LSD “helps alcoholics to give up drinking”, BBC News has today reported.
This unusual claim is based on a review examining research into the powerful hallucinogenic and its potential to treat alcoholism. The review analysed the results of six medical trials performed between 1966 and 1971, a time when LSD was still used for the treatment of some psychiatric conditions. Although it seems unthinkable now, the drug was prescribed to some patients until evidence began to suggest that it could cause long-term harm, leading it to be withdrawn.
Although the review suggested that LSD could help dependent people to stop drinking, the limitations of the quality, methods and age of the research gathered mean that the researchers cannot support using the drug to treat alcohol misuse or dependency. Since the research was conducted, social and medical perceptions of drug harms have changed considerably, and it is highly unlikely the benefits - if any - would outweigh the risks, particularly as there are now many options for helping people with alcohol problems.
LSD is a class A drug that is illegal to possess or sell. The effects of taking LSD are highly unpredictable, and while some individuals may experience enjoyable hallucinations it carries high risk of considerable personal and psychological harm, both at the time of taking the drug and in the longer-term.
Where did the story come from?
This study was carried out by researchers from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU and Harvard Medical School. It was funded by the Research Council of Norway and published in the peer-reviewed Journal of Psychopharmacology.
The Daily Mail gives slightly overinflated coverage of this story, which doesn’t take into account the review’s numerous and significant limitations. BBC News does make it clear that the review looked at trials from the 1960s and 1970s.
What kind of research was this?
LSD (lysergic acid diethylamide was first created in a lab in the 1930s, and in the decades that followed there was great interest in whether the psychedelic chemical could have medical uses. As the drug significantly alters how people think and perceive their surroundings, there was some speculation that it could open patients’ minds to psychotherapy.
This speculation centred on whether the substance could help people with severe mental health problems, although it was also considered as a potential treatment for more minor conditions, such as anxiety and phobias. Given its perceived benefits, LSD was administered to psychiatric patients for several years; but as it became associated with recreational use and negative effects for patients, it was withdrawn from medical use.
According to the authors of this new research, numerous clinical investigators have claimed that treating alcoholics with individual doses of LSD in combination with psychosocial interventions may help prevent further alcohol misuse. They suggested this could work by allowing patients to understand better their behavioural patterns and therefore become motivated to build and maintain a sober lifestyle.
This was a systematic review and meta-analysis, which aimed to combine the results of all relevant trials that have used LSD (lysergic acid diethylamide to treat alcoholism. A systematic review of randomised controlled trials (RCTs is the best way of reviewing the available evidence on the health effects of a particular intervention. Systematic reviews are, however, often inherently limited by the different methods of the individual trials that they combine, including the populations they studied, how the intervention is given (such as frequency, dose and duration and outcomes measured.
What did the research involve?
The researchers searched PubMed and PsycINFO databases to identify any published trials that included key terms relating to LSD, alcohol and dependence. They included any RCTs of LSD treatment for alcoholism. In RCTs, an intervention such as LSD-use is compared with a “control treatment”, such as standard treatment or no specific treatment. The researchers described that the control treatments in eligible trials could involve any type of other treatment, including using “low doses” of LSD (up to 50 micrograms, which was lower than the intervention doses . Two reviewers analysed the studies and extracted data.
Primary outcomes of interest were alcohol misuse, which was defined as “alcohol use or consequences of alcohol use, as systematically measured by interview or self-report at the first reported follow-up”. Secondary outcomes of interest were alcohol misuse in the short-term (approximately three months , medium-term (approximately six months and longer-term (approximately 12 months . They also looked at reports of abstinence and adverse events. Where possible, they pooled the results of individual studies. If any trials had included people with psychiatric conditions such as schizophrenia or psychosis, the researchers excluded these from their analyses.
The researchers identified six eligible trials, all of which were dated between 1966 and 1971. Five trials were conducted in the USA and one in Canada. The trials included 536 individuals (general age range 30s-50s; all male except two females , of whom 61% were randomly assigned to receive “full-dose” LSD and 39% a control treatment or no intervention. The trials all gave a single oral dose of LSD as the intervention, with doses ranging between 210 and 800 micrograms (average 500 . Control conditions included “low-dose” LSD (25 or 50 micrograms , amphetamines, ephedrine sulphate (a stimulant drug or no drug treatment. All participants were said to be seeking treatment for alcoholism and had been admitted to alcohol-focused treatment programmes before being recruited to the trials.
The researchers said that the individual trials varied in their preparation for the LSD treatment session, with most studies providing only brief participant information, with often little or no description of the possible effects of LSD. During treatment, the most common procedure was described to be “simple observation with brief reassurance by clinical staff”. In only three studies did the treatment groups also receive clinical interviews, psychotherapy or active guidance. After the experimental drug session, only one study included multiple review sessions that reviewed the experiences during the drug session. The other five studies provided either only one brief review session or no review session at all.
All of the trials defined their methods for assessing the effects of the drug on alcohol use, but these varied between trials (such as using rating scales on alcohol use, assessing abstinence or using social adjustment rating scales .
What were the basic results?
Five trials gave “categorical” data (for example, whether a patient was improved or unimproved , and in these five trials 59% of those taking LSD (185 of 315 and 38% of controls (73 of 191 had improvements in their alcohol use at first follow-up. The pooled results of all six trials demonstrated increased odds of improvement in alcohol misuse, with LSD treatment compared to control ( odds ratio 1.96, 95% confidence interval 1.36 to 2.84 . This, they calculated, meant six people would need to be treated with LSD for one person to gain benefit at the time of first follow-up.
When the researchers divided the trials up into those assessing short-term (two to three months , medium-term (six months and longer-term effects (12 months , significant improvements were only seen at short- and medium-term follow-up.
Three trials reported on abstinence rates but only found a benefit of LSD at short-term follow-up.
In total the trials reported eight adverse reactions at the time of taking the drug. These included becoming agitated, acting “bizarrely” and having a seizure.
How did the researchers interpret the results?
The researchers concluded that “a single dose of LSD, in the context of various alcoholism treatment programmes, is associated with a decrease in alcohol misuse”.
Conclusion
Fifty years ago, researchers and doctors considered LSD to be a possible treatment for patients with mental health problems, until evidence showed that it could cause long-term psychological problems in some people. This review of six previous trials cannot be considered to provide evidence that LSD could be beneficial for people with alcohol problems. This is in no small part due to the questionable methods of the reviewed trials, the most recent of which was carried out 41 years ago.
Although LSD may have been considered suitable for testing in a trial at a time when its recreational use was quite common, it is highly unlikely that it would be considered now, given how considerably social and medical perceptions of drug harms have changed since then. This is notable by the attitudes displayed in the previous trials, which reportedly gave the participants very little information ahead of their LSD treatment session: most studies provided only brief participant information with often little or no description of the possible effects and risks of taking LSD. This would be considered unethical and unacceptable in trials today.
There was also very little follow-up of patients to see the long-term effects of taking LSD. Only one study included multiple review sessions assessing the individual’s experiences of taking the drug; the other five studies provided either only one brief review session or no review session at all. Therefore, how individuals are affected by taking LSD – regardless of its effects on their subsequent alcohol use - are unknown. At the time of taking the drug, there were eight reports of participants being agitated, acting “bizarrely”, having a seizure or having other “unspecified” adverse reactions.
LSD is a class A drug that is illegal to possess or sell. The effects of taking LSD are highly unpredictable, and while some individuals may experience “pleasant” hallucinations, the individual is putting themselves, and potentially others, at high risk of considerable personal and psychological harm, both at the time of taking the drug and in the long term.
