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Elon Musk denies claim by Truth Social boss that Trump encouraged him to buy Twitter – CNBC

Posted on May 12, 2022 by Danzig

Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla, speaks to media representatives at the Tesla Gigafactory construction site In Grnheide near Berlin, September 3, 2020.

Julian Sthle | picture alliance via Getty Images

Elon Musk on Friday flatly denied a claim by the head of ex-President Donald Trump's new social media company that Trump had encouraged Musk's bid to buy Twitter.

"This is false," Musk tweeted in reply to a New York Post article about that claim by Trump Media & Technology Group CEO Devin Nunes.

"I've had no communication, directly or indirectly, with Trump, who has publicly stated that he will be exclusively on Truth Social," wrote Musk, head of Tesla and SpaceX.

Nunes, during a televised appearance Wednesday on Fox Business, said that Trump's social media app, Truth Social, was "all for" Musk's move to buy Twitter and take it private with a $44 billion offer a somewhat eyebrow-raising claim since Twitter is a competitor to Truth Social.

"President Trump, basically before Elon Musk bought it, actually said to go and buy it because you know the goal of our company is really to build a community where people are in a family friendly, safe environment," said Nunes, a former Republican congressman from California, during the appearance.

Twitter banned Trump, who had been an obsessive user of the platform, in January 2021 for what the company said was the "risk of further incitement of violence."

The ban followed the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot by a mob of Trump supporters who disrupted the certification of President Joe Biden's election.

Trump announced plans to launch Truth Social as a competitor to Twitter last fall, and said his social media company would become publicly traded through a deal with the so-called blank-check company Digital World Acquisition.

On April 25, Twitter accepted Musk's offer to buy the company, which is contingent on approval from shareholders and regulators.

Former Twitter vice president on Donald Trump, Elon Musk, and billionaires’ whims controlling social media – Sky News

Posted on May 12, 2022 by Danzig

Having huge social media platforms controlled at the "whim of billionaires" is "wholly undemocratic", a former vice president of Twitter has told Sky News.

Bruce Daisley spent eight years working for the US tech giant between 2012 and 2020, and was speaking after Elon Musk agreed a $44bn (35.6bn) deal to buy it.

He said: "Billionaires' whims controlling media is something we've always been subject to and something we've witnessed in press and broadcast.

"But now it's coming to social platforms and the danger is it feels wholly undemocratic.

"In a democratic society the opportunity to have oversight over these incredibly powerful tools is probably something of a right.

"One of the challenges is we are allowing, and almost deferring the control of what we read and what we see - broadly to the winner of who has got the biggest pile of cash."

His comments come as Mr Musk announced he would reverse the platform's "foolish" ban on Donald Trump if his acquisition goes through.

The former US president was sanctioned "in the midst of the 6 January insurrection after repeated warnings, and final warnings", Mr Daisley said.

"He was posting things saying he thought the people invading the Capitol were loyal to him and just effectively probably drove the leadership of the organisation (Twitter) to the point where they had no choice.

"And so most people on 7 January would have said the ban was justified and most media accepted that. But I guess we've all got short memories.

"Ultimately it shouldn't be one person's decision if he comes back."

Read more:Elon Musk's plans for his new 'toy' sound like nonsense - but don't underestimate himInternet troll, 'dangerously deluded' billionaire or rogue entrepreneur: The many faces of Elon Musk

Asked how social media platforms could be made more accountable, Mr Daisley suggested greater transparency and awareness of their rules and regulations.

He said: "Quite often technology companies shroud themselves in secrecy. They try and say their algorithm is complicated and sophisticated and so the consequence of that is they avoid too much scrutiny.

"If people knew the amount of employees working on responding to issues or if people know the amount of people working to keep toxic tweets away from them - if they knew how small those teams were then they would have an opinion on it.

"Every platform from Facebook to YouTube to Twitter should have to publish the amount of people they've got working, responding to customer enquiries, reports of abuse.

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"We often see these things only when they intrude into the news. A Premier League footballer is subjected to racist abuse. The first thing we say is 'how did this happen?'

"Well, if we knew it happened because there is a small team, the size of the number of Uber passengers in a car - and they're dealing with it in Hungary - if we knew all those things were the components then we would see it was obvious why it happened."

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Former Twitter vice president on Donald Trump, Elon Musk, and billionaires' whims controlling social media - Sky News

Elon Musk Says This Is The ‘Most Amazing Thing’ He Knows – Benzinga – Benzinga

Posted on May 12, 2022 by Danzig

Tesla, Inc. TSLA CEO Elon Muskis often seen sharing his thoughts and viewpoints on Twitter Inc. TWTR a platform he has agreed to take private.

Musk on Wednesday said on Twitter that "awareness awakening" is the most amazing thing he knows. He was replying to a question asked by a widely followed Twitter handle, named @gunsnrosesgirl3. As usual, Musk's legion of followers approved of the reply, as is evident from the over 26,000 likes the tweet garnered at press time.

Author's View:Musk may have referred to his attempts at arriving at the right perception of thingsbringing himself or, widely, the global populationup to speed on knowledge relevant to humankind.

From a modest beginning, the Tesla CEO has raised a big business empire for himself even while pursuing the less-trodden path of building a sustainable future for humans. All of his Tesla electric car venture, SpaceX space transportation company, Starlink internet service, and Boring companyhave the stated goals of improving the quality of life for people from different walks of life. Muskis also harboring the vision of inhabiting Mars with humans.

Related Link: Elon Musk Thinks This Energy Source Will Be World's Preferred Choice

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Elon Musk Says This Is The 'Most Amazing Thing' He Knows - Benzinga - Benzinga

Newsworthy from the School of Medicine, Week of May 6 – May 12 | Newsroom – UNC Health and UNC School of Medicine

Posted on May 12, 2022 by Danzig

The below clickable headlines link directly to outside media outlets, which featured UNC School of Medicine faculty during the past week, starting Friday May 6, 2022.

In North Carolina, UNC Horizons Reimagines Addiction Treatment for Parents Dr. Hendre Jones (The Pew Charitable Trusts)

In Test Tubes, RNA Molecules Evolve Into a Tiny Ecosystem Charlie Carter (Quanta Magazine)

Astellas to Present 12-Week Data from Pivotal Phase 3 SKYLIGHT 1 Trial of Fezolinetant in Oral Session at the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists Annual Meeting Dr. Genevieve Neal-Perry (One News Page [Press Releases Only)

Unraveling the Link Between Multiple Sclerosis and Migraine Dr. Ana Felix (Everyday Health)

Low demand seen for COVID treatment despite surge in NC cases Dr. David Wohl (CBS17)

It Was Hard Enough to Get Treatment for Eating Disorders. Then Private Equity Took Over. Dr. Cynthia Bulik (Mother Jones)

COVID-19 metrics increase in NC; what to know about treatment and boosters Dr. David Wohl (WTVD)

COVID-19 metrics increase in NC; what to know about treatment and boosters Dr. David Wohl (MSN)

It is a developing crisis: Doctors see increase in long-haul COVID-19 cases Dr. John Baratta (WTVD)

Like you are carrying around extra weight on your body: UNC treats 1,000th COVID long hauler Dr. John Baratta (WRAL)

US Docs at Double the Risk of Postpartum Depression Dr. Alison Stuebe (Medscape)

Pregnant mother undergoes laser surgery to save her twins Dr. William Goodnight, Dr. Courtney Stephenson (WRAL)

Radiation technique reduces symptomatic esophagitis in patients with advanced lung cancer Ashley A. Weiner, Joel E. Tepper (Healio)

Where are the 22 Leapfrog straight-A hospitals? UNC Rex (Beckers Hospital Review)

North Carolina ranks No. 1 in US for hospital safety Alan Wolf (WRAL)

Study: Most NC hospitals earned As for patient safety. One got an F. What grade did yours get? Alan Wolf (CBS17)

More serious than people might think: Durham moms concerned about baby formula shortages Dr. Katherine Jordan (WTVD)

Gene therapy could treat Pitt-Hopkins syndrome, proof-of-concept study suggests Dr. Ben Philpot (EurekAlert!)

We are in a surge: COVID cases are undercounted, but up. Should we be worried? Dr. David Wohl (News & Observer)

7 ways to be a more effective, happier parent Dr. Edward Pickens (WRAL)

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Newsworthy from the School of Medicine, Week of May 6 - May 12 | Newsroom - UNC Health and UNC School of Medicine

Medical Students Learn How to Apply Arts and Humanities to Medicine – News Center – Feinberg News Center

Posted on May 12, 2022 by Danzig

Since 1989, Feinberg has offered arts and humanities seminars as an integral component of its MD curriculum, allowing students to approach the world of medicine and healthcare from different perspectives and with new skills.

Today, every medical student at Feinberg takes two seminars during their medical school career one in the winter quarter of their first year and one in the fall quarter their second year.

Humanities seminars introduce students to the methods and insights that humanities disciplines provide for more accurate understanding and effective practice of clinical medicine, said Catherine Belling, PhD, associate professor ofMedical Education and curriculum leader for humanities and ethics. Now, more than ever, doctors need to understand how culture, history, language and imagination all matter for framing and providing ethical healthcare.

Catherine Belling, PhD, associate professor of Medical Education and curriculum leader for humanities and ethics.

The seminars focus on a wide range of topics, such as drawing, sculpture and creative writing, and incorporate a clinical medicine component. The seminars are led by Northwestern and community experts from different humanities and arts fields, often taught in collaboration with Feinberg faculty members.

A new seminar offered this past fall to second-year medical students was taught by Ashish Premkumar, MD, assistant professor ofObstetrics and GynecologyandMedical Social Sciences.

Premkumars course, called Troubling the Fetus: Reconsidering the Relationship between Biomedical Practice and the State, connects current debates within the U.S. legal, political, and biomedical spheres on reproductive health to published medical anthropology, science, technology and legal studies.

This type of course is critical for any medical trainee at this current time in American history, where reproductive justice is front and center within mainstream media and curtailments to accessing abortion are only growing, Premkumar said. By cultivating students to question the logics inherent in how biomedicine and the state work together, oftentimes at the detriment of individual well-being in lieu of loftier goals like pronatalism, we can help to create the next generation of physician advocates.

Ricardo Rosenkranz, MD, 93 GME, clinical assistant professor of Pediatrics in the Division of Community Based Primary Care, has been teaching his Magic, Medicine and Meaning seminar to both first- and second-year medical students at Feinberg for more than 10 years.

Magdy Milad, MD, MS, the Albert B. Gerbie, MD, Professor of Obstetrics, instructs the Playing Doctor seminar, where first-year medical students use medical improv to improve their communication and teamwork skills.

