were nominated to the honor society at Icahn and presented it in a series of meetings with school leadership last year.
Lynch, who is black, recalls one particularly moving meeting when they showed photographs of Icahn’s past AOA students — and black and Latino faces were conspicuously sparse.
“Where are we? We’re nowhere here,” says Lynch, remembering her reaction. “AOA is an award of student excellence. What was the argument that was being perpetuated about us if we’re not being included?”
Announced in May of this year, the decision at Icahn was a controversial one, because many students and faculty fear that not participating in the award puts Icahn students at a disadvantage when competing for slots in residency programs.
The honor society has existed since 1902 and is a sought-after line on the résumés of medical students across the country. Membership can help students secure training in competitive specialties and is a predictor of success in academic medicine.
Membership is generally open to the top 25 percent of medical students in a graduating class, as determined by their grades and scores on standardized tests, but only about 16 percent makes it in. Each medical school has its own criteria for making final selections including qualities like leadership or professionalism.
Icahn is not alone in selecting a disproportionately low number of minority students for the honor society. A 2017 study in JAMA Internal Medicine showed that nationwide, black and Asian students were less likely than their white counterparts to be selected for the honor.
Dr. Dowin Boatright, the study’s lead author and an assistant professor of emergency medicine at Yale, hypothesizes that the disparities may be related to racial inequalities in grading and standardized tests, a phenomenon well-documented in medical education literature. Grading based on clinical performance is subjective, he notes, since it often reflects a global assessment of a student rather than technical skills or performance on a test.
“You’re graded on things that are completely vulnerable to bias, like, ‘How good is this medical student?’ ” Boatright says.
Other medical schools are also considering how their AOA chapters can accurately reflect the racial makeup of their student bodies, according to Dr. Eve Higginbotham, the president of AOA board. And at the University of California, San Francisco, faculty and students are debating whether the honor society has a future there.
“Systems we use [for student evaluation] fail to take into account the extra work minorities are doing,” says Dr. Catherine Lucey, vice dean for education at UCSF. “[Minority] students have more stressors they have to deal with, low levels of racism that exist in our patients and our clinical environments.”
Lucey says that UCSF changed its selection criteria for AOA in 2016 to focus less on grades. The number of minority students selected for the honor society that year increased to match the percentage of minorities in each graduating class.
Dr. Jonathan Giftos, an internist in New York who was president of the Icahn chapter when he graduated in 2012, says disparities in the honor society are important to address because when medical education favors white students that can mean fewer minorities in leadership roles.
“It feels like a layering on of accolades that makes people who are doing well do better, have more access and power and opportunity,” Giftos says.
National AOA leadership says that diversity is a priority for the organization, but since every medical school is different, they leave the specifics of how students are chosen up to the school.
“We know that improving diversity will hopefully result in inclusion of talented individuals from different backgrounds, and that will help benefit our patient care,” says Dr. Richard Byyny, executive director of AOA. “But the schools themselves need to tackle this.”
Muller notes that Icahn has not officially closed its AOA chapter and will still nominate faculty and residents.
And student activists at Icahn aren’t celebrating yet. Lynch says she now wants to focus on discrimination in grading and medical school admissions. This, she says, can help address the dearth of minority physicians in different specialities — a problem with negative consequences for the health of minority patients.
“Many of us are still wary,” Lynch says. “It is a symbolic gesture, actually. We are interested in the deeper work.”
Government spends nearly $1 million of taxpayers’ money on cancer treatment for illegal alien who had repeatedly raped an 8-year-old child
In my opinion, this is a waste of the taxpayers’ money.
Also, there’s something very unfair about this. If this guy was a law abiding U.S. citizen, instead of an illegal alien who had repeatedly raped a child, I’m wondering if he would be getting this much health care for free.
https://www.sltrib.com/news/politics/2018/07/26/utah-county-inmate-was/
A Utah County inmate was headed to trial and possible deportation. Then came his cancer diagnosis and medical bills nearing $1M.
July 27, 2018
Gerardo Valerio-Romero was in Utah County custody, accused of repeatedly sexually abusing an 8-year-old relative, when he was diagnosed with cancer.
The day after the medical determination, the 49-year-old Mexican citizen was in LDS Hospital receiving cancer treatment, marking the start of an ongoing saga that exposed a rift between the county’s sheriff and its commission as well as medical bills that threaten to top $1 million.
