One thing people need to understand is I am pro-science, pro-professional training, pro-advances in society. I support things that make life better for people that are data / science driven. I like facts and data. I do not like and actively argue against lies, misinformation, and bigoty / hate. On trans issues the science is in and clearly proven. Yes some details around the edges may need to be worked on for society which gives the anti-trans haters the room to attack, but the medical science has proven that the issue of gender of a person is not connected to biological sex determination at birth. Sex is not limited to a binary of if it dangles it is male and if not it is female. Both biological sex and gender are a spectrum regardless of how loud the deniers who want to go back to easier simpler times will scream. Those are accepted medical facts. Just like decades of climate change denial was false and lost time in fixing a the issue, so is denying the gender / trans issue. At one time being gay was thought a mental illness, but the medical community researched it and realized it was a normal inborn condition. Society adjusted even though some people still fight against our acceptance to this day. The same will be with trans gender people. But now the right / hating bigots have learned how to use social media and right wing media to mass spread misinformation and scary stuff to the public. That is where we are and what I fight. It is like the Covid deniers / vaccine hate myths / Qanon believers / and bigfoot believers they all don’t accept reality and medical science. Instead they believe lies, myths, misinformation and will fight to the death in their belief. They are wrong! One fact no anti-trans person can argue against is that the major medical organizations support affirmative trans gender care and treatment as best practices and there is decades of use of puberty blockers that show they are safe and reversable. These are facts. The haters scream that puberty blockers are unsafe and cause all the evils in life, but the truth is they have been used in some forms since the 1970s and fully accepted by the medical establishment in 1993. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved puberty blockers in 1993. Nearly 30 years ago and that is after the studies were conducted.
I will have a civil discussion with anyone on the subject of trans gender issues. I will not tolerate slurs or repeated misrepresentations, myths, and lies. Once a subject / issue has been addressed it is not to be repeatedly brought up days later. It has been addressed and done. I won’t allow disinformation and will call out fringe unscientific claims of studies or unfounded fake medical claims. I am about truth and science, the real verifiable data with peer reviewed studies, which so far have all confirmed that gender and biological sex is a spectrum, and that trans gender best practice treatment is the affirmative transition treatment given today. Hugs
Juno Dawson, Joanne Harris and Hannah Graf MBE at the PinkNews Awards 2022. (PinkNews Awards 2022)
Trans icons Hannah Graf MBE and Juno Dawson have slammed well-known public figures and for stoking “uninformed and divisive” views against the trans community.
The pair spoke at the PinkNews Awards 2022, supported by joint headline sponsors Lloyds Banking Group and United Airlines, where they presented the Ally of the Year award to Chocolat author Joanne Harris.
In her speech Graf, a former officer of the British Army, detailed how “vital allies are” and shared how she had felt “isolation and fear” while growing up.
“On a positive note younger trans people, particularly today, we have more role models, more support networks, more understanding of who they are than ever before.
“That support is from parents, friends, organisations like Mermaids, they now have somewhere to turn to and feel that little bit less alone.”
Juno Dawson, Joanne Harris and Hannah Graf. (PinkNews Awards 2022)
But despite the increased support available, Graf highlighted that “trans young folk remain under attack”.
“They are bullied at school by their peers, sometimes even their teachers,” she said.
She added that trans children’s families are often attacked for supporting them and the media “continues to debate their very existence”.
“This becomes truly dangerous when it then gets involved with public figures with huge social media followings, most of whom have never talked to a trans child or their terrified parents.”
She said these figures spout “uninformed and divisive” views, and added: “The mainstream media would have us believe these are innocent concerns vocalised for the good of society, but freedom of speech should not be freedom from consequence.
“For example, the sustained and utterly inexplicable Twitter campaign from a certain author – she who who must not be named – against trans youth charity Mermaids of which I’m a proud patron.”
Graf said the impact of the author’s Twitter campaign has been “truly devastating” and led to the abuse of the charity’s volunteers.
She recalled terrible names the team have been called and said “multiple death threats have been made specially at individuals”, with people’s and addresses and phone numbers also being shared online.
“This is to a charity that has been largely run by mothers, fathers, volunteers, all of who are now afraid for their own safety and the safety of their children.
“I’m sorry, but If your words incite these behaviors then you are accountable,” Graf added.
Hannah Graf MBE (l) and Juno Dawson at the PinkNews Awards 2022. (PinkNews Awards 2022)
Bestselling author Dawson noted the mainstream media “like to create a myth that there is some great ideological divide between cisgender women and trans women”.
She explained that the first people she came out to were all cisgender women and highlighted how if they speak up for their trans brothers and sisters they are “shut down and locked out”.
The duo then presented the Ally of the Year award which went to Joanne Harris, author of Chocolat, who said it was “so wonderful” to finally have a “supportive, wonderful, fabulous community that I understand and that understands me”.
PinkNews’ Ally of the Year Joanne Harris. (PinNews Awards 2022)
She said she didn’t feel she deserved the award as she “only tweeted” and said a few things, so she dedicated the award to her trans son, who came out in June.
Harris was subjected to vicious online abuse this year due to her support for trans people, with one academic claiming people with trans children should be forced to “declare” their family relationships.
“I’m still coming to terms with what that means, but I’m so impressed by this young generation of people who are so incredibly articulate about their gender, their sexuality and their mental health.
“These magical children who don’t need a special hat to tell them who they are, but who have actually worked it out for themselves.”
‘I was a target’
In an interview at the PinkNews Awards 2022, Harris said she started talking about trans issues five years ago but didn’t realise there would be so much “push back”
When her son came out as trans Harris realised “not only was he a target, but so was I”.