During his seminar, medical students work with world-class magicians to explore the role of belief, empowerment and meaning in the world of magic performance. Rosenkranz, who himself is a world-renowned illusionist,encourages students to learn how magic performance can apply to modern medical practice with the goal of improving their understanding of the doctor-patient relationship.

Rosenkranz also produces the Rosenkranz Mysteries, a series of live magic and illusion performances, and is an owner of The Rhapsody Theater, a new live entertainment venue in Chicagos Rogers Park neighborhood that is catered around magic performances.

First-year medical students who enroll in the Playing Doctor seminar have the opportunity to use improvisational theater techniques to improve their communication and teamwork skills by performing medical improv, which was originally created by Katie Watson, JD, associate professor ofMedical Education,Medical Social SciencesandObstetrics and Gynecology.

The seminar is currently taught by Magdy Milad, MD, MS, the Albert B. Gerbie, MD, Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology, who has been performing improv across Chicago since 2016.

For me, improv has affected nearly every aspect of my life: it has improved my family life, clinical experiences, scholarly activity and relationships. Im a better listener and communicator, better able to read body language, assess status and be able to respond in the moment, Milad said.

Medical Students Learn How to Apply Arts and Humanities to Medicine - News Center - Feinberg News Center

MDMA as medicine: Stemming the tide of veteran suicides in Western North Carolina – Smoky Mountain News

Posted on May 12, 2022 by Danzig

In the cold dark streets with tears streaming down his face, he sought them out, but he was really in search of something more solace from the post-traumatic stress disorder hed acquired while serving in a combat zone in the United States Army.

Until recently PTSD wasnt well understood. Until very recently it wasnt taken seriously. There werent many options for people like Lubecky, who had been home from Iraq for less than 60 days.

When Lubecky finally found the bells of Sacred Heart, the century-old neo-gothic cathedral was so full that he was turned away.

He lingered near the North Carolina Veterans Monument for a time, staring up at the solitary white obelisk of Mt. Airy granite topped by a dark bronze Lady Liberty hoisting a tobacco leaf high above her head.

He was trying to figure out the best way to kill himself.

Something from his training popped into his thoughts, so Lubecky hopped in his car and drove to the Womack Army Medical Center at Fort Bragg.

He told them he wanted to take his own life.

They gave him six Xanax and said not to take them all at once or he would succeed.

Instead Lubecky drove home, downed a fifth of vodka, put a Beretta to his temple and pulled the trigger.

More than 15 years later, an estimated 22 American veterans still commit suicide each day as thousands more are left searching for something Jonathan Lubecky couldnt find on that Christmas Eve.

Stigma associated with seeking mental health assistance and a general lack of education about PTSD both contribute to the death toll, as do palliative treatments that dont nearly help all of the people all of the time.

That may soon change, and Western North Carolina is at the tip of the spear thanks to a promising new treatment that involves an overlooked psychedelic compound called MDMA.

Jonathan Lubecky, seen here outside the White House in 2019, continues to advocate for increased access to psychedelics like MDMA for PTSD patients. Donated photo

Miraculously, Jonathan Lubecky didnt die on Christmas Eve in 2006. A manufacturers defect in the cartridge prevented the round from leaving the barrel.

You still get a bang, Lubecky said. And I did it in front of a mirror. I thought I was dead. And I was like, This is what dead is?

Born in Ohio, Lubecky reported to Marine Corps Recruit Depot, Parris Island nine days after graduating high school in 1995 and served as a C-130 loadmaster until he left the Marines in 1999. He returned after the Sept. 11 terror attacks, and was sworn into the North Carolina National Guard three days after the initial invasion of Iraq in 2003.

Iraqs Balad Air Base, where Lubecky was stationed in 2005 and 2006, was the target of thousands upon thousands of mortar attacks. Each and every day, Lubecky said, the dry desert air rained steel. Sirens blared. Soldiers scrambled. Defensive weapons roared as explosions peppered the base, leaving the distinct smell of cordite wafting over them all.

Theres also one specific incident Lubecky doesnt want to talk about.

Then, as he prepared to return home in late 2006, his life rapidly became a country music song.

His wife took their dog, sold his motorcycle and moved in with another man, leaving him only an empty house in Sanford, not far from Fort Bragg.

Occasionally you could hear helicopters flying overhead or impacts from artillery. When I started hearing those and they werent there, he said, I realized I was starting to have a problem. Things devolved rapidly from there.

Thats what led Lubecky, weeks later, to that lonely Christmas Eve at the bar and the church and the monument and the hospital and his face in the mirror with a gun against his head.

It was his first suicide attempt, and hed try four more times over the next eight years, all the while still searching.

They had me on I think a total of 42 pills a day for mental health and chronic pain and stuff like that, said Lubecky of his experience with the VA. And then on Nov. 4, 2013, I slit my wrists, which was my final suicide attempt.

The history of ineffective treatments for PTSD parallels the history of PTSD itself. First described by the ancient Greeks, PTSD has been known for millennia by different names shell shock, war nerves, combat neurosis, soldiers heart.

Its not limited to combat veterans or veterans in general and can affect anyone whos been through acute or chronic trauma, be it emotional, physical or sexual.

Roughly 12 million Americans are walking around with PTSD in any given year, according to the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs .

Civilians experience comparatively less trauma than members of the armed forces. Studies from the VA suggest that 15% of Vietnam veterans, 12% of Gulf War veterans and somewhere from 11-20% of veterans from operations Iraqi Freedom and Enduring Freedom have PTSD.

In 2019, about 17 civilians per 100,000 committed suicide, while the rate for veterans was closer to 27.

Jonathan Lubecky may have continued on his path to becoming one of them, but after his last unsuccessful suicide attempt, someone at the Charleston VA slid a folded up note across the table, told him not to tell anyone about it and not to open it until he got home.

Published data suggest that MDMA has value as a post-traumatic stress disorder treatment. Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies infographic

In his Waynesville office, the bearded, bespectacled Dr. Raymond Turpin sits behind a modest desk piled with papers, folders and a webcam. The place screams calm, with soothing natural light streaming through the partially drawn window shades, casting sepia hues over the rich wood trim.

Strewn about the high-ceilinged room are several chairs and couches where patients of the Pearl Psychedelic Institute come to discuss their trauma with Turpin.

A Georgia native, Turpin was an advertising major at the University of Georgia in the mid-1980s until he had his first encounter with psilocybin, the active ingredient in hallucinogenic mushrooms. The experience led him to change his major to psychology and earn a masters degree at West Georgia College, and then a PhD at the California Institute of Integral Studies. He moved to Waynesville in 2001.

All along, Ive been interested in psychedelics as medicines and being used for mental health treatment, Turpin said.

Psychedelics are a class of compounds that trigger dramatically altered states of consciousness. Natural psychedelics like peyote and psilocybin have been known to humans for thousands of years and were sometimes utilized in religious or spiritual ceremonies.

Recreational users also consumed them for the pleasant physical and emotional effects they can produce, alongside auditory and visual hallucinations.

More than a century ago, the pharmaceutical industry began to study these compounds and isolate or synthesize new ones, hoping to find some commercial use for the relatively potent substances.

Swiss chemist Albert Hoffman first synthesized LSD in 1938 but experienced the psychedelic effects firsthand on April 19, 1943 now called Bicycle Day , because of Hoffmans interesting ride home from work. Bicycle Day is also recognized as the dawn of the modern psychedelic age.

Wayne State University professor Dr. Calvin Stevens invented ketamine in the early 1960s, which ended up being a go-to surgical anesthetic on the battlefields of Vietnam. Now, its an FDA-approved nasal spray that treats depression.

MDMA, discovered by Dr. Anton Kllisch of Merck Pharmaceuticals in 1912, sat on a shelf until a Dow chemist named Dr. Alexander Shulgin rediscovered it in 1976, and began testing it on himself.

Through ever-increasing dosages, Shulgin eventually experienced the psychoactive effects of MDMA and suggested to his friend, Oakland psychologist Leo Zeff , that it might be good for psychotherapy.

Dr. Raymond Turpin sees hope in a new treatment for PTSD. Jeffrey Delannoy photo

At one time, Turpin said, there were around 4,000 mental health professionals legally using MDMA in their psychotherapy practices.

But MDMA had also been adopted by the early-1980s underground party culture, where it was used recreationally as a supplement to the loud music, colorful flashing lights and gyrating revelers.

Users reported feelings of euphoria, increased energy, sensory elevation and tactile stimulation that earned MDMA the moniker of ecstasy, or simply, X. More recently, its been called Molly.

Blowback ensued, and by 1988, MDMA was classified as a Schedule I narcotic by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency, along with heroin, LSD, marijuana, methaqualone (quaaludes) and peyote. Schedule I substances are defined as drugs with no currently accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse.

In the mid-1990s, Dr. Charles Grob of UCLA received FDA permission to conduct the first phase-one study on the physiological and psychological effects of MDMA in healthy volunteers.

Other than a temporary elevation in heart rate and blood pressure, and maybe body temperature, people could tolerate it well and there werent any adverse effects, Turpin said. That opened the door to phase two, which was where they actually started to look at it for PTSD. And there was a lot of evidence from the legal period there during those 10 years in the late 1970s/early 1980s that it might be very effective with people who had traumatic histories.

In 2017, Turpin returned to the California Institute of Integral Studies for a certificate program in psychedelic studies and research, where he met Dr. Michael Mithoefer and his wife Annie , a registered nurse. Mithoefer conducted one of the seminal phase two studies testing MDMAs suitability for treating PTSD.

The results were really pretty strong, said Turpin. These were folks that had severe chronic PTSD for an average of 17 or 18 years. One year after the protocol, 67% of the people that had entered the study with PTSD no longer qualified for [a diagnosis of] PTSD.

When Lubecky got home, unfolded the note and read it, it simply said, Google MDMA PTSD.

Once he did, he learned that the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies was conducting a phase two clinical trial, run by the Mithoefers. Founded in 1986, MAPS is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit focusing on the development of cultural, legal and medical shifts in the careful use of psychedelics for mental and spiritual healing.

Interestingly enough, I returned from Iraq on Nov. 22, 2006, and I took my first dose of MDMA on Nov. 22, 2014, Lubecky said. So, on Nov. 22 of this year, I will have been healed of PTSD as long as I had it.

But its not as simple as just taking a single pill and walking away feeling better.

Theres a strict screening process meant to weed out people who could experience an adverse reaction from MDMAs known side effects elevated blood pressure and heart rate. Then, there are three 90-minute prep sessions where therapists get to know the patient and answer questions about the treatment.

