Commentary: Columnist says California should abolish parenthood in the name of equity
Joe Mathews
Fri, January 28, 2022, 11:54 AM·3 min read
If California is ever going to achieve true equity, the state must require parents to give away their children.
Today’s Californians often hold up equity — the goal of a just society completely free from bias — as our greatest value. Gov. Gavin Newsom makes decisions through “an equity lens.” Institutions from dance ensembles to tech companies have publicly pledged themselves to equity.
But their promises are no match for the power of parents.
Fathers and mothers with greater wealth and education are more likely to transfer these advantages to their children, compounding privilege over generations. As a result, children of less advantaged parents face an uphill struggle, social mobility has stalled, and democracy has been corrupted. More Californians are abandoning the dream; a recent Public Policy Institute of California poll found declining belief in the notion that you can get ahead through hard work.
My solution — making raising your own children illegal — is simple, and while we wait for the legislation to pass, we can act now: The rich and poor should trade kids, and homeowners might swap children with their homeless neighbors.
Now, I recognize that some naysayers will dismiss such a policy as ghastly, even totalitarian. But my proposal is quite modest, a fusion of traditional philosophy and today’s most common political obsessions.
In his “Republic,” Plato adopted Socrates’ sage advice — that children “be possessed in common, so that no parent will know his own offspring or any child his parents” — in order to defeat nepotism, and create citizens loyal not to their sons but to society.
Today, a policy of universal orphanhood aligns with powerful social trends that point to less interest in family. Californians are slower to marry, and are having fewer children; our birth rate is at an all-time low.
My proposal also should be politically unifying, fitting hand-in-glove with the most cherished policies of progressives and Trumpians alike.
The left’s introduction of anti-racism and gender identity in schools faces a bitter backlash from parents. Ending parenthood would end the backlash, helping dismantle white supremacy and outdated gender norms. Democrats also would have the opportunity to build a new pillar of the safety net — a child-raising system called “Foster Care for All.”
Over on the right, Republicans are happy to jettison parents’ rights in pursuit of their greatest passions, like violating migrant rights. Once you’ve gone so far as to take immigrant children from their parents and put them in border concentration camps, it’s a short walk to separating all Americans from their progeny.
Universal orphanhood also dovetails nicely with the pro-life campaign to end abortion rights. In fact, a suggestion from Justice Amy Coney Barrett, during a recent case that could overturn Roe, inspired this column. She posited that abortion rights are no longer necessary because all 50 states now have “safe haven” laws allowing women to turn their babies over to authorities after birth. My proposal would merely make mandatory such handovers of babies to the state.
Perhaps such coercion sounds dystopian. But just imagine the solidarity that universal orphanhood would create. Wouldn’t children, raised in one system, find it easier to collaborate on global problems?
Now, I don’t expect universal support for universal orphanhood. A few contrarians might argue that pursuing your own conception of family is fundamental to freedom.
They also may suggest that people don’t really want to start or finish at the same point in life.
They may even say that what we really desire is what the title orphan of the musical “Annie” demanded: “I didn’t want to be just another orphan, Mr. Warbucks. I wanted to believe I was special.”
But don’t pay those critics any mind. Because they just can’t see how our relentless pursuit of equity might birth a brave new world.
Joe Mathews writes the Connecting California column for Zócalo Public Square.
Sunday, January 30, 2022
Spotify's communications chief reportedly told employees that Joe Rogan episodes 'didn't meet the threshold for removal'
Sarah Jackson
Sat, January 29, 2022
Vivian Zink/Syfy/NBCU Photo Bank/NBCUniversal via Getty Images
Spotify's communications chief reportedly told employees that episodes of Joe Rogan's podcast "didn't meet the threshold for removal."
The Verge published a list of Spotify's internal company content policies around healthcare Friday.
The controversy prompted singers Neil Young and Joni Mitchell to pull their music over Rogan's COVID-19 misinformation.
Leaked internal messages from Spotify offer a glimpse into the company's decision to keep airing Joe Rogan's podcast, which has come under fire for promoting COVID-19 misinformation.
The Verge reported Friday that Dustee Jenkins, Spotify's head of global communications and public relations, broached the subject with concerned employees in an internal Slack channel.
Jenkins told them the company reviewed multiple episodes of podcast "The Joe Rogan Experience" but concluded they "didn't meet the threshold for removal," according to leaked screenshots of her message that were viewed by The Verge.
"We apply our policies consistently and objectively," Jenkins wrote. "They are not influenced by the media cycle, calls from any one individual or from external partners. It doesn't mean I personally agree with this content. But I trust our policies and the rationale behind them."