“So I thought, damn it, I’m just going to come out and say things as they are. I think it’s important that people understand that this ridiculous media-driven culture war narrative, where the trans people are the enemy, is just so dangerous and so divisive and it absolutely needs to be combatted.”
Harris added there are so many powerful and influential people sharing the anti-trans narrative that it is time “that somebody else stood up and spoke the truth”.
Congressional Republicans have introduced a bill that would cut federal funding to schools that discuss LGBTQ+ rights. Cenk Uygur and Ana Kasparian discuss on The Young Turks. Watch TYT LIVE on weekdays 6-8 pm ET.
“Congressional Republicans introduced a measure Tuesday that would prohibit federal money from being used to teach children under 10 about LGBTQ issues.
The bill would prohibit the use of federal funds to teach children about “sexually-oriented material” as well as “any topic involving gender identity, gender dysphoria, transgenderism, sexual orientation, or related subjects”. The effects of such a law, if enacted, would be far-reaching since a range of institutions – schools, libraries, among them – receive public money.
The bill also gives parents the ability to sue in federal court if their child is exposed to the barred material that is funded “in whole or in part” by federal funds.” *
Charles Hamilton was described as being “bold and impudent” and continued to defy the world even as the world closed in.
By Laura Linham
Image from a copy in Bristol Library of the pamphlet “The Female Husband” (1813 edition) by Henry Fielding. Cartoon is attributed to George Cruikshank. Text on the image says: “The Prisoner being convicted of this base and scandalous crime was sentenced to be publically and severely whipped four several times in 4 Market Towns, and to be imprisoned for 6 Months.”Photo: British Newspaper Archive
Charles Hamilton, a traveling doctor in 18th-century Somerset, UK, was a dapper, charming suitor who could have his pick of the ladies – and according to some accounts, often did.
But it was love at first sight when the doctor laid eyes upon his landlady’s niece, the beautiful but naive Mary Price.
On July 16, 1746, at St. Cuthbert’s Church in Wells, Somerset, Charles (or, as the parish register has it, James) Hamilton and Mary Price were married by the Reverend Mr. Kingstone.
For two months, the couple traveled through Somerset as husband and wife selling quack remedies – unproven cure-alls that often had little medical value. Still, on September 13, in a nearby town called Glastonbury, Mary denounced her husband to the town authorities.
It turned out that Charles was missing a vital piece of equipment for Mary’s long-term happiness – a penis.
Charles’ story scandalized and titillated society, courtesy of Henry Fielding’s hurriedly-written – and mostly fictionalized book – The Female Husband.
But who was Charles Hamilton?
The person first known to the world as Mary Hamilton was born in Somerset, a rural farming county in southwest England, in about 1725, the daughter of William and Mary Hamilton.
When still a child, her family moved to Angus in Scotland until, at about 14, Mary put on her brother’s clothes and set out on the road back to England alone. From this moment, Mary lived as a man, going by the names of James, George, and Charles Hamilton in the years that followed.
In Northumberland, as Charles Hamilton, he entered the service of Dr. Edward Green, a ‘mountebank’, or seller of quack medicines. He then worked for Dr. Finly Green before setting up independently as an unqualified doctor.
In May 1746, he arrived at Wells in Somerset and lodged in the house of Mary Creed, meeting her niece and falling helplessly in love. This fateful act led to the marriage that would cast him into infamy.
A deposition from Mary Price says that she and Hamilton traveled selling medicines after marriage.
During their time together, Hamilton “entered her body several times” and “so well did the imposter assume the character of man, that she still believed she had married a fellow-creature of the right and proper sex.”
But after gossiping with her neighbors, Mary soon began to suspect her husband was harboring a secret. She confronted her husband when they were in Glastonbury – a town just a few miles away from their home in Wells. Hamilton admitted the truth to Price, who, in turn, instantly ratted him out.
The story was unusual enough at the time to attract the attention of the local newspaper, the Bath Journal.
According to those reports, after news of the arrest, many people visited the prison to gawp at Hamilton, described as being “bold and impudent”.
It added that “it is publickly talk’d that she has deceived several of the Fair Sex by marrying them.”
Another report says that at the trial, the prosecuting attorney, Henry Gould – misspelled as Gold in the newspapers – claimed that Hamilton had been married fourteen times.
The scandalized magistrates struggled to agree what the crime was – or even if one had been committed.
British Newspaper Archive
Records show that it was not so much that Hamilton dressed and worked as a man that was a problem as much as the fact that he deceitfully contrived penetrative sex.
After much debate Charles Hamilton was labeled an ‘uncommon notorious cheat’ and was charged under the vagrancy act of 1744; an act meant to prosecute lack of employment or deceitful attitudes.
During the trial, members of Hamilton’s community wrote a letter to the clerk asking for severe punishment. They demanded public humiliation to ensure that Hamilton would never be able to live as a man again.
The severity of Hamilton’s sentence, and the terms in which the court delivered it, reflected the outrage and perplexity the case had aroused: ‘and we, the Court,’ they said, ‘do sentence her, or him, whichever he or she may be, to be imprisoned six months, and during that time to be whipped in the towns of Taunton, Glastonbury, Wells and Shepton Mallet.’
The newspaper recorded that the ‘bold and impudent’ Hamilton remained at that time ‘very gay, with periwig, ruffles, and breeches’, still defying the world as the world closed in.
He continued to sell his remedies surrounded by fascinated crowds who flocked to see him.
British Newspaper Archive
At three-week intervals, until Christmas 1746, Hamilton was whipped publicly in four different towns. That might have been the end of the saga for Hamilton if it weren’t for the novelist Henry Fielding.
Now considered the founder of the English novel, Fielding hurriedly cashed in on the salacious scandal, claiming he had his information “from the mouth” of Hamilton himself.
