Health Issues Directory

Health Issues Directory

Cuts in Regulations

Cuts in Health Services and
Disqualifications

Faith Based Health Plans for
Federal Employees

Mad Cow Disease

Embryonic Stem Cell Research

U.S. Life Expectancy

September 15, 2009

NEW: A Special Americans
United Report:
How the Fundamentalist Political
Movement Focuses On Defeating Obama
Health-Care Proposals and Electing
Republicans To Congress and the White House

NEW: A Letter to God On Universal Health Care:

By Alice Ina Wonderland
September 2, 2009

Dear God, I need to let you know what’s
happening on earth in order to find out if it’s
what’s happening in heaven since they are both
supposed to be the same (Matthew 6:10). So
I want to know if you have an anti-universal-health-
care campaign going on in heaven too? And if you
do—why did Jesus spend so much time going
around healing the sick?

See and Hear Ted Kennedy

Revealing why he fought so hard to
achieve universal health care coverage.

Senate Passes Minors
Abortion Bill

Measure punishes those who help
girls cross state lines for procedure

A bill that would make it a crime to take a
pregnant girl across state lines for an abortion
without her parents' knowledge passed the
Senate Tuesday, but vast differences with
the House version stood between the
measure and President Bush's desk

New Abortion Laws
May Be on Horizon in Ohio
Eight proposals, including a total
ban, have been offered for debate
by Ohio legislators.
By Laura A. Bischoff

In Ohio, the debate over abortion — which
never quite cools — is heating up again. With
two new faces on the U.S. Supreme Court,
abortion opponents anticipate their best
opportunity in years to overturn the 33-year-
old Roe v. Wade decision that legalized
abortion. And the governor's seat is open.
Republican J. Kenneth Blackwell opposes
abortion in all instances, including if the life
of the mother is in danger.

Regulations Cut in Vital Health Issues

Bush Forces a Shift In Regulatory
Thrust Drops Protection Against TB

By Amy Goldstein and Sarah Cohen
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, August 15, 2004;

Tuberculosis had sneaked up again, reappearing
with alarming frequency across the United States.
The government began writing rules to protect 5
million people whose jobs put them in special
danger. Hospitals and homeless shelters, prisons
and drug treatment centers -- all would be required
to test their employees for TB, hand out breathing
masks and quarantine those with the disease. These
steps, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration
predicted, could prevent 25,000 infections a year
and 135 deaths.

Budget Cuts and Disqualifications in Vital Health Services

Prescription Errors Kill,
Injure Americans, Report Says

By Marc Kaufman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, July 20, 2006

At least 1.5 million Americans are sickened,
injured and killed each year by avoidable
errors in prescribing, dispensing and taking
medications, the influential Institute of
Medicine concludes in a major report
released today.

Judges Overturn Bush Bid
to Ease Pollution Rules
By MICHAEL JANOFSKY
March 17 — A federal appeals court on Friday
overturned a clean-air regulation issued by
the Bush administration that would have let
many power plants, refineries and factories
avoid installing costly new pollution controls
to help offset any increased emissions caused
by repairs and replacements of equipment.

Court Sides With States,
Activists on EPA Rule
Factories Can't Modernize Without
Upgrading Pollution Controls
By William Branigin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, March 17, 2006; 4:36 PM
A federal appeals court today blocked the
Environmental Protection Agency from
implementing a rule change that would have
allowed power plants and factories to modernize
without having to upgrade their pollution controls,
a change that the court said violated the Clean Air Act.

Abortion Rights in Latin America
For proof that criminalizing abortion doesn't
reduce abortion rates and only endangers
the lives of women, consider Latin America.

Report Details F.D.A. Rejection
of Next-Day Pill

By GARDINER HARRIS
WASHINGTON, Nov. 14 - Top federal drug
officials decided to reject an application to
allow over-the-counter sales of the morning-
after pill months before a government scientific
review of the application was completed,
according to accounts given to Congressional
investigators.

The Government Accountability Office, a
nonpartisan investigative arm of Congress,
concluded in a report released Monday that
the Food and Drug Administration's May 2004
rejection of the morning-after pill, or emergency
contraceptive, application was unusual in
several respects.

GAO Report Finds side-stepping of
procedures and objectivity in denying
morning-after-pill or emergency
contraceptive in the F.D.A.'s
rare and unusual process. PDF File

Bush Budget Calls for Cuts in Health
Services
By ROBERT PEAR

WASHINGTON, Feb. 4 - President Bush's budget
for 2006 cuts spending for a wide range of public
health programs, including several to protect the
nation against bioterrorist attacks and to respond
to medical emergencies, budget documents show.