The Verge also published Spotify's internal content guidelines pertaining to healthcare. They prohibit behavior such as denying that COVID-19 exists, suggesting that mask-wearing causes life-threatening physical harm, and "promoting or suggesting that vaccines are designed to cause death," according to the news site.
"What Spotify hasn't done is move fast enough to share these policies externally, and are working to address that as soon as possible," Jenkins wrote.
Earlier this week, "Heart of Gold" artist Neil Young demanded Spotify remove his music from its platform over COVID-19 misinformation, saying, "Spotify is spreading fake information about vaccines – potentially causing death to those who believe the disinformation being spread by them." Young delivered an ultimatum, adding, "They can have Rogan or Young. Not both."
Spotify announced a few days later that it will pull Young's music catalog from its platform.
"We regret Neil's decision to remove his music from Spotify, but hope to welcome him back soon," the company told The Wall Street Journal. "We want all the world's music and audio content to be available to Spotify users. With that comes great responsibility in balancing both safety for listeners and freedom for creators."
Joni Mitchell announced Friday that she'll also be pulling her music from Spotify over "lies that are costing people their lives."
Earlier this month, 270 scientists, healthcare workers, and educators signed an open letter calling on Spotify to stop the spread of misinformation on its platform following an episode of Rogan's podcast in which he interviewed a doctor who baselessly claimed Americans were "hypnotized" into wearing masks and getting COVID-19 vaccines because of what he calls "mass formation psychosis." Psychology experts have said there is no such phenomenon.
Spotify did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Read the original article on Business Insider
Sarah Jackson
Sat, January 29, 2022
Vivian Zink/Syfy/NBCU Photo Bank/NBCUniversal via Getty Images
Spotify's communications chief reportedly told employees that episodes of Joe Rogan's podcast "didn't meet the threshold for removal."
The Verge published a list of Spotify's internal company content policies around healthcare Friday.
The controversy prompted singers Neil Young and Joni Mitchell to pull their music over Rogan's COVID-19 misinformation.
Leaked internal messages from Spotify offer a glimpse into the company's decision to keep airing Joe Rogan's podcast, which has come under fire for promoting COVID-19 misinformation.
The Verge reported Friday that Dustee Jenkins, Spotify's head of global communications and public relations, broached the subject with concerned employees in an internal Slack channel.
Jenkins told them the company reviewed multiple episodes of podcast "The Joe Rogan Experience" but concluded they "didn't meet the threshold for removal," according to leaked screenshots of her message that were viewed by The Verge.
"We apply our policies consistently and objectively," Jenkins wrote. "They are not influenced by the media cycle, calls from any one individual or from external partners. It doesn't mean I personally agree with this content. But I trust our policies and the rationale behind them."
The Verge also published Spotify's internal content guidelines pertaining to healthcare. They prohibit behavior such as denying that COVID-19 exists, suggesting that mask-wearing causes life-threatening physical harm, and "promoting or suggesting that vaccines are designed to cause death," according to the news site.
"What Spotify hasn't done is move fast enough to share these policies externally, and are working to address that as soon as possible," Jenkins wrote.
Earlier this week, "Heart of Gold" artist Neil Young demanded Spotify remove his music from its platform over COVID-19 misinformation, saying, "Spotify is spreading fake information about vaccines – potentially causing death to those who believe the disinformation being spread by them." Young delivered an ultimatum, adding, "They can have Rogan or Young. Not both."
Spotify announced a few days later that it will pull Young's music catalog from its platform.
"We regret Neil's decision to remove his music from Spotify, but hope to welcome him back soon," the company told The Wall Street Journal. "We want all the world's music and audio content to be available to Spotify users. With that comes great responsibility in balancing both safety for listeners and freedom for creators."
Joni Mitchell announced Friday that she'll also be pulling her music from Spotify over "lies that are costing people their lives."
Earlier this month, 270 scientists, healthcare workers, and educators signed an open letter calling on Spotify to stop the spread of misinformation on its platform following an episode of Rogan's podcast in which he interviewed a doctor who baselessly claimed Americans were "hypnotized" into wearing masks and getting COVID-19 vaccines because of what he calls "mass formation psychosis." Psychology experts have said there is no such phenomenon.
Spotify did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Read the original article on Business Insider
AMERICAN EXCEPTIONALISM
Why don't Arizona cities require residents to conserve water? It's simple, really
Joanna Allhands, Arizona Republic
Sat, January 29, 2022,
Few Arizona cities mandate water conservation measures now,
Why don't Arizona cities require residents to conserve water? It's simple, really
Joanna Allhands, Arizona Republic
Sat, January 29, 2022,
Few Arizona cities mandate water conservation measures now,
but most have plans to do so in the future.