However, he likely never met the person he satirized in his work and it was instead cobbled together from court reports and his own (filthy) imagination.
The obscure – and pornographic – pamphlet was published anonymously. Like a Georgian-era 50 Shades of Grey, it was badly written, salacious and sold out almost immediately. Unlike 50 Shades of Grey, only four copies are known to exist today.
In his story, Fielding claims Mary Hamilton was born in 1721 on the Isle of Man, the daughter of a former army sergeant who had married a woman of property on the island.
In his version, she had been brought up in the strictest principles of virtue and religion but was seduced into “vile amours” by her friend Anne Johnson, an enthusiastic Methodist, and “transactions not fit to be mention’d passed between them”.
When Anne leaves him for a man, Hamilton seeks another female lover. He meets Mrs. Rushford, a wealthy 68-year-old widow who takes her to be a lad of about 18. He pretends to be a Methodist preacher and promptly marries the widow.
According to Fielding, he deceived his bride by means “which decency forbids me even to mention.” The bride eventually discovers Hamilton’s birth sex, and Hamilton is forced to flee. Hamilton uses various other aliases to marry other women but is repeatedly forced to run when the ruse is discovered.
Finally, posing as a doctor, he marries Mary Price.
Gendering Hamilton as a woman, Fielding also claims that “on the very evening she had suffered the first whipping, she offered the gaoler money, to procure her a young girl to satisfy her most monstrous and unnatural desires.”
British Newspaper Archive
Historian Louis Crompton describes Fielding’s account as “one part fact to ten parts fiction” – so what did happen to Charles Hamilton once the storm had passed?
In July 1752, an unsigned letter appeared in the Pennsylvania Gazette, sent from Chester, just outside Philadelphia. It recounted the story of Charles Hamilton, an itinerant doctor living as a man, who was discovered to be biologically female.
According to the letter, Hamilton said he had been brought up in the business of a doctor and surgeon in the UK.
He said he had set sail for Philadelphia in Autumn 1751, cast away from North Carolina and made his way towards the city, selling medicine and treating people along the way.
Hamilton confessed he had used the “disguise” for many years.
So perhaps, Hamilton headed off to the New World and continued to live his life as he always had – true to himself and unashamed.
Laura Linham is a freelance journalist based in Somerset, UK. You can find her on Twitter, @midsomlaura
And who pays the costs? Both medical and personal. Hugs
Susan Rinkunas
·3 min read
Photo: Paul Burns (Getty Images)
A pregnant Tennessee woman with high and rising blood pressure had to take a roughly six-hour ambulance ride to get an abortion in North Carolina, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal. When she got to the second hospital several hundred miles away, her blood pressure was dangerously high and she was showing signs of kidney failure.
The woman’s doctor in Tennessee, Leilah Zahedi-Spung, is a high-risk obstetrician who spoke to the WSJ for a story about how abortion bans impact medical emergencies. Zahedi-Spung said the patient was in her second trimester when her blood pressure began rising; the fetus had been diagnosed with genetic abnormalities and wasn’t expected to survive. Zahedi-Spung worried the woman could develop life-threatening preeclampsia and thought she needed an abortion, but the procedure has been banned in Tennessee since late August. Eight states border Tennessee and abortion is banned in all but two of them.
“She kept asking if she was going to die,” Zahedi-Spung told the WSJ. “I kept saying, ‘I’m trying, I’m trying, we’re going to make it happen. We just need to get you to the right place where you can be taken care of.’” She said she was relieved to see the patient alive a few weeks later.
The Tennessee law, which makes providing abortions a felony, doesn’t contain explicit exceptions for abortions “necessary to prevent death or serious and permanent bodily injury”—instead, doctors have to prove the procedure was necessary via what’s known as an “affirmative defense.” The Associated Press described affirmative defense this way: “Instead of the state having to prove that the procedure was not medically necessary, the law shifts the burden to the doctor to convince a court that it was.” (Bans in NorthDakota and Idaho—both of which are currently blocked—also use affirmative defense language.)
Given these realities, Zahedi-Spung said she feared if she performed the medically necessary abortion, the state would still charge her with a crime that would lead to a long legal fight and upend her ability to practice medicine.
Even bans that don’t require an affirmative defense and have more standard exceptions for the “life of the pregnant person”—like, for instance, treating ectopic pregnancies—are often meaningless in practice. Perhaps the hospital lawyers don’t want to risk a lawsuit, or the doctors themselves may fear legal action (and many have hundreds of thousands of dollars in student debt and their own families to provide for). But it’s easy enough for a part-time state lawmaker to throw some words into a bill.
Zahedi-Spung spoke to the WSJ in her personal capacity and didn’t name her employer. Multiple OB/GYNs recently told CNN that their employers are muzzling them from talking about the impacts of abortion bans—whether they work in states where their patients can’t access the procedure, or in places where people are traveling to get care.
Zahedi-Spung decided it’s too risky for her to practice in Tennessee and recently accepted a job in Colorado where abortion is legal. It’s a predictable loss of a medical provider thanks to a hostile environment. Per the WSJ:
Chloe Akers, a criminal defense attorney based in Knoxville, Tenn., read the law after Roe fell and was surprised to see it contained no exceptions, only defenses that doctors could use after the fact. She founded a nonprofit Standing Together Tennessee and began giving seminars to doctors and others about the law.
Ms. Akers tells healthcare providers there are ways to manage risk, such as keeping robust records of their decision making. But if a doctor asks how to take that risk to zero, she answers, “You stop providing obstetric care in the state.”
Let this story be a reminder that abortion bans harm everyone who can get pregnant.
