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Category: Health

These male politicians are pushing for women who receive abortions to be punished with prison time

These male politicians are pushing for women who receive abortions to be punished with prison time

CNN reports: A businessman turned state representative from rural Oil City, Louisiana, and a Baptist pastor banded together earlier this year on a radical mission. They were adamant that a woman who receives an abortion should receive the same criminal consequences as one who drowns her baby. Under a bill they promoted, pregnant people could face murder charges even if they were raped or doctors determined the procedure was needed to save their own life. Doctors who attempted to help…

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Graham’s abortion ban stuns Senate GOP

Graham’s abortion ban stuns Senate GOP

Politico reports: Lindsey Graham’s anti-abortion legislation once unified the Republican Party. The 15-week abortion ban he pitched Tuesday had the exact opposite effect. The South Carolina senator chose a uniquely tense moment to unveil his party’s first bill limiting abortion access since this summer’s watershed reversal of Roe v. Wade. It was designed as a nod to anti-abortion activists who have never felt more emboldened. Yet Graham’s bill also attempted to skate past a Republican Party that’s divided over whether…

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Brain fog: One of long Covid’s worst symptoms is also its most misunderstood

Brain fog: One of long Covid’s worst symptoms is also its most misunderstood

Ed Yong writes: On March 25, 2020, Hannah Davis was texting with two friends when she realized that she couldn’t understand one of their messages. In hindsight, that was the first sign that she had COVID-19. It was also her first experience with the phenomenon known as “brain fog,” and the moment when her old life contracted into her current one. She once worked in artificial intelligence and analyzed complex systems without hesitation, but now “runs into a mental wall”…

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Once a ‘quintessential pro-life Texan,’ she had to flee her home state to get an abortion

Once a ‘quintessential pro-life Texan,’ she had to flee her home state to get an abortion

CNN reports: Nine years ago, Cade DeSpain messaged a friend about a cute girl he saw on her Facebook feed. The friend introduced him to Kailee Lingo, her sorority sister at Tarleton State University in Stephenville, Texas. Kailee remembers that when she and Cade met, it was “a connection at first sight.” A month after college graduation, Kailee and Cade married in Marble Falls, Texas. They’re both proud to be native Texans: Kailee’s family has lived there for generations, and…

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What you need to know about the new omicron booster shots

What you need to know about the new omicron booster shots

Science News reports: Revamped COVID-19 vaccines are poised to do battle with the super-contagious omicron variant. On September 1, U.S. health officials greenlit the first major update of the mRNA-based shots, reformulated to recognize both the original version of SARS-CoV-2 and the recently circulating versions of omicron. Those mRNA vaccine boosters could start going into arms within days. “They can help restore protection that has waned since previous vaccination and were designed to provide broader protection against newer variants,” Rochelle…

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The pandemic erased two decades of progress in math and reading

The pandemic erased two decades of progress in math and reading

The New York Times reports: National test results released on Thursday showed in stark terms the pandemic’s devastating effects on American schoolchildren, with the performance of 9-year-olds in math and reading dropping to the levels from two decades ago. This year, for the first time since the National Assessment of Educational Progress tests began tracking student achievement in the 1970s, 9-year-olds lost ground in math, and scores in reading fell by the largest margin in more than 30 years. The…

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To ease the world food crisis, focus resources on women and girls

To ease the world food crisis, focus resources on women and girls

Elizabeth Bryan, Claudia Ringler, and Nicole Lefore write: In the wake of Russia’s war on Ukraine, the global community is scrambling. The World Bank, the G7 group of the world’s largest developed economies, the European Union and the United States have collectively pledged more than US$40 billion to avert food and humanitarian crises (see Supplementary information). Yet these massive funds are unlikely to get women and girls the help they need. The investments might even exacerbate inequalities. Crises hit women…

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U.S. life expectancy falls again in ‘historic’ setback

U.S. life expectancy falls again in ‘historic’ setback

The New York Times reports: The average life expectancy of Americans fell precipitously in 2020 and 2021, the sharpest two-year decline in nearly 100 years and a stark reminder of the toll exacted on the nation by the continuing coronavirus pandemic. In 2021, the average American could expect to live until the age of 76, federal health researchers reported on Wednesday. The figure represents a loss of almost three years since 2019, when Americans could expect to live, on average,…