Given the potential danger, it seems unlikely that LSD would be considered for future testing in people with alcohol dependence. It’s particularly important to note that we now have a range of medicines and psychological interventions for treating alcoholism that weren’t available at the time of this previous research.
Links To The Headlines
LSD 'helps alcoholics to give up drinking'. BBC News, March 9 2012
LSD could treat alcoholism because 'trips' make you reassess addiction. The Daily Telegraph, March 9 2012
Can LSD cure alcoholism? Trials show 59 per cent of problem drinkers improve after a single dose of powerful hallucinogen. Daily Mail, March 9 2012
Links To Science
Krebs TS, Johansen PO. Lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD for alcoholism: meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials. Journal of Psychopharmacology. Published online March 8 2012
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JUDY WOODRUFF: We turn to U.S. politics, as both parties have been working to win over female voters amid a flurry of recent activity related to women's issues.
Issues of particular interest to women have been front and center of late. And it may be helping President Obama and fellow Democrats. This was the president Tuesday at his White House news conference.
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: I believe that Democrats have a better story to tell to women about how we're going to solidify the middle class and grow this economy, make sure everybody got -- has a fair shot, everybody's doing their fair share, and we got a fair set of rules of the road that everybody has to follow.
JUDY WOODRUFF: Democrats are using a series of recent incidents to help tell that story, including the debate over the original birth control mandate in the president's health care law.
Republicans like New Hampshire Sen. Kelly Ayotte argued it would trample the rights of religious groups opposed to birth control.
SEN. KELLY AYOTTE, R-N.H.: This is not a women's rights issue. This is a religious liberty issue. And it can apply to all faiths.
JUDY WOODRUFF: But California Sen. Barbara Boxer and other Democrats countered, the GOP was launching a "war on women."
SEN. BARBARA BOXER, D-Calif.: Women in this country are tired of being treated like a political football by Republicans in Congress, who have tried continually and are continuing to try to take away their benefits, to take away their rights.
JUDY WOODRUFF: The president ultimately altered the birth control mandate to accommodate religious objections. But House Republicans drew fire from women's groups when they arranged for five men to speak against the mandate at a hearing, while barring a young female law student, Sandra Fluke, from testifying in favor.
The issue blew up again when conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh called Fluke a slut and prostitute last week. He later apologized, but lost a number of sponsors in the continuing furor.
President Obama, meanwhile, telephoned Fluke to commend her for speaking out. But at Tuesday's news conference, he said women will base their votes on more than any single incident.
BARACK OBAMA: And there are millions of strong women around the country who are going to make their own determination about a whole range of issues. It's not going to be narrowly focused just on contraception. It's not going to be driven by one statement by one radio announcer.
JUDY WOODRUFF: Still, evidence of fallout appeared in a new poll by the left-leaning group EMILY's List. It found that on women's health issues, voters in eight Senate battleground states now give Democrats an 18-point advantage.
Indeed, in Virginia, a firestorm of criticism and protests prompted Republicans to back away from requiring internal ultrasound testing for women seeking abortions. And some Republicans looked to shift the debate back to friendlier ground.
Mitt Romney's wife, Ann, had this to say on Super Tuesday night.
ANN ROMNEY, wife of Mitt Romney: Do you know what women care about? And this is what I love. Women care about jobs.
(CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
JUDY WOODRUFF: Whatever drives women to the polls in November, Democrats hope the events of recent weeks will ultimately work to their benefit.
For a closer look, we are joined by Washington Post columnist Ruth Marcus and Republican strategist Cheri Jacobus. She's the founder of Capitol Strategies and a columnist for The Hill newspaper.
And we thank you both for being here.
CHERI JACOBUS, republican strategist: Good to be here. Thank you.
RUTH MARCUS, The Washington Post: Thank you.
JUDY WOODRUFF: So, Ruth, how important is the women's vote in a presidential election?
RUTH MARCUS: The women's vote is very important, for the simple fact that women tend to be a majority of the electorate. And so women are stronger voters and they are also stronger Democratic voters than men.
So the president needs to have women by his side, strong women by his side, if he's going to be elected.
JUDY WOODRUFF: And, Cheri, typically, what issues are more important to women voters than they are to men, or can you say that there's a pattern for women?
CHERI JACOBUS: Well, first of all, women are people and they care a lot about the same things that men do. They care about jobs, they care about the economy.
And Ann Romney was right. I don't think she was trying to change the subject. If you look at some of the polling, Pew Research shows Romney was doing better, slightly better among women in January when put up against Obama, which is pretty significant for a Republican to be able to do that.
That has since shifted, and a lot of that is attributed to the kerfuffle with Rush Limbaugh and the contraception issue, which has been bungled from a P.R. perspective from Republicans. However, it does show that women were starting to pivot slowly towards Obama before that likely due to the economy.
The good news for Republicans, for Mitt Romney, the probable GOP nominee, is that economic issues, jobs really do matter, and he can compete with Obama on that.
JUDY WOODRUFF: And before we talk about what's going on in this campaign, Ruth, there has been, since, what, the Reagan era, the 1980s, kind of a structural what we call gender gap between men and women. What has that been all about?
RUTH MARCUS: Right.
Well, it's been about women are sort of -- women are people too and women care about the same issues that men care about. But they may weight them differently. For example, women are a little bit more reluctant -- women voters as a general matter. I'm not doing stereotypes. I'm just talking about polls.
They're a little bit more reluctant to go to war, so they were less supportive of Ronald Reagan. They're a little bit more believers in activist government, more supportive of health care type issues. And so as I said, there is this structural gender gap. And Democrats, when they succeed, can exploit that and build on it.
And I have to say, I know that Cheri's trying to sort of make lemonades from -- lemonade from lemon here, but, boy, I sometimes think watching this debate right now that the Obama campaign has some kind of sleeper agent in the Republican Party that is creating this kerfuffle, because it just can't be good for Republicans.
JUDY WOODRUFF: You mean the controversy over contraception, birth control and everything.
RUTH MARCUS: Calling Sandra Fluke a slut and a prostitute.
Mitt Romney, I thought, made a huge mistake -- and I was glad to see my conservative colleague George Will calling him on it -- in being very, very timid in what he said. He said, "I wouldn't have used those words."
Well, what words would you use?
JUDY WOODRUFF: How did this happen this year in this campaign? Because this -- it started out as the Obama administration issuing new regulations about birth control. How did it sort of spin out of control? This is not where Republicans would like it to be right now.
CHERI JACOBUS: Well, it's not where the Republicans would like it to be, but that's because the whole P.R. war has been - you know they've lost at least the first part of the battle.
I don't think Republicans are going to lose on the substance if they can get back on track, when you're talking about religious liberty. Look, you have a lot of women, Republican women who maybe lean pro-choice or some of us have sympathies in both camps. We're not activists for either side and we understand somebody wanting the choice to do what they want with their body.
But when you start saying, well, but we're going to force this on religious institutions to go against something that's important to them or we're going to force somebody else to pay for it, you start losing a lot of people that you might consider to be pro-choice that are kind of silent right now. So it's not a black-and-white issue.
I think it's a bit little risky for Democrats to really want to run on this. But, again, Obama's numbers, particularly among white women, were so poor, and he can't win without them. A huge gender gap in the 2008 election, but that's why they started this whole campaign Republican war on women. It is to close that gap.
And so a lot of this is hyperbole that is being invented by the Democrats.
