Explanation: This story discusses chelation,  the use of drugs to ‘bind’ heavy metals in the body so that they can be excreted, for the potential treatment of autism spectrum disorder in children. Chelation is based on the largely discredited view that mercury in vaccines triggers autism. Under this theory, removing heavy metals like mercury from the body will ‘cure’ autism. This story does a good job of presenting evidence about this harmful and potentially fatal practice. It successfully addresses the disease-mongering that could result around this emotionally charged issue. The story was well done but could have included a few more details such as the cost of various chelation treatment. Autism spectrum disorder is a devastating condition that affects thousands of children and their families each year and the number of cases continues to rise. There is no known cause or cure which has led to use of uNPRoven and potentially harmful treatment in children.

Costs are not mentioned. Our research indicates that 5 suppository treatments cost ~$119. A liquid formula that is taken as a few drop 3 times a day cost ~$46 for 100 mL. Costs are particularly important in unconventional therapies as they are largely out of pocket expenses. The story appropriately addresses the issue of benefits. Benefits are anecdotal and reported by parents. No credible, evidence-based benefits have been seen as noted in the story. This story correctly notes that chelation poses significant harms including depletion of essential minerals and death. The story is clear that there is very little evidence, if any, to support the use of chelators to treat autism spectrum disorder. As noted in the story, a review of scientific studies conducted by the Institute of Medicine has failed to show a link between between a vaccine containing a mercury based preservative, thimerosal, and autism spectrum disorder. The story also indicates that a controversial research study designed to test the potential use of chelation in children with autism spectrum disorder was canceled based upon the death of a child undergoing chelation and harmful effects on cognitive function seen with animal testing. This story highlights disease-mongering surrounding the unfounded and potentially dangerous use of chelators to treat or ‘cure’ autism spectrum disorder in children. The story provides information through interviews of several medical experts. All of the experts interviewed noted the lack of evidence and potential harms; however, their opinions are shared by the majority of the scientific community. The only approved drug, resperidone, could have been mentioned in the story. In addition, a variety of behavioral interventions are felt to be "best practice" for managing some of the manifestations of autism. This story correctly indicates that chelators are available in several forms including creams, capsules, suppositories and intravenous infusions of drugs. Chelation is thought to be used by thousands of parents on their children with autism spectrum disorder. The use of chelation to treat autism spectrum disorder is not new. Appropriately, the story does not try to imply that this is new, or that its use in autism is new. This story does not rely on a press release.


Global coronavirus death toll hits 150,000: Reuters tally.

Explanation: The number of deaths worldwide linked to the novel coronavirus reached 150,000 on Friday, according to a Reuters tally.

The first death came in the central Chinese city of Wuhan on Jan. 9. It took 83 days for the first 50,000 deaths to be recorded and just eight more for the toll to climb to 100,000. It took another eight days to go from 100,000 to 150,000. The death toll is still far short of the so-called Spanish flu, which began in 1918 and is estimated to have killed more than 20 million people by the time it petered out in 1920. The novel coronavirus is believed to have emerged in a Wuhan market where wild animals were sold before quickly spreading around the world. Much remains to be determined about it, scientists say, including just how lethal it is. In many countries, official data includes only deaths reported in hospitals, not those in homes or nursing homes. The United States has recorded the most confirmed cases of COVID-19, the respiratory illness caused by the coronavirus, with more than 680,000 detected infections. Spain is in second place with around 188,000 cases, followed by Italy. (Interactive graphic tracking global spread of coronavirus: tmsnrt.rs/3aIRuz7)


We check an assortment of claims about the 2017 total solar eclipse over North America.

Explanation: Eclipses only occur if the Moon is located within 0.5 degrees of the plane of the ecliptic, on a line that passes through the center of the Sun and the Earth. The Moon travels along an orbit that is inclined by 5 degrees to the ecliptic plane, so there are only two opportunities each month when it passes through the plane of the ecliptic. These points are called the ascending and descending nodes. Eclipses of the Sun only occur if new moon occurs when the Moon is near of one of these nodes. A similar argument explains why lunar eclipses do not occur every full moon at the node opposite the Sun from the Earth.