State Rep. Beau LaFave clearly doesn’t understand what trans gender is, what gender is, and how it doesn’t mean having sex. I wish these law makers on the right would take the time to learn something about the subject they are regulating before they write stupid laws. In this case these lawmakers seem to think getting elected makes them smarter and know more about medical treatment than the doctors / scientist in the major medical organizations which all support affirmative transgender care. What they are really saying is their politics come before the medical care prescribed by doctors to their patients. Hugs
One of the bill’s sponsors said it’s “insane” that kids can have a gender identity “when it is illegal for them to have sex.”
A Michigan bill seeks to brand gender-affirming parents and doctors as child abusers and even proposes life in prison as a possible consequence for facilitating gender-affirming care.
H.B. 6454 would amend the penal code to state that child abuse includes when someone “knowingly or intentionally consents to, obtains, or assists with a gender transition procedure for a child.”
The bill includes any hormones or puberty blockers in its definition of “gender-transition procedure.” Puberty blockers are reversible medications that delay the onset of puberty so that trans youth can have more time to explore their gender identities before the permanent effects of puberty occur and they have been shown to decrease lifelong suicide risk for trans people who want them.
State Rep. Beau LaFave (R), one of the lawmakers who introduced the bill, told The Hill that kids shouldn’t transition until they are old enough to have sex.
“People are abusing these children. The idea that we would be making potentially life-altering changes to 11-, 12-, 13-, 14-, 15-year-old kids when it is illegal for them to have sex is insane. I mean, they’re not responsible enough to smoke a cigarette until they’re 21.”
“Gender affirming care is medically necessary and life-saving care for transgender youth,” Equality Michigan executive director Erin Knott said in a statement. “Medical decisions belong to trans youth, their parents, and their doctors.”
Should the bill pass, Michigan would become the second state to make gender-affirming care a felony, after Alabama – though a judge has blocked part of Alabama’s law from taking effect.
Republicans across the country continue to advocate for laws banning youth from receiving gender-affirming care, even though multiple studies show that transgender youth experience high rates of suicidality, and that access to affirming healthcare often leads to significant improvements in their mental health and quality of life.
In August, anti-LGBTQ Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) introduced a bill at the federal level that would make providing gender affirming care for transgender minors a class C felony, ban federal funds—including Medicaid funds—from being used for gender affirming care for transgender people, ban medical schools from teaching about gender affirming care, stop health care plans under the Affordable Care Act from funding gender affirming care, and ban anyone found to have performed gender affirming care from immigrating to the U.S.
I am stunned at the projection of the republican party / right wing. Also they don’t even bother to try to stick to reality, saying the most wild things they can think of or have heard. The fact that a large section of the right loves and believes these wild of the wall things because the right has ruined the public education system in the US. Why do you think wealthy people send their kids to private schools? Because they deliberately destroyed public education so they have a steady stream of uneducated workers who won’t be able to advance and will work for low wages in any conditions. Plus uneducated people with no idea of history are much easier to control. I fear for the country if we cannot turn around the republican drive to make the US a whole owned company of the wealthy. People are still dying of Covid, more in red states that the governors deny the value of vaccines / masks. Hugs
“You just can’t make these things up. He said very definitively more than once that COVID is over and the pandemic is over.
“And because of that now – the team behind him, what I call that cabal in the White House – they have to keep this pandemic going so that they can spend more taxpayer money the way they want to.
“And, they think it helps them in the elections, having more people vote via mail-in ballot, making certain that they have that power and control. That’s what this is all about, always has been from day one.” – Sen. Marsha Blackburn, today on Fox.
As you may have noticed, “cabal” is Blackburn’s favorite word. She’s used it to describe the CDC, the FBI, teachers unions, and others.
Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) thinks the Biden admin. is deliberately prolonging the COVID-19 pandemic to help Democrats in the midterms:
"They have to keep this pandemic going … because they think it helps them in the elections having more people vote by a mail-in ballot." pic.twitter.com/RrLf0WJQfZ
We knew this even though the trump people denied it. DeathSantis did the same thing. Horrible waste of life because of pride and ego. Over 81 thousand people have died of Covid already and more still dying because they didn’t get the vaccines / boosters. The Florida surgeon general claims the vaccines are more harmful than Covid itself in what is laughingly called a joke of a study, which was not a study in any sense of the word. Hugs
Donald Trump Photographer: Chris Kleponis/Polaris/Bloomberg
Donald TrumpPhotographer: Chris Kleponis/Polaris/Bloomberg
The CDC bowed to the Trump administration’s demands to change the editorial process of its weekly scientific journal after warnings from then health secretary Alex Azar to “get in line,” a House investigation found.
The pressure faced by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to change the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report‘s procedures was one of several instances of political interference by former President Donald Trump’s aides that the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis identified in a report released Monday. The report was provided to Bloomberg Law ahead of the official release.
The latest subcommittee report details widespread attempts by Trump-era political appointees within the Department of Health and Human Services to interfere with the CDC, including tampering with the science and misuse of the agency’s quarantine authority in a way an agency division director described as “morally wrong.”
The CDC declined to comment on the report.
“This prioritization of politics, contempt for science, and refusal to follow the advice of public health experts harmed the nation’s ability to respond effectively to the coronavirus crisis and put Americans at risk,” Rep. James E. Clyburn (D-S.C.), chairman of the subcommittee, said in a statement.
“As we continue to recover from the coronavirus crisis, we must also continue to work to safeguard scientific integrity and restore the American people’s trust in our public health institutions,” he said.
Azar and other political appointees called for MMWR editorial process changes in May 2020 out of concern the findings put Donald Trump’s White House at a political disadvantage, the congressional panel said. The changes granted political appointees at HHS access to summaries of what was coming out in the MMWRs for the first time, which the committee said “ultimately precipitated HHS officials’ attempts to interfere with the MMWRs over the following months.”