Next comes the dosing session, during which two therapists administer the drug via a pill and sit with the patient for between six and eight hours. Sometimes the patient will don eyeshades, or headphones, and listen to calming instrumental music. Other times, theyll talk with therapists as they go through the experience.

It kind of felt like I was in a tight wetsuit in a hot tub, Lubecky said. Its like doing therapy while being hugged by everyone in the world who loves you in a bathtub full of puppies licking your face.

The patient will go on to spend the night and then participate in an integration session following breakfast the next morning, trying to make sense of what was happening during the dosing session.

Typically, three dosing sessions followed by integration sessions will take place over the course of four to six months. After that, no further MDMA use by the patient is anticipated.

Whats actually happening during those dosing sessions is the untangling of complicated processes in the brain that have become dysfunctional due to trauma.

When somebody is undergoing an overwhelming psychological emotional experience, certain higher functions of the brain shut down, and the brain reverts to more primitive processing, Turpin said. The information thats coming in from the traumatic memory the things people are seeing, what theyre hearing, what theyre smelling they dont go through proper processing channels, like a normal memory would. It basically gets stuck in the brain in an improper area where it just sits there. And thats why people have intrusive memories, nightmares, flashbacks. Its all this highly charged, fragmented information.

That information tends to pop up randomly, or when external sensations trigger a re-experiencing of the traumatic event.

Its just kind of living in a state of fear, said Turpin. There could be a car backfiring. They could smell somebodys cologne that reminds them of the smell of the person that raped them. It tends to really throw the body into a state of shock almost.

Such episodes can leave those suffering from PTSD with hypervigilance, but they can also result in the desire for physical seclusion and mental isolation with or without the use of alcohol or other illicit drugs.

The only two FDA-approved drugs for the treatment of PTSD, Paxil and Zoloft, are antidepressants and dont really treat the underlying cause of PTSD. Theyre often prescribed in conjunction with other drugs to combat the effects of PTSD, like sleeplessness and nightmares.

A 2009 study pegged their effectiveness at between 20-30%, although Turpin said its maybe 50% at best.

What weve done for years in treatment is try to give people drugs that have tried to basically throw a blanket on those symptoms and to mitigate those symptoms so that people can go out and function, Turpin said. Unfortunately, we havent done a very good job with those drugs.

What MDMA does, according to Turpin, is shut down the amygdalae the fire alarm of the brain that triggers the normal fight-or-flight response to trauma. That allows the trauma to be processed by the prefrontal cortex, the way it should have happened in the first place.

The positive results from Mithoefers phase two trial, in which Lubecky was a participant, led to the third phase of trials conducted by MAPS .

I think theyre expected to probably do phase three through this year and then wrap it up and turn in hopefully a new drug application to the FDA early next year, Turpin said. The hope is that itll be approved, but theres a special program that the FDA has, called expanded access or compassionate use.

The FDA has approved 10 sites nationwide for the compassionate use program, effectively clearing the way for 50 people to receive the MDMA treatment. Four sites are expected to be up and running soon, but Turpins Waynesville practice has a bit of a head start on the other three.

Mithoefer was my mentor for that [certificate] program, and they were moving to Asheville, Turpin said. Thats how the conversation got started about maybe getting an expanded access site in Asheville, and since I was over here in Waynesville, I was kind of interested to see if we could pull it off in Waynesville, too.

Currently, two patients are in the screening process and on track for treatment later this year, which would make Waynesville the first expanded access site in the world for the compassionate use of MDMA to treat PTSD.

Ill be honest, Lubecky said. I didnt think this was going to work. Thats entirely why I volunteered. Im like, Im going to die any day, I might as well try this. And then it was a miracle.

Marine Michael Ferguson (left) rides out of Fallujah after 28 days of near-constant firefights. Donated photo

Lubecky hasnt taken MDMA since his initial doses in 2016 and continues to advocate for the treatment he thinks saved his life, which is good news for other veterans like Waynesville resident Michael Ferguson, who hasnt yet had the opportunity to go through the MDMA treatment process.

Ferguson joined the Marine Corps just before the terror attacks of Sept. 11, and became part of a FAST company Fleet Anti-terrorism Security Team.

After the invasion of Iraq, he spent 28 days fighting in the Battle of Fallujah.

Fallujah was kind of, firefight, break. Firefight, break. Youd hear morning prayer about 5 a.m. and youd know everybody was getting up and pretty soon they were going to come find where you are today. At times I remember being on rooftops and looking out over the city and it looked like the entire city was on fire, Ferguson said. Its hard for me to explain it or put it into words and grasp it. Its still odd to me that thats what I did.

Ferguson said he had trouble adjusting when he returned home and was fired from his first nine jobs for his quarrelsome behavior. He still sees snipers lurking in open windows and improvised explosive devices on the sides of Western North Carolinas roads.

Finally, a Vietnam veteran recognized Fergusons symptoms and encouraged him to visit the VA. From 2006 until he was formally diagnosed with PTSD in 2014, he went through several different therapy programs and was on 11 different medications.

I never really found one that even came close to working. Most of what I was given at the time had a side effect of suicidal ideation, he said. Thats the last thing that a person in my position needs is more encouragement towards that.

Ferguson stopped taking medications for PTSD several years ago. He said he still contemplates self-harm but continues to fight it, in hopes that one day soon hell find the solace that Lubecky found perhaps in the research and treatment Turpin and MAPS are currently conducting. When you deal with death that much at such a young age, once somethings on the table, its hard to remove it off the table, he said. Even today I definitely dont have an intent or a will [to commit suicide] but its still something I think about. Its always going to be on the table. The process is just keeping it on the table and not putting it into action. And every day that we do that, we win.

If you or someone you know is contemplating self-harm, call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 800.273.8255. The work of MAPS and the Pearl Psychedelic Institute, both of which are nonprofits, is primarily funded through donations. To learn more or to help, visit pearlpsychedelicinstitute.org/donate.

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MDMA as medicine: Stemming the tide of veteran suicides in Western North Carolina - Smoky Mountain News

The Molecular Machinery That Delivers Metabolites to Mitochondria – Yale School of Medicine

Posted on May 12, 2022 by Danzig

When we eat and then digest a meal, the nutrients and other useful components in the food are broken downor metabolizedand ultimately make their way to cells throughout the body. Each cell has its own power plant, called the mitochondria, which produces energy for the cells various processes as well as other tasks that help keep a cell healthy. By the time metabolites reach the cell, they are completely broken down and segregated from one another, so that each can play a role in specific functions that the mitochondria perform.

The process goes far beyond fueling power generation in the cell, according to Hongying Shen, PhD, assistant professor of cellular & molecular physiology at Yale School of Medicine and a member of Yales Systems Biology Institute. Mitochondria also house many other biochemical processes that are critical for cellular and organismal physiology, and that require trafficking in and out of all kinds of metabolites, including nucleotides, amino acids for protein, and lipids, she says.

In a study published May 5 in Nature Communications, Shen and her lab have identified the molecular machinery through which many of the metabolites reach inside the mitochondria.

They focus on the human SLC25 carrier family, the largest protein family responsible for metabolite translocation across the mitochondrial membrane. Each of the 53 transporters has a distinct assignment. They are structurally, sequence-wise, very similar to each other, says Shen, but they have this amazing specificity. One is dedicated to a certain type of nutrients, the other dedicated to other metabolites or nutrients. So there seems to be a very tight regulation in terms of specificity to recognize metabolites being transported.

This new knowledge may open the door to potential regulation of what enters the cell, with the goal of preventing or mitigating disease.

We are particularly interested in human diseases affecting the brain that include psychiatric disorders and neurodegenerative disorders, Shen explains. In fact, there have been de novo mutations in the gene SLC25A39 that have been implicated in autism. And also, A39 has been recently implicated in Parkinsons disease where oxidative stress was proposed as a pathological mechanism. In addition, according to Shen, the antioxidant metabolite glutathione, whose delivery route her lab also identified, may be of great interest to scientists studying cancer.

One day in the future, it is conceivable that biomarkers could associate conditions such as neurodegeneration with the metabolic processes that Shens lab is studying. That, she says, could lead to new treatments for disease. Then we can perhaps change our metabolism by diet and by nutrition and all kinds of methods to intervene with that. If we were able to discover these processes and identify the metabolites, can we use dietary intervention to slow the disease onset or disease progression? There's a long way to go [before we might accomplish that], but it's something.

The new study appears to lay a sound foundation for future work. Shen is encouraged that a different research team, working independently and from a different direction, recently produced similar conclusions about the mitochondrial glutathione transporter.

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The Molecular Machinery That Delivers Metabolites to Mitochondria - Yale School of Medicine

On the front lines of advocating for academic medicine – AAMC

Posted on May 12, 2022 by Danzig

Vast inequities in health care. Millions of uninsured patients. The need to protect crucial funding for biomedical research. A growing physician shortage and bureaucratic obstacles to effective care. Maternal mortality, racism in medicine, and mounting public distrust of scientific sources.

All this and more drives the agenda of policy advocates who work to ensure that medical schools and teaching hospitals across the United States can provide patients with the best possible care.

Karen Fisher, JD, AAMC chief public policy officer, has been working on such efforts for decades. From legislative battles over the Affordable Care Act (ACA) to advocating for hospitals during the COVID-19 pandemic, she has influenced dozens of major policy matters. At the end of June, she is retiring from the AAMC.

Fisher first joined the association as assistant vice president in 1997 and spearheaded policy and regulatory efforts related to the special missions of teaching hospitals, including federal funding for graduate medical education.

In 2011, she left to serve as senior health counsel to the U.S. Senate Committee on Finance, where she was pivotal in enacting major Medicare reform the Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act of 2015 (MACRA) that repealed a damaging Medicare physician payment formula known as the sustainable growth rate and emphasized physician payments based on high-quality care.

In 2016, Fisher returned to the AAMC to run its Office of Government Relations. Since then, she has set advocacy priorities, navigated difficult political waters, and educated lawmakers about the pressing issues affecting some 250,000 U.S. medical trainees, 400 teaching hospitals, 155 medical schools, and the millions of patients that rely on them.

AAMCNews sat down with Fisher to discuss key legislative successes during her tenure and the work that lies ahead to promote the health of all.

First, getting our teaching hospitals, patients, and communities through the pandemic is crucial. We need Congress to pass a supplemental COVID-19 funding bill, for example, to help fund additional vaccines and treatments. And we need legislation to ensure that the nation is prepared for the next pandemic. We have seen what happens when you have chronic underfunding for public health, for things like testing, identifying variants of a virus, and distributing vaccines, and we dont want that to happen again.