Science, astronomy, cell phone eclipse, cosmic rays

A total solar eclipse will be visible across swaths of North America on 21 August 2017, the first of its kind since 1974:  Was the eclipse calculated for the wrong year? One extremely bogus claim is that the date was miscalculated by one year because NASA failed to “carry the one”. NASA astrophysicist C. Alex Young says that is a popular hoax: I know people have checked their numbers more than once. I’ve heard that one — that’s a good one. Young, an associate director at the agency’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland, will host a live online broadcast tracking the eclipse across the U.S. (We should note that watching the livestream on a laptop or desktop computer will not cause eye damage.) Around 10 million people, he said, reside along “path to totality,” with more traveling to areas where it will be visible. According to NASA: The path of totality is a relatively thin ribbon, around 70 miles wide, that will cross the U.S. from West to East. The first point of contact will be at Lincoln Beach, Oregon at 9:05 a.m. PDT. Totality begins there at 10:16 a.m. PDT. Over the next hour and a half, it will cross through Oregon, Idaho, Wyoming, Montana, Nebraska, Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee, Georgia, and North and South Carolina. The total eclipse will end near Charleston, South Carolina at 2:48 p.m. EDT. From there the lunar shadow leaves the United States at 4:09 EDT. Its longest duration will be near Carbondale, Illinois, where the sun will be completely covered for two minutes and 40 seconds. The number of people who will be able to witness the eclipse, Young said, has fueled the interest in this particular event, as well as the connectivity and access that will allow more to follow it: So many people have access to what’s happening but also, everyone in the United States — all of North America — are gonna experience at least a partial eclipse. So many people have access to this online but will get to experience this in some sort or another. There hasn’t been anything that broad-reaching ever in terms of astronomical events like this. It really is unprecedented. Are eclipses harmful to your health? Only if you look directly at the sun before or after totality without the appropriate protective glasses. An eclipse is nothing more or less than the moon passing between the sun and the earth, casting a large shadow over the earth as the moon blocks the sun’s light. This allows the solar corona, which is luminous electromagnetic radiation that is always present but normally too faint to see, to be briefly visible in the form of a ghostly (sometimes green) light. It does not bring any new radiation into the planet’s atmosphere, and thus cannot spoil or poison food, affect a developing fetus, or accurately foretell any impending disaster. And no, eclipses don’t send expectant mothers into labor. Are eclipse glasses worthless? The National Aeronautics and Space Administration partnered with the American Astronomical Society to release a list of vendors and retail chains who are selling glasses that meet the 12312-2 international safety standard. Young told us that welder glasses can also be used, so long as they meet the same standard. Both groups have also released guides for watching the eclipse with either a pinhole camera or through optical projection (which can be done by using binoculars or a telescope, though at risk of damaging each device). Using regular sunglasses, however, would be worthless for the occasion — and even potentially harmful, said the agencies: While you’re enjoying a “comfortable” view of the “dim” Sun, solar infrared radiation could be cooking your retinas. And you wouldn’t know till later, because your retinas don’t have pain receptors. Only after the eclipse, when you notice blind spots or other vision problems, would you realize you’d made a catastrophic mistake. The same is true of ordinary camera filters, old X-rays, mobile phone camera lenses, and smoked glass; viewing the eclipse through them will offer no protection to your eyes, although you can take photographs of the eclipse with a camera or a cell phone — with a proper filter attached. However, even if you ordered the proper glasses, it’s important to keep in mind that not all eclipse viewing glasses are equal. On 12 August 2017, less than two weeks before the eclipse, retail giant Amazon issued a recall for certain counterfeit viewing glasses. They offered full refunds, but left people scrambling for eye safety. The move created a secondary panic when legitimate and verified eclipse viewing glasses were caught up in the recall as well: “Safety is among our highest priorities. Out of an abundance of caution, we have proactively reached out to customers and provided refunds for eclipse glasses that may not comply with industry standards. We want customers to buy with confidence anytime they make a purchase on Amazon.com and eclipse glasses sold on Amazon.com are required to comply with the relevant ISO standard,” the company said in a statement. Amazon said customers who did not receive an email purchased glasses that were safe to use. The company did not reveal how many glasses were recalled or how much money was refunded. Anyone who is concerned about their eclipse glasses but did not receive an email about the recall can reach out to Amazon customer service. Viewers don’t need to have one black side and one reflective side in order to be effective, despite what you may have heard, but special solar filters are essential to look at the event directly (until full totality) without frying your eyes. In their absence, or in the absence of an appropriately darkened welding filter (Shade 12 or above) optical projection or a homemade pinhole camera is the safest choice. Do eclipse glasses expire? NASA said that anyone who bought one of the recommended sets of glasses can use them indefinitely as long as they are not damaged: If your eclipse glasses or viewers are compliant with the ISO 12312-2 safety standard, you may look at the uneclipsed or partially eclipsed Sun through them for as long as you wish. Furthermore, if the filters aren’t scratched, punctured, or torn, you may reuse them indefinitely. Some glasses/viewers are printed with warnings stating that you shouldn’t look through them for more than 3 minutes at a time and that you should discard them if they are more than 3 years old. Such warnings are outdated and do not apply to eclipse viewers compliant with the ISO 12312-2 standard adopted in 2015. Can you watch the eclipse through your phone’s “selfie” mode? You can view the eclipse through your phone’s “selfie” mode so that you can watch it on your screen. That will spare your eyes, but be sure to make certain it won’t burn your phone’s photoreceptors; for example, Apple says iPhones and iPads are safe to point at the sun because the lens is so wide, meaning that the full force of the light the sun emits is relatively dim, but if you use a telephoto clip-on lens or something else to magnify the sun and its light, a filter is probably a good idea. Are pets in danger of eye damage if they are outside during the eclipse? While humans need to take precautions to guard their eyes, the consensus among experts is that pets are in no immediate danger. Author and veterinarian Dr. Jessica Vogelsang explained to us: It’s hard for me to criticize such a well-meaning warning, because there’s really no harm in following the advice to keep pets inside during the eclipse. It’s better to be too cautious than not cautious enough. But in the interest of offering a realistic risk assessment, the likelihood of a pet ruining their eyes the same way a human would during an eclipse is much lower- not because the damage would be any less were they to stare at the sun, but because from a behavior standpoint dogs and cats just don’t have any interest in doing so. We tend to extrapolate a lot of things from people to pets that just doesn’t bear out, and this is one of them. I’ve seen lots of warnings from the astronomy community and the human medical community about the theoretical dangers of pets and eclipses, but I’m not sure if any of them really know animal behavior all that well. It’s not like there’s a big outcry from the wildlife community to go chase down coyotes and hawks and bears and give them goggles either. While we in the veterinary community absolutely appreciate people being concerned about their pets’ well-being, this is a non-issue for us. Pet owners unsure of how their pet would react to the eclipse, she said, should keep them inside since “if nothing else they’ll avoid the chaos outside from all the partygoers.” Angela Speck, a co-chair of the AAS National Solar Eclipse Task Force, had the same advice for pet owners in a video NASA released on 21 June 2017: It’s no different than any other day. On a normal day, your pets don’t try to look at the sun and therefore don’t damage their eyes, so on this day they’re not gonna do it either. It is not a concern, letting them outside. All that’s happened is we’ve blocked out the sun, it’s not more dangerous. So I think that people who have pets want to think about that. I’m not going to worry about my cat. Young added, “The reality is that animals are smart enough not to look at the sun, even the partially eclipsed sun.” He did note, however, evidence that other animals such as whales and dolphins have observed eclipses once they begin, before avoiding the sun once they concluded. Will the eclipse cause earthquakes and damage infrastructure? Young refuted the notion that the eclipse would be responsible for any tremors or infrastructure damage, though he anticipated traffic increases for people coming or going from eclipse-centered gatherings, as well as a possible shortage of other necessities: I’ve been hearing reports that pretty much all the suppliers of porta potties have been completely tapped out and everything’s rented. I suspect there will a lot of people buying water and food so that’s gonna bring up the numbers quite a lot. There’s even a concern that it might become difficult to get gasoline. I don’t have any hard numbers, but it’s very possible that it could be an issue. For those outside the path of totality or who wish to spare their retinas, the eclipse can be viewed online at multiple web sites. Do revised maps show inexplicable deviations from the eclipse’s totality path? There have been no revisions to NASA’s map of where the solar eclipse can be viewed, nor are there any reported irregularities or strange deviations from the path of the shadow:  An interactive map can be viewed here. (As you can see, there are no strange jogs or veers.) Conspiracy theorists have also claimed that the eclipse would foreshadow the end of the world, or the appearance of Nibiru a fabricated “renegade planet” people have also said would destroy the Earth. Will NASA launch bacteria-filled balloons during the eclipse? Yes, kind of. More than fifty high-altitude balloons will be released across the United States for the Eclipse Ballooning Project, which is led by Montana State University’s Angela Des Jardins. The balloons will live-stream the event from high altitudes: Students will conduct high altitude balloon (HAB) flights from around 25 locations across the 8/21/2017 total eclipse path, from Oregon to South Carolina, sending live video and images from near space to the NASA website. While the cost of conducting HAB flights is low, there are  interesting challenges presented by this highly collaborative effort. These challenges are broad – technical, political, administrative – and present an amazing hands-on learning opportunity for the students who participate. Several potentially long lasting partnerships with other federal agencies and with industry will develop. Several partnerships, including with ATA Aerospace, which conducted the Red Bull Stratos flight, are already in progress. In addition to the primary camera payloads that students will build to provide footage of the moon’s shadow on Earth and the darkened sun, each team will fly a secondary payload of their choice. Links to information and pictures about each team’s secondary payload will be included online. In a second effort in collaboration with NOAA, dozens radiosonde balloons will be flown to gather important science data on eclipse stratospheric temperature and ozone fluctuations. Some of the balloons will carry metal tags coated with a type of bacteria called Paenibacillus xerothermodurans, which is an especially hardy life form found in the soil outside the Kennedy Space Center in 1973 and isolated in NASA clean rooms, so that their resilience in the upper layers of the atmosphere can be tested when the balloons return to the ground. Because of the specific conditions in the stratosphere that are affected by the eclipse — low temperatures, lower oxygen levels, and high levels of ultraviolet radiation — the experiment will potentially offer inside into how bacteria might behave on Mars. Students will track the balloons using GPS tags, then and mail the tags back to NASA once they find them. (Despite rumors and speculation, the bacteria is not harmful to humans or the environment.) Are people selling tickets to view the eclipse? Yes. In some areas, observatories and event planners are offering tickets to specific viewing areas and festivals, particularly along the “totality path”. However, the eclipse will be above most of North America, so there is no need to buy a ticket unless you feel like paying to share the experience with like-minded strangers. Even if you do, though, most of the events appear to have sold out fairly quickly. Will a group of coal industry people be protesting the eclipse? A group of people purporting to be associated with the coal industry have put out a press release on 11 August 2017, saying that they plan to hold a protest in the western Kentucky town of Hopkinsville (which has temporarily rebranded itself as Eclipseville, or the “point of greatest eclipse”) in order to bring attention to how important their industry is, and how it has been mistreated by the “fake news” media:  Kentuckians for Coal is an ad-hoc coalition of miners, union officials, family members and coal users created to defend the Kentucky coal industry against encroachment from renewable energy industries and from economic development initiatives aimed at lessening America’s dependence on coal. Kentuckians for Coal stands against the eclipse and those who worship it. The protest is scheduled for high noon on Monday, August 21, 2017, in front of the offices of the Kentucky New Era newspaper at 1618 E. 9th Street, Hopkinsville, just as the eclipse begins. The “totality”–the complete blocking of the Sun by the Moon–will start at 1:24:39 and will last 2 minutes and 40 seconds. The protesters chose the New Era office location because the newspaper and other fake-news media have been over-hyping the eclipse because of its potential to boost local economic development, while ignoring the importance of the coal industry. The story has been picked up by news organizations and blogs as legitimate, but we have found several reasons to be tremendously skeptical. For example, the press release appears to have been written with tongue lodged firmly in cheek: Hopkinsville, with a population of 33,000, has two other great claims to fame. One is as the birthplace of the world-renowned psychic Edgar Cayce. He made his home in Hopkinsville, and died there in 1945, after predicting the date of his own death. The other is the notoriously pagan annual celebration of extra-terrestrials, which commemorates a terrifying landing by space aliens in 1955, 62 years ago to the day, known as the Little Green Men Festival. When more than 250,000 people descend on the town for four days in August, including busloads of Amish from Pennsylvania and rumored Arab royalty, hucksters will peddle overpriced souvenirs as area hotels jack up their room rates by 400%; gas stations run out of gas; and cell phone service crashes due to demand. Traffic jams, a run on available food, an invasion of prostitutes, and rowdy crowds will test the patience of both local residents and the extra law enforcement brought in to maintain order. In addition, there is the serious threat to spectators’ eyesight if they look at the sun without special eclipse-viewing glasses. Secondly, there appears to be no Joseph Calvin (no matter his rank) living in Hopkinsville, and no one has responded to a voice mail message we left at the number supplied in the release. Finally, as of 2015, there are no more union coal miners working anywhere in the state of Kentucky. Do personal electronics such as cellphones present a danger due to “cosmic rays,” “gamma rays,” or “cosmic gamma rays”? Among rumors spreading on social media about the solar eclipse were ones that involved the putative danger posed by cell phones on the day of the event: I heard something about comic rays and about not being able to use our phones during 12:30 p.m to 3:30 a.m However, the claim circulated for years prior to the eclipse and still made “no scientific sense whatsoever.” Does an eclipse happen only during the full moon, new moon, or doesn’t it matter? According to NASA, eclipses can take place during a new moon, under certain circumstances:


Facebook post Says Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte said, “We have lost control, we have killed the epidemic physically and mentally. Can’t understand what more we can do, all solutions are exhausted on ground. Our only hope remains up in the Sky, God rescue your people.”

Explanation: The quote attributed to Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte is fabricated. The image accompanying the post shows the president of Brazil, not the Italian prime minister.