Azar told Bloomberg Law Monday that he “never pressured” Trump’s CDC director, Robert Redfield, “to modify the content of a single MMWR scientific article.”
“I always regarded the MMWR and other peer-reviewed scientific publications as sacrosanct,” Azar said in an email. “Indeed, I worked directly with Dr. Redfield to ensure that processes were in place to protect the integrity of the peer-review process for the MMWR when an internal CDC procedural defect was identified in early May 2020.”
Voice of CDC
The MMWR has long been considered the “voice of the CDC” and serves as the agency’s essential source for disseminating information quickly to inform public health and evidence-based decisions that drive policy. It was a report in the MMWR that in part prompted Anthony S. Fauci to pivot his career toward HIV research in 1981.
The allegations stem from former CDC Chief of Staff Kyle McGowan and Deputy Chief of Staff Amanda Campbell’s testimony to the House panel, in which they said Azar warned that “if the CDC would not get in line, then HHS would take control of approving the publication of the MMWRs.” McGowan and Campbell, who joined the agency during the Trump administration, left several months after those May 2020 allegations and started their own consulting firm.
“The committee’s report reflects a serious and fair look at what happened,” McGowan wrote in an email which included Campbell in the response.
Political appointees successfully changed or held up at least five MMWR reports and tried to interfere with at least 19 different reports out of concerns they would harm Trump politically, McGowan and Campbell said in the subcommittee report.
The report marks the culmination of a two-year investigation by the House panel and offers new details of allegations into how the Trump administration handled the Covid-19 response. The CDC historically has prided itself on making science-based, data-driven decisions to protect the public health, but the House panel concluded political interference caused lasting harm on CDC’s morale and credibility in the nation’s public health institutions.
Redfield told a Senate panel more than two years ago, “At no time has the scientific integrity of the MMWR been compromised, and I can say that under my watch it will not be compromised.” But Redfield told the House coronavirus committee that the Trump administration “compromised” CDC guidances on Covid-19. He said the process for developing coronavirus policy “got complicated” and gave him “PTSD,” or post-traumatic stress disorder. It also gave the White House budget outfit veto power, he said.
The House investigation also concluded the Trump administration blocked the CDC from holding its weekly press briefings for several months after Nancy Messonnier, who was then the CDC’s longtime immunization director, cautioned in February 2020 that a significant disruption could happen and the nation should prepare.
The former administration also installed political appointees who attempted to downplay the severity of the virus and misused its quarantine authority under Title 42 to close the southern border. CDC’s quarantine and global migration director, Martin Cetron, told the House panel that agency staff didn’t write the Title 42 order, allegedly saying, “It’s just morally wrong to use a public authority that has never, ever, ever been used this way. It’s to keep Hispanics out of the country.”
The Biden administration recently expanded Title 42 and coupled it with a humanitarian parole program under new rules aimed at stemming the flow of migrants from Venezuela.
The House report from the CDC marks the third in a series from the coronavirus subcommittee. A report released in August found similar attempts by the Trump administration to interfere with the Food and Drug Administration’s decision to withdraw authorization of a Covid-19 treatment because it didn’t work. The first report released in June examined a controversial herd immunity approach to managing Covid-19 that would have sidestepped mitigation measures.
To contact the reporter on this story: Jeannie Baumann in Washington at jbaumann@bloombergindustry.com
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Cheryl Saenz at csaenz@bloombergindustry.com
(Updated with a statement from McGowan and Campbell in the 12th paragraph)
It has long been know that the we need higher prices to find or develop new drugs has been a dodge and a ruse. It is entirely for profit. Katie Porter showed that on during a House of Rep. hearing with a Pharma CEO and with his own testimony showed it was about personal profit for the company / himself / the investors. Hugs
A new study finds no correlation between R&D spending and outlandish drug prices.
At the end of September, a spot of good news: Relyvrio, a new drug for treating amyotrophic lateral sclerosis—or ALS, a neurological disorder without a cure—was approved in the United States. The ALS community rejoiced; the drug’s authorization was described as a “long-sought victory for patients.”
But the next day, the price of the medicine was revealed: $158,000 a year. This was far higher than what the Institute for Clinical and Economic Review, an independent nonprofit that analyzes health care costs, had estimated would be a reasonable price, which it deemed to be between $9,100 and $30,700.
Americans, though, probably weren’t shocked. Prescription drugs in the US cost about 2.5 times what they do in other countries, and a quarter of Americans find it difficult to afford them. Almost every new cancer drug starts at over $100,000 a year. And a 2022 study found that every year, the average price of newly released drugs is 20 percent higher.
How drug prices are set in the US is a mysterious black box. When rationalizing their lofty price tags, one of the most common reasons pharmaceutical companies will cite is that a high price is needed to makegoodon the money invested in research and development.
But is that true? “You hear it so much,” says Olivier Wouters, an assistant professor of health policy at the London School of Economics and Political Science. “That’s why I was like, well, let’s get some data, because I don’t believe it. I don’t think anyone believes it.”
So Wouters did just that. In September 2022, he and his colleagues published a new paper in JAMA that took this simple argument and put it to the test. In the study, they looked at the 60 drugs that had been approved by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) between 2009 and 2018 for which there was publicly available information about both R&D spending and pricing. And then they matched up the figures. “Essentially, it was like investigative journalism—check all the receipts, trace back in time on what they spend,” he says. If it were the case that R&D spending was the reason behind high drug prices, you’d expect to see a high correlation between the two. Instead, they found no correlation.