JUDY WOODRUFF: Republicans say this is all about -- Ruth, all about religious liberty, as we just heard Cheri referring. Democrats say, wait a minute, no, it's about contraception.
How are voters dealing with that?
RUTH MARCUS: Well, it was about religious liberty.
And I thought the administration made a mistake in not drawing its exemption largely -- broadly enough at the start. But, partly, the administration has just stumbled into this terrific situation now, in terms of politics, where it's not just a question of religious liberty. You have Mitt Romney, who says he opposes federal funding for family planning programs. This is a program that was started by George H.W. Bush.
You have clinics closing in Texas, family planning clinics and clinics that offer women's health services, because, God forbid, pardon the pun, they should take money that might trickle somewhere in some theoretical way into providing abortion services.
JUDY WOODRUFF: So it's not just in Washington? This is happening around. . .
RUTH MARCUS: It's not just in Washington.
You have this debate, for example, about the sonogram bill in Virginia where even the conservative governor of Virginia backed off of having the more invasive form of the sonogram required before a woman could have an abortion. And I just think the Republicans do not want to be having this debate, but they keep allowing the Democrats to keep it going at this point.
JUDY WOODRUFF: Are moderate women in the Republican Party, Cheri, weighing in with the party leadership, with the candidates and saying, this is what we think the party should be talking about?
CHERI JACOBUS: Sure, I think moderate women and all women in the party understand what's going on.
A lot of this sudden blip in the women support for Obama that he didn't have before is because of the hyperbole and people kind of misrepresenting the issue overall. I'm confident that that will die down, I think sort of settle where they're supposed to be. And that's where you are going to find that Ann Romney was right about what women really care about.
Women -- if there's a woman who's getting free birth control or free abortion services somewhere, and I don't think they're going to say, well, that's a Republican voter and now she's going to change and be a Democrat because suddenly now people are a little bit upset about the commingling of the funds with regard to what the taxpayers are funding.
JUDY WOODRUFF: Is there -- well, let me just start -- is there any way that this can be -- that this whole question of birth control, contraception can be discussed that is not a detriment to Republicans?
CHERI JACOBUS: Absolutely.
JUDY WOODRUFF: Can Republicans talk about it in a way that does not turn off many women voters?
CHERI JACOBUS: I think that they can. It was a mistake to have just men -- it was just on the first panel, by the way, not the entire hearing, but the first panel talking about contraception.
They have really blown it on the P.R. front. But that does not mean they're wrong on the substance. So that's where -- as a Republican, that's where I see a silver lining. But I do think, on the P.R. front, temporarily, they've blown it. They can get back on because there's clear evidence that Republicans will -- women will support Republicans, will support Mitt Romney, and it'll be on jobs and the economy.
JUDY WOODRUFF: Meantime, what do Democrats say about this, as you go into this election? We're just in March.
RUTH MARCUS: Right.
Well, Democrats want this to keep going. And let me just give you some numbers that explain why. In 2008, President Obama beat John McCain by seven points overall, by 13 points among women. Right now, he's up six points in one of the latest polls against Gov. Romney, but by 18 points against women, and Romney is, not surprisingly, given some of the other candidates, doing the best with women.
And I think one of the particular things. . .
JUDY WOODRUFF: You mean among the Republicans.
RUTH MARCUS: Among Republicans.
And one of the particular things that Democrats want to do is distinguish among women voters. They do best, in theory, among single women. But single women, who are very traditional Democratic voters, do not vote in proportion to their numbers. If this kind of discussion can energize those women to get out and vote, Democrats will have a very good year.
CHERI JACOBUS: I don't think it's likely that women will vote on this issue, particularly -- well, because they think that -- the issue is been misrepresented.
The issue is not that Republicans want to eliminate contraception. A lot of people think that's exactly what they want to do, is eliminate access, and that's not the case.
JUDY WOODRUFF: It's just March. We have got many months, eight months to go.
We thank you both, Cheri Jacobus, Ruth Marcus. Thank you.
CHERI JACOBUS: Thank you.
RUTH MARCUS: Thanks, Judy.
Steve Chock uses a plasma welder to cut metal during a class at Hennepin Technical College in Brooklyn Park, Minn. Photo by Ariana Lindquist/Bloomberg via Getty Images.
By Paul Solman and Elizabeth Shell
Healthy job numbers arrived Friday, and, for once, the two surveys -- payroll and household -- more or less jibe, or at least don't contradict each other. The so-called establishment survey of companies, which asks for payroll tallies, showed a net increase of 227,000 jobs in February. The household survey, which is gathered by visiting 60,000 American households, found that about 370,000 more of us reported that we worked in February compared to January, which means, technically, that we'd worked at least one hour the week before the survey was taken.
Why then, you may ask, did the official unemployment rate not fall, but hold steady at 8.3 percent? The answer appears to be fairly straightforward: Almost half a million more Americans joined the labor force in February. That means nearly 500,000 more people were actively looking for work than in January. Lots of them seem have found jobs, judging by the numbers above. But 50,000 or so did not, the household survey suggests, meaning the total number of officially unemployed, which the government calls U-3, rose nearer to 13 million.
As readers of this page know, we pay closer attention to more inclusive unemployment statistics, specifically our U-7, which includes everyone who told the government that they want a job but don't have one plus the part-time employed who are looking for full-time work. Our U-7 number is now 16.85 percent, down .05 percent from January's 16.9 percent.
In general, Republicans say the unemployment rate under President Obama remains far too high. Indeed, Republican presidential candidates Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich have been using numbers that approximate
our all-inclusive U-7, though neither man is exactly a paragon of precision on the subject.
In statement, .@
JohnBoehner says
#jobs report provides "some encouragement," but adds "unemployment remains far too high."
March 9, 2012
If the payroll rate of increase holds, around a quarter-of-a-million jobs would be added to the economy each month. Using the latest household survey numbers, unemployment would drop to 6 percent in a year. These projections come courtesy of a
nifty new online calculator from the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta.
So ask yourself: What U-3 unemployment rate should we be shooting for? 6.1 percent, last seen just before the Lehman Collapse in August of 2008? 4 percent, the low point under President Clinton? 1.2 percent, the lowest rate ever, registered in 1944 during World War II? Enter your target rate and how soon we should get to it, and the calculator will estimate the number of jobs needed.
Where are the jobs? Professional and business services showed the biggest gains, though more than half of the jobs added were in "temporary help services." Health care and social assistance showed the next biggest gains -- no surprise in an aging economy. Restaurant and hotel employment grew. Manufacturing and mining were up a bit. Government employment was flat.
All in all, it is a positive report, confirming the upbeat intuition of those like our esteemed friend Simon Johnson over at Baseline Scenario with whom we've been
sparring on Twitter the past few days.
Johnson says the indicators are looking up, and surely he's right. I remain skeptical, though I admit it's probably a congenital condition. Nonetheless, when Johnson points to increased consumer debt as a reason to cheer, I look at the U.S. savings rate, back down to 4.6 percent. The historical average is 7 percent, and with more and more Americans nearing retirement -- even if they're retiring later -- I just don't see how the rate can stay this low. Won't Americans have to save more, given how little they've stashed away? Won't a higher savings rate bring this rally to a screeching halt? Will the day of reckoning really never come? For what it's worth, those remain my questions.
What others are saying:
Let's call it a recovery: Payrolls growing at average rate of +245k per month over the past three months. That's huge.
March 9, 2012
The
New York Times reports that the job numbers "followed a flurry of positive economic reports about the American economy, including a continued rise in consumer confidence and growing strength in the manufacturing sector."