Facebook Fact-checks, Coronavirus, Facebook posts,

Italy has reported the most deaths in the world related to the coronavirus and doctors in the country report a dire situation amid an overwhelmed medical system. But we found no public record of Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte saying of the situation "we have lost control" and "God rescue your people," contrary to the claim of a Facebook post. "We have lost control, we have killed the epidemic physically and mentally. Can’t understand what more we can do, all solutions are exhausted on ground. Our only hope remains up in the Sky, God rescue your people," said a Facebook post from March 22. The post includes emojis of crying faces and Italian flags along with a picture of a man with tears rolling down his face, a microphone near his lips. The post implies the picture is of the Italian prime minister crying. It is not. The man in the picture is Brazil President Jair Bolsonaro. The image is from December 2019 and was taken at an event unrelated to the coronavirus. It shows Bolsonaro crying when he spoke about being stabbed in 2018 during his election campaign, according to a Brazilian website, poder360.com. In a March 17 Twitter thread, Conte said the country has faced a thousand difficulties in the past, including world wars and a fascist regime, but has endured them with heads held high. Alluding to the coronavirus pandemic, he said the country was facing a new test and would defeat the invisible enemy. His tweets reflect a different tone than the message of defeat we see in the Facebook quote. We searched for the quote attributed to Conte using Nexis news archives and online search engines but found no reporting or government statement indicating he said it. We rate this !


GOP senators from NC come out against Trump EPA nominee.

Explanation: North Carolina’s two Republican senators said Wednesday they oppose President Donald Trump’s pick to oversee chemical safety at the Environmental Protection Agency, putting his nomination at serious risk.

Richard Burr, North Carolina, Politics, Scott Pruitt, North America, Environment, Business, Thom Tillis, Donald Trump, Pollution

Senators Richard Burr and Thom Tillis issued statements saying they will vote against Michael L. Dourson to serve as head of EPA’s Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention. Environmentalists and Senate Democrats have vehemently opposed Dourson, a toxicologist with close ties to the chemical industry. That means only one more Republican “no” vote would likely be needed to torpedo his nomination. The White House and EPA did not respond to requests for comment Wednesday evening. Despite his lack of Senate confirmation, Dourson has already been working at the agency as a senior adviser to EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt. The Associated Press reported in September that Dourson has for years accepted payments for criticizing studies that raised concerns about the safety of his clients’ products, according to a review of financial records and his published work. Past corporate clients of Dourson and of a research group he ran include Dow Chemical Co., Koch Industries Inc. and Chevron Corp. His research has also been underwritten by industry trade and lobbying groups representing the makers of plastics, pesticides, processed foods and cigarettes. Burr and Tillis, both of whom are considered reliably pro-business conservatives, cited Dourson’s past work and worries among their home-state constituents about tainted drinking water in opposing his nomination. “Over the last several weeks, Senator Tillis has done his due diligence in reviewing Mr. Dourson’s body of work,” said statement said. “Senator Tillis still has serious concerns about his record and cannot support his nomination.” Marine veterans and their families blame decades-old contamination of wells at a North Carolina base with solvents and dry-cleaning chemicals for infant deaths and serious health problems that include cancer. More recently, concerns have been raised about undisclosed discharges of chemicals used to manufacture Teflon and GoreTex into the Cape Fear River, a source of municipal drinking water for Wilmington and other southeastern North Carolina communities. Dourson worked at the EPA for more than a decade, leaving in 1994 as the manager at a lab that assessed the health risks of exposure to chemicals. The following year, he founded Toxicology Excellence for Risk Assessment, a private toxicity evaluation nonprofit organization that tests chemicals and produces reports on which chemicals are hazardous in what quantities. Dourson’s views toward industry are consistent with others Trump has selected as top federal regulators. Among them is EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt, who in March overruled the findings of his agency’s own scientists to reverse an effort to ban chlorpyrifos, one of the nation’s most widely used pesticides. Court records show Dourson and his work have often been called on when his corporate clients are seeking to fend off lawsuits. DuPont was accused of polluting a West Virginia town with Perfluorooctanoic acid, or PFOA, a chemical that the company’s internal tests had long ago concluded were toxic. Corporate officials discussed hiring Dourson as part of a strategy to defend themselves. Dourson led a team that found in 2002 that PFOA levels up to 150 parts per billion were safe, a level higher than was found in testing of 188 private wells and springs. That was also well above the 1 part per billion Dupont’s own scientists had concluded could be considered safe years before. The EPA now says that only 70 parts per trillion of PFOA are acceptable — or only 0.05 percent of what Dourson’s team said was safe. DuPont and a former subsidiary, Chemours Co., later paid $761 million to settle 3,550 lawsuits stemming from its use of the chemical. Chemours is the company whose spills of a chemical called GenX, a replacement for PFOA, are now at issue in North Carolina’s Cape Fear River. “I will not be supporting the nomination of Michael Dourson,” said Burr, the state’s senior senator. “With his record and our state’s history of contamination at Camp Lejeune as well as the current GenX water issues in Wilmington, I am not confident he is the best choice for our country.” The stand was quickly praised by environmental advocacy groups that rarely find common ground with the two Tarheel Republicans. “No one who has spent decades arguing on behalf of the chemical industry for weaker safety standards should be charged with reviewing chemicals for the EPA,” said Scott Faber, a senior vice president for government affairs at the Environmental Working Group. “It would be like putting an arsonist in charge of the fire department.” ___ Follow Associated Press environmental reporter Michael Biesecker at http://twitter.com/mbieseck


The death from influenza of eight mostly vaccinated people over 65 in California's Santa Barbara County during the 2017-2018 flu season proves that you shouldn’t get the flu shot.

Explanation: The fact is, unless you belong to a class of immunocompromised individuals, the flu shot is extremely safe but its effectiveness does vary year to year. Even in its least effective years, though, influenza immunization has been shown to reduce significantly the incidence of the virus at the population level, which ultimately means there will be fewer opportunities for someone to infect, as an example, eight Santa Barbara County residents.

Medical, antivax, antivaxer, erin elizabeth

On 12 January 2018, Erin Elizabeth of Health Nut News posted what was, in essence, a regurgitation of a factual article from the Santa Barbara Independent discussing how virulent this year’s flu season is shaping up to be: Eight Santa Barbara County residents have died from the flu in the past two weeks alone. By contrast, only three residents died throughout last year’s entire flu season, which typically runs from October to April. All eight people were ages 65 or older. […] “Our numbers are in line with statewide numbers, and they’re definitely cause for concern,” [public health official Charity Dean said]. Dean attributed this year’s impact to a strain of flu — H3N2 — that’s particularly resistant to vaccination. According to the Center for Disease Control, vaccines have been effective at knocking this strain out only 32 percent of the time. But studies from Australia — where the flu season runs about six months ahead of the United States and Europe — indicates the vaccine’s effectiveness could be even more limited than that, only ten percent. In keeping with her website’s primary modus operandi, Elizabeth uses these tragic deaths to push her own flawed political argument. Her article (bearing the headline “8 Die of ‘Flu’ in 2 Weeks in Santa Barbara. 7 Had Their Flu Shot”) appears to cast doubt on the very existence of influenza, speciously repurposing the story as evidence that people shouldn’t get the flu vaccine: This year’s strain of flu, H3N2, has been knocking people out — hard. But you don’t need a flu shot that’s only 10 percent effective and comes with a host of potential problems. Instead, you need to take care of your body (I’m not a doctor and not trying to tell you what to do) by getting sunlight or taking Vitamin D, drink plenty of water, manage your stress level, and eat plenty of whole foods. Half-hearted disclaimer aside, Elizabeth attempts to make or allude to two medically dubious points while offering her own vitamin D-based treatment plan: The Flu Vaccine Is Ineffective, So Why Bother? The effectiveness of the flu vaccine, as well as the strains it covers, varies year to year depending on — among other things — how well researchers are able to predict which strains will be the most virulent each season. That selection is made each year primarily by the World Health Organization Global Influenza Surveillance Network (WHO GISN) in collaboration with research centers all around the world. How well matched their work is to the strains that become problematic each flu season is a primary driver of the vaccine’s effectiveness. As referenced by Elizabeth, data from Australia had suggested that the 2017-2018 influenza season’s most virulent strain was H3N2. The season’s flu shot did include that strain, however, so a mismatch is not likely the issue; according to an increasing body of research, the issue may be with the strain itself. H3N2 is more difficult to vaccinate against because it can mutate more rapidly during the vaccine production process and as a result, produce antibodies that do not actually impart immunity against the form of H3N2 to which humans are susceptible. In a 4 January 2018 article in the Journal of the American Medical Association, scientists have suggested that this year’s prevalence of H3N2 could be related to this fact. Despite the variable effectiveness of annual flu shots — which have never claimed to provide 100 percent certainty of immunity against various strains of the flu — doctors and scientists (even the ones writing about its ineffectiveness against H3N2) still strongly recommend getting the shot. Aaron Carroll, a professor of pediatrics at Indiana University School of Medicine, argued in an 11 January 2018 New York Times piece that even an ineffective vaccine year can provide tangible benefits, save lives, and reduce hospital visits and deaths: Let’s say that this year’s flu vaccine is even worse than we think. Maybe the absolute risk reduction will be as low as 1 percentage point, making the [number of people needed to treat to get a result, a metric known as N.T.T.] 100. That’s still not that bad. Even at an N.N.T. of 100, for every 100 people who get a flu shot, one fewer will get the flu. That’s a pretty low N.N.T. compared with many other treatments that health experts recommend every day. Further, a […] review published in 2016 showed that the N.N.T. in children 6 years old or younger to prevent one flu case was just six — an astonishing payoff in medical terms. It has even been shown to be effective in preventing death in children from flu-related causes.The negatives of a flu shot are almost nonexistent, and significant side effects are very rare. Even in an ineffective year, the benefits greatly outweigh the harms. The Flu Vaccine Will Make You More Susceptible to the Flu and Other Viruses Next Year The flu vaccine has been the subject of a number of either completely or mostly incorrect claims made about its safety, which we have previously reviewed in detail. Here Elizabeth adds to that list with a new claim, made in the form of a link to a YouTube video featuring anti-vaccine activist, Natural News contributor and former nephrologist Suzanne Humphries in which she claims that “plenty” of medical literature demonstrates that a flu shot increases your risk of getting the flu or other respiratory diseases in following years. This is a stretch. One small-scale study published in 2012 found an increased risk of “virologically-confirmed non-influenza infections,” arguing that “being protected against influenza, [flu shot] recipients may lack temporary non-specific immunity that protected against other respiratory viruses.” No other studies have replicated this result (though many have tried), and a number of larger-scale studies have, in fact, found no evidence that this is the case. Elizabeth’s effort to turn the tragic deaths of eight senior citizens from the flu into an argument against influenza inoculation rests only on the premise that there is a significant risk to getting the flu shot in the first place. She has provided no credible evidence to support that claim because no credible evidence exists. Instead, she uses the testimony of someone who once provided a biblical rationale for avoiding vaccines to make her argument.