Theres also ensuring that policy advances made during the pandemic continue permanently, such as changes to telehealth requirements. Previously, there were many obstacles to telehealth, including that it could only take place in rural areas. Loosened restrictions during the pandemic meant providers could help many more patients, and some AAMC members increased their telehealth services by as much as 200%.

The third issue is addressing the physician workforce shortage. Medicare is the primary public source of funding to offset the costs of medical residents training, and we need Congress to continue to lift caps on that support. This is crucial because the AAMC is predicting a shortfall of as many as 124,000 physicians by 2034.

Fourth, we need to ensure that policymakers understand the importance of providing increased growth in funding for the National Institutes of Health [NIH] so medical schools and teaching hospitals can continue crucial biomedical research.

Finally, we need to address issues of health equity and health care workforce diversity, so we can better work to improve the health of all. We need to advocate for data that identify social factors like housing and food insecurity that contribute to illness. And we want federal policies like the one that recently expanded Medicaids coverage of postpartum care to help address this countrys disparities in maternal mortality.

Pretty much every medical advancement that weve had in this country started with NIH funding. The infrastructure for the mRNA COVID-19 vaccine was possible thanks in part to funding from the NIH over a decade ago. Researchers have revolutionized cancer care and created better treatments for diseases like diabetes and devised new techniques in organ and stem cell transplants, all thanks to NIH funding.

Weve now had seven years of sustainable, robust growth in NIH funding. Before that, we had many years of flat funding. So were still barely at spending capabilities that we had 20 years ago, and we need to continue that trajectory. President Biden has indicated that kind of support with his Cancer Moonshot initiative, but we think theres also a lot more wonderful research that could be funded.

In a lot of ways, the pandemic simply highlighted existing issues.

Weve long known about health inequities, and COVID-19 highlighted them. We knew about the physician shortage, and the pandemic made that clearer. The pandemic highlighted the role of NIH funding since we were able to produce a vaccine in nine months because of prior funding. And we knew about provider burnout before the pandemic and that public health departments and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention havent had enough funding, and that we needed expanded health care coverage. The pandemic just brought those issues to the fore.

As for our ability to advocate and talk to policymakers, Zoom was a big help. Congressional policymakers were working around the clock, so we were working around the clock. During COVID, three major pieces of legislation came out within a month that provided critical waivers and funding that enabled our teaching hospitals and physicians to provide needed care to COVID-19 patients.

We have a whole decision tree, and it has many questions. Do we have expertise to contribute? How important is the issue to health care systems and our patients and communities? What kind of role makes sense for us?

We also ask ourselves if we can join others who are advocating in similar ways. Were big believers in coalitions. We convene a number of coalitions, including the Ad Hoc Group for Medical Research, which includes over 300 members committed to advancing funding for the NIH.

We also ask if this is the right time to address an issue. We care a lot about DACA [Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals], for example, and often raise it with policymakers, but we also know immigration is not on the Congressional radar right now, so we monitor it and are ready to throw our weight behind it when the time is right.

Overall, we need to prioritize, but we also do need to recognize that academic medicine is involved in clinical care, research, education, and community issues. That means we have a responsibility to be active around a broad variety of health-related issues.

An easy way to get involved is through AAMC Action. Its a grassroots advocacy group with 200,000 trainees, researchers, faculty, and physicians on call to address issues quickly. It gives you an avenue to connect with your legislators. It gives you information on issues and even model emails you can send to your legislator. Our member institutions also all have offices of government relations, so thats another place to start.

Im a strong believer that our issues are bipartisan.

Everybody cares about having a sufficient and high-quality physician workforce. Everybody wants research to help identify cures and advances to reduce disease and suffering. Everyone wants to ensure that when patients have complex health problems, there are places to care for them.

Sometimes, how legislators want to go about achieving those goals is different. But weve had open doors with both Democratic and Republican offices and good discussions with both. Each party has its own priorities. So sometimes we have to find a way to fit somewhere in their priority list, or we have to work harder to make the issues we care about get on their list.

Looking back, what do you consider some of the greatest policy accomplishments during your tenure?

Im definitely pleased that we did not lose significant health care coverage during attempts to defeat or diminish the ACA. By the way, the AAMC wasnt necessarily defending the ACA we were defending coverage. If Republicans had developed a policy that was better, we would have supported it.

Im also glad that the federal payments that our members receive have been protected. Teaching hospitals often treat very complex patients as well as many uninsured patients, and they train future providers. It takes a lot of resources to do that, and its essential that the federal government offset some of those costs.

Im proud that after decades, we broke through the freeze on Medicare-funded [medical] residency slots. In December 2021, Congress approved an additional 1,000 Medicare-funded residency slots that will go to train physicians in underfunded and under-resourced areas. These were the first new residency slots approved since 1997.

Im proud of our work on immigration issues and health equity, recognizing that there is much more to do, and of our current work to emphasize the importance of mental health issues in this country and our efforts to support physician well-being.

Im proud that we were able to learn from our members how much theyve been doing during COVID-19 and that we let policymakers know about that work and what our members needed to support it.

The first thing is that the Medicare program is expected to go insolvent in 2026. That means that there will not be enough money to pay Medicares bills. We need to look at how to constrain spending growth while continuing to ensure high-quality care. I worry about how we will do that. Do we need to look at alternative payment models, for example?

I also think we need to focus on protecting research funding. Theres been a lot of attention placed on science during COVID-19. Its crucial that we educate the public and policymakers about the importance of science. We in academic medicine spend so much time doing this important work that we sometimes fail to remind people about the value of doing it.

Well, part of my job is to be worried all the time. The job is stressful because issues emerge suddenly and change quickly, and we often dont have control over the outcomes of our efforts. But this also makes the job challenging and exciting and fun to get up and do every day. And I am surrounded by talented colleagues both in the AAMCs Office of Government Relations and the rest of the association, and that makes my job a lot easier.

I must say that it has been an absolute honor to work on behalf of academic medicine and its patients.

I truly believe teaching hospitals and medical schools are the backbone of the American health care system. I appreciate that they treat everyone who comes through the door, and I respect the passion of people who work in academic medical centers. In fact, I always say that our best advocacy is the work that academic medical centers and their staff do every single day.

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On the front lines of advocating for academic medicine - AAMC

Future Physicians at Hackensack Meridian School of Medicine and New Jersey Communities to Benefit from $1 Million Gift to School’s Human Dimension…

Posted on May 12, 2022 by Danzig

A $1 million gift to the Hackensack Meridian School of Medicine from Roger and Carin Ehrenberg will support the schools Human Dimension program, which benefits both medical students and New Jersey communities. A three-year course, the Human Dimension program provides service-learning experiences and an integrated curriculum for medical students in which they come to understand the many Determinants of Health, including personal, economic and environmental determinants that greatly impact health.

"The Human Dimension program is foundational to the Hackensack Meridian School of Medicines innovative curriculum," said Robert C. Garrett, CEO of Hackensack Meridian Health. "We are grateful for this generous gift which will help us continue to reinvent medical education to create a physician workforce that will thrive in a new state of health care that focuses as much on prevention as curing illness."

Since its start in 2018, 335 students in the Human Dimension program have cared for 257 families in nine communities across five counties, and have taken on 35 community health projects. The programs 35 faculty members have been integral in the success of the program and in leading another key aspect of it: the Professional Identity Formation curriculum. This training includes reflection, narrative medicine, resilience-building, mindfulness and other skills and activities to support student development as resilient, empathic professionals able to meet the needs of their patients.

"By matching our future physicians to individuals and families from underserved areas, and through interactions over the entire core curriculum, they become involved in all aspects of a familys life to understand drivers of health outcomes, provide education and navigate community resources, said Jeffrey Boscamp, M.D., interim dean of Hackensack Meridian School of Medicine.

The schools commitment to improving community health has garnered much recognition, including the American Hospital Associations NOVA award. The Hackensack Meridian School of Medicine was one of just five institutions to be recognized.

"Carin and I have long believed that medical care needs to take into account the whole individual, not merely reported symptoms, says Roger Ehrenberg. "This means understanding where and how someone lives, what stressors exist and why, and other physical and psychological forces that drive their behaviors.

"Traditional medical training has given short shrift to context, which often has profound impacts on a patient's physical and emotional well-being, added Ehrenberg. "This is a problem we wanted to address both with respect to training subsequent generations of medical professionals to take these factors into account, but also to develop empathy and perspective by incorporating these kinds of challenges and communities into their medical training and curriculum.

The gift provided by the Ehrenbergs will cover nearly all annual costs to implement the Human Dimension program for one year, including core faculty and team member positions, a mix of full- and part-time, and include clinical faculty teachers, curriculum development, associate dean supervision and support and operations costs such as interpreter services and community events. Additionally, it will help to establish the Health Services Research Institute. Health Services Research is core to assessing the impact of the Human Dimension program on students and the communities and populations they are caring for. It will focus on the organization, delivery and outcomes of health care in a broad manner and addresses a wide array of areas, including social determinants of health, health outcomes of programs and policies, variations in care, disease specific health care outcomes and costs, diversity, equality and outcomes, payment systems and population and geographic care delivery.

"We are so thankful to Roger and Carin for their compassion and generosity, says Joyce P. Hendricks, president and chief development officer, Hackensack Meridian Health Foundation. "The COVID-19 pandemic shone a spotlight on the undeniable health care disparities we face as a nation, and programs, like the Human Dimension program, are just one of the ways in which we can truly make headway in establishing equal health care for all."

To learn more about how you can make a gift in support of Hackensack Meridian School of Medicine, please contact Joseph Burt, executive director, at 551-358-8269, joseph.burt@hmhn.org or by donating here. To learn more about, or to support Hackensack Meridian Health Foundation, please email giving@hmhn.org.

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Future Physicians at Hackensack Meridian School of Medicine and New Jersey Communities to Benefit from $1 Million Gift to School's Human Dimension...

$83 Bn Regenerative Medicine Markets – Global Opportunity Analysis and Industry Forecast, 2021-2022 & 2030 – ResearchAndMarkets.com – Business…

Posted on May 12, 2022 by Danzig

DUBLIN--(BUSINESS WIRE)--The "Regenerative Medicine Market by Product Type, Material, Application and End user (Hospitals, Ambulatory Surgical Centers, and Others: Global Opportunity Analysis and Industry Forecast, 2021-2030" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering.

The regenerative medicine market size was valued at $10,107.32 million in 2020, and is estimated to reach $83,196.72 million by 2030, growing at a CAGR of 23.4% from 2021 to 2030.

Regenerative medicine is a process of replacing human cells, tissues or organs to restore or establish normal function. It is field that brings together experts in biology, chemistry, genetics and medicine. This is a promising field which working to restore structure and function of damaged tissues and organs.