Feb jobless rate for people 25+ with bachelor's degree: 4.2%. High school grads: 8.3% (down 0.1 . No high school diploma: 12.9% (down 0.2
March 9, 2012
Looking ahead to the Federal Reserve's meeting next week, the
Wall Street Journal surmises that the positive growth in jobs "raises questions for the Federal Reserve, where officials have been surprised that the unemployment rate has fallen so quickly recently given the recovery's lackluster pace. If growth or inflation pick up much, officials seem unlikely to launch a bond-buying program because the economy might not need the extra help or because doing more could spur higher inflation."
And portfolio manager Brett Baker
told Marketplace that he's cautiously optimistic about the numbers, adding "it's too soon to take a victory lap on this."
This entry is cross-posted on the
Rundown- NewsHour's blog of news and insight.
Follow @PaulSolman
A team of researchers at Duke University has determined the structure of a key molecule that can carry chemotherapy and anti-viral drugs into cells, which could help to create more effective drugs with fewer effects to healthy tissue.
"Knowing the structure and properties of the transporter molecule may be the key to changing the way that some chemotherapies, for example, could work in the body to prevent tumor growth," said senior author
Seok-Yong Lee, PhD, assistant professor of biochemistry at Duke.
The article was published in
Nature online on March 11.
The transporter molecule, called a concentrative nucleoside transporter, works by moving nucleosides, the building blocks of DNA and RNA, from the outside to the inside of cells. It also transports nucleoside-like chemo drugs through cell membranes.
Once inside the cells, the nucleoside-like drugs are modified into nucleotides that are incorporated into DNA in ways that prevent tumor cells from dividing and functioning.
"We discovered the structure of the transporter molecule, and now we believe it is possible to improve nucleoside drugs to be better recognized by a particular form of the transporter molecule that resides in certain types of tissue," Lee said. "Now we know the transporter molecule has three forms, which recognize different drugs and reside in different tissues."
The team determined the chemical and physical principles a transporter molecule uses to recognize the nucleosides, "so if you can improve the interactions between the transporter and the drug, you won't need as much of the drug to get it into the tumor cells efficiently," Lee said. "Knowing the shape of the transporters will let scientists design drugs that are recognized well by this transporter."
Because the drugs enter healthy cells as well as tumor cells, giving a lower dose of drug that targets tumor tissue would be the best scenario, said Lee, who is also a member of the
Duke Ion Channel Research Unit. "Healthy cells don't divide as often as tumor cells, so lowering the amount of drug given overall would be an effective approach to killing tumors while protecting patients."
The researchers studied transporter molecules from
Vibrio cholera
, a comma-shaped bacterium. The bacterial transporter serves as a good model system for studying human transporters because they share similar amino acid sequences. They found that both the human and bacterial transporter use a sodium gradient to import nucleosides and drugs into the cells.
The next step will be to try to understand which features of the transporter confer the ability to recognize certain chemo drugs and ultimately to design drugs that can easily enter the cells.
This work won a prize for Dr. Lee, the National Institute of General Medical Sciences Award, which he will receive at the Biophysical Society meeting in February.
The work was funded by the McKnight Endowment Fund for Neuroscience, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the Klingenstein Fund, the Mallinckrodt Foundation, the Basil O'Connor Starter Scholar Research Award from the March of Dimes Foundation, and the NIH Director's New Innovator Award, in addition to start-up funds from the Duke University Medical Center.
Other authors include Zachary Lee Johnson and Cheom-Gil Cheong also of the Department of Biochemistry and the Ion Channel Research Unit.
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RAY SUAREZ: The jobs numbers for February offered new signs of hope today that the recovery is gaining some traction. The president pointed to progress, while his opponents said it's still not nearly good enough.
The U.S. economy has now turned in three of its strongest months of job growth since the recession began. President Obama marked the improvement today in Petersburg, Virginia, at a Rolls-Royce aircraft engine plant.
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: The economy is getting stronger. And when I come to places like this and I see the work that's being done, it gives me confidence there are better days ahead.
RAY SUAREZ: The Labor Department counted more than 142 million Americans at work in February, the most since January 2009.
Employers added a net total of 227,000 jobs, somewhat better than expected.
Overall, the work force has increased by more than 730,000 positions since the beginning of December. The gains have been helped by expanding payrolls in the manufacturing sector, now at their highest since April of 2009. And even the number of underemployed fell below 15 percent for the first time in three years.
Still, the president acknowledged there is much more to do.
BARACK OBAMA: Day by day, we're creating new jobs. But we can't stop there, not until everybody who's out there pounding the pavement, sending out their resumes has a chance to land one of those jobs.
RAY SUAREZ: In fact, half-a-million Americans resumed looking for work in February. For that reason, mainly, the unemployment rate was unchanged at 8.3 percent.
It has now stayed above 8 percent since February of 2009, a month after the president's inauguration. Republican presidential frontrunner Mitt Romney took note of that fact today, as he had last night in Pascagoula, Miss.
MITT ROMNEY (R : When he became president, he asked us to let him borrow $787 billion. He said, if he got the money, he would keep unemployment below 8 percent. It has not been below 8 percent since. This guy had a lot of things to say, but hasn't delivered a lot.
RAY SUAREZ: Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich issued a statement about the job numbers. In it, he said, "Any new job is a welcome paycheck for the American worker. But as past recoveries show, the current rate of growth will leave the American economy sputtering for years to come."
Still, people hunting for work have to hope that other recent signs bode well, with consumer confidence at its highest in a year, and new claims for jobless benefits near a four-year low.
For more on all this, we turn to Lisa Lynch, dean of the Heller School for Social Policy and Management at Brandeis University. She's a former chief economist at the Labor Department. And Diane Swonk, senior managing director and chief economist for Mesirow Financial, a firm based in Chicago, she joins us tonight from New York City.
Dean Lynch, during 2010, when the economy was struggling to add jobs, we kept having guests on like you who said you can't look at any one month and say much of anything. But now that we have had three straight months of high growth, a year-and-a-half of net job creation, is it safe to get into the water and start talking about a pattern, something we can really hold on to?
LISA LYNCH, Heller School for Social Policy and Management at Brandies University: I think so, Ray.
When you -- as you said, you don't want to put too much weight on any single month's worth of data. But it is important to start doing a little bit of addition and looking at what we're seeing on the employment front, having three very strong months of robust job growth, well beyond the number of jobs we need to keep pace with the growth of the population, on top of 17 months overall of adding jobs every month to the economy.
Seeing the unemployment rate coming down, even as more people are entering if into the labor market, seeing wages increasing, seeing temporary help go up, seeing hours of work go up, all of that added together on top of decreasing unemployment insurance claims data, really suggest that we have turned a significant corner with regards to improvement in the labor market.
RAY SUAREZ: Diane Swonk, you've had a look at the numbers. What are your general observations about February 2012?
DIANE SWONK, Mesirow Financial Holdings, Inc.: Well, certainly, it was a good month.
And I agree that the trend has been in the right direction. I would add to what Lisa has already said. And that is that we have seen revisions up. We saw 60,000 more jobs created in the last two months than they initially counted. And they cut the survey in the middle of the month, which means momentum was picking up over the course of the month that they missed.
And that's been happening for some time now, that they have been revising up the data, instead of revising down the data. So it also suggests that we're starting to get some more momentum out there.