On whether Barack Obama was born in the United States.

Explanation: Full Flop: Donald Trump abandons Barack Obama birther conspiracy

National, Obama Birth Certificate, Donald Trump,

Donald Trump, who led a years-long movement to prove President Barack Obama was born in Kenya and thus ineligible to be president, abandoned that position in a speech in Washington Sept. 16, 2016. "Hillary Clinton and her campaign of 2008 started the birther controversy," Trump said. "I finished it. I finished it. You know what I mean. President Barack Obama was born in the United States. Period. Now we all want to get back to making America strong and great again." At PolitiFact, our Flip-O-Meter judges whether someone has been consistent on an issue. The rating is not making a value judgment. Indeed, voters often like politicians who are flexible and have the ability to compromise or adapt their positions to the wishes of constituents. Still, accusations of shifting positions are so common in politics that it is valuable to have us provide an analysis of a shift and rate the amount of change. Trump previously took credit for Obama releasing his long-form birth certificate and pledged to donate $5 million to charity if Obama released his passport records. "A book publisher came out three days ago and said that in his written synopsis of his book, he said he was born in Kenya and raised in Indonesia. His mother never spent a day in the hospital," Trump said in 2012. "His grandmother in Kenya said, 'Oh no, he was born in Kenya and I was there and I witnessed the birth.' Now, she's on tape and I think that tape's going to be produced fairly soon ...The grandmother in Kenya is on record saying he was born in Kenya," Trump said, incorrectly, in 2011. Trump made an identical false claim in a 2011 Today show interview: "His grandmother in Kenya said he was born in Kenya and she was there and witnessed the birth, okay?" In 2015, he dodged a question of where Obama was born in an interview with CNN’s Anderson Cooper. When Cooper asked directly if Trump believed Obama was born in the United States, Trump responded, "I don't know." "I really don't know. I mean, I don't know why he wouldn't release his records. But you know, honestly, I don't want to get in it," Trump said. "I don’t talk about that anymore," Trump told MSNBC’s Chris Matthews in December 2015. He said "he didn’t want to answer the question." As recently as Sept. 15, 2016, Trump would not acknowledge Obama’s birthplace, declining to address the matter when asked by the Washington Post, according to the Associated Press. "I’ll answer that question at the right time," Trump said. "I just don’t want to answer it yet." He talked more about it on Sept. 16, 2016, switching his long-held position.


Facebook post Says the governors of Michigan, New York and Nevada “have issued orders banning the prescription of hydroxychloroquine to patients with COVID-19.”

Explanation: New York and Nevada have restricted access to chloroquine prescriptions to avoid stockpiling of the drug. There are exemptions for clinical trials and patients hospitalized with COVID-19. Michigan has not taken any regulatory action related to chloroquine. Instead, it has asked prescribers to not give the drug to potential stockpilers.

Public Health, Facebook Fact-checks, Coronavirus, Facebook posts,

Facebook pages and groups are promoting misleading information about several states’ decisions to restrict access to a malaria drug that could be used to treat COVID-19. One post, published March 29 in a group called "Keep America great Trump Pence 2020," claims that three Democratic governors have "issued orders banning the prescription of hydroxychloroquine to patients with COVID-19." The post includes photos of Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo and Nevada Gov. Steve Sisolak. "For a drug deemed safe by doctors and has a history of safely treating malaria for the last 40-50 years," reads a caption on the post. "So now ask yourself...who is the enemy." The photo collage also asserts that the governors are "threatening the licenses of doctors and pharmacist(s)." That’s similar to a claim made in a Facebook post published by Trending Politics, a conservative opinion website, on March 27. "The Democrat Governor of Michigan along with other Democrat governors are THREATENING doctors who prescribe the promising drug Chloroquine to Coronavirus patients," reads text on an image of Whitmer. The posts were flagged as part of Facebook’s efforts to combat  news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Facebook.) Collectively, they’ve been shared thousands of times. (Screenshot from Facebook) Since President Donald Trump said during a March 19 press briefing that chloroquine could potentially be used to treat COVID-19, several states have restricted access to the malaria drug to prevent stockpiling — including New York and Nevada. But neither of those orders bans the use of chloroquine outright, and Michigan has not taken formal action to restrict access to the drug. New York and Nevada have limited access to chloroquine since Trump’s March 19 press briefing. But neither of the actions comprise an outright ban on the drug. Take Nevada, for example. On March 24, Sisolak signed an emergency regulation that safeguards the supply of chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine, which is sold under the brand name Plaquenil and as a generic. The order prohibits doctors in outpatient settings from prescribing and dispensing the drugs for COVID-19 treatment. It also limits prescriptions to 30-day supplies. "While the two drugs serve necessary medical purposes, there is no conclusive evidence at this time among COVID-19 experts or Nevada’s own medical health advisory team that the drugs provide treatment for COVID-19 patients," Sisolak said during a press conference. "The emergency regulation is aimed at preventing the hoarding of the drugs so those that actually need them can have access to them." As several news outlets have reported, physicians around the country have started to prescribe themselves chloroquine in order to hoard it for their families. That hoarding has led to drug shortages in some parts of the country, affecting patients who take chloroquine regularly to treat conditions like lupus and arthritis. Conservative organizations like Turning Point USA took Nevada’s order to mean Sisolak was banning any use of chloroquine for COVID-19 patients. But there is an exemption to the order. That’s similar to what the government has done in New York. On March 23, Cuomo signed an executive order restricting the prescription of chloroquine "except when written as prescribed for an FDA-approved indication; or as part of a state approved clinical trial related to COVID-19 for a patient who has tested positive for COVID-19." The state has acquired more than 800,000 doses of chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine for clinical trials. And while the Food and Drug Administration has said there are no approved drugs to treat or prevent the coronavirus, the agency is investigating whether chloroquine "can be used to treat patients with mild-to-moderate COVID-19 to potentially reduce the duration of symptoms." On March 28, the FDA signed an emergency authorization for the use of chloroquine to treat patients hospitalized with COVID-19. The day before that action, Cuomo amended his previous restrictions on the drug. The new rules allow health care providers to prescribe the drug for "patients in inpatient settings and acute settings; for residents in a subacute part of a skilled nursing facility; or as part of an study approved by an Institutional Review Board." The change means that, similar to Nevada, doctors in New York can now prescribe chloroquine to COVID-19 patients in hospitals and emergency rooms, but not in outpatient settings. Bottom line: Neither Nevada nor New York currently bans the use of chloroquine to treat coronavirus patients. Michigan has taken no formal action to restrict access to chloroquine. Instead, it has asked prescribers to not stockpile the drug for friends and family. On March 24, the state’s Department of Licensing and Regulatory Affairs sent a letter to "licensed prescribers and dispensers" about chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine. It said that the department had received "multiple allegations of Michigan physicians inappropriately prescribing hydroxychloroquine or chloroquine to themselves, family, friends, and/or coworkers without a legitimate medical purpose." "Prescribing hydroxychloroquine or chloroquine without further proof of efficacy for treating COVID-19 or with the intent to stockpile the drug may create a shortage for patients with lupus, rheumatoid arthritis, or other ailments for which chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine are proven treatments," the letter reads. "Reports of this conduct will be evaluated and may be further investigated for administrative action." The letter did not outline any new regulatory action related to chloroquine. In a follow-up statement published March 27, the department said the purpose of the correspondence was "to remind both prescribers and dispensers of their continued obligation to adhere to the standards of practice." No, chloroquine effectiveness only anecdotal On March 31, however, the state shifted course. It requested chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine from the Strategic National Stockpile based on the FDA emergency authorization for using the drug to treat severe cases of COVID-19. The Detroit News reported that several hospitals in the metro area are using chloroquine to treat hospitalized patients. In an op-ed, Michigan Senate Majority Leader Mike Shirkey explained why the government included the "administrative action" wording in its original letter. "We needed something to prevent chloroquine from becoming the next toilet paper," he told the Detroit News. "I quickly requested of (Whitmer’s) staff that they put something out, and somehow in the translation it was prohibiting use of these drugs — and that wasn't the intent." A Facebook post claims the governors of Michigan, Nevada and New York have ordered banning the use of chloroquine for COVID-19 patients. Nevada and New York have restricted access to the malaria drug in an effort to limit stockpiling. Each state has exemptions for patients hospitalized with the coronavirus. Michigan has taken no additional regulatory action to restrict access to chloroquine; instead, it has asked prescribers to avoid giving the drug to potential stockpilers. The Facebook posts are inaccurate. We rate them .