It includes cell therapy involves the use of cellular materials such as stem cells, autologous cells, xenogeneic cells, and others, for the therapeutic treatment of patients. Cell therapy is used to replace damaged cells, deliver therapies to target tissues/organs, stimulate self-healing, and various other applications in regenerative medicine.

The major factors boosting the regenerative medicine market growth include technological advancements in tissue and organ regeneration, increase in prevalence of chronic diseases and trauma emergencies, prominent potential of nanotechnology, and emergence of stem cell technology.

In addition, increase in incidence of degenerative diseases and shortage of organs for transplantation are expected to boost the growth of the market. The prominent potential of regenerative medicine to replace, repair, and regenerate damaged tissues and organs has fueled the market growth. In addition, technological advancements in regenerative medicine production and advancement in the stem cell therapy procedures propel the growth of the market.

Rise in prevalence of musculoskeletal diseases and increase in dermatological treatments propel the growth of the market. Moreover, utilization of nanomaterial's in wound care, drug delivery, and immunomodulation has opened growth avenues for the regenerative medicine market.

However, stringent regulations, operational inefficiency, and high cost of regenerative medicine treatment are key factors that hinder the market growth. Furthermore, advancements in stem cell technology and increase in R&D activities in the emerging economies are expected to fuel the market growth during the forecast period. Developed nations have adopted technological advancements in tissue engineering and regenerative medicine sectors, which help in the expansion of the global market.

Moreover, rise in development of pharmaceutical and medical device industries and improvement in healthcare spending are anticipated to drive the growth of the regenerative medicine market. In addition, increase in demand for regenerative medicine led to development of innovative technologies in the healthcare sector, thereby propelling growth of the market.

Moreover, initiatives taken by governments for development of advanced stem cell therapies and development of the healthcare sector for manufacturing of regenerative medicine are the key factors that boost growth of the market. Furthermore, surge in geriatric population, who are more vulnerable to chronic disease, propels the market growth.

KEY MARKET PLAYERS

KEY MARKET SEGMENTS

By Product Type

By Material

By Application

By End User

By Region

For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/qek5u

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$83 Bn Regenerative Medicine Markets - Global Opportunity Analysis and Industry Forecast, 2021-2022 & 2030 - ResearchAndMarkets.com - Business...

Medicine is Sick: Nurses describe why theyve left the profession – WGN TV Chicago

Posted on May 12, 2022 by Danzig

WGN News examines the health care system in crisis

Those who care for sick patients know the system is in crisis.

But if medicine is sick, how will healthcare workers take care of themselves so that patients can get better? Over the next several weeks WGN News will talk with doctors, nurses and administrators about medicine.

People are leaving the profession, wait times to get help are astronomical while face-to-face time with a healthcare provider is minimal. Examining medicine under a microscope the only diagnosis is sick. But caregivers say even as they feel as if they are drowning, they are committed to finding a way to stay afloat.

In part one, WGN News spoke to two nurses who have left the profession. Statistics show nearly half of all doctors and nurses will leave the field altogether.

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Medicine is Sick: Nurses describe why theyve left the profession - WGN TV Chicago

Smoking-cessation program that targets cancer patients effective Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis – Washington University School…

Posted on May 12, 2022 by Danzig

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Siteman program widens reach, lowers costs of tobacco treatment

Researchers at Siteman Cancer Center at Barnes-Jewish Hospital and Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have found a way to help more patients who want to stop smoking. The successful strategy involves using electronic medical records to help identify smokers when they visit their oncologists and offering help with quitting during such visits.

Researchers at Siteman Cancer Center at Barnes-Jewish Hospital and Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have found that a program that targets patients for smoking-cessation treatment while theyre visiting a clinic for cancer care gets more cancer patients into such treatment than previous methods. The program also helps more cancer patients quit successfully, and its costs are lower than prior methods that involved referring cancer patients to specialists.

The findings are published in the May issue of the Journal of the National Comprehensive Cancer Network.

The same research team has found that even after a cancer diagnosis, quitting smoking doubles the survival rate and lowers the risk of cancer recurrence, no matter the stage of the cancer when a patient is able to stop smoking cigarettes.

The key thing is that treatment is offered on site, said first author Alex T. Ramsey, PhD, an assistant professor of psychiatry. Past care has tended to rely on referrals to specialists, requiring patients to make appointments in a different clinic. That creates hurdles involving time and transportation. When we built this program, we kept those barriers to treatment in mind, understanding that for a program like this to be sustainable, and to reach large numbers of people, it would need to be fully embedded in the care patients already receive.

The researchers used electronic health records to determine which patients at Siteman were smokers. Then, while the patients were in the clinic to see oncologists, nurses and medical assistants offered the patients help to quit smoking. This strategy has increased the percentage of patients receiving smoking-cessation treatment from about 2% at the start of the study to nearly 30%. Further, the number of patients who successfully quit smoking increased from about 12% to more than 17%.

Ramsey said the eventual goal is to make evidence-based tobacco treatment available to every cancer patient who smokes. And senior investigator Li-Shiun Chen, MD, said the best way to make that happen is to incorporate tobacco treatment into the point of care via electronic health record support.

We gather information before a patient gets to the clinic so that we can maximize what theyre offered when they arrive, said Chen, an associate professor of psychiatry. A cancer center visit is very busy for patients and for providers, but by using health informatics and technology tools to learn who smokes and to offer those patients tobacco treatment options, were saving time, money, and, most importantly, lives.

The program offered through the Siteman Cancer Network also is proving to be less expensive than prior approaches.

The cost of past tobacco-treatment strategies averaged about $500 per patient across national cancer centers, but with the ability to offer treatment to patients while they already are in the clinic, weve lowered the per patient cost to about $70, Chen said.

Patients are offered access to phone- or text-based counseling, an app designed to help them quit, referral to a smoking-cessation group, and evidence-based medications to support attempts to quit. Pharmacists are available to ensure that any smoking-cessation drugs prescribed will be safe to use in conjunction with chemotherapy.

Traditionally, there have been three pillars of cancer treatment, Ramsey said. Now, along with surgical treatment, radiation therapy and chemotherapy, we believe smoking-cessation treatment can be recognized as a fourth pillar of cancer care.

Ramsey and Chen plan to expand their efforts, both within the Siteman Cancer Network and by sharing their strategies with providers at other cancer centers. And theyre continuing to home in on personalized care recommendations, including for patients at risk for lung cancer.

Lung cancer remains the deadliest form of cancer: More than 80% of lung cancers and lung cancer deaths are caused by cigarette smoking. A new $2.8 million grant from the National Cancer Institute will assist the researchers as they investigate whether personalized risk feedback tools including patient-specific genetic risk results delivered to patients and to their primary care physicians may lead to more frequent lung cancer screening and use of smoking-cessation treatments, as well as opportunities to detect lung cancers at earlier, more treatable stages.

We want to help more patients stop smoking, both those who have and who have not been diagnosed with cancer, Ramsey said. We want to bring high-quality tobacco treatment to the point of care and ensure that we have systems in place so that everyone who needs treatment has access. With that increase in reach, we think well see smoking-cessation rates increase, too, and that should improve cancer outcomes moving forward.

Ramsey AT, Baker TB, Stoneking F, Smock N, Chen J, Pham G, James AS, Colditz GA, Govindan R, Bierut LJ, Chen LS. Increased reach and effectiveness with a low-burden point-of-care tobacco treatment program in cancer clinics. Journal of the National Comprehensive Cancer Network, May 11, 2022.

This work is supported by the National Cancer Institute, the National Institute on Drug Abuse and the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Grant numbers P30 CA091842-16S2 (Cancer Moonshot Tobacco Cessation Supplement), P50 CA244431, P30 CA091842, K12 DA041449, R34 DA052928, UL1 TR002345, R01 DA038076, with additional funding from the Siteman Investment Program.

Washington University School of Medicines 1,700 faculty physicians also are the medical staff of Barnes-Jewish and St. Louis Childrens hospitals. The School of Medicine is a leader in medical research, teaching and patient care, and currently is No. 4 in research funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Through its affiliations with Barnes-Jewish and St. Louis Childrens hospitals, the School of Medicine is linked to BJC HealthCare.

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Smoking-cessation program that targets cancer patients effective Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis - Washington University School...

Examine Mindful Eating and Food as Medicine, 2022 Research Study – Focus on Key Functional Ingredients, Health and Wellness by Category, Health and…

Posted on May 12, 2022 by Danzig

DUBLIN--(BUSINESS WIRE)--The "Mindful Eating and Food as Medicine" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering.

The Mindful Eating and Food as Medicine global briefing offers an insight into the size and shape of the health and wellness marketplace, highlights buzz topics, emerging trends, categories and geographies as well as pressing industry issues and white spaces.

Mindful consumption is on the rise as health has become a top priority in a post-pandemic world. This report highlights emerging trends around functionality, clean label and digital wellness and examines the role of nutritional wellbeing in the context of mindful eating. It explores how food and beverage companies can adapt innovation strategies to win in the growing health segment.

It identifies the leading companies and brands, offers strategic analysis of key factors influencing wellbeing market - be they new product developments, packaging and ingredients innovations, introduction of new regulatory schemes, economic/lifestyle influences, distribution or retail pricing issues. Forecasts illustrate how the market is set to change and criteria for success.

Product Coverage: Focus Categories by Key Functional Ingredients, Health and Wellness by Category, Health and Wellness by Prime Positioning, Health and Wellness by Type.

Data Coverage: Market sizes (historic and forecasts), company shares, brand shares and distribution data.

Why buy this report?

Key Topics Covered:

1. Introduction

2. Examining Mindful Eating and Food as Medicine

3. Meeting Consumer Needs

4. Conclusion

For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/fmogi2

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Examine Mindful Eating and Food as Medicine, 2022 Research Study - Focus on Key Functional Ingredients, Health and Wellness by Category, Health and...

The Lancet Respiratory Medicine: Two years after infection, half of people hospitalized with COVID-19 have at least one symptom, follow-up study…

Posted on May 12, 2022 by Danzig

Peer-reviewed / Observational study / People

Two years after infection with COVID-19, half of patients who were admitted to hospital still have at least one symptom, according to the longest follow-up study to date, published in The Lancet Respiratory Medicine. The study followed 1,192 participants in China infected with SARS-CoV-2 during the first phase of the pandemic in 2020.

While physical and mental health generally improved over time, the analysis suggests that COVID-19 patients still tend to have poorer health and quality of life than the general population. This is especially the case for participants with long COVID, who typically still have at least one symptom including fatigue, shortness of breath, and sleep difficulties two years after initially falling ill. [1]

The long-term health impacts of COVID-19 have remained largely unknown, as the longest follow-up studies to date have spanned around one year. [2] The lack of pre-COVID-19 health status baselines and comparisons with the general population in most studies have also made it difficult to determine how well patients with COVID-19 have recovered.