Separately, it looks like, from the unemployment rate, where they call people up, that is generating much more jobs than we're getting from where they actually talk to firms, that survey. And those two over time go -- sort of get pushed together and they get squared up. And I think what we're seeing out there is new business creation. New business formation is starting to pick up. There's other signs of that in the U.S. economy in the payroll reports that we see from other kinds of businesses where newer businesses use payroll services.
We're seeing small businesses account for 50 percent of the job gains, and that new business formation is really the backbone of a more sustainable recovery going forward.
RAY SUAREZ: So, Diane, what are the areas of concern, then?
DIANE SWONK: The areas of concern are the persistence of how many people are still unemployed and have been unemployed for more than six months. We have got -- that percentage actually went up. It went from about 5.5 million to 5.4 million people. So the number went down, but the percentage went up, still over 40 percent.
It was a high of 26 percent in the 1980s recession. So this persistence of long-term unemployment, what we're seeing is people are quitting their jobs quicker and getting a new job. Younger people are getting jobs more quickly, new entrants into the labor force. But the people who have been left behind by the recession continue to be left behind by the recession.
And that's who we worry about, because for them every month that they continue to be left behind, the chances of them getting back into the labor force is more diminished.
RAY SUAREZ: Lisa Lynch, at some point, does a virtuous cycle set in? When more people are working, that means more people are spending, and maybe more people are working yet again?
LISA LYNCH: Well, that's what you hope, that it's -- certainly when you look at the economy, much of the growth in our economy comes from consumer demand.
And consumers can actually actualize that demand when they have money in their pocket. And they need to have jobs and good wages in order to be able to produce -- to buy goods that then producers will produce more of.
So, clearly, as we add more jobs to the economy, the unemployment rate drops, this helps feed a virtuous circle. But there are headwinds that one has to worry about undermining that circle, that virtuous circle. So that's why it's important that we still have in place the extension of the payroll tax cut. We have extension for the unemployment insurance for those people that are out of work, as Diane mentioned, for long periods of time.
And we have to keep our eyes on other parts of the world that are buying our goods, and in particular Europe, with respect to what their demand for our products is.
RAY SUAREZ: Diane Swonk, with so many people wanting to work more than they are able to work now, with so many people still looking for work, is it too soon for people to be asking for raises? I noticed that the data on raises was not very good.
DIANE SWONK: Well, it is.
I mean, in fact, one of the things we do know is when you run unemployment above 8 percent for such a long period of time -- it happened in the 1980s for 38 months. We're now at 37 months today. You start to have cumulative effects out there.
Even new college grads that are getting jobs today are accepting jobs maybe out of the area that was their expertise. And it can hurt their earning potential going forward. Also, people who accept jobs often that have been out of work accept a job that is at lower pay and with less job security than they had in the past.
And that even undermines, you know, the future in terms of the broader economy and qualifying for a mortgage, for instance. So you are seeing a very unevenness to the improvement. It's good. We will take it. It's much better than we have had, and it's still not enough. And I think that's very important in understanding out there, is that it still is a very uneven recovery and it is certainly not one that people are popping champagne corks over at this point in time.
RAY SUAREZ: Lisa Lynch, during 2010 and 2011, men were gaining jobs faster than women. But in the last three or four months, that trend has reversed and now it's strongly women ahead of men. Is that a function of which sectors of the economy are doing well?
LISA LYNCH: Right.
I mean, we see the health care sector and social assistance sectors, like child care, those sectors are adding jobs. Business and professional services are adding jobs. Leisure and hospitality are adding jobs. All of those sectors have a disproportionately higher fraction of women in those sectors.
But we're also seeing the manufacturing sector adding jobs. And those four sectors together represent the 3.5 million net new jobs that have been added to the economy over the last two years. So we're going to see a little bouncing around between men and women with respect to the employment gains.
But I think, back to a point that Diane raised earlier, the folks that are really struggling are the folks that have struggled time and time again. Those are people with less than a high school degree. We see unemployment rates for blacks that are double unemployment rates for whites.
So if you're an unskilled worker out there looking for employment, regardless of whether or not you are male or female, you're the person that's really struggling right now to find a job.
RAY SUAREZ: Diane Swonk, quickly, before we go, you heard Lisa Lynch talk about headwinds. What will you be looking for in the coming months to see whether these job growths have legs, whether they can sustain for the rest of 2012?
DIANE SWONK: Well, the first one is, there was a bit of help from the weather. And so the weather did help some of those leisure jobs. We were golfing in -- I wasn't, but I knew people who were golfing in Chicago in January. And that just doesn't usually happen. And so that did help some of the leisure jobs that we saw there.
But, more importantly, you really want to look for oil prices. Oil prices are the biggest near-term risk. Want to watch that labor force participation. Is the hope going to stay of people throwing their hat back in the ring? That's really critical. And, most importantly, I think -- Lisa already mentioned it -- the European -- European feeding back through China.
China's -- exports to China are important to us, and they slowed dramatically. Sort of the unannounced news today was that imports outpaced exports almost 2-1. And that's something that had been the silver lining, exports of heavy manufactured goods in particular, into places like China.
And China uses Europe as one of their largest markets. So the ripple effects of the world economy are very important to us here in the United States. You can't just take us as an island.
RAY SUAREZ: Diane Swonk and Lisa Lynch, thank you both.
JUDY WOODRUFF: For more on the jobs numbers, check out our website for Paul Solman's own measure of unemployment, which includes the underemployed and those out of work so long, the government no longer counts them. That's on our Making Sense page.
- Today's
comic by Matt Bors is
Santorum go bye bye:
- What's coming up on Sunday Kos ...
- Mitt Romney, incompetent campaigns, and anti-Southern elitism, by Steve Singiser
- Teacher job satisfaction drops as school budget cuts and layoffs rise, by Laura Clawson
- The PVI/Vote Index: Quantifying good Dems, bad Dems and ugly Republicans, by David Jarman
- The Obama administration steps up for bullied kids in Minnesota, by Scott Wooledge
- Women of color in women's history. Part two: Latinas, Denise Oliver Velez
- The danger of the current arguments on contraception, by Dante Atkins
- Mitt Romney, incompetent campaigns, and anti-Southern elitism, by Steve Singiser
- Rage against the
Rush:
To Rush Limbaugh: Hey Jackass, stop using our music on your racist, misogynist, right wing clown show. Sincerely, Rage Against The Machine
—
@tmorello via
Twitter for BlackBerryA®
- Fox News somehow manages to
bury today's report on improving job numbers. What a shock.
- Bitter, party of
one?
Dennis Kucinich said today that he has no plans to endorse his former friend and the winner of Ohio's 9th Congressional District seat, Marcy Kaptur.
"I haven't done that and I'm not sure I will," he said. "The problem is in politics if someone runs a gutter-level campaign, you're just expected to say it's OK and you move on. Marcy's been my friend for 30 years and I have to tell you, it was pretty surprising to me the kind of campaign that was run, it was more worthy of Karl Rove than Marcy Kaptur."
- On the bright side, after resigning earlier today, he'll have
more time to hike the Appalachian Trail ... or not:
Former South Carolina Lt. Gov. Ken Ard has pleaded guilty to seven counts of violating the State Ethics Act.
- Proof that Haley Barbour will
never run for national office:
Mississippi's Supreme Court on Thursday upheld the controversial pardons of more than 200 convicts that former Gov. Haley Barbour granted on his way out of office, rejecting a challenge by the state's attorney general. [...]
One of the pardoned trusties was David Gatlin, who had been serving a life sentence for killing his estranged wife Tammy while she held their 6-week-old baby.
