China forcefully harvests organs from detainees, tribunal concludes

Via: sandy-2021492  •  News & Politics  •  5 Comments  •  2 Likes  •  7 years ago

“China's organ transplant trade is worth $1 billion a year, according to a tribunal.”

The organs of members of marginalized groups detained in Chinese prison camps are being forcefully harvested — sometimes when patients are still alive, an international tribunal sitting in London has concluded. Some of the more than 1.5 million detainees in Chinese prison camps are being...

The Worst Patients in the World

Via: sandy-2021492  •  News & Politics  •  25 Comments  •  6 Likes  •  7 years ago

“Americans are hypochondriacs, yet we skip our checkups. We demand drugs we don’t need, and fail to take the ones we do. No wonder the U.S. leads...”

For years, the United States’ high health-care costs and poor outcomes have provoked hand-wringing, and rightly so: Every other high-income country in the world spends less than America does as a share of GDP, and surpasses us in most key health outcomes. Recriminations tend to focus on how...

I Didn’t Kill My Baby

Via: sandy-2021492  •  Op/Ed  •  15 Comments  •  3 Likes  •  7 years ago

“When he was born, my husband at the time and I knew he couldn’t survive. That doesn’t make me a murderer.”

On Feb. 5, during the State of the Union address, President Trump implied that women like me executed our babies after birth. On Tuesday, he repeated that same lie on Twitter after the nonsensical Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Act failed to gain enough votes in the Senate to move forward. The...

How a 3 a.m. bar fight left a WV delegate blind

Via: sandy-2021492  •  News & Politics  •  9 Comments  •  7 years ago

More than 12 years after Eric Porterfield lost his vision in a parking lot brawl, his legal battle against the bar where it happened continues. Porterfield, now a Republican member of the House of Delegates from Mercer County, started that night in 2006 at a strip club in Harvey,...

Woman who called Michelle Obama an 'ape' defrauded FEMA of $18K

Via: sandy-2021492  •  News & Politics  •  10 Comments  •  7 years ago

The West Virginia woman who made national headlines in 2016 when she was placed on leave from a county development organization over a demeaning Facebook post about then-first lady Michelle Obama has now pleaded guilty to defrauding the Federal Emergency Management Agency out of thousands of...

Outlawing Late Abortion Seemed Like Such a Reasonable Idea Until I Needed One Myself

Via: sandy-2021492  •  News & Politics  •  19 Comments  •  7 years ago

Before I found myself in this dire position, I never understood the need for third trimester abortion. In my naivety, I did not realize that extreme actions are inspired by extreme circumstances. Good people in hard times must do hard things. Government interference, like abortion bans, makes...

W.Va. mom says her daughter was bullied after they balked at Bible classes in public school

Via: sandy-2021492  •  News & Politics  •  208 Comments  •  1 Like  •  7 years ago  •  LOCKED

The chill set in not long after word got out that Elizabeth Deal’s little girl was not taking the Bible class at her West Virginia public grammar school. Her daughter, Jessica Roe, then a first-grader, felt it first. When her teacher and the pastor who ran that class realized they didn’t...

An Epidemic Is Killing Thousands Of Coal Miners. Regulators Could Have Stopped It.

Via: sandy-2021492  •  News & Politics  •  1 Comments  •  8 years ago

A multiyear investigation by NPR and FRONTLINE found that Smith and Kelly are part of a tragic and recently discovered outbreak of the advanced stage of black lung disease, known as complicated black lung or progressive massive fibrosis. A federal monitoring program reported just 99 cases of...

Purdue’s secret OxyContin papers should be released, appeals court rules

Via: sandy-2021492  •  News & Politics  •  36 Comments  •  8 years ago

A Kentucky appeals court on Friday upheld a judge’s ruling ordering the release of secret records about Purdue Pharma’s marketing of the powerful prescription opioid OxyContin, which has been blamed for helping to seed today’s opioid addiction epidemic.

Conservative Pastor: ‘God Is Burning Down California’ Because The Gays

Via: sandy-2021492  •  Religion & Ethics  •  22 Comments  •  8 years ago

““God is burning down California” because the citizens of the state “legitimize the sin of homosexuality” according to controversial conservative...”

Swanson is a radical anti-LGBTQ radio host and conservative darling beloved by such GOP politicians as Ted Cruz. Commenting on the wildfires raging in California, Swanson, speaking on his “Generations” radio program, claimed that the wildfires are God’s punishment on the state for its years of...