Lead author Professor Bin Cao, of the China-Japan Friendship Hospital, China, says: Our findings indicate that for a certain proportion of hospitalised COVID-19 survivors, while they may have cleared the initial infection, more than two years is needed to recover fully from COVID-19. Ongoing follow-up of COVID-19 survivors, particularly those with symptoms of long COVID, is essential to understand the longer course of the illness, as is further exploration of the benefits of rehabilitation programmes for recovery. There is a clear need to provide continued support to a significant proportion of people whove had COVID-19, and to understand how vaccines, emerging treatments, and variants affect long-term health outcomes. [3]

The authors of the new study sought to analyse the long-term health outcomes of hospitalised COVID-19 survivors, as well as specific health impacts of long COVID. They evaluated the health of 1,192 participants with acute COVID-19 treated at Jin Yin-tan Hospital in Wuhan, China, between January 7th and May 29th, 2020, at six months, 12 months, and two years.

Assessments involved a six-minute walking test, laboratory tests, and questionnaires on symptoms, mental health, health-related quality of life, if they had returned to work, and health-care use after discharge. The negative effects of long COVID on quality of life, exercise capacity, mental health, and health-care use were determined by comparing participants with and without long COVID symptoms. Health outcomes at two years were determined using an age-, sex-, and comorbidities-matched control group of people in the general population with no history of COVID-19 infection.

The median age of participants at discharge was 57 years, and 54% (n=641) were men. Six months after initially falling ill, 68% (777/1,149) of participants reported at least one long COVID symptom. By two years after infection, reports of symptoms had fallen to 55% (650/1,190). Fatigue or muscle weakness were the symptoms most often reported and fell from 52% (593/1,151) at six months to 30% (357/1,190) at two years. Regardless of the severity of their initial illness, 89% (438/494) of participants had returned to their original work at two years.

Two years after initially falling ill, patients with COVID-19 are generally in poorer health than the general population, with 31% (351/1,127) reporting fatigue or muscle weakness and 31% (354/1,127) reporting sleep difficulties. The proportion of non-COVID-19 participants reporting these symptoms was 5% (55/1,127) and 14% (153/1,127), respectively. COVID-19 patients were also more likely to report a number of other symptoms including joint pain, palpitations, dizziness, and headaches. In quality of life questionnaires, COVID-19 patients also more often reported pain or discomfort (23% [254/1,127]) and anxiety or depression (12% [131/1,127]) than non-COVID-19 participants (5% [57/1,127] and 5% [61/1,127], respectively).

Around half of study participants (650/1,190) had symptoms of long COVID at two years, and reported lower quality of life than those without long COVID. In mental health questionnaires, 35% (228/650) reported pain or discomfort and 19% (123/650) reported anxiety or depression. The proportion of COVID-19 patients without long COVID reporting these symptoms was 10% (55/540) and 4% (19/540) at two years, respectively. Long COVID participants also more often reported problems with their mobility (5% [33/650]) or activity levels (4% [24/540]) than those without long COVID (1% [8/540] and 2% [10/540], respectively).

Mental health assessments of long COVID participants found 13% (83/650) display symptoms of anxiety and 11% (70/649) displayed symptoms of depression, while for non-long COVID participants the proportions were 3% (15/536) and 1% (5/540), respectively. Long COVID participants more often used health-care services after being discharged, with 26% (169/648) reporting an outpatient clinic visit compared to 11% (57/538) of non-long COVID participants. At 17% (107/648), hospitalisation among long COVID participants was higher than the 10% (52/538) reported by participants without long COVID.

The authors acknowledge limitations to their study. Without a control group of hospital survivors unrelated to COVID-19 infection, it is hard to determine whether observed abnormalities are specific to COVID-19. While the moderate response rate may introduce selection bias, most baseline characteristics were balanced between COVID-19 survivors who were included in the analysis and those who were not. The slightly increased proportion of participants included in the analysis who received oxygen leads to the possibility that those who did not participate in the study had fewer symptoms than those who did. This may result in an overestimate of the prevalence of long COVID symptoms. Being a single centre study from early in the pandemic, the findings may not directly extend to the long-term health outcomes of patients infected with later variants. Like most COVID-19 follow-up studies, there is also the potential for information bias when analysing self-reported health outcomes. Some outcome measures, including work status and health-care use after discharge, were not recorded at all visits, meaning only partial analysis of long-term impacts on these outcomes was possible.

NOTES TO EDITORS

This study was funded by the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences, National Natural Science Foundation of China, National Key Research and Development Program of China, National Administration of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Major Projects of National Science and Technology on New Drug Creation and Development of Pulmonary Tuberculosis, China Evergrande Group, Jack Ma Foundation, Sino Biopharmaceutical, Ping An Insurance (Group), and New Sunshine Charity Foundation. It was conducted by researchers from the Capital medical university, China-Japan Friendship hospital, Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences, Harbin Medical University, and Tsinghua University-Peking University Joint Center for Life Sciences, China.

[1] https://www.who.int/publications/i/item/WHO-2019-nCoV-Post_COVID-19_condition-Clinical_case_definition-2021.1%5B2%5D The Lancet: 1-year outcomes in hospital survivors with COVID-19: a longitudinal cohort study, https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(21)01755-4/fulltext%5B3%5D Quote direct from author and cannot be found in the text of the Article.

The labels have been added to this press release as part of a project run by the Academy of Medical Sciences seeking to improve the communication of evidence. For more information, please see: http://www.sciencemediacentre.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/AMS-press-release-labelling-system-GUIDANCE.pdfif you have any questions or feedback, please contact The Lancet press office pressoffice@lancet.com

IF YOU WISH TO PROVIDE A LINK FOR YOUR READERS, PLEASE USE THE FOLLOWING, WHICH WILL GO LIVE AT THE TIME THE EMBARGO LIFTS: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanres/article/PIIS2213-2600(22)00126-6/fulltext

The Lancet Respiratory Medicine

Observational study

People

Health outcomes in people 2 years after surviving hospitalisation with COVID-19: a longitudinal cohort study

11-May-2022

We declare no competing interests

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The Lancet Respiratory Medicine: Two years after infection, half of people hospitalized with COVID-19 have at least one symptom, follow-up study...

Mother and Daughter Nurses Make Their Mark, Spread Message of Diversity At UNC Medical Center | Newsroom – UNC Health and UNC School of Medicine

Posted on May 12, 2022 by Danzig

The story of Honey Monet Jones, an Acute Care Nurse Practitioner in the MICU at UNC Medical Center, and her mother, Venus Standard, a Certified Nurse Midwife, and current Assistant Professor at the UNC School of Medicine and Department of Family Medicine, is not your typical mother-daughter story.

The story of Honey Monet Jones (pictured left), an Acute Care Nurse Practitioner in the MICU at UNC Medical Center, and her mother, Venus Standard (pictured right), a Certified Nurse Midwife, and current Assistant Professor at the UNC School of Medicine and Department of Family Medicine, is not your typical mother-daughter story.

I was a nurse first, said Jones, with a laugh.

Standard previously had a number of jobs, including working as a photographer, massage therapist and an entrepreneur, as Jones, an only child, was growing up.

Originally both from New York, Jones came to North Carolina for college. She earned her Bachelors degree from UNC in 2000.

Joness original intent was to go to medical school. I always thought when I was a kid that I was going to be a doctor. I knew I needed to do something in healthcare. Thats where I wanted to be: taking care of people, helping people get better, so the plan was to go to medical school.

However, a slight change in plans occurred as her senior year of undergraduate neared. She started working in the hospital as a Health Unit Coordinator (HUC). While there, she gained an interest in critical care spaces. She also began to be drawn more to nursing, citing work-life balance.

After receiving her RN from Watts School of Nursing, she continued to work in a variety of critical and intensive care units. She eventually did end up earning her Doctorate of Nursing Practice (DNP) from Duke University School of Nursing.

Standard has enjoyed watching her daughters advancements and hard work. Its been amazing to watch her grow, and to watch her develop into the professional that she has, she said.

Jones credits her perseverance to her mother. All of that grit came from her, she said.

Meanwhile, Joness parents had moved to the Tar Heel State. Standard had gone back to school, working toward a nursing degree of her own. She had previously worked as a doula while still living in New York. That got her interested in midwifery.

After obtaining her nursing degree, Standard worked as a travel nurse before accepting a job with UNC Health. Her specialty has been in labor and delivery. She also works as an assistant clinical professor in the UNC School of Medicines department of family medicine.

Standard has been a fierce advocate for maternal and child health, especially among vulnerable populations. She is the co-founder of4moms2be, a group which offers support and resources to expectant mothers and their families. She also received the C. Felix Harvey Award and the accompanying $75,000 grant to Advance Institutional Priorities for her proposal regarding a program to train black women to become doulas. Standard has led that program training twenty black women to earn the DONA International Labor Doula certification, considered the gold standard in doula training. That grant has helped with another obstacle: the high training fees.

This doula training program wasprofiledby Sci NC, a division of PBS North Carolina.

As it stands, doula training is less extensive than training for nurses, doctors and other medical practitioners. Your typical basic doula training is a very long weekend, said Standard. Because we produced an extensive, it actually flowed to be an eight-week program. But its the only profession that can have healthcare status that be trained in a very short time.

Although Standard has made a considerable mark in her role in labor and delivery, as previously mentioned, this was far from her first professional success.

If you set out to do something, you can do it, said Jones of her mother. There wasnt really any area that she did not succeed in.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the maternal mortality rate for black women in the United States is more than three times that of white women. Standard seeks to lessen this disparity by connecting black women to black doulas. They (doulas) bring an extra layer of security to the birth space for that laboring person, said Standard.

Jones has been personally affected by this disparity. I similarly was a statistic in laboring, she said. Its being second-guessed when you present with symptomsand youre kind of passed off. Because black women have poorer outcomes, the medical community needs to shift its focus and say, I need to pay attention to this patient.'

Relating to this is the need to develop pathways that increase diversity among clinicians. Jones and Standard are hard at work on that, too.

Unfortunately, disparities in health arent unique to just laboring moms, said Jones. Its infiltrated all aspects of health and minorities remain underrepresented in a lot of spaces including clinical practice, research, education and leadership.

Recently, Jones she was awarded funding from the Clinical Investment Committee for the Critical Care Advanced Practice Provider Support Program (CCAPPS). This program works to standardize onboarding for newly-hired critical care APPs and offer a pathway for APP professional development. Jones currently serves as a Diversity Champion for the UNC Department of Medicine to promote, celebrate and encourage engagement for diversity initiatives across the UNC Department of Medicine. She was as an evaluator for the Health Equity Academy scholars program under the HRSA Nursing Workforce Diversity grant. She also co-draftedthe diversity commitment statementfor the American Association of Nurse Practitioners.