Even at a discount, Valerio-Romero’s cancer treatments have drained the county jail’s medical budget. His case is set for trial early next month, and he’s caught the interest of federal immigration officials who will look at possibly deporting him if he’s acquitted. Until then, he’s in Utah’s court system, where his case is stalled and costs from his treatment continue to climb.
Spoiler:
“It’s a Catch-22,” Sheriff Jim Tracy said.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement placed a detainer on Valerio-Romero when he was arrested in March 2017, meaning ICE asked to be notified when he was convicted or acquitted on six counts of felony aggravated sexual abuse of a child. (He also faces eight felony charges related to forgery and one count of unlawful possession of another person’s identification.)
“A detainer is basically saying, ‘Hey, listen, when you’re going to be releasing him, let us know so that we can pick this guy up,’” ICE spokesman Carl Rusnok said Wednesday.
Valerio-Romero’s trial has twice been delayed, once last August at the request of prosecutors and again in December, when he asked for a new attorney and rejected a plea deal offered by the state (the details of which haven’t been disclosed).
The defendant has waived his right to a speedy trial, the court docket shows.
His next three-day trial is scheduled to begin Aug. 8. It’s unclear whether he’ll be ready to stand trial. If not, Tracy said, his medical treatment will continue to ring up costs for the county.
Valerio-Romero has pleaded not guilty to all charges against him. Court filings indicate he may have used the name Jesus Melgoza for work and cashing checks. His attorney, Clayton Simms, didn’t respond to a request for comment Wednesday.
The case was catapulted to the public spotlight early this month, when Tracy took the microphone during public comment at a County Commission meeting and announced he is quitting, partially over the inmate’s medical bills. His last day is Aug. 3.
Commissioners said at the time they were caught off guard by Tracy’s abrupt resignation. They said they believed the office could shift money around to cover immediate costs before the commission can meet next month and adjust its budget.
Commissioner Nathan Ivie was also critical of Valerio-Romero, saying he “shouldn’t even be in this country” because of a prior conviction.
Tracy said Valerio-Romero’s previous conviction wasn’t an offense for which he could be deported.
The sheriff said he was frustrated with the county’s funding of his department over the past 10 years. While he said Valerio-Romero’s case isn’t the only reason he’s quitting, he said Wednesday that things came to a head when he asked for emergency budget help from the commission.
He said commissioners will vote early next month — just after his exit — on emergency funding through year’s end.
“The solution to this problem … was adding additional money,” Tracy said. “This guy pops up with a million-dollar [problem], which we don’t even have. That’s why there was the crisis. The solution has always been from Day One you’re going to have to transfer money” to cover medical costs.
“It’s a mess,” he added. “That’s the final straw that broke the back.”
Study: E-cigarettes might help smokers quit
http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/wireStory/blowing-smoke-cigarettes-smokers-quit-48872459
Blowing smoke? E-cigarettes might help smokers quit
July 26, 2017
People who used e-cigarettes were more likely to kick the habit than those who didn’t, a new study found.
Nicotine patches, gums and medications are known to aid smoking cessation, but there’s no consensus on whether vaping devices can help anti-smoking efforts. The U.S. research is the largest look yet at electronic cigarette users and it found e-cigarettes played a role in helping people quit.
“It’s absolutely clear that e-cigarettes help smokers replace cigarettes,” said Peter Hajek, director of the health and lifestyle research unit at Queen Mary University in London, who wasn’t part of the study.
Smoking rates have been generally declining for decades. Health experts have credited taxes on tobacco products and anti-smoking ads for the drop.
E-cigarettes have been sold in the U.S. since 2007. Most devices heat a liquid nicotine solution into vapor and were promoted to smokers as a less dangerous alternative since they don’t contain all the chemicals, tar or odor of regular cigarettes.
Researchers analyzed and compared data collected by the U.S. Census from 2001 to 2015, including the number of adult e-cigarette users from the most recent survey.
About two-thirds of e-cigarette users tried to quit smoking compared to 40 percent of non-users, the study found. E-cigarette users were more likely to succeed in quitting for at least three months than non-users — 8 percent versus 5 percent.
The research was published online Wednesday in the journal, BMJ. It was funded by the National Institutes of Health.
The rate of people quitting smoking in the U.S. has remained steady at about 4.5 percent for years. It jumped to 5.6 percent in 2014-2015, representing about 350,000 fewer smokers. It was the first recorded rise in the smoking cessation rate in 15 years.