- A Republican New York Assemblyman, Teresa Sayward,
doesn't like any of the GOP presidential candidates:
SAYWARD: I do not have a favorite in the presidential race, if I had to vote today, I’d vote for Obama.
INTERVIEW: Really?
SAYWARD: Absolutely… Because I really, truly think that the candidates that are out there today for the Republican side would take women back decades.
Also:
Did D.C’s political and media elite find Hollywood’s portrayal of “Game Change” and Sarah Palin fascinating? You betcha.
HBO’s “Game Change” had its star-studded — for Washington, at least — premiere Thursday night in the Newseum with some of the town’s political and media VIPs in attendance alongside star Julianne Moore and producer Tom Hanks. Once the credits rolled to applause, guests milled around the lobby and offered their snap judgments on the film and its take on the former Alaska governor and vice presidential nominee to POLITICO.
The overall feeling? Moore got it darn right.
- The New York Times is
reporting that Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes is buying The New Republic.
- I'm pretty sure the researchers were
high:
Alcoholism could be treated using the mind-bending drug LSD, as the hallucinogenic trips it creates alter the drinker's perception of their habit.
Researchers at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU in Trondheim, central Norway, assessed the results of controlled trials that took place during the 1960s and 1970s in the US and Canada, the study published Thursday showed.
- A
funny take on the "comment section for every article ever written about PETA."
Watch Video |
Listen to the Audio
RAY SUAREZ: This week, a special program that affects every one of you, taxes.
We want to start with some big numbers. In 2011, the federal budget was $3.6 trillion. But federal revenues were only $2.3 trillion. Most of that money comes from taxes. Individual income taxes, followed by social security taxes, Medicare taxes, corporate taxes, gasoline taxes, and the rest.
Despite all those tax collections, the U.S. still had a budget deficit of nearly $1.3 trillion during the last fiscal year.
Of course, much more rapid economic growth would mean more tax revenues and help close that deficit. But unless and until that happens, we're left with two ways to make the budget whole: Cut spending or raise more money from taxes. Today, our focus is on that side of the equation, taxes.
Specifically, how we can raise more money and make the tax code fairer for everyone. Joining us from left to right in every sense, Eliot Spitzer is the former Democratic governor of New York, Dorothy Brown is a Professor of Law at Emory University, specializing in federal tax law. Bruce Bartlett was a former Policy Analyst in the Reagan White House. He helped draft the nation's last major tax reform in 1986. He's written a new book called "The Benefit and the Burden." And Dan Mitchell is a Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute and previously served as an economist for the Senate Finance Committee.
Guests, thank you all for being here. The federal government loses or foregoes collecting more than $1 trillion a year by offering 250 different deals that lower tax payments, excluding employer contributions for health care, not taxing Medicare benefits, the child tax credit, excluding contributions to retirement plans.
If we got rid of all of these, would we end up with a fairer system?
DAN MITCHELL: Get the government out of the business of picking winners and losers, industrial policy, get rid of the loopholes that we all agree are loopholes, bring the rates down, you're going to have a more efficient tax system, the system will be less corrupt, less complex-- it's just a win-win situation.
ELIOT SPITZER: You're right. If-- if we could wipe the slate clean, there'd be enormous dislocation to many people. And understand, so homeowners across the nation who have a mortgage who deduct that interest and don't-- and therefore don't have to pay-- tax on a fair bit of their income, will suddenly say, "Wait a minute, I have more taxable income."
If we paired it with the theoretical argument we could then lower rates, it would be healthier, there would be fewer disincentives, fewer dislocations. So yes it would be the right thing to do.
DOROTHY BROWN: Economists generally agree that the mortgage interest deduction does not cause anyone to buy a home. We are rewarding people for doing what they'd already do. Put aside the fact that renters get nothing. Talk about craziness, we not only allow you a mortgage interest deduction for your first home, we allow you a mortgage interest deduction for your second home, up to a $1 million total.
ELIOT SPITZER: The problem is at this moment, with the housing market still at the very bottom of the trough, some people think we've hit the bottom, who knows, let's hope we have. If you were to take away the mortgage deduction, everybody who owns a home would see the price drop as a consequence. Because it is capitalized in.
DAN MITCHELL: The one thing that's very important to look at, there are countries like Australia, like Canada, like the U.K. that have either no or much lower tax preferences for housing. And they still have homeownership rates --
DOROTHY BROWN: Comparable to ours.
DAN MITCHELL: --that are equivalent--
BRUCE BARTLETT: Yeah, the price-- the prices increased even faster in some of those countries than they did here.
RAY SUAREZ: The highest tax rate ever reached 92 percent in the early 1950s. Now it's 35 percent. But given our huge deficit, should that rate go much higher, at least temporarily, until we're no longer financing a third of our central government's spending with borrowing?
DOROTHY BROWN: I would say no, no, no, no, no.
RAY SUAREZ: Why?
DOROTHY BROWN: The answer in my opinion isn't raising tax rates. It's eliminating loopholes. It's eliminating exclusions. The 35 percents' already high. I -- I -- to me it makes no sense to allow privileges to certain groups, for example homeowners over renters, when they both have housing costs. So -- and therefore tax other people. It doesn't make sense.
RAY SUAREZ: So keep the current rate schedule, get rid of the loopholes, Governor --
ELIOT SPITZER: Well-- well look, I think what the professor says is right. If you had to create a hierarchy, you would say first thing you do is close the loopholes, broaden the base. That may not be sufficient and it may not happen. Practically, if you cannot get people to agree on what's a loophole and what's a legitimate incentive. That -- that is often an ideological debate.
If we had to go from 35 percent to 39.6 percent, that's fine with me as a matter of philosophy, as a matter, because not that many people are paying the 35 percent, the 39 percent at the upper reaches. If we could reach some level where people who were earning over $2 million a year, over a $1 million a year have to pay 39 percent, that's fine. That does not in any way offend my sense of fairness.
DAN MITCHELL: I-- one thing that's very important to understand is there's a difference between tax rates and tax revenue. And the 1980s are a good example. In 1980, when we had a top break all the way up at 70 percent, people making over $200,000 a year paid $19 billion to Uncle Sam.
Reagan brought the top rate all the way down to 28 percent, those people making over $200,000 a year, they suddenly paid $99 billion. You got five times as much revenue at a lower rate. But there's no question that people respond to changes in tax rates. There is a very high economic cost when you impose these higher tax rates, because people just decide, "I'm not going to work, save and invest as much."
RAY SUAREZ: So if we go all the way back to those days, those dimly remembered days of 1996, 1997, 1998, weren't rich people still trying to earn more money and be even richer?
ELIOT SPITZER: There is surprisingly little economic study of this. But you asked the question, at what point does the marginal rate actually dissuade somebody from working. I have not seen anything that suggests that you cannot tax people-- let me say it affirmatively. You can tax people up to 40, 45 percent.
BRUCE BARTLETT: Oh, much more than that.
ELIOT SPITZER: Without -- that's -- I said -- I said there's nothing suggests in the 40s, you dissuade people. You can probably get into the 60s. Because as you pointed out, people still want to get wealthier.
Close Supervision Centres in three prisons hold Britain’s most troublesome prisoners. The partner of one inmate claims the system fails inmates and society
Close Supervision Centres in three prisons hold Britain’s most troublesome prisoners. The partner of one inmate claims the system fails inmates and society
March 2011, Milton HMP Woodhill, the Close Supervision Centre. An inmate walks away from an officer and is pounced on from behind. Other officers join in the struggle to pin him to the floor and the first officer violently grabs and squeezes his genitals. The inmate bites the officer's shoulder to release his grip and is subsequently accused of assault.