Researcher: Alzheimer's vaccine could cut dementia in half, human trials may be next

Explanation: This story reports on a study done in laboratory mice that showed a vaccine decreased the build-up of two proteins, amyloid and tau, that are associated with Alzheimer’s. The story mentions this was a mouse study and acknowledges it isn’t the only potential avenue under study to arrest those harmful substances. However, it gives an overly optimistic spin, using the word “promising” and playing up a speculative comment in a UT Southwestern Medical Center news release that dementia cases “could drop by half” if there’s a vaccine that delays the onset of Alzheimer’s by five years. The story also doesn’t caution that success in animals often doesn’t translate to benefits in humans, and that other treatments targeting these proteins have not panned out. Also missing: discussions of costs and potential harms and comments from independent sources. As the U.S. population ages, dementia is becoming more common. Millions of families are coping with a person who has a diagnosis of Alzheimer’s. Available treatments do not prevent or cure Alzheimer’s and at best slow down the progression of symptoms for short periods. Considerable effort has focused on new treatments that seek to break down or prevent the deposition of abnormal proteins that appear to increase as memory loss progresses. So far these new treatments have not been shown to help. Initially they were tried in individuals with advanced disease but now are being used in patients with mild symptoms as a way to prevent progression. Even here, trials have not shown positive results that are clinically meaningful. A vaccine to “prevent” Alzheimer’s is appealing in that it works even earlier in the process, maybe even before symptoms appear. However, it isn’t clear that a vaccine will actually improve clinical outcomes. The fact that this small study in mice led to several optimistic headlines — not just USA Today’s — reflects how desperate we are for progress. Regardless, news stories should not make a remedy sound closer and more certain than it is.

There’s no discussion of costs. It might be difficult to estimate the cost of a vaccine that hasn’t yet been tested in humans. However, the story could have pointed out that at least some researchers have begun to consider the financial impact of treatments that are in development to slow or delay Alzheimer’s. For example, British study released in March estimated that a hypothetical vaccine given to everyone over 50 that delayed the onset of Alzheimer’s by five years would yield a savings of about $9,000 in health, social care, and unpaid care costs over a person’s life. It estimated that the justified cost of such a vaccine, if it had to be given every two years, would be $1,175 per dose. However, those figures would drop to a lifetime savings of $2,200 and a justified cost of $293 per dose if the vaccine delayed onset of disease by just one year. The story gives no data to describe the differences in the buildup of amyloid in the brains of mice given the vaccine versus those not given it. A news release stated: “The latest study – consisting of four cohorts of between 15 and 24 mice each – shows the vaccine prompted a 40 percent reduction in beta-amyloid and up to a 50 percent reduction in tau, with no adverse immune response.” Also, the story doesn’t explain whether there’s any data behind these speculative comments about potential human benefits from a researcher: “If the onset of the disease could be delayed by even five years, that would be enormous for the patients and their families. … The number of dementia cases could drop by half.” The story states that the vaccine is “safe in mice” and alludes to the fact that it hasn’t been proven safe in humans. It also mentions “harmful side effects, such as brain inflammation” with a previous Alzheimer’s vaccine attempt. For that, we’ll give the story credit. But we think it could have better served readers by explicitly cautioning that safety in mice doesn’t translate to safety in humans. This is a significant weakness. The story did report that the study was in mice, but didn’t given much information beyond that about how the study was conducted. The vaccine was given to mice at risk for developing an amyloid deposit, while a similar control group didn’t get the vaccine. At 20 months, the amounts of amyloid buildup in the brains of the two groups were compared. It does not point out that many vaccines and drug therapies have been successful in mice and later were proven unsuccessful in people. The story also misses a key point: treatments that seek to limit build-up of harmful protein — which the story refers to as “promising” — have thus far not shown much benefit in humans. The story should have cautioned that it’s unclear a vaccine can actually prevent dementia, even if it safely limits protein growth. No disease-mongering here. The story has no independent sources. The authors asserted no conflicts in the published paper. The story says the vaccine is among “several promising treatments” aimed at reducing the buildup of proteins associated with Alzheimer’s. It could have also mentioned that another Alzheimer’s vaccine is undergoing clinical trials. It could have also mentioned current available medicines that have a very modest, short-term effect. Drugs called cholinesterase inhibitors have been approved by the FDA to lessen symptoms from Alzheimer’s, but none is curative. The story makes clear that the vaccine is not available and has not even begun clinical research in human patients. However, it would have been appropriate to give a sense of the time frame. Even if trials started in humans and the vaccine was shown to be safe and effective, it would be years before this became widely available. It’s clear that a vaccine would be a new approach to Alzheimer’s. This story barely goes beyond the contents of a UT Southwestern news release, which contains more guarded and accurate language than the story.


Midwifery linked to lower odds of birth complications for low-income women

Explanation: This news release touted an observational study that found low-income women in British Columbia who used midwives for prenatal care experienced fewer complications than those who used general practitioners or obstetricians. The study was published in the British Medical Journal Open. Commendably, the release used mostly cautious language, stating the study adds “new evidence in support of midwives as a safe option.” However, it did not quantify adequately the differences in the outcomes or explain the limitations of observational data. Midwifery can fill an important need for wider access to care for pregnant women. Advocates for midwives say they reduce unnecessary care, cost less, and lead to great patient satisfaction. Still, news releases should stress the need for ongoing research to assess how the use of midwives affects pregnancy outcomes. The research report describes the study’s context well, noting that at this stage in the evolution of midwifery care in Canada, a randomized trial could not be supported based on the limited evidence that midwifery care is at least as good as traditional care. Studies such as this one, while not providing a definitive answer, add to our knowledge of the safety of midwifery care and pave the way for further studies that establish its benefits and risks.

childbirth,midwifery,University of British Columbia

There’s no discussion of how much it costs to use midwives in Canada or who pays for their services. The release did note that all of the 57,872 women included in the study had received medical insurance premium assistance. In general, midwifery care is less costly than that provided by specialists in obstetrics and gynecology and general practitioners. The study looked at three specific pregnancy outcomes:  babies who were small for gestational age, had a low birth weight, or were delivered pre-term.The news release said low-income women who received prenatal care from a midwife had a 29% “lower odds” of a small-for-gestational age birth compared to women who received care from a general practitioner and a 41% “reduction in odds” compared with women who used an obstetrician. This was insufficient for two reasons. First, it didn’t provide absolute numbers that would give readers an idea of the size of the difference. According to the study, 7.09% of all births were small-for-gestational age births. Of those who used midwives, 4.83% had small-for-gestational age births, compared with 7.06% of women who used general practitioners and 8.59% of women who used obstetricians. Second, the news release did not give any figures about the study’s findings that women who used midwives were less likely to go into early labor or to have a low birth weight baby. Potential harms of midwifery care could include risks both for the health of the baby, as well as the health of the mother. Maternal health outcomes are not addressed in the study, and not mentioned in the release. The news release didn’t say anything about the limitations of observational data, which is what this study was based on. In an observational study, researchers can’t know if they’ve adjusted the data to account for all variables that might have led to differences in outcomes among the three groups. In this study, the authors reported having limited or no data on several factors that might have influenced outcomes: alcohol and substance abuse, mental health conditions, race and ethnicity, language, culture, and the quality of any collaboration between midwives and doctors. Moreover, the study’s author herself notes that “women who are educated and health-conscious typically access midwives early on in their pregnancies.”  Thus women who are better educated and more health conscious may have self-selected midwife care, leading to an apparent improvement in outcomes. With an observational study, unlike a randomized trial, it’s not possible to draw firm cause-and-effect conclusions. In this case, the authors said a causal relationship between midwife care and better outcomes will “need to be established by repeated observational studies with representative samples over time.” However, a researcher quoted in the news release jumped to a cause-and-effect conclusion, saying the findings “show that women who are more vulnerable benefit from the care of a midwife.” The news release does not engage in disease-mongering. The news release did not state how the study was funded, which was through scholarships. It also did not mention that the lead author disclosed in the published study that as of May, she had been providing consulting services to the Midwives Association of BC. The news release met our threshold here by saying midwives, general practitioners, and obstetricians “are all qualified to provide safe prenatal care for women during their pregnancy, labour and birth, but each offer a different style of care that matches different women’s preferences and needs.” This was a strong point. The news release noted that midwifery is “not available in all parts of the country.” It added: “Waitlists for midwives can be quite long, so women who are educated and health-conscious typically access midwives early on in their pregnancies,” said [lead author Daphne] McRae. “But more vulnerable women might not be as aware of the services available to them, so expanding midwifery to make it available for all women is important.” We like how the news release did not attempt to characterize this study as unique, but rather characterized it as “adding new evidence in support of midwives as a safe option for prenatal care, especially for women who have low socioeconomic status.”  The news release did not use unjustifiable language.