Jones says that through both her and her mothers work, the ultimate goal is not just representation, but helping vulnerable and marginalized populations feel safer when receiving healthcare. Theres certainly a distrust of the healthcare community among some populations..I think having a provider who understands the experience of the population they are serving and likewise their historical trauma is the key to establishing that trust and improving patient outcomes.

For both Jones and Standard, they hope their work makes an indelible imprint on the healthcare community and inspires others to do the same.

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Mother and Daughter Nurses Make Their Mark, Spread Message of Diversity At UNC Medical Center | Newsroom - UNC Health and UNC School of Medicine

Global Nuclear Medicine Isotopes Market Report to 2027 – Featuring Bayer, Bracco Imaging and Cardinal Health Among Others – ResearchAndMarkets.com -…

Posted on May 12, 2022 by Danzig

DUBLIN--(BUSINESS WIRE)--The "Global Nuclear Medicine Isotopes Market 2021-2027" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering.

The global nuclear medicine isotope market is anticipated to grow at a considerable CAGR during the forecast period.

The growing usage of nuclear medicine isotopes in treatment of several disorders is a key factor driving the growth of the global nuclear medicine isotopes market. Nuclear medicine is used to diagnose and test the effect of a wide range of diseases, including heart diseases, tumors, gastrointestinal, neurological disorders, and endocrine disorders, as well as other abnormalities in the body.

The global nuclear medicine isotope market is segmented based on type and application. Based on type, the market is segmented into stable isotopes and radio isotopes. Based on application, the nuclear medicine isotope market is segmented into nuclear therapy, equipment radioactive source, and diagnosis.

Geographically, the global nuclear medicine isotope market covers the analysis of four major regions including North America (the US and Canada), Europe (UK, Germany, Italy, Spain, France, and Rest of Europe), Asia-Pacific (China, Japan, India, and Rest of Asia-Pacific), and the Rest of the World. Some of the companies operating in the global nuclear medicine isotope market include Bayer AG, General Electric Co., Siemens Healthcare, Cardinal Health, Inc., and Nordion Inc.

Market Segmentation

The Report Covers

Key Topics Covered:

1. Report Summary

1.1. Research Methods and Tools

1.2. Market Breakdown

1.2.1. By Segments

1.2.2. By Region

2. Market Overview and Insights

2.1. Scope of the Report

2.2. Analyst Insight & Current Market Trends

2.2.1. Key Findings

2.2.2. Recommendations

2.2.3. Conclusion

3. Market Determinants

3.1. Motivators

3.2. Restraints

3.3. Opportunities

4. Market Segmentation

4.1. Global Nuclear Medicine Isotopes Market By Type

4.1.1. Stable Isotopes

4.1.2. Radio Isotopes

4.2. Global Nuclear Medicine Isotopes Market by Application

4.2.1. Nuclear Therapy

4.2.2. Equipment Radioactive Source

4.2.3. Diagnosis

5. Regional Analysis

5.1. North America

5.1.1. United States

5.1.2. Canada

5.2. Europe

5.2.1. UK

5.2.2. Germany

5.2.3. Italy

5.2.4. Spain

5.2.5. France

5.2.6. Rest of Europe

5.3. Asia-Pacific

5.3.1. China

5.3.2. India

5.3.3. Japan

5.3.4. Rest of Asia-Pacific

5.4. Rest of the World

6. Company Profiles

6.1. Advanced Accelerator Applications

6.2. Bayer AG

6.3. Bracco Imaging

6.4. Cardinal Health, Inc.

6.5. Curium

6.6. Eczacybay-Monrol Nuclear Products

6.7. GE Healthcare

6.8. Lantheus Medical Imaging

6.9. Nordion

6.10. NTP Radioisotopes

For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/ee00sy

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Global Nuclear Medicine Isotopes Market Report to 2027 - Featuring Bayer, Bracco Imaging and Cardinal Health Among Others - ResearchAndMarkets.com -...

Bill Elliott Gives Clint Bowyer a Dose of His Own Medicine and Takes Hilarious Swipe at Former Driver’s Ability – Sportscasting

Posted on May 12, 2022 by Danzig

When NASCAR fans tune into a Fox broadcast, they know theyll get a couple of things from Clint Bowyer. First and most importantly, hell provide a drivers perspective of whats happening on the track. In his second season, hes also shown a propensity to take a lighthearted approach, joking around, which often includes taking shots at anyone and everyone.

On Sunday at Darlington, the tables were turned. Bowyer had a shot fired directly at him, and it surprisingly came from none other than Bill Elliott. It was a hilarious moment and just one of several reasons fans were suggesting the Hall of Famer should become a regular in the booth in the future.

Since Clint Bowyer joined the Fox NASCAR team at the start of the 2021 season, hes been more than willing to joke at the expense of others. Last year, his target was often his boothmate and former competitor, Jeff Gordon.

This year, with Gordons departure, the former Stewart-Haas Racing driver has had moving targets in the booth with Fox using a rotational lineup of guest analysts. Despite that change, Bowyer didnt take long to start firing shots, beginning with the season-opening race at Daytona and Tony Stewart.

After the network aired a segment with Stewart interviewing Kevin Harvick, in which both made fun of Bowyers attire, the live broadcast returned to the set where the 42-year-old took aim at his former boss.

You made fun of the way I dress. Have you seen some of your Halloween outfits over the years? I mean, my gosh, Bowyer said as the broadcast showed Stewart in one of his Halloween outfits when he dressed like Carmen Miranda, wearing a pink hat, pink skirt, and matching top, exposing his hairy stomach.

Look at that. What is that? Bowyer asked. Are you kidding me?

After Stewart explained it was a Halloween-winning costume from 2015, Bowyer finished off his attack.

Thats a Halloween nightmare, he said. How would you like to wake up with that babe, folks? Leah, look out!

On Sunday at Darlington, Fox provided a Hall of Fame lineup of guests analysts, including Richard Petty in Stage 1, Bobby Labonte in Stage 2, and Bill Elliott wrapping up the race. With 56 laps remaining and Elliott joining Bowyer and Mike Joy in the booth, Chase Briscoe got loose and drove the No. 14 car hard into the outside wall. Bowyer drove the SHR 14 car for the last four years of his career.

14 got off of pit road, but I think youre right, man. Smoked the wall, Bowyer said as the replay showed Briscoe earning one of many Darlington stripes delivered throughout the race. The 14 way too high, jumped the cushion, is what Im going to call that, and got into the wall.

Are you driving that thing today? Elliott hilariously asked.

No, Bowyer quickly retorted. Thats not funny, Bill.

Just checking. Okay, the Hall of Famer responded with his familiar drawl.

That cut deep, Bowyer said. My hero just cut me. I mean right in the back.

Elliotts humorous dig at Bowyer was one of several highlights of his time in the booth, which most agreed was not only a top guest analyst performance for the day, but one of the better ones for the entire season.

Bill Elliott is actually doing pretty good in the booth, Xfinity Series driver Ryan Vargas tweeted. Seems like hes genuinely having a good time and I love to see that.

Side note: Bill Elliott has been wildly good in the broadcast booth this stage. Very informative, wrote reporter Dustin Albino.

Bill Elliott is absolutely crushing it in the booth right now, wrote one fan. The man is as sharp and up to date with the sport as hes always been.

Those were just a few of the comments that were overwhelmingly positive. Based on that response, if Fox decides to go down the same route in 2023 with its coverage implementing a rotation of analysts, the network would be smart to bring on Elliott earlier in the season and for a couple of races. Theres no doubt hes going to already be on location watching his son, so might as well put him to work and, more importantly, watch him put Bowyer in his place.

Like Sportscasting on Facebook. Follow us on Twitter @sportscasting19 and subscribe to our YouTube channel.

RELATED: Chase Elliott Is a Star but Will Never Match His Dads Record Set at Talladega for Fastest Speed in NASCAR History

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Bill Elliott Gives Clint Bowyer a Dose of His Own Medicine and Takes Hilarious Swipe at Former Driver's Ability - Sportscasting

Elevating your voice, and medicine, for 175 years and counting – American Medical Association

Posted on May 12, 2022 by Danzig

In the earliest days of the AMA, back when the idea of a national body for medicine was novel and few knew if it would last, the leaders of this organization had the wisdom to begin by carefully laying out the ethical standards that must guide our profession. This was a signal to doctors everywhere that the AMA was ushering in a more responsible and compassionate era for medicine.

To create the Code of Medical Ethics, as it would later be called, the AMAs leaders drew from historylanguage and concepts that emerged in the 5th century B.C. with the great Greek physician Hippocrates. The Code would be updated and modernized over the years to keep up with advancements in medical practice, but the core tenets drafted in 1847, which speak to physicians responsibilities to their patients, have remained largely unchanged.

As the AMA marks its 175-year anniversary on May 7, Ive been thinking about the key inflection points for our organization. By making the Code one of our first major acts, it is clear that our leaders solidified the AMAs standing and reputation as a principled and guiding light for medicine and set the tone for all that would follow.

Since our founding in 1847, the AMA has been the physicians powerful ally in patient care and we continuously strive to live up to our lofty mission of promoting the art and science of medicine and the betterment of public health. Recall that the AMA emerged in a time when quackery was rampant and widespread, when numerous unregulated medical schools failed to graduate qualified physicians, and when a patchwork of medical journals existed whose information was not reliable or credible.

This dysfunction fueled the creation of the Code of Medical Ethics, and soon after, pushed the AMA to create the Journal of the American Medical Association, now known as JAMA, with research also broadly published under the 12 JAMA Network journals. Both remain cornerstones of medical practice today, anchoring the broad work of the AMA in science, evidence and respect for the sanctity of the patient-physician relationship. By establishing a board to educate the public about the dangers of quack and unproven remedies in our early years, the AMA committed itself to protecting the publics health.

Advancing public health

Through policy and advocacy, the AMA has led many of the greatest public health achievements in the last century: from supporting universal childhood vaccines and launching a war on public smoking, to opposing acts of discrimination against patients with HIV/AIDS. More recently, the AMA has supported expanding health care coverage through the Affordable Care Act and other safety-net programs, and we implemented policies to combat systemic racism in health care and other forms of discrimination in medicine.

Today, we fulfill our mission in three important ways: by working to remove obstacles that interfere with patient care, by leading the charge to prevent chronic disease and confront public health crises, and by driving the future of medicine through innovation and improved physician training and education. In short, the AMA represents physicians with a unified voice on the issues that matter most to them, leveraging the power of physician experience and expertise to government and stakeholders across health care.