In a letter to the inmate’s solicitor, the CSC's Operational Manager Claire Hodson defended the officer who attacked a man from behind by saying that he feared for his life. Inmates at Woodhill CSC are frequently attacked and sexually assaulted — officers commonly grab inmates by the genitals when restraining them. It has been caught on CCTV, inmates have filled in complaints forms. Nothing happens.
An inmate who has been violent may be locked in a high control cell to give him a cooling down period. It is meant to be assessed daily — and is not meant to be a punishment.
One inmate with a serious mental illness has been kept here for months, locked 24 hours a day in a bare shell of a cell, fed through a hatch, no exercise, no association, no shower, no TV, radio, no newspapers, no phonecalls, toiletries — and no access, either, to complaints forms (or indeed a pen .
On the occasions when the cell is unlocked he is confronted with six officers kitted up in riot gear holding shields in front of them and told that any sudden movement will result in him being beaten up and restrained in handcuffs.
With his hands cuffed behind his back he has been accused of assault and more force has been used to restrain him, including grabbing by the genitals. This inmate is inevitably so disturbed that when the door is unlocked he is violent and aggressive again, and then locked back in with apparent justification, and so the cycle spins round.
Inmates feel that CSC officers deliberately target and goad them into reacting so that they can be put back in the high control cell.
If they are vocal it is regarded as aggression, if they are silent they are accused of not interacting. Inmates say officers may try to get a reaction by making silly or threatening remarks, laughing outside the cell of an inmate known to be paranoid, ensuring an inmate is last to lunch so the food is cold, hurrying him out of the showers, not letting him make a phone call — little things that are inescapable when you’re locked up on such a small, claustrophobic unit. If an inmate manages to resist the bait he has his own inner turmoil to deal with and this cannot be kept up indefinitely.
CSC officers are trained only in how to control. They are not skilled in recognising the behavioural traits of mental illness, which leads to misunderstanding and heavy-handedness towards 'difficult' prisoners.
The Close Supervision Centre is a prison within a prison. Based in HM prisons Woodhill (near Milton Keynes , Wakefield and Whitemoor, the CSC system was set up by a Labour government in 1998 "to remove the most significantly dangerous, challenging and disruptive prisoners and manage them within a small highly supervised unit". Director General Richard Tilt called the system "therapeutic, not punitive", and the aim was to return prisoners to normal wings after a year or so. But how would that be possible if the inmates chosen were to be those deemed incapable of progression and incapable of being reformed?
After early failures with disruptive inmates, the CSC began to select those who they felt would cooperate. Disruptive behaviour abated and it started to look like a success, even though
genuine persistent troublemakers rarely got selected anymore.
Inmates began to be selected after just one disruptive incident, or for alleged gang activity, or for what is perceived as religious extremism.
Then
inmates with diagnosed mental illnesses began to be selected — they are easier to manage because they are easier to medicate.
My partner David was selected after repeated bouts of segregation. He has a personality disorder and cannot cope on busy wings. Segregation desocialises an inmate even further and each time he was returned to the wing more problems arose for which he was again segregated.
Like many other prisoners he was referred to the CSC and selected in breach of the procedural requirements detailed in the
referral manualthat the CDC should be a last resort after other options (primarily the Managing Challenging Behaviour Strategy have failed. Such management tools are frequently bypassed.
Secure hospitals, seeking to save money, would not accept him, despite recommendations, because they said his needs could best be met in prison. Nobody looked at his documented history, addressed any issues with therapy or fully took his illness into account. His medication was increased and he was referred to the CSC, an even more extreme form of punishment and containment than segregation.
CSC is not a hospital, it is a prison control unit that is being used against the mentally ill as a substitute for appropriate mental health care. In effect, the mentally ill are being punished for being ill, a bit like leprosy in the Middle Ages.
Solicitor Shahida Begum, writing in Inside Time, says: “It is common knowledge that Close Supervision Centres are widely used to manage ‘mentally ill’ prisoners, and that mentally ill prisoners are overrepresented in segregation units. Prisoners who are deemed as dangerous or chronically disruptive are placed in prolonged solitary confinement as a prison management tool.”
Self-harm and suicide attempts on the Woodhill CSC are disproportionately high.
The high numbers of mentally ill held in the CSC means the psychiatrist doesn't have time to interview every inmate and is regularly absent with no cover - he doesn't see every inmate every week and if he does see an inmate then time is short because he has so many others to see.
David found there was no consistency or continuity. An inmate could see a psychiatrist one week, stirring up really powerful issues, then be left alone to deal with the fall-out, often for weeks, because next week and the following week the psychiatrist may not be available.
There is no mental health cover in the evening or at weekends so if an inmate mistimes his crisis he has to cope alone, even on suicide watch. If he rings the bell for help, nobody is there.
Frustration can lead to self-harm, a tiny respite from mental torment — in Woodhill one inmate cut off his own ear in the shower. Months later, in the shower again, he was allowed another razor and cut off the other ear.
Each and every day presents a trigger, and for those who are vulnerable and less well-equipped mentally and emotionally to cope with such a regime — pretty much everyone there — the perpetual tension is impossible to endure. Sleep is a luxury most lack. When the door is unlocked in the morning and the inmate is interpreted as hostile or threatening further restrictions are imposed.
Prolonged solitude is not an effective management technique — it only allows the prison to claim that disruptive "incidents" have been stopped. Those at risk of self-harm and suicide should not be isolated; it can push them over the edge. It will create illness in those not already vulnerable to start with.
David had consistently good reports in the CSC, overcoming daily provocations, and had been given Enhanced status but this is meaningless in the CSC as nothing is available on the unit. Because of the regime and the understaffing he was kept locked up for 23 hours a day with no association and restricted access to the gym and showers.
In August 2011 a few inmates were selected for their good behaviour to progress to the newly-opened B wing. They had been told that it would help them progress towards deselection and a return to normal wings. Instead, it was the same as the A wing they had just left behind except with a different letter on the door — no course work, no therapy, no stimulation, education, nothing. And now others are randomly being put on this wing dragging the whole unit down so that those who had behaved well because they wanted to progress are now locked up for 23 hours a day again. Six months later they are bored out of their skulls, demotivated, getting restless, feeling cheated, and in limbo.
They are told to "engage" but Care and Management meetings are frequently cancelled, and there is no structure. Inmates are constantly led to believe that they are on the verge of being deselected (transferred out of the unit but four to five years is an average stay, despite fully cooperating, not the one to two years originally proposed, and ten years is not unheard of. They face the impossible task of proving they can cope on normal wings while not being allowed to go there.
One inmate who has been stuck in the system for thirteen years does yoga and tai chi — not, to me, indicative of a dangerous man incapable of progression and beyond help. In 2007 one young offender stuck in the CSC for five years hanged himself.
Former head of High Security Prisons Lord David Ramsbotham has been critical of the CSC from the start, acknowledging that lengthy isolation should cease as it jeopardises mental health. In the Guardian last year, he argued:
"If you are holding people suffering mental health problems, then they should be held in conditions similar to those in secure mental health hospitals. This is clearly not the case at Woodhill.”
Claire Hodson, Woodhill's CSC Operational Manager, states in a letter
quoted by the Guardian: "CSC inmates often present with highly complex needs", but she ignores the fact that the CSC cannot help with those needs. She describes self-harm as a "maladaptive coping strategy" but, when asked what procedures are in place to remove those psychologically unable to cope and displaying serious signs of illness and self-harm, she makes no reply.