Ruling leaves Ohio ban on Down syndrome abortions on hold.

Explanation: A federal appeals court on Friday upheld a judge’s decision to put on hold an Ohio law prohibiting doctors from performing abortions based on a fetal diagnosis of Down syndrome.

John Kasich, Health, General News, Courts, Ohio, Laws

The 2-1 ruling from a panel the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati said the law signed in 2017 by former Republican Gov. John Kasich is likely unconstitutional but didn’t make such a declaration outright. The Ohio Attorney General’s Office said the state will seek reconsideration by the full 6th Circuit. The ruling is a disappointment for abortion opponents, who had promoted the law as an anti-discrimination measure. The Ohio law specifically outlawed abortions in cases where there was a positive test result or prenatal diagnosis indicating Down syndrome. Under that law, physicians convicted of performing an abortion under such circumstances could be charged with a fourth-degree felony, stripped of their medical license and held liable for legal damages. The pregnant woman faced no criminal liability under the law, but it still fell into a category of restriction that abortion-rights groups label “reason bans” because they attempt to get into the mind of the pregnant woman as she is deciding whether to continue or end a pregnancy. The American Civil Liberties Union sued the Ohio Department of Health, the state medical board and county prosecutors over the law on behalf of Planned Parenthood and several abortion providers. “We hope today’s decision sends a clear message to anti-abortion politicians about our reproductive rights,” Jessie Hill, the attorney who argued the matter for the abortion providers, said in a statement. A federal judge placed the state law on temporary hold last year, saying federal law is clear that states can’t limit a woman’s right to terminate a pregnancy before viability. The state appealed, leading to Friday’s decision. Ohio Right to Life, the state’s oldest and largest anti-abortion group, said it was saddened by the ruling. It “serves to show the moral contradictions and outright discrimination imposed by abortion jurisprudence that sorely need to be settled,” Stephanie Ranade Krider, the group’s vice president, said in a statement. The group had promoted the law as a protection to “lethal discrimination” against children with a rare and, the group argued, widely misunderstood condition. Down syndrome is a genetic abnormality that causes developmental delays and medical conditions such as heart defects and respiratory and hearing problems. According to the National Down Syndrome Society, about one in every 700 babies in the United States — or about 6,000 a year — is born with the condition, which results from a chromosomal irregularity. The rarity of the condition has prompted abortion rights groups to paint the Down syndrome bans as part of a thinly veiled effort to continue chipping away at a woman’s right to an abortion.


As millions vape, e-cigarette researchers count puffs, scour Facebook.

Explanation: One team of researchers assessing the risks of electronic cigarettes is counting the puffs taken by volunteer “vapers.” Another will comb Facebook for posts on how people are tinkering with e-cigarettes to make the devices deliver extra nicotine. A third is building a virtual convenience store for 13-to-17-year-olds, measuring how e-cigarette displays and price promotions influence whether minors buy the increasingly popular devices.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is spending $270 million on these and 45 other research projects to determine the risks of e-cigarettes before millions more Americans become hooked on the devices. “They want data and they want it yesterday,” said Dr Suchitra Krishnan-Sarin of Yale University, who is leading four projects. “Yesterday,” however, is years away. Final results may not be available before 2018, researchers leading the FDA-funded projects told Reuters. That timetable, which has not been reported before, underscores how the slow pace of science is contributing to a regulatory vacuum, allowing e-cigarette makers to sell their products virtually unchallenged. To be sure, studies of e-cigarettes not funded by the FDA are also under way, and the agency can factor those results into any action it takes. But the FDA chose these 48 projects because they address questions central to future regulations. The e-cigarette industry, which Wells Fargo Securities estimates will make $2 billion in global sales this year, says the FDA must wait for the results of the research before it issues any regulations, or manufacturers risk being driven out of business by unproven fears about their products. “There shouldn’t be regulations akin to those for cigarettes without evidence of similar health impact, especially since the preliminary evidence is positive for the industry” when it comes to comparing the contents of e-cigarette vapor to tobacco smoke, said attorney Bryan Haynes. His Richmond, Virginia-based firm Troutman Sanders represents e-cigarette manufacturers. Backed by the world’s biggest tobacco companies, the industry is aggressively expanding its marketing across the country. More than 14 million U.S. adults and nearly 2 million teens and tweens have used e-cigarettes, and the rate of use among high-schoolers doubled from 2011 to 2012, the latest data available. The FDA “will always make regulatory decisions based on the best available science,” said an agency spokeswoman. “With regard to e-cigarettes, the agency does not believe it will take many years to create the regulatory framework” once the FDA has the basic authority to regulate the products, which could happen next year. The missing science includes basic questions such as what compounds are in the vapor produced by e-cigarettes. It also includes complicated ones like whether flavors such as butterscotch and bubble gum entice children to vape, how e-cigarette displays in online stores affect teenagers’ desire to buy vaping liquid, and, perhaps most crucial, whether e-cigarettes will reduce the number of smokers or produce millions of new nicotine addicts. The Yale team, for instance, will study whether menthol and flavors such as chocolate and cherry increase the appeal of e-cigarettes, especially to 16-to-18-year-old smokers or “dual users” who both smoke and vape. If that turns out to be the case, the FDA would have scientific support for regulating. “We’ll have the first results within two years” and complete ones in four to five, Krishnan-Sarin said. REAL-TIME EXPERIMENT      As an uncontrolled experiment in public health, the use of electronic cigarettes is rivaled only by conventional tobacco smoking, a habit adopted by half of American men and one-third of women during its peak in the 1960s. The first Surgeon General’s report on the health dangers of cigarettes was released in 1964, when more than 40 percent of American adults were already hooked. To date, more than 10 million Americans have died from illnesses tied to smoking tobacco. Research on e-cigarettes has moved more quickly, partly because scientists can draw on regular tobacco research to establish the biological effects of vaping. The cartridge-like devices were first introduced in the United States by start-up manufacturers in 2007. Now, the U.S. market is dominated by blu, a brand owned by Lorillard Inc.  Other leading tobacco companies are making a big push for a share of the growing market: R.J. Reynolds Vapor Co., a subsidiary of Reynolds American, began selling its Vuse e-cigarette nationwide last month and Altria’s NuMark subsidiary plans to do so with its MarkTen later this year. The FDA got authority to regulate tobacco products, both traditional and novel, with the 2009 Tobacco Control Act. In April, the FDA proposed banning e-cigarette sales to minors, angering public health advocates who want more far-reaching prohibitions on online sales, advertising and flavors. The FDA began funding e-cigarette research in 2012. An FDA-funded project at the University of Louisville in Kentucky illustrates why the pace of science is slow. Scientists there will look at three or four brands of e-cigarettes and analyze their volatile organic compounds, flavorings and particulate matter to see how they affect lung and other cells in lab mice, said lead researcher Dr Sanjay Srivastata. This spring, he began exposing the animals to e-cigarette vapor for up to six months, with full results expected in 2015. While those findings could help FDA quantify risks from vaping, results extending the conclusions to humans are as much as five years away. Another crucial question researchers are trying to answer is whether e-cigarettes will be used mostly by nicotine newbies, including adolescents; by ex-smokers craving a nicotine hit without the carcinogens of tobacco; or by smokers trying to quit. To get a handle on who is likely to use e-cigarettes, scientists at Georgia State University School of Public Health  will conduct online surveys of 6,000 people to assess whether they perceive e-cigarettes as less harmful than the traditional kind, why those who have switched from the latter to e-cigarettes did so, and what influences people’s perceptions of the product’s risk. “This is the kind of research that is going to be informing the FDA’s regulatory process,” said Michael Eriksen, dean of the School of Public Health and leader of three FDA-funded projects on tobacco. The FDA’s proposed e-cigarette rules would give it the power to regulate the ingredients in the vaping liquid, but are silent on the plumes of vapor produced when the liquid is heated. According to research at Virginia Commonwealth University, that may be a dangerous oversight: a form of e-cigarettes called tank systems can get so hot the vapor can contain the carcinogen formaldehyde and other toxic compounds. “We want to know what’s in the emissions, not just the ingredients,” said VCU toxicologist Robert Balster, who is helping to oversee four FDA-funded projects. To find out, VCU engineers are constructing mechanical vaping devices to measure how temperature, voltage, and other parameters affect the content of the plumes from e-cigarettes. They will next comb through Facebook and blog postings to see whether vapers like super-hot temperatures, for instance. Combining the results of the mechanical vaper and real-life habits should show what emissions people are exposed to. “If it turns out that people are tinkering with the electronics to increase the voltage of e-cigarettes, and FDA regulations limit the maximum voltage, that’s useful to know,” since it may justify a requirement that the devices be tinker-proof, said Balster. Full results are years away, he said, “but we’re mindful of getting information to FDA in a timely manner. They’re under a lot of pressure to get moving.”