While national anti-smoking campaigns likely helped, the results show e-cigarette use also played an important role, said lead author Shu-Hong Zhu of the University of California, San Diego.
Hajek, who wasn’t part of the research, said vaping devices shouldn’t be strictly regulated, but instead be allowed to compete directly with cigarettes. “That way, smokers can get what they want without killing themselves,” he said.
Earlier this month, a House panel renewed its efforts to prevent the Food and Drug Administration from requiring retroactive safety reviews of e-cigarettes already on the market.
Others warned that the long-term side effects of e-cigarettes are unknown.
“We just don’t know if moving to e-cigarettes is good enough to reduce the harm,” said Aruni Bhatnagar, director of the American Heart Association’s Tobacco Research and Addiction Center.
Chris Bullen, who authored an accompanying editorial , said although the long-term safety of e-cigarettes is unclear, any ill effects are “likely to be rare compared with the harms of continuing to smoke.”
The latest results strongly suggest that more lenient control of e-cigarettes could improve population health, said Bullen, a professor of public health at the University of Auckland.
“If every smoker was to change over to e-cigarettes completely, there would be a dramatic and almost immediate public health benefit,” he said in an email.
Bernie Sanders repeatedly refuses to answer a small business owner’s question about how she’s supposed to pay for Obamacare
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n8tabnxTXa4
The robotic brain surgeon will see you now: drill can perform complex procedures 50 times faster
The robotic brain surgeon will see you now: drill can perform complex procedures 50 times faster
May 1, 2017
Scientists have revealed a robotic drill that can cut the most sensitive brain surgery down from two hours to two and a half minutes.
The machine, developed at the University of Utah, is being hailed as a potential breakthrough in survival for brain patients as the reduced time they spend in surgery will drastically cut the chances of infection.
Researchers say can make one type of complex cranial surgery 50 times faster than standard procedures.
They say the drill produces fast, clean, and safe cuts, reducing the time the wound is open and the patient anaesthetized, which also decreases the chances of human error, as well as the cost of surgery.
In complex surgeries, especially cranial surgeries, surgeons typically use hand drills to make intricate openings, adding hours to a procedure.
Dr William Couldwell, neurosurgeon at University of Utah, she said: “It was like doing archaeology. We had to slowly take away the bone to avoid sensitive structures.
“We knew the technology was already available in the machine world, but no one ever applied it to medical applications.”
Under the new system, patients will undergo CT scans to establish the exact location of sensitive structures such as nerves, major veins and arteries that must be avoided.
Surgeons use this information to program the cutting path of the drill and the surgeon can program safety barriers along the cutting path within 1 mm of sensitive structures.
Dr A.K. Balaji, who also worked on the drill, said: “The software lets the surgeon choose the optimum path from point A to point B, like Google Maps.
“Think of the barriers like a construction zone. You slow down to navigate it safely.”
The drill does the heavy lifting by removing most of the bone, similar to a mill, accurately and rapidly.
It has so far not been tested on a human patient.
The research was published in the journal Neurosurgical Focus.
I just added four new items to my list of Obamacare criticisms
The complete list can be found at https://danfromsquirrelhill.wordpress.com/2013/09/24/obamacare-59/
Here are the new entries:
338) After Obamacare caused Obama supporting graduate students at the University of Missouri to lose their insurance, they falsely blamed it on the school
In August 2015, the University of Missouri issued the following message to its graduate students:
“The Affordable Care Act prevents employers from giving employees money specifically so they can buy health insurance on the individual market. Graduate teaching and research assistants are classified as employees by the IRS, so they fall under this ruling.”
However, in November 2015, left wing graduate students who had voted for Obama, falsely blamed their loss of insurance on the school, instead of on Obamacare.
339) A federal judge ruled that some of the funding for Obamacare was unconstitutional
In May 2016, U.S. District Court Judge Rosemary Collyer ruled that some of the funding for Obamacare was unconstitutional, because it had not been approved by Congress.
340) Obama falsely said that opponents of Obamacare did not have a plan to replace it
In November 2016, when talking about Republican opponents of Obamacare, Obama said:
“You watch the press conference and you realize, they got no plan… It’s not like, they don’t even have a pretense of a plan. They don’t even have a semblance of a plan. Not even a hint of a plan. Not even a remote — not even a — there’s no plan. Nothing, zero, nada. You can’t just be against something. You gotta be for something.”