One of the great strengths of the AMA is our commitment to an internal democratic process that ensures a variety of perspectives, vigorous debate and good policymaking. Twice a year, the AMA convenes its House of Delegates, with representatives from more than 190 state and specialty medical societies. This legislative body develops and adopts policies on health care issues that influence AMA advocacy and medical practices throughout the United States and around the world. By elevating the concerns of physicians and speaking on behalf of the entire profession, the AMA has a tremendous impact in government agencies, Congress, state legislatures and the courts.

This has been invaluable over the last two years as we have provided counsel, support and leadership amid one of the most challenging times for health care in a century. Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, the AMA has fought for personal protective equipment, financial resources, and telehealth regulatory flexibility on behalf of physicians, and we have helped lead a national effort to build support for COVID-19 vaccines and counter widespread misinformation.

Committed to rectifying wrongs

As we celebrate the AMAs many contributions to science and public health, we also recognize that there are periods in our long history that we are not proud of. At the point of our founding, AMA leaders made decisions to exclude women and Black physicians from our ranks, contributing to a health care system today that is plagued by inequities and injustices for patients and physicians alike.

In 2008, the AMA concluded a three-yearstudyon the racial divide in organized medicine and publicly apologizedfor our organizations past discriminatory practices against Black physicians, an effort we called a modest first step toward healing and reconciliation. This is a journey of reflection that continues today with an enterprisewide commitment to rectify past wrongs.

Working in partnership with other leading health organizations, we are educating physicians about the legacy and impact of structural racism in health care and advancing policies and programs to eliminate health inequities. We created a Center for Health Equity to lead these efforts, which range from establishing a new Medical Justice in Advocacy Fellowship to helping launch the national Release the Pressure campaign to improve the heart health of Black women.

The AMAs history is a complicated one, but one constant over 175 years is our commitment to delivering the tools, support and resources physicians need to deliver the very best care to patients. This wouldnt have been possible without the hard work of generations of AMA employees and the millions of physician members through the years who have dedicated their careers to meeting each moment in medicineimproving the health of communities and the entire nation. In fact, AMA membership is at its highest level since 1996 and has grown for 11 consecutive years.

We are proud of this work. We are humbled by the trust physicians have placed in us, beginning in those first, uncertain days in 1847. By defining what it means to be a physician, by uniting the profession around a common set of ethics and standards, we laid the groundwork for modern medicine. We made a promise to patients and physicians that we still keep today, and all the days to come.

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Elevating your voice, and medicine, for 175 years and counting - American Medical Association

Stay Tuned: Music is medicine to our Body, Mind and Soul – whitefishpilot.com

Posted on May 12, 2022 by Danzig

As chaos ensues across the globe, the pandemic continues to instill loss, pain and fear in our communities, and mental health care demand spikes, we continue to find peace and serenity through music.

Music, whether performed or heard, has been seen as therapeutic in the history of many cultures across the globe. Music of prehistoric cultures is first firmly dated to c. 40,000 BP by evidence of bone flutes, though it remains unclear whether or not the actual origins lie in the earlier Middle Paleolithic period, 300,000 to 50,000 BP. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_music) Plato said that music affected the emotions and could influence the character of an individual. Aristotle taught that music affects the soul and described music as a force that purified the emotions. The fact remains, music is a solid part of our human being, from indigenous peoples to the newer developments of music therapy as a profession in post-World War 2 era, music has long been curing our ills on a bad day.

May is Mental Health Awareness month. North Valley Music School and Nate Chute Foundation are joining forces to present Instruments of Resilience Music and Mental Health panel. The panelists will discuss how music and mental health are correlated and explore musics unique ability to unify people in difficult times. They will share their stories, explain how music has impacted their own mental health journeys, and even play some of their personal and poignant music.

Music in all forms has always served as a reminder of humanity. On days when Im feeling particularly down and non-human, there is always connection, expression and movement to be found in music, says Emily Freudenberger, NVMS alumni who will be speaking on the panel as a musician representative.

Also joining the panel is Kirsten Allen, MT-BC, Flathead Valleys neurologic music therapist.

Because music is so deeply rooted in us as people, and because our bodies and minds respond so uniquely to music, we can use music in a therapeutic manner, Allen says. Music therapists can use music to help others process and cope with emotions during difficult times, engage socially when isolated (whether that be physically or due to cognitive decline), learn, regain, or maintain motor or speech function, learn new skills, decrease pain perception, receive spiritual support, and more.

Join NVMS and NCF on Tuesday, May 17 at the Black Box Theater at Whitefish High School. Doors open at 6 p.m. with the panel occurring from 6:30 to 8 p.m. The event is free and open to the public.

Register at http://www.northvalleymusicschool.org. And dont forget to take your medicine, a little bit of music each day.

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Stay Tuned: Music is medicine to our Body, Mind and Soul - whitefishpilot.com

Now Anyone Can Deploy Google’s Troll-Fighting AI – WIRED

Posted on February 24, 2017 by Danzig

Slide: 1 / of 1. Caption: Merjin Hos

Last September, a Google offshoot called Jigsaw declared war on trolls, launching a project to defeatonline harassment using machine learning. Now, the team is opening up thattroll-fighting system to the world.

On Thursday, Jigsaw and its partners on Googles Counter Abuse Technology Team releaseda new piece of code called Perspective, an API that gives any developer access to the anti-harassment tools that Jigsaw has worked on for over a year. Part of the teams broader Conversation AI initiative, Perspective uses machine learning to automatically detect insults, harassment, and abusivespeech online. Enter a sentence into its interface, and Jigsaw says its AI can immediately spit out anassessment of the phrases toxicity more accurately than any keyword blacklist, and faster than any human moderator.

The Perspectivereleasebrings Conversation AI a step closer to its goal of helping to foster troll-free discussion online, and filtering out the abusive comments that silence vulnerable voicesor, as the projects critics have less generously put it, to sanitize public discussions based on algorithmic decisions.

Conversation AI has always been an open source project. But by opening up that system further with an API, Jigsaw and Google can offer developers the ability to tap into that machine-learning-trained speech toxicity detector running on Googles servers, whether for identifying harassment and abuse on social media or more efficiently filtering invective from the comments on a news website.

We hope this is a moment where Conversation AI goes from being this is interesting to a place where everyone can start engaging and leveraging these models to improve discussion, says Conversation AI product manager CJ Adams. For anyone trying to rein in the comments on a news site or social media, Adams says, the options have been upvotes, downvotes, turning off comments altogether or manually moderating. This gives them a new option: Take a bunch of collective intelligencethat will keep getting better over timeabout what toxic comments people have said would make them leave, and use that information to help your communitys discussions.

On a demonstration website launched today, Conversation AI will now let anyone type a phrase into Perspectives interface to instantaneously see how it rates on the toxicity scale. Google and Jigsaw developed that measurement tool by taking millions of comments from Wikipedia editorial discussions, the New York Times and other unnamed partnersfive times as much data, Jigsaw says, as when it debuted Conversation AI in Septemberand then showing every one of those comments to panels of ten people Jigsaw recruited online to state whether they found the comment toxic.

The resulting judgements gave Jigsaw and Google a massive set of training examples with which to teach their machine learning model, just as human children are largely taught by example what constitutes abusive language or harassment in the offline world. Type you are not a nice person into its text field, and Perspective will tell you it has an 8 percent similarity to phrases people consider toxic. Write you are a nasty woman, by contrast, and Perspective will rate it 92 percent toxic, and you are a bad hombre gets a 78 percent rating. If one of its ratings seems wrong, the interface offers an option to report a correction, too, which will eventually be used to retrain the machine learning model.

The Perspective API will allow developers to access that test with automated code, providing answers quickly enough that publishers can integrate it into their website to show toxicity ratings to commenters even as theyre typing. And Jigsaw has already partnered with online communities and publishers to implement that toxicity measurement system. Wikipedia used it to perform a study of its editorial discussion pages. The New York Times is planning to use it as a first pass of all its comments, automatically flagging abusive ones for its team of human moderators. And the Guardian and the Economist are now both experimenting with the system to see how they might use it to improve their comment sections, too. Ultimately we want the AI to surface the toxic stuff to us faster, says Denise Law, the Economists community editor. If we can remove that, what wed have left is all the really nice comments. Wed create a safe space where everyone can have intelligent debates.

Despite that impulse to create an increasingly necessary safe space for online discussions, critics of Conversation AI have argued that it could itself represent a form of censorship, enabling an automated system to delete comments that are either false positives (the insult nasty woman, for instance, took on a positive connotation for some, after then-candidate Donald Trump used the phrase to describe Hillary Clinton) or in a gray area between freewheeling conversation and abuse. People need to be able to talk in whatever register they talk, feminist writer Sady Doyle, herself a victim of online harassment, told WIRED last summer when Conversation AI launched. Imagine what the internet would be like if you couldnt say Donald Trump is a moron.

Jigsaw has argued that its tool isnt meant to have final say as to whether a comment is published. But short-staffed social media startup or newspaper moderators might still use it that way, says Emma Llans, director of the Free Expression Project at the nonprofit Center for Democracy and Technology. An automated detection system can open the door to the delete-it-all option, rather than spending the time and resources to identify false positives, she says.

Were not claiming to have created a panacea for the toxicity problem. Jigsaw founder Jared Cohen

But Jared Cohen, Jigsaws founder and president, counters that the alternative for many media sites has been to censor clumsy blacklists of offensive words or to shut off comments altogether. The default position right now is actually censorship, says Cohen. Were hoping publishers will look at this and say we now have a better way to facilitate conversations, and we want you to come back.'

Jigsaw also suggests that the Perspective API can offer a new tool to not only moderators, but to readers. Their online demo offers a sliding scale that changes which comments about topics like climate change and the 2016 election appear for different tolerances of toxicity, showing how readers themselves could be allowed to filter comments. And Cohen suggests that the tool is still just one step toward better online conversations; he hopes it can eventually be recreated in other languages like Russian, to counter the state-sponsored use of abusive trolling as a censorship tactic. Its a milestone, not a solution, says Cohen. Were not claiming to have created a panacea for the toxicity problem.

In an era when online discussion is more partisan and polarized than everand the president himself lobs insults from his Twitter feedJigsaw argues that a software tool for pruning comments may actually help to bring a more open atmosphere of discussion back to the internet. Were in a situation where online conversations are becoming so toxic that we end up just talking to people we agree with, says Jigsaws Adams. Thats made us all the more interested in creating technology to help people continue talking and continue listening to each other, even when they disagree.