Explanation: Zambia has recorded its first death from coronavirus, and the number of confirmed cases has risen by three to 39, Health Minister Chitalu Chilufya said on Thursday.

“The same patient had an underlying chronic respiratory disorder and a history of travel to South Africa and contact with some cohorts who travelled to high-risk countries prior to his admission,” Chilufya said at a news conference. Chilufya said the three new cases registered in the southern African country had all got the virus from people who had travelled abroad. Africa has now registered almost 6,000 cases of coronavirus and more than 200 deaths. The continent is already suffering a huge economic impact from lockdowns aiming to contain the virus and a sharp fall in global demand for commodities. African governments including Zambia had become heavily indebted in the decade before the virus struck and are seeking support from the International Monetary Fund, World Bank and EU for wide-ranging debt relief. Zambia’s finance ministry said this week it was looking for advisors to make its $11.2 billion of external debt more sustainable.


A female mortuary worker was arrested after becoming pregnant by one of the corpses she was preparing for burial.

Explanation: According to the Kansas City Missouri Police Department, her baby is the son of man who died in a car accident in March 2015, and whose body she was supposed to autopsy. They allege that she Ms. Burrows sexually abused more than 60 other dead bodies, belonging to males from 17 to 71 years old.

Junk News, dead serious news, world news daily report

On 11 November 2010, the Dead Serious News web site published an article positing that a female mortuary worker had become pregnant after engaging in a sex act with a deceased male: A 38 year old female mortuary worker is being held on $250,000 bond after becoming pregnant by one of her clients — a dead man. The alleged crime took place at the Mourning Glory Mortuary just outside of Lexington, Missouri. Police have charged Felicity Marmaduke with desecration of the dead and necrophilia. According to a statement made to police by Marmaduke, the alleged victim experienced a post mortem erection while being bathed. Being alone, Marmaduke straddled the dead man and proceeded have sex with him. Much to her surprise, the alleged victim came to orgasm after several minutes. A few weeks later, Marmaduke had a positive pregnancy test while receiving a routine medical exam. Upon telling her doctor the circumstances leading to the conception, the police were notified. Marmaduke was arrested without incident at her dilapidated trailer home a few blocks from the mortuary. Although the news media occasionally report real cases of workers or interlopers at mortuaries/cemeteries attempting to engage in sex with bodies of the deceased, this item about a female mortuary worker’s becoming pregnant through such an activity is not one of them. It was a spoof from the Dead Serious News site, whose “About” page notes that “Dead Serious News is a satirical website that is updated on an irregular basis. With the exception of the names of public figures, all names are fictional.” In October 2016, the World News Daily Report fake news site recycled this story for a similar article: A 26-year old morgue worker was arrested this morning after a DNA test revealed that her newborn child was the result of a necrophiliac intercourse with a man she was supposed to autopsy. Jennifer Burrows, an assistant pathologist with the Jackson County medical examiner services, is accused of having sex with dozens of corpses over the course of the last two years, a behavior which led the birth of a baby boy on January 7.


Explanation: This news release describes findings from a retrospective study on a blood test marketed for the early detection of cancer, in this case asbestos-related malignant mesothelioma. The test screens for the presence of the protein ENOX2 which researchers say exists only on the surface of a malignant cancer cell. The MorNuCo company is “elated to share” news about this “exciting” ONCOblot cancer marker blood test. To make sure you don’t miss the “exciting” point, the word is used three times in a release that is only nine sentences long. The release falls short on data and relies on fear-mongering to engage people worried about cancer risk because of exposure to asbestos. The release flogs the myth that early detection is always a good thing, thus raising false hopes. To give powerful cancer treatments too soon, or even unnecessarily, does enormous harm, justified only if the potential benefit is clear. Not only does this study of the ONCOblot test fail to provide any evidence that early detection could provide a benefit to people exposed to asbestos (most of whom will never get mesothelioma), the retrospective study of a few people who have been diagnosed with mesothelioma cannot even demonstrate that the test could reliably predict who is likely to develop the disease, something that will have to be tested by prospective studies. The authors of the study noted the following in their conclusions: “As with all biomarker studies, these observations require validation in a larger, independent cohort of patients and should include prospective as well as retrospective sampling.” The news release failed to communicate that message.

Cancer,Disease mongering,industry/commercial news releases,Screening tests

It is notable that the company that sells the ONCOblot test (which can be used for early detection of 26 different cancers) doesn’t discuss its price. Some clinics list their test cost at $850 or $1000. It is not known how often testing would need to be repeated, if it is found to be useful for people exposed to asbestos. The release states it’s “an exciting sign of progress in the cancer detection field” because researchers detected “two mesothelioma-specific ENOX2 protein transcript variants” in the blood serum of individuals exposed to asbestos “an average of 6.2 years” before they were clinically diagnosed. Unfortunately, that’s the only attempt at quantification found in the release. There’s no mention of accuracy or sensitivity of the test, how many people were tested, or how long the study lasted. It’s not enough to claim that the test is useful. The sponsors should provide some data on how it improves patient outcomes, not just sound an alarm in order to get individuals to take a test. The unfortunate reality is that patients diagnosed with stage 1 disease have a median survival of 21 months and those diagnosed at stage 4 have a median survival of 12 months. It remains to be seen if early detection provides any advantage and a large clinical trial will be needed to see if this is true. While the ONCOblot test itself involves just drawing a blood sample, the results of the test could produce life-threatening harms if it overdiagnoses people. In other words, a person told they have tested positive for these biomarkers for mesothelioma might start treatment too early or unnecessarily. Mesothelioma treatment is notably damaging. Let’s put the study into perspective: there were a total of 32 people enrolled (17 with known malignant mesothelioma and 15 without). Hardly a large enough sample size on which to make the claims made. Although as we noted previously, early detection does offer a small survival advantage, it comes at a cost. The American Cancer Society notes that chemotherapy for mesothelioma can cause hair loss, mouth sores, loss of appetite, nausea and vomiting, diarrhea, increased risk of infections, easier bruising or bleeding, fatigue and long-lasting nerve damage. Radiation treatment also can cause many of the same problems, as well as lung damage. Combining radiation and chemotherapy often makes side effects worse. It won’t be known whether starting treatment earlier offers any benefits to people at risk for mesothelioma, but it is certain that treating more people earlier would cause more treatment-related harm. The release fails to mention how many people were included in the study: just 17 cancer patients and 15 people who were exposed to asbestos, but had not been diagnosed with cancer. Although the release notes near the top that the study was “retrospective” (it looked back at stored blood samples taken from people exposed to asbestos, some who had been diagnosed with mesothelioma and some without known cancer), there is no mention of the long years of work needed before anyone will be able to say the test would be useful to people who have been exposed to asbestos. The journal article notes, “As with all biomarker studies, these observations require validation in a larger, independent cohort of patients and should include prospective as well as retrospective sampling.” The release should have noted that there is an important difference between finding that people who have cancer carry a certain biomarker and what people really want to know: that the biomarker can predict who will or won’t develop cancer, and even more importantly, whether starting treatment earlier makes any difference. The news release emphasizes that “Malignant mesothelioma is an aggressive and almost uniformly fatal tumor caused primarily by exposure to asbestos.” However, it fails to note that not only is the disease rare (fewer than 3,000 cases per year in the United States, compared to more than 1.6 million cases and half a million deaths from all types of cancer), but most people exposed to asbestos never get mesothelioma. By implying that this test might be useful for anyone exposed to asbestos, the release sets the stage for a vast sales market of people, most of whom would never have to deal with mesothelioma, regardless of testing. The news release states that the study was done by MorNuCo, the company that developed the ONCOblot test. Another useful flag apparent to close readers is that the only person quoted in the release is not a researcher, but the company’s vice president of business development. The release doesn’t mention any alternatives to the sponsor’s test. Some physicians believe that repeat chest CT scans are useful but this has not been verified in a clinical trial. The other alternative is basic primary care and watchfulness. The news release notes that the ONCOblot test is FDA approved as a “Laboratory Developed Test.” It also includes a link to a company web site with more information on the test and how to get it. The study backs up the characterization in the release that the results represent progress. Aside from the concerns mentioned above about implying the test will benefit patients, it is reasonable to say this test could be useful to researchers planning clinical trials of early treatment of mesothelioma. There are only nine sentences in this release, yet there is room to boast of “exciting results,” “exciting sign of progress” and an “exciting new chapter” that the company is “elated to share.” While the study results may well be exciting to some researchers who are planning clinical trials of early treatments for rare mesothelioma cancers, there is nothing in this study that is truly “exciting” to people worried about their personal risk of developing mesothelioma. The release dangles false hope in front of people exposed to asbestos by pushing the popular myth that “early detection is widely considered the corner stone of an effective strategy to reduce cancer-related deaths”. As this online primer summarizes, the triple stumbling blocks of lead time bias, length bias and overdiagnosis stand between this study and any real understanding of whether the news may ever be exciting to people worried about the consequences of exposure to asbestos.