However, several months earlier, in June 2016, the Republicans had announced this plan to replace Obamacare.
341) Obama falsely said that none of the predictions that were made by Obamacare opponents came true
In November 2016, when talking about predictions made by Obamacare opponents, Obama said:
“None of what they said has happened.”
However, in the real world, Obamacare opponents accurately predicted that Obamacare would cause millions of people to lose their insurance.
Consumer Reports gave Planned Parenthood’s condoms the worst possible score for both “strength” and “durability”
Consumer Reports’ ratings use a scale one to five.
In the February 2005 print issue, they tested condoms for two different categories: “strength” and “durability.”
The condoms called “Planned Parenthood Honeydew” received the worst possible score in both of these categories.
The text of the article can be read here.
The ratings for the different brands of condoms can be seen here.
Vox asks readers for Obamacare success stories, plan backfires horrifically
Go to the link to see lots of examples:
Vox Asks Readers For Obamacare Success Stories, Plan Backfires Horrifically
February 18, 2017
Vox decided to ask people on Twitter about how the Affordable Care Act has changed their lives – they didn’t get the answers they were looking for…
Of the over 600 replies, very few were positive. Many people replied detailing the horrible impact of Obamacare on their lives…
Libertarian doctors start their own clinic, post all their prices online, and charge way, way, way less than everyone else
Can you imagine what would happen to the price of gasoline, if you couldn’t see the price until after you put it into your car? The price would skyrocket like crazy.
Same thing with groceries, clothing, and well, pretty much anything.
Right now, health care is the only industry where most customers don’t get to see the prices until after the service has already been provided. This is why prices are so absurdly high.
The health care clinic in this article and video is completely different. They list all of their prices online, so customers can see how much everything costs before they actually get the service. As a result, the prices charged by this clinic are way, way, way less than what everyone else charges.
This is a wonderful policy.
In my opinion, the government should require all health care providers to post all of their prices online.
Here’s an article and a video about this particular clinic:
http://reason.com/blog/2017/01/27/what-happens-when-doctors-only-take-cash
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0uPdkhMVdMQ
The world needs more black women studying STEM subjects like Jasmine Burton!
With so many college students, and especially so many blacks and women, majoring in fake, useless, worthless subjects that will leave them with nothing but huge amounts of debt that they will never be able to pay back from the low wages they will get from working at coffee shops and fast food restaurants after they graduate from college, here’s a wonderful story about someone who chose to study something that is actually useful in the real world. More people should follow Jasmine Burton’s lead and study STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) subjects:
http://money.cnn.com/2016/01/22/smallbusiness/safichoo-toilet-jasmine-burton/
This plastic toilet could save lives
Jasmine Burton helped design an inexpensive, portable plastic toilet to address the lack of basic sanitation around the world.
January 22, 2016
Everybody poops. But not everyone has access to a toilet.
“It’s shocking that this basic necessity is unavailable to nearly half of the world,” said Jasmine Burton, founder and president of Atlanta-based Wish for WASH.
Burton, 23, was a freshman at Georgia Institute of Technology when she learned that as many as 2.5 billion people don’t have access to a toilet.
It bothered her even more that this sanitation problem disproportionately affects women and young girls.
“Young girls in the developing world frequently drop out of school because there isn’t a toilet,” she said. “It angered me as a woman in higher education and as a product designer.”
Just 18 at the time, Burton channeled her feelings into a mission: She would design a toilet.
While at Georgia Tech, she collaborated with three other students to invent an inexpensive, eco-friendly mobile toilet that could convert waste into renewable energy. They called their sanitation system SafiChoo Toilet.
Made of plastic, the toilet is designed for sitting or squatting, which is a common practice in some countries. It can be placed directly on the ground, or it can be elevated by adding an attachable base. It can also function with or without water.
The system features a waste collection unit (that can go above or below ground), which separates the waste into liquids and solids. There’s also a manually-operated bidet that can be attached.
Burton said these features are intended to help curb contamination and the spread of diseases.
The SafiChoo toilet costs about $50. “That’s the highest price point we want it to be,” she said.
In 2014, Burton and her team won first place and $25,000 at the Georgia Tech InVention competition, the nation’s largest undergraduate invention competition.
“We didn’t think we’d win because products at the contest were always high-tech with super sexy designs,” she said. “Ours was a simple toilet.”