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Bacteria’s immune sensors reveal a novel way to detect viruses

Bacteria’s immune sensors reveal a novel way to detect viruses

Annie Melchor writes: “All of the life forms on Earth have the same problem,” said Jonathan Kagan, an immunology researcher at Boston Children’s Hospital. “And that is dealing with infection.” Just as we worry about bacterial infections, bacteria are on the watch for the viruses called phages that infect them, and — like every organism across every kingdom of life — they have evolved an arsenal of molecular tools to fight infections. Large, complex creatures like humans can splurge on…

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Probing the mystery of Japan’s light Covid toll

Probing the mystery of Japan’s light Covid toll

Neil Seeman writes: In light of Japan’s decision last week to waive pre-departure COVID-19 tests for vaccinated inbound travelers, it is worthwhile to consider that its strong performance over the first two years of the pandemic may have had less to do with policy than with culture. In a study published this summer in the Canadian Medical Association Journal, Dr. Fahad Razak and colleagues at the University of Toronto examined COVID-19 outcomes in Canada, Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the…

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Climate change has already aggravated 58% of infectious diseases

Climate change has already aggravated 58% of infectious diseases

Eos reports: The consequences of climate change aren’t reserved for the oceans and atmosphere: Diseases have secured a larger presence in recent years thanks to global warming. In a sweeping analysis of more than 800 published studies, scientists from the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa (UHM) discovered climate change had exacerbated 58% of infectious diseases in certain documented instances. Although less common, climate warming also lessened 16% of infectious diseases. “We never imagined the magnitude of diseases impacted by climate…

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How to rest well

How to rest well

Alex Soojung-Kim Pang writes: Downtime is undervalued in today’s busy, always-on world. But for most of human history, rest – time in which we can recharge the mental and physical batteries we use while labouring – was prized as a gift. To Aristotle, work was drudgery and necessity; only in leisure could we cultivate our mental and moral abilities, and become better people. In The Sabbath (1951), Rabbi Abraham Heschel argued that, in Judaism, this day of rest was more…

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Why the defense of abortion in Kansas is so powerful

Why the defense of abortion in Kansas is so powerful

Sarah Smarsh writes: Lines of Kansas voters, resolute in the August sun and 100-degree heat, stretched beyond the doors of polling sites and wrapped around buildings on Tuesday to cast ballots in a primary election. A few suffered heat exhaustion. Firefighters passed out bottles of water. When polls closed at 7 p.m. Central time, many were still in line and legally entitled to get their turn. The Wichita Eagle reported that one Wichita woman cast the final vote at her…

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How abortion rights supporters won in conservative Kansas

How abortion rights supporters won in conservative Kansas

The New York Times reports: Going into Election Day, many observers believed the outcome of the referendum would be determined in increasingly Democratic areas like the Kansas City suburbs — that is, by whether enough voters turned out there to compensate for the very conservative lean of the rest of the state. But abortion opponents did surprisingly poorly even in the reddest places. Consider far western Kansas, a rural region along the Colorado border that votes overwhelmingly Republican. In Hamilton…

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Monkeypox is about to become the next public health failure

Monkeypox is about to become the next public health failure

Scott Gottlieb writes: When about 100 cases of ‌‌monkeypox had been confirmed or suspected in Europe‌ in May, it was clear the virus was spreading outside the areas where it was previously seen‌‌. Some on social media ‌‌suggested it might already be ‌spreading rapidly in communities in Europe and the ‌United States. These reports should have been a code red for federal infectious disease response. But it wasn’t until late June that the C‌enters for Disease Control and Prevention expanded…

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States opposed to abortion are more willing to let mothers and children die

States opposed to abortion are more willing to let mothers and children die

The New York Times reports: In Mississippi, which brought the abortion case that ended Roe v. Wade before the Supreme Court, Gov. Tate Reeves vowed that the state would now “take every step necessary to support mothers and children.” Today, however, Mississippi fares poorly on just about any measure of that goal. Its infant and maternal mortality rates are among the worst in the nation. State leaders have rejected the Affordable Care Act’s Medicaid expansion, leaving an estimated 43,000 women…

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