Wouters acknowledges that the sample size in the research is small, but this is because pharmaceutical companies keep most of their financial data under lock and key. If the industry wants to refute the conclusion reached in his paper, then pharmaceutical companies need to make more data available, he says.
To anybody in the field, the response to the paper’s finding is: Well, duh. We know what drives drug pricing, says Ezekiel Emanuel, chair of the Department of Medical Ethics and Health Policy at the University of Pennsylvania. “It’s, ‘How far can I go? What will the market bear?’” Still, Emanuel says, it’s important to have empirical data like this study to refute the industry’s claim.
Intuitively, it feels plausible that a drug’s price would be linked to its R&D costs—the risky biz of innovation is super expensive, right? It turns out even this is highly contested. In 2020, Wouters published another paper in JAMA that dug into how much it actually costs to bring a new medicine to market, something experts have been trying to work out for decades. The number thrown around the most comes from one paper, which relied on confidential data provided by pharmaceutical companies, estimating that it takes around $2.8 billion. “These estimates are sort of shrouded in secrecy. There’s a lot of controversy around them,” says Wouters. He and his colleagues instead found the number shook out at closer to $1.3 billion, less than half the commonly held estimate. Substantially lower R&D costs would suggest that this spending shouldn’t have such a big bearing on drug pricing.
Every so often, there are small glimpses behind the curtains into how pharmaceutical companies actually decide on a drug price. An example of this is the hepatitis C drug Sovaldi, which was put on the market in 2013 for a steep $84,000 per 12-week course. In 2015, an 18-month-long US government investigation that reviewed some 20,000 pages of internal company documents revealed that Gilead, the company that owned the drug, had set the high price as a way “to ensure its drugs had the greatest share of the market, for the highest price, for the longest period of time”—in essence, that it was prioritizing profit. In response Gilead said it “stand[s] behind the pricing of our therapies because of the benefit they bring to patients and the significant value they represent to payers, providers, and our entire healthcare system by reducing the long-term costs associated with managing chronic [hepatitis C virus].”
In other countries, the price paid for a drug is decided by bodies that look at the value the drug provides. In the United Kingdom, for example, the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) lands on the value of a new medicine by working out how much it costs to give a patient an extra year of “quality life” in comparison to current treatments on offer. If the drug offers too little value, NICE won’t recommend it to the National Health Service. Countries like France and Germany negotiate with pharmaceutical companies to land on a price determined by the clinical benefits a drug provides compared to others on the market.
In the US, things may be beginning to slowly move in this direction. Under the new Inflation Reduction Act, Medicare will be allowed to negotiate prices for a small selection of drugs. However, Emanuel is skeptical it will actually have a big impact on drug price regulation, given the way that law was designed—too many loopholes, he says.
As for holding pharmaceutical companies to account, it shouldn’t fall to academics to do this, says Tahir Amin, founder and executive director of the Initiative for Medicines, Access & Knowledge (I-MAK), a nonprofit that addresses inequities in how medicines are developed and distributed. “We need the government authorities and bodies to be doing this work,” he says of the analysis by Wouters’ team. “How are they setting policy when they do not have this information?”
Wouters doesn’t see his paper as a game changer, but it’s another weapon in the arsenal of those with power to refute excuses made by pharmaceutical companies. “I never thought this was a gotcha,” he says. “No, we always expected this to be the case. But I’m a firm believer that we need some evidence to point to.”
Remember this is the same administration / surgeon general that Tildeb used to promote anti-trans nonsense. Politics dressed up as science. For those that did not believe me about Tildeb using fringe science and right-wing talking points, I give you this as exhibit 1! I keep trying to tell people they medical science is in, the studies done, and trans gender affirmative care is the recommended best practices for kids. Hugs
LADAPO: Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo, left, and Gov. Ron DeSantis are seen at a news conference in West Palm Beach, Fla., on Jan. 6. Joe Cavaretta/Sun Sentinel/Tribune News Service
This far into the pandemic, tens of millions of Americans have received mRNA COVID vaccines, following vast medical trials. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Food and Drug Administration continue to review the safety of the vaccines, part of what the CDC calls “the most intense safety monitoring efforts in U.S. history.”
But somehow, Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo knows best. Armed only with a skimpy “analysis” done by the state Department of Health — an analysis that is not peer-reviewed, has no named authors and has been blasted by the medical community — he warned last week that men ages 18-39 shouldn’t get the Moderna or Pfizer COVID shots, citing a higher risk of heart-related deaths.
The analysis itself states it should be considered “preliminary” and “should be interpreted with caution.” And yet the stance that Ladapo took on Twitter was far from cautious, insisting that “FL will not be silent on the truth.” Twitter initially pulled down Ladapo’s post, but then restored it
Hand-picked doctor
Ladapo, of course, is Gov. Ron DeSantis’ hand-picked surgeon general, and the Harvard-trained doctor knows it. He seems intent on carrying out the governor’s increasingly anti-vax agenda. Ladapo has promoted Ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine as legitimate treatments for COVID — they are not — and said in March that the state is against COVID vaccines for children. (The vaccines are considered safe and effective for children.) He vowed that Florida would “reject fear” when it comes to public health policy.
Reminder: More than 81,000 Floridians have died of COVID.
This latest report Ladapo is pushing has holes large enough to drive a car through. No amount of calling the resulting criticism an example of cancel culture — which is what a Florida DOH spokesman tried to do — will change that.
For one thing, it’s missing so many key details in the “methodology” section that Daniel Salmon, the director of the Institute for Vaccine Safety at the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, said he can’t even figure out what the department actually did.
“If you were to submit that to any decent journal, it would be almost certainly rejected quickly,” Salmon said in the Miami Herald. “I think it’s irresponsible for a state government agency to put out something like that without sufficient detail.”