Faced with constraints on spending caused by record
budget deficits and the demands of the war in Iraq,
administration officials said on Friday that they had
increased the budget for some health programs but
cut many others, including some that address urgent
health care needs.

Health Leaders Seek Consensus
Over Uninsured
By ROBERT PEAR
WASHINGTON, May 28 - At a time when
Congress has been torn by partisan battles,
24 ideologically disparate leaders representing
the health care industry, corporations and unions,
and conservative and liberal groups have been
meeting secretly for months to seek a consensus
on proposals to provide coverage for the growing
number of people with no health insurance.

Moralists at the Pharmacy

Scattered reports suggest that a growing number
of pharmacists around the country are refusing to
fill prescriptions for contraceptives or morning-after
birth control pills because of moral or religious
objections. Although the refusals are cast as important
matters of conscience for self-described "pro-life"
pharmacists, they have the pernicious effect of delaying,
and sometimes even denying, a woman's access to
medications that may be urgently needed. This is an
intolerable abuse of power by pharmacists who have
no business forcing their own moral or ethical views
onto customers who may not share them. Any pharmacist
who cannot dispense medicines lawfully prescribed by a
doctor should find another line of work.

Pharmacists' Rights at Front Of
New Debate
Because of Beliefs, Some Refuse To Fill
Birth Control Prescriptions

By Rob Stein
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, March 28, 2005

Some pharmacists across the country are
refusing to fill prescriptions for birth control and
morning-after pills, saying that dispensing the
medications violates their personal moral or
religious beliefs. The trend has opened a new
front in the nation's battle over reproductive rights,
sparking an intense debate over the competing
rights of pharmacists to refuse to participate in
something they consider repugnant and a woman's
right to get medications her doctor has prescribed.
It has also triggered pitched political battles in
statehouses across the nation as politicians seek
to pass laws either to protect pharmacists from
being penalized -- or force them to carry out
their duties.

Prescription for Injustice

By FLORENCE A. RUDERMAN
THE current push by some pharmacists
for a right not to fill certain prescriptions
awakens memories of 1954, when my father
was dying of cancer. I was a graduate student
in New York, but I returned to my home in New
Haven, Conn., to be with him. As the end drew
near, his suffering became intense, the pain harder
and harder to control. He was being cared for by
an extraordinary doctor: Seymour Lipsky, then
chief of hematology at Yale-New Haven Hospital.
Dr. Lipsky did not have a private practice, but he
had volunteered to take care of my father, telling
us to call him whenever we felt we needed him.
When we called, he came to the house.

Faith Based Health Plan for Federal Employees

U.S. Health Plans Include One
With Catholic Tenets
By MILT FREUDENHEIM

The Bush administration has broken new
ground in its "faith-based" initiative, this time
by offering federal employees a Catholic health
plan that specifically excludes payment for
contraceptives, abortion, sterilization and
artificial insemination.

The new plan, announced last week, combines
two White House priorities. It is part of a $1 billion
project seeking to involve religious organizations
in all types of federal social programs. At the same
time, the plan is a new form of coverage - a health
savings account combined with high-deductible
coverage - that is being promoted as a centerpiece
of President Bush's health care policy.

Mad Cow Disease: A History

A Roundup of Vital Information
About the U.S. Mad Cow Disease
Outbreak

A Brief Background of Mad Cow Disease

What About the Bush Political Response
to Mad Cow Disease?

U.S.D.A.'s Testing Problem

In the past seven months - ever since a case
of mad-cow disease was discovered in Washington
State - the United States Department of Agriculture
has been working hard to reduce the risk of the disease
spreading. It is slowly introducing restrictions on how the
most susceptible bovine tissues can be used, and it has
found money to begin developing a national animal-
identification system. But there are still gaps in the
department's efforts to guarantee a safe meat supply.

Official Tells of Investigation Into Mad
Cow Discrepancies
By DONALD G. McNEIL Jr.

The government has begun a criminal investigation
into whether documents were falsified in the lone
case of mad cow disease found in the United States,
the Agriculture Department's inspector general
said yesterday.

Eating Well
Warily Searching for Safer Beef
By MARIAN BURROS

The Department of Agriculture appears to have
been successful in convincing most Americans
that one mad cow does not an epidemic make.
People are not deserting their fast-food hamburgers
in droves. Nor did many people planning standing
rib roasts for Christmas dinner substitute turkey.

U.S. Imposes Stricter Safety
Rules for Preventing Mad Cow Disease
By DENISE GRADY

The secretary of agriculture imposed a broad set of
new rules yesterday to try to protect the nation's food
supply from mad cow disease, including banning the
use of sick "downer" cows and certain beef parts as
well as ordering speedier testing of suspect animals.