The win enabled Burton to pilot SafiChoo (which means clean toilet in Kiswahili) at a Kenyan refugee camp. She also launched Wish for WASH, the parent company of SafiChoo.
John Zegers, director at Georgia Center of Innovation for Manufacturing, contacted Burton after her InVention competition win. “We thought it was a great product that needed a little bit more development,” he said.
The Center gave a grant to Georgia Tech to develop a SafiChoo prototype and helped Burton’s team find an Atlanta-based manufacturer.
Zegers said he hopes that Wish for WASH is able to keep the toilet a Made in America product.
Burton is currently living in Lusaka, Zambia, as she tests the toilet there. The company is also running an Indiegogo campaign to support the Zambia pilot.
She hopes to begin selling the toilet to U.S.-based customers and to NGOs in 2017.
“It’s amazing when you see how many people have never used a toilet before and what [the SafiChoo Toilet] could mean for them,” she said.
New York Times: Dying Infants and No Medicine – Inside Venezuela’s Failing Hospitals
This is what Hugo Chavez referred to as “21st century socialism.”
Dying Infants and No Medicine: Inside Venezuela’s Failing Hospitals
May 15, 2016
By morning, three newborns were already dead…
… chronic shortages of antibiotics, intravenous solutions…
Doctors kept ailing infants alive by pumping air into their lungs by hand for hours. By nightfall, four more newborns had died…
Gloves and soap have vanished from some hospitals…
… there was not enough water to wash blood from the operating table…
The rate of death among babies under a month old increased more than a hundredfold in public hospitals run by the Health Ministry…
The rate of death among new mothers in those hospitals increased by almost five times in the same period…
… two premature infants died recently on the way to the main public clinic because the ambulance had no oxygen tanks. The hospital has no fully functioning X-ray or kidney dialysis machines… some patients lie on the floor in pools of their blood…
… people are dying for lack of antibiotics…
… without water, gloves, soap or antibiotics, a group of surgeons prepared to remove an appendix that was about to burst, even though the operating room was still covered in another patient’s blood…
… the rotting mattress had left her back covered in sores…
The pharmacy here has bare shelves…
I hope a lot of the anti-vaccine people learn a lesson from this family’s sad experience
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-35975011
‘Anti-vax’ mother’s regret over whooping cough ‘nightmare’
April 6, 2016
An Australian mother has said she regrets refusing the whooping cough vaccination during pregnancy after she passed the potentially fatal infection to her newborn baby.
Cormit Avital said she had turned down the vaccination because she was a “healthy, fit, organic woman”.
She caught the disease shortly before giving birth and passed it to Eva, who has spent a month in intensive care.
Ms Avital recorded a video warning about her “nightmare” experience.
“If I could turn back time I would protect myself,” she said, in the video released by Gold Coast Health, the regional health authority.
‘A lot of suffering’
Ms Avital contracted whooping cough, also known as pertussis, around the time she gave birth, and was told she had passed it to Eva.
Within two weeks, Eva’s cough “became pretty scary, horror movie, coughing to the point of going blue, flopping in my hands, can’t breathe,” she said.
“For a moment there you think they’re dead in your hands. [It’s] a lot of suffering for a tiny little cute thing you love so much.”
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Gold Coast Health Staff Specialist Dr Paul Van Buynder told the BBC that Eva’s condition was improving.
She is likely to be released from hospital in coming weeks.
Dr Buynder said more than 20,000 pertussis cases were recorded in Australia last year, and “sadly this is becoming more common”.
“There’s always a feeling of pregnancy being this special state and you don’t want to put anything into your body, but what’s really bad for your baby is to get whooping cough or influenza”, Dr Buynder added.
Newborns are highly susceptible to the infection until they start vaccination at two months old.
I hope this cigarette will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law
Officials say cigarette sparked fatal motel fire
March 20, 2015
The state police fire marshal today said a cigarette was the cause of a fatal motel fire in Westmoreland County on Thursday.
Timothy Paul Shane, 43, of Hempfield was killed in the fire at the Motel 3 on Route 30 in Adamsburg, according to the county coroner’s office.
State police fire marshal Scott Mackanick ruled the fire an accident and said Mr. Shane was smoking a cigarette that ignited the blaze around 6:30 a.m.
A section of Route 30 was closed in the area of the fire, as was the Irwin exit off of the Pennsylvania Turnpike.
Mr. Shane’s cause and manner of death are pending toxicology results from an autopsy, the fire marshal said.