(We can’t ask the study’s authors because Ladapo refused to divulge them, calling that question a “fake” issue during a Washington Post interview.)
Salmon, who is leading a large global study looking into myocarditis — inflammation of the heart muscle — and the coronavirus vaccine, said the benefits of the vaccines still outweigh any risks. He was far from alone in criticizing Florida’s position.
Jason Salemi, a University of South Florida epidemiologist, told the Herald the study failed to focus on both risks and benefits, looking only at risk. “It’s not a complete picture,” Salemi said. “It’s taking one part of it and using that seemingly in isolation to make a recommendation.”
The Washington Post — because Ladapo’s claims have attracted national attention — spoke to more than a dozen experts on vaccines, patient safety and study design who had concerns with the Florida analysis. Concerns included a too-small sample size, using data from death certificates that are frequently inaccurate and skewed results because the study tried to exclude anyone who had COVID or died from it.
Particularly telling: Ladapo said in The Washington Post interview that he hoped his mentors at Harvard University would support the methods used in the Florida study. The opposite happened. Health economist David Cutler said the Florida report was deeply flawed, he hoped it wouldn’t discourage people from getting vaccines and that Ladapo was wrong to base Florida’s vaccine policy on it.
He went further: “If I was a reviewer at a journal, I would recommend rejecting it,” Cutler told The Washington Post.
Vaccine disinformation has real consequences — and Ladapo’s post has been shared hundreds of thousands of times. A revealing study by Yale University researchers published last month found higher COVID death rates for Republicans compared to Democrats, after vaccines were available.
And there is hesitancy — or at least malaise — when it comes to the most recent booster shot. The new bivalent COVID boosters are widely available, and yet only about half of Americans have heard much about the shot, according to a Kaiser Family Foundation poll. About a third of adults said they had gotten the booster or planned to.
COVID is still with us. There are vaccines that save lives. But people such as Ladapo, with his privileged platform in Florida, can do real damage. His assertions amount to a political position disguised as science and cloaked in the state flag. The danger is that some people may forgo the lifesaving vaccine because Florida, and Ladapo, told them to.
I would again like to point out this is not about protecting kids, it is entirely political. Look how often they attack Biden and the administration on a local school board issue. This is being used by the republicans to rile up their base with misinformation and to hurt a group of kids they don’t like. Hugs
: A supporter holds a sign that says “Support Trans Youth” in Washington Square Park on the 8th Annual Trans Day of Action on June 22, 2012 in New York City. Photo: Shutterstock
In a victory for trans Ohioans, the Ohio State Board of Education decided to delay voting on an anti-trans resolution that would ban trans girls from women’s sports teams, force teachers to out trans students to their parents, and ban classroom discussions on LGBTQ issues in kindergarten through third grade.
The resolution was introduced by board member Brandon Shea and rejects a proposed rule from the Biden administration to apply Title IX anti-discrimination protections to LGBTQ students nationwide.
It aligns with a lawsuit against President Joe Biden’s proposal put forth by Ohio’s Republican Attorney General Dave Yost (along with other state attorneys general) and states that sex is an “unchangeable fact” and that “there are observable, quantifiable, and immutable differences between males and females.”
“Denying the reality of biological sex destroys foundational truths upon which education rests and irreparably damages children,” it declares.
The resolution blasted the Biden administration for “federal overreach” and criticized its assertion that schools who fail to adhere to gender anti-discrimination policies could lose federal funding for free and reduced lunch programs.
Activists, teachers, parents, students, and the like showed up in droves to testify against the resolution – after many in favor of it also spoke.
“The mental, emotional and psychological toll will be huge if it is passed because it takes away protections from the students who need those protections the most,” said Rev. Andrew Burns of the King Avenue United Methodist Church. “And I would be one of the people who would have to clean up the mess left behind.”
After four hours of public comments, trans rights won the day, and the board decided to delay a vote on the measure.
Happening now… The waiting room is overflowing in Ohio as people pack the building in order to speak out against a policy that will force teachers to misgender Ohio trans students and ban them from bathrooms statewide. pic.twitter.com/x4ZYafOd5t
In a 12-7 vote, the board decided to send the resolution to an executive committee. Some board members believe it will probably die there, according to Cleveland.com. A softer version of the proposal will also reportedly be considered by the committee.
But the decision is still a huge victory.
Activist Erin Reed tweeted, “I can’t overstate how big a victory we just won in Ohio for trans people was. We got a boardroom full of Republican school officials to vote AGAINST moms for Liberty anti trans policies. The activists speeches objectively swayed things. The anti-trans group was stunned.”
People like Rep Clock, who has proposed legislation to detransition all trans youth, now will see that his own bill is enormously unpopular and will result in major blowback.
Reed continued to explain that the vote shows that being anti-trans is becoming an extreme position, also praising Jon Stewart for his recent skewering of Arkansas Attorney General Leslie Rutledge (R) for the state’s ban on gender-affirming care for youth.
“The same arguments were repeated multiple times in the testimony,” Reed continued. “Ultimately though the credit goes to the activists who showed up. It was a pleasure to watch this and help mobilize from the VERY beginning. The fight isn’t over in Ohio. It isn’t over anywhere. but we won one for the kids today.”
Ultimately though the credit goes to the activists who showed up. It was a pleasure to watch this and help mobilize from the VERY beginning.
The fight isn’t over in Ohio. It isn’t over anywhere.