U.S. Scientist Says Anti-mad Cow
Measure Ignored
January 2, 2004
By Maggie Fox, Reuters

WASHINGTON — A U.S. scientist said Tuesday
a simple treatment combining high pressure with
heat could neutralize the proteins that cause mad
cow disease, but federal officials had shown little
interest in it.

For Cattle Industry, a Swift Response
Years in the Making
By GLEN JUSTICE

WASHINGTON, Dec. 31 — When word flashed to the
National Cattlemen's Beef Association last week that
the first case of mad cow disease in the United States
had been found on the West Coast, it was a red alert
for an industry that had spent years playing down
the threat.

Mad Cow in the USA
Why Additional Safeguards Must Be Added Very
Soon To Bolster Trade and Protect Health
By ANITA RAMASASTRY

Tuesday, Dec. 30, 2003

On December 23, the U.S. Department of Agriculture
(USDA) announced a presumptive diagnosis of bovine
spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) -- also known as Mad
Cow disease -- in an adult Holstein dairy cow from
Washington.

Bush Embraces Some Regulations as
Election Approaches
By DAVID E. SANGER

CRAWFORD, Tex., Dec. 30 — The Bush administration's
twin moves on Tuesday to ban the dietary supplement
ephedra and the sale of meat from cows that appear to
be sick on the way to the slaughterhouse underscores a
simple White House maxim these days: with an election
approaching, even a president who came to office assailing
government regulation cannot do too much to protect
consumers.

The Cow Jumped Over the U.S.D.A.
By ERIC SCHLOSSER

Lisa Harrison has worked tirelessly the last two weeks to
spread the message that bovine spongiform encephalopathy,
or mad cow disease, is not a risk to American consumers.
As spokeswoman for Agriculture Secretary Ann M. Veneman,
Ms. Harrison has helped guide news coverage of the mad cow
crisis, issuing statements, managing press conferences and
reassuring the world that American beef is safe.

Mad Cow Case Clouds Bush's Political
Outlook
Report of Disease Colors Spurt of Good News
With a Touch of Uncertainty By Mike Allen

CRAWFORD, Tex., Dec. 27 -- The discovery of mad
cow disease in the United States could shift the political
landscape at the start of President Bush's reelection
year by injecting uncertainty into a fragile economy and
drawing scrutiny to his handling of an industry that was
a financial and political ally in the last election, analysts
in both parties said yesterday.

As Probe of Infected Cow Spreads,
So Does Worry
By Shankar Vedantam and Blaine Harden
Washington Post Staff Writers
Saturday, December 27, 2003;

Cattle in other states may have eaten the same
contaminated feed that infected a Washington state
Holstein with mad cow disease, but investigators
who want to track the infection to its source are
being confounded by the lack of an organized system
that would lead them to the herd where the cow was
born, officials said yesterday.

Embryonic Stem Cell Research

Bush Would Veto Stem-cell
Bill, Rove Says
Legislation on research funding passed
House, likely to pass Senate
DENVER - President Bush will probably issue his
first veto if the Senate approves a bill to expand
federal funding of embryonic stem-cell research,
White House aide Karl Rove told a newspaper’s
editorial board.

Excommunication Is Sought for
Stem Cell Researchers
By ELISABETH ROSENTHAL

Scientists who engage in stem cell research
using human embryos should be subject to
excommunication from the Roman Catholic
Church, according to a senior Vatican official.

Bush and the Blastocysts
Or How to Cure the Snowflake Baby
Propaganda

By Pamela A. Kraemer
Did you get to hear or read any of the comments
our President is parading around the "snowflake"
baby? It's like a carnival midway freak show.

Not on Faith Alone
By MARIO M. CUOMO
Published: June 20, 2005

THERE is a way to get beyond the religious
morass created by President Bush's position
on embryonic stem cells.

Most scientists agree that while adult stem
cells offer hope of a cure for some of the
cruelest diseases and injuries, embryonic
stem cells hold even greater and surer promise.
As a result, while most scientists welcomed
Mr. Bush's August 2001 offer of government
resources to advance adult stem cell research,
they and millions of other Americans were sorely
disappointed by his refusal to consider retrieving
any stem cells from the many thousands of unused
embryos awaiting destruction.

U.S. Life Expectancy

U.S. life expectancy may drop
Report projects startling decline
within next 50 years

The Associated Press
Udated: 6:46 p.m. ET March 16, 2005

CHICAGO - U.S. life expectancy will fall dramatically
in coming years because of obesity, a startling shift
in a long-running trend toward longer lives, researchers
contend in a report published Thursday.

Send a letter
to the editor
about this Directory
Join the Yurica Report Mailing List

Name:
Email:
Subscribe
Unsubscribe

Back to The Yurica Report Home Page

Copyright © 2005 Yurica Report. All rights reserved.