Walmart, Amazon, Kroger, Target and Costco “have not had any reported (coronavirus) cases in the news.”

Explanation: News reports from across the country have documented COVID-19 cases and deaths involving employees at all of these companies.

Facebook Fact-checks, Coronavirus, Viral image,

Questioning why some small businesses around the country must close during the coronavirus pandemic, a recent Facebook post claims that several big companies have yet to see a single of their millions of employees catch COVID-19. "Walmart- 1,500,000 employees, Amazon- 750,000 employees, Kroeger (sic)- 500,000 employees, Target- 350,000 employees, Cosco (sic)- 214,000 employees," the post says. "3,314,000 total employees combined. All of these companies have not had any reported cases in the news. Yet, every employee in these companies encounters thousands of people a day. None of these companies have closed stores. However, all of a sudden, all the meat packing plants are closing and small businesses are still not allowed to open. None of this makes any sense at all." This post was flagged as part of Facebook’s efforts to combat  news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Facebook.) And it’s wrong. As early as at least February, employees at these companies were contracting COVID-19 and, in some cases, dying. Here’s just a sampling of the news stories documenting different cases. • In Worcester, Mass., one Walmart closed in April after 23 employees there tested positive for COVID-19. As of May 1, that number had nearly doubled; 41 employees have tested positive. • Two Walmart employees from a Chicago-area store died of COVID-19. • Employees at a New Jersey Amazon warehouse reported about 48 infections there. • A worker at an Amazon fulfillment center in Tracy, Calif., died due to complications from COVID-19. • An Amazon employee in Seattle who left work feeling ill on Feb. 25 later tested positive for COVID-19. , • Four workers at four separate Kroger stores in Michigan died after they were infected with the disease. • In Louisville, Ky., 13 employees at 10 different Kroger stores tested positive. • A Target employee in Short Pump, Va., has tested positive. • COVID-19 infected more Target employees at stores in Georgia, North Dakota, North Carolina, and California. • BuzzFeed reported in late March that Costco employees had said that managers in at least eight stores had notified staff that a coworker had tested positive. • An employee at a Seattle-area Costco died after contracting COVID-19. COVID-19 cases involving employees at these companies have been well-documented in news reports. We rate this Facebook post .


The World Health Organization has listed being single as a disability under their definition of infertility.

Explanation: News accounts reported that the World Health Organization had revised their definition of infertility to include single men and women.

The UK newspaper The Telegraph reported on 20 October 2016 that the World Health Organization (WHO) had revised their definition of infertility to include single men and women: Single men and women without medical issues will be classed as “infertile” if they do not have children but want to become a parent, the World Health Organisation is to announce. In a move which dramatically changes the definition of infertility, WHO will declare that it should no longer be regarded as simply a medical condition. The authors of the new global standards said the revised definition gave every individual “the right to reproduce”. Under the new terms, heterosexual single men and women, and gay men and  women who want to have children would be given the same priority as couples seeking IVF because of medical fertility problems. The organization’s decision, the Telegraph stated, was “likely to place pressure” on the National Health Service to change their eligibility standards concerning in-vitro fertilization. However, even though the story was picked up by multiple news outlets, it did not include any material or comments from WHO. Instead, it quoted endocrinologist David Adamson, a leading reproductive health practitioner whose Huffington Post  contributor profile references him as a fertility expert for the WHO. According to the Telegraph, Adamson, listed as an author of the new WHO standards, said: The definition of infertility is now written in such a way that it includes the rights of all individuals to have a family, and that includes single men, single women, gay men, gay women. It puts a stake in the ground and says an individual’s got a right to reproduce whether or not they have a partner. It’s a big change. It fundamentally alters who should be included in this group and who should have access to healthcare. It sets an international legal standard. Countries are bound by it. We contacted Adamson to confirm the Telegraph‘s reporting, but did not respond. Meanwhile, WHO’s  website has not reflected any changes to their terminology concerning infertility, which does not mention single people at all: The organization denied the Telegraph‘s reporting in a statement sent to us on 29 October 2016:  In 2009, WHO joined with the International Committee for Monitoring Assisted Reproductive Technologies (ICMART) and other partners to develop a Glossary of definitions for infertility and fertility care. This Glossary included the clinical definition for infertility as “a disease of the reproductive system defined by the failure to achieve a clinical pregnancy after 12 months or more of regular unprotected sexual intercourse.” This is keeping with WHO definition of male and female infertility in the International Classification of Diseases (ICD 10) WHO has not changed its use of this definition. It is important to note that this definition provides a clinical description of infertility. It does not make any recommendations about the provision of fertility care services. WHO is currently collaborating with its partners to update the Glossary and consideration is being given to revising the definition of infertility. Should there be a change in the definition of infertility, it will remain a clinical description of infertility as a disease of the reproductive system and will not make recommendations about the provision of fertility care services. WHO definitions are contained in ICD and that glossary is not an official WHO publication but rather a work that WHO staff contribute to. The organization also reiterated their definition of infertility via Twitter: @pved Our definition of #infertility remains the same https://t.co/fbkyxzWocd — WHO (@WHO) October 22, 2016


Abortion services are "well over 90 percent of what Planned Parenthood does.

Explanation: Jon Kyl says abortion services are “well over 90 percent of what Planned Parenthood does”

Abortion, National, Federal Budget, Jon Kyl,

As the government inched toward a shutdown on April 8, 2011, Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., gave a speech on the Senate floor to respond to Democratic charges that the major sticking point in the negotiations was a disagreement over Planned Parenthood. Many Republicans want to end federal funding for Planned Parenthood because the organization does abortions. The federal government currently provides Planned Parenthood with $363 million annually, but by law, that money cannot be spent on abortion. It is spent on other types of health care services, such as cancer screenings, breast exams, and tests and treatment for sexually transmitted infections. Some opponents of abortion say that by sending any money to Planned Parenthood, taxpayers are still supporting abortions indirectly, since money is fungible. That’s why they’re pushing to eliminate all funding for the organization. Here’s a portion of what Kyl said on the floor:  "Everybody goes to clinics, to hospitals, to doctors, and so on. Some people go to Planned Parenthood. But you don’t have to go to Planned Parenthood to get your cholesterol or your blood pressure checked. If you want an abortion, you go to Planned Parenthood, and that’s well over 90 percent of what Planned Parenthood does." We got many requests to fact-check his statement. Planned Parenthood says the statistics are dramatically different -- that 90 percent of its services are preventive in nature, compared with 3 percent that are abortion-related. Planned Parenthood calculates the numbers by services provided, rather than dollars spent. In a fact sheet last updated in March 2011, the group lists the following breakdown of its services:  Contraception (including reversible contraception, emergency contraception, vasectomies and tubal sterilizations): 4,009,549 services  Sexually transmitted infections testing and treatment: 3,955,916 services  Cancer screening and prevention: 1,830,811 services  Other women’s health services (including pregnancy tests and prenatal care): 1,178,369 services  Abortions: 332,278 procedures  Miscellaneous (including primary care and adoption referrals): 76,977  Total services: 11,383,900  By this tally, abortions accounted for just under 3 percent of the procedures Planned Parenthood provided in 2009, which is the most recent year for which the group is reporting statistics. And that would make Kyl’s statement way off. We should note a few caveats. First, we think many people would acknowledge a difference between providing an abortion and, say, handing out a pack of condoms or conducting a blood test. The former is a significant surgical procedure, whereas the latter are quick and inexpensive services. So Planned Parenthood’s use of "services" as its yardstick likely decreases abortion’s prominence compared to what other measurements would show. Using dollars spent or hours devoted to patient care would likely put abortion above 3 percent in the calculations. Second, it’s worth noting that Planned Parenthood self-reported these numbers, although the group says each affiliate’s numbers are independently audited. (There is no single, national audit.) So we have no choice but to accept their accuracy more or less on faith. Still, even with those caveats, we do think that Kyl has vastly overstated the share of abortions. We checked with Kyl’s office but did not hear back. However, a few hours after the speech, CNN anchor T.J. Holmes told viewers that the network had received a statement from Kyl’s office saying that the senator’s remark "was not intended to be a factual statement but rather to illustrate that Planned Parenthood, an organization that receives millions in taxpayer dollars, does subsidize abortions." The statistics from Planned Parenthood and the statement from Kyl's office make it clear that he erred by saying abortion counts for well over 90 percent of the group's services. We find his claim .