Now that you have read the article I want to point out several things. First l want you to look at the trans man in the video above. This is a man. However republicans want to force this man to use women’s restrooms. For those women that say they would be uncomfortable knowing a trans person was using the same bathroom as they were, tell me you as a woman wouldn’t be uncomfortable seeing this man entering the female bathroom with you. This is the problem first with judging gender on looks, and second this is the end result of the republicans anti-trans agenda. Second the anti-trans people tried to make sure that they spoke first and took as many spots as they could, knowing that many board meetings have a time limit and they hoped to run out the clock so the trans positive people could speak. Also notice that the anti-trans activists used lies, myths, debunked talking points, to the point of claiming that trans people simply did not exist. They throw so much false misleading and wrong information out that as one of the people said it would take longer than the meeting like refute them all. It is called a Gish gallop. But what was nice was a real geneticist who destroyed the anti-trans arguments with scientific medical facts, not that the anti-trans people would ever listen to facts. Below is the unrolled tweets from the story. Hugs
Happening now… The waiting room is overflowing in Ohio as people pack the building in order to speak out against a policy that will force teachers to misgender Ohio trans students and ban them from bathrooms statewide.
I know the people fighting on the ground. People like @CamomileOgden who have devoted so much to ensuring this doesn't go through.
Unfortunately Moms 4 Liberty has shown up to this meeting, unlike last time where all speakers were against this policy.
We've already had two speakers propose that people shouldn't be able to transition up to 25 years old because of "brain development."
And now there's a teacher saying that trans youth are a sign that "society is in decay"
I'm being told that the Moms4Liberty folks snagged the first 20 spots, and then later spots will be heavily opposed to the measure.
Its still a nonstop stream of people speaking in favor of the resolution. Soon the flavor of speakers will change. There seems to have been some shenanigans in how approved speakers were handled.
We are finally getting to the speakers in opposition to the policy.
"We already know how this policy works… the state practiced this policy for years and it killed LGBTQ+ people."
Oh cool cool cool, now they are saying that "[transgenderism] is moral decay in our public institutions that is growing like a cancer spread by globalists."
Reverend Andrew Burns of the United Methodist Church is speaking passionately against the measure.
This girl is AMAZING and is making an economic argument for rejecting this bill. She’s so good! I missed her name.
Getting word that there has been a disturbance outside of the hearing and mood is tense. Many speakers are now effectively speaking against this policy. I hope to clip some later.
This trans man speaking is amazing. "I am a trans man. I WAS one of the students who would be affected by this policy."
"I'm here today for all the trans kids in Ohio who are not able to be here to speak up for themselves"
I'll get his name later when I clip.
Amanda Erickson from Kaleidoscope Youth Center is AMAZING.
She's speaking on behalf of students who gave her quotes.
She says, "You are actively failing the students you have been elected and appointed to serve"
This geneticist is absolutely ripping the measure and teaching them about genetics and how there are hundreds of intersex conditions, and that "Sex is NOT binary"
Now a speaker is comparing trans acceptance to "Hitler youth"
🙄
"gender confusion" is the most garbage transphobe dogwhistle.
We're not confused about our gender – YOU are.
Although early speakers were ALL in favor of the resolution, it has been a nonstop wall of those opposed.
This is great. People are speaking powerfully and persuasively.
Oh look who else it is! This woman also spoke in favor of the Ohio bill to detransition all trasn youth.
Her SON has transitioned and is now an adult, and is living away from her.
She's mad at that so she's trying to stop youth transition.
You can see the previous speaker when she spoke earlier this year.
Her son has repeatedly stated that he is trans and is an adult and does not support this.
Ohio HB454 which would detransition all trans teens in Ohio, Rep Liston @Liston4Ohio asked the non-affirming parent of a trans son (now 18 and free) if she believes trans people exist.
She, like many others asked, does not. All of these witnesses deny trans people ENTIRELY. pic.twitter.com/qJUFS9cbTA
The ever amazing Cam Ogden just spoke, I didn't get a screenshot of her, but she pointed out how so many lies have been spoken and debunking them would take all the time in the world, and how the board should take more time to address and research the truth. @CamomileOgden 💜
I will clip the 2 or 3 best moments a little bit later this evening and probably post them in separate posts as well as to my TikTok.
Young republican speaking out in favor by saying that Biden "changed title IX by executive order" (All he did was interpret gender, as title IX law does not provide such an interpretation)
But its particularly rich to see Republicans complaining of executive actions.
The mother of a trans former student:
"How can you say that trans students should be included when you say they don't even exist?"
Public testimony is over – they will proceed to vote this evening.
Please tell the Ohio Board of Education to protect trans kids, not force teachers to misgender them, and not to ban them from bathrooms of their gender.
We are getting closer and closer to a vote that will determine the fate of so many trans students in Ohio…
Here we go…
They have moved to refer this motion back to committee (which would, for the time being, delay the motion for quite a while)
The vote on this motion has NOT happened yet. Lets hope this motion passes, if not then it will be outright voted on.
Sorry I want to be clear- they have MOVED to send it back to committee, but that motion must now be voted on. Its not a victory or defeat yet – lets see what happens with this vote.
"these kids exist… and there has been absolutely nothing said about what we can do for these kids."
– Member arguing to send this back to committee.
They are currently debating back and forth through parliamentary procedure and everything is kind of running into each other.
The Ohio Board of Education is completely trapped in a Roberts Rules loop.
We may get a vote from them in the next century.
THE OHIO BOARD OF EDUCATION HAS VOTED TO SEND THE PROPOSAL BACK TO COMMITTEE!
They have decided not, at this time, to force teachers to misgender their trans students and ban them from bathrooms.
Thank ALL the activists who did this.
The vote to send back to committee was done 12-7.
I have clips coming of many moments today. Thank you all for following along.
Next stop – Virginia, where we must defeat a very similar proposal.
Scottie's Playtime 