Responding in June 2010 to an Inside Time article, “Great Well of Psychiatric Morbidity”, written by a relative of an inmate of Wakefield CSC,
Danny McAllister, Director of High Security Prisons, dismisses with breathtaking arrogance everything she has observed. He still maintains that the CSC is a force for good when experience of inmates demonstrates that it isn't, and still insists it provides opportunities for inmates to address their psychological and mental needs when clearly it doesn't. He claims he is satisfied that it is achieving its aims and says prisoners can use the complaints forms if they encounter problems. They do. Nothing happens.
An
HM Inspectorate of Prisons report on Woodhill in 2010 found:
“There was a need for a more structured evidence-based violence reduction programme within the CSC estate, addressing some of the underlying behaviours and attitudes presented. A programme had been piloted at Woodhill in 2004/05 and a recent business case submitted for funding, which had been turned down on the basis of cost.”
There is special funding for the CSC. Can it not be diverted to more places in secure hospital units? There needs to be an independent monitoring of the regime and independent psychiatric assessment of inmates instead of the prison-funded psychiatrists who aid the prison in its control ethos. Abusive officers should be charged for abusing the mentally ill, as anybody else would be. Prisoners have rights too and the state is obliged to safeguard human dignity.
If people are offending because they are ill then surely treating their illness will reduce their offending? Secure hospitals need to be brought to account for refusing inmates who clearly need this intervention.
Twelve years of the CSC has proved not only that it doesn't work but that in most cases it makes inmates worse. How much longer before government finds the courage to act on the evidence and fund something that actually works?
"Lydia Smith" and "David" are pseudonyms
Right now, the American women who have the most choice are those who live near the
border with Mexico, where pharmacies sell oral contraceptives without a prescription, generally for about $5 for a one-month supply. A group of researchers including Grossman have conducted
extensive interviews with more than 1,000 women who live in El Paso,
Texas. Roughly half the women get birth-control pills from local clinics, often free, while the other half go across the border to pharmacies in
Ciudad Juarez. The researchers find, not surprisingly, that those who cross the border have more ties to
Mexico; 77 percent were born there, compared with 60 percent of clinic users. But there are also differences in priorities.
“Among pharmacy users, very large percentages noted both not having to go to a doctor to get a prescription and being able to send a friend or relative to pick up their pills as advantages of Mexican pharmacies,” the researchers write in a June 2010 article in the American Journal of
Public Health. Clinic users, on the other hand, cite low cost and the availability of other
health services.
Category: Health News
Created: 3/8/2012 2:05:00 PM
Last Editorial Review: 3/9/2012
Category: Health News
Created: 3/8/2012 2:05:00 PM
Last Editorial Review: 3/9/2012
Category: Health News
Created: 3/8/2012 6:06:00 PM
Last Editorial Review: 3/9/2012
Category: Health News
Created: 3/9/2012 11:00:00 AM
Last Editorial Review: 3/9/2012
While they may watch their diets a bit more carefully than others, they're still at risk, just like the rest of us. According to estimates by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimated that 1 in every 6 Americans gets sick, 128,000 are hospitalized, and 3,000 die of foodborne illnesses each year.
Celebrities are no exception.
Musician Elton John has suffered multiple times from foodborne illness. On Feb. 17 and 18, 2012, he was hit with what was said to be food poisoning prior to his scheduled performances at Caesar's Palace in Las Vegas and was unable to attend.
In 2010, Sir Elton was affected with a case of food poisoning prior to a performance in Tucson and was forced to postpone concerts in Seattle and Portland, OR.
In 2009, he was hospitalized for E. coli infection. "It was something that I have never had before -- a serious E. coli infection which I got from something I ate," said Sir Elton in an interview with UsMagazine.
William Shatner's recent Broadway opening, for the former Star Trek actor's one-man show, was marred by a bout of foodborne illness. On Good Morning America, he said of his return to the New York stage, "I'd love to say I absorbed every second of it but I got food poisoning. So the lack of absorption was really good."
Last June 13, after a performance on the Tonight show, singer Selena Gomez was rushed to a Los Angeles hospital exhibiting symptoms of a "severe headache and nausea."
Tests reportedly revealed the problem to be food poisoning and exhaustion. The singer cancelled a performance at the Santa Monica Pier and told reporters at a make-up concert that she was "very malnourished and low on iron and exhausted." Later, in an interview on Kidd Kraddick's radio show, she said she "doesn't eat right. I love everything that's possibly not good for me."
Could the hard-charging lifestyles often led by celebrities be a factor that might weaken their immune systems and make them more vulnerable to harmful bacteria?
On June 10, 2011, singer Jennifer Hudson suffered what reportedly was a case of severe food poisoning between appearances on Good Morning America and the Early Show to promote her new album, "I Remember Me." Hudson complained of "abdominal pain" and was unable to perform.
For musician Lady Gaga, not performing was not an option. During her Monster Ball Tour in 2011, the star refused to cancel her show after she was diagnosed with food poisoning. "I was vomiting backstage during the changes. Nobody knew," said Gaga in an interview with Vogue magazine. "I just Jedi mind-tricked my body. 'You will not vomit onsatge.' I certainly wouldn't want [the audience] them to think I had something so ordinary as food poisoning."
Singer-songwriter-actress Katy Perry, however, was not able to go on during a tour in July 2011, ' when "an attack of food poisoning leading to severe dehydration" forced her to bow out of two performances in Chicago and St. Paul.
Although he may be well-versed in the ways of magic, even Harry Potter is susceptible to foodborne illness. In 2010, actor Daniel Radcliffe became very ill on a flight to New York. Radcliffe was hospitalized for two days and treated for dehydration.
Actress-singer Mandy Moore was hit with a bout of poisoning in January 2011, which she attributed to fish. Moore tweeted, '"Food poisoning is the worst. It will be a long time before I can even look at a piece of fish."
In January this year, singer Miranda Lambert suffered from a severe sickness supposedly due to a shrimp dish and took several days to recover. "Food poisoning... Take this. That was a near death experience. No more shrimp for me," tweeted Lambert on January 8.
But do these stars actually know what made them ill? While it is a common perception that the last food item ingested is what caused illness, this is often not the case.
According to STOP Foodborne Illness, adverse reactions can be caused by food eaten a few hours ago, a few days ago, a few weeks ago, or even a few months ago. The length of time between when one eats something and when one gets sick -- called the incubation period -- can vary depending on the pathogen in contaminated food, but it's often at least a full day.
The incubation period for norovirus, for example, is usually between 24 and 48 hours after exposure. More than half of all foodborne disease outbreaks in the U.S. can be attributed to noroviruses.
For Salmonella illnesses, the time from eating a contaminated food to the beginning of symptoms is typically one to three days, sometimes longer. For E. coli infection, the incubation time is three to four days.
While foodborne illnesses may just appear to be a temporary inconvenience -- what many people incorrectly call "stomach flu" -- some can result in long-term health problems, including diabetes or high blood pressure. Though young children, the elderly, pregnant women, and those with weakened immune systems are more at risk than the general population, any one is susceptible to coming down with foodborne illness.
If you think you have contracted a foodborne illness, contact your doctor, ask for a stool analysis, and try to remain hydrated by drinking plenty of fluids.
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Julia Thomas and Olivia Marler, student reporters from Bainbridge Island, WA, co-authored this report.
Category: Health News
Created: 3/8/2012 2:05:00 PM
Last Editorial Review: 3/9/2012
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