Why don’t cities mandate conservation measures if Arizona needs to save water?
This is a question I get frequently, and there’s a simple answer: Because we’re not at that stage yet.
That doesn’t mean saving water is unimportant. Cities can and should be doing more to help residents use less.
But there are reasons why Arizona cities aren’t yet forcing residents and businesses to save – and we can see them playing out in California.
California has struggled to save more water
California has essentially cut off State Water Project supplies to many cities and farmers this year because there isn’t enough water to go around. It also has announced another round of mandatory statewide restrictions on things like outdoor watering and car washing.
The state enacted mandatory conservation measures for the first time in 2015 to reduce usage by 25%. Many cities have generally sustained those savings, the result of converted landscaping and other measures.
But the state also widely missed its target last year to save an additional 15% – in part because those 2015 mandates took out the low-hanging fruit. If California wants to save more water now, it’ll require behavioral changes that residents may not be so eager to make, much less sustain over time.
That’s the downside of mandatory measures. If people aren’t willing to play along, the only way to get there is by enforcement, which is expensive, time consuming and usually anger producing.
That’s why Arizona cities are loath to use mandates.
Nearly all Arizona cities will mandate, eventually
But nearly all have plans to enact them, eventually.
Arizona water providers are required to create a drought preparedness plan – somewhat of a misnomer, considering that they are really about handling water shortages, not preparing for drought.
Actions increase as the stages progress, though the triggers for each stage vary by provider. Scottsdale and Tucson tie their stages in part to levels of shortage at Lake Mead, which makes sense, considering that they rely on a larger portion of Colorado River water than other major cities. Other cities base their triggers on more general reductions to surface water or their overall supply.
The actions that cities will take at each stage also vary. Most begin with cuts to water use at city facilities and voluntary actions for homeowners and businesses, which grow into mandates as the stages increase.
Most cities spell out which mandates they will consider at various stages, such as turning off water to splash pads, limiting ornamental turf, creating restrictions on outdoor watering or imposing fines on water wasters. Some require city council approval for actions taken in later stages.
Scottsdale and Tucson are already in stage 1
Because Lake Mead has reached its first level of shortage, Scottsdale and Tucson have already moved into stage 1 of their plans.
Scottsdale will no longer make water available to those who live outside city limits and is asking residents to voluntarily conserve 5%, perhaps by replacing turf and water-intensive landscaping, choosing not to overseed grass in the winter or by scheduling a free, city-provided review of their water use.
The water department is asking for additional money this year to fund its turf removal rebate and is ratcheting up its messaging about saving water. Officials hope that the more they can conserve voluntarily now, the less they will have to mandate later as Mead sinks into deeper levels of shortage.
Meanwhile, Tucson is sharing information with homes and businesses about their historical use and will send targeted conservation recommendations to those who use more water than their peers. The city also is reviewing whether to suspend new requests to join its water service area.
Do more to save – but voluntarily, for now
Some argue that cities should already be doing this stuff, and they have a point. If most actions in the first stage of cities’ plans are voluntary, why wait for a shortage trigger to enact them?
But cities also are right that rather than jumping to heavy-handed mandates that people may reject over time, the focus now should be on creating a positive culture of water conservation, where everyone agrees that if we’re going to live in the desert, we need to use less water, and any water we use must be done wisely.
Cities have done a decent job of that so far. Existing voluntary measures, along with more efficient appliance standards, have vastly cut water use over time. Arizona uses less water now than it did in the 1950s, even though millions more people live here.
It’s also worth noting that while metro Phoenix’s largest cities are home to half of the state’s 7-plus million population, they use 11% of Arizona’s water supplies. Even drastic cuts in use among these cities probably wouldn’t be enough to keep Lake Mead from falling into deeper tiers of shortage.
That doesn’t mean water is OK to waste, or that cities shouldn’t do more to encourage residents and businesses to use less water.
But the balance between carrots and sticks matters. And while mandates won’t be off the table forever, they are probably not the best way to compel lower use now.
Reach Allhands at joanna.allhands@arizonarepublic.com. On Twitter: @joannaallhands.
If you love this content (or love to hate it – hey, I won't judge), why not subscribe to get more?
This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Why don't Arizona cities mandate water conservation?
Why don’t cities mandate conservation measures if Arizona needs to save water?
This is a question I get frequently, and there’s a simple answer: Because we’re not at that stage yet.
That doesn’t mean saving water is unimportant. Cities can and should be doing more to help residents use less.
But there are reasons why Arizona cities aren’t yet forcing residents and businesses to save – and we can see them playing out in California.
California has struggled to save more water
California has essentially cut off State Water Project supplies to many cities and farmers this year because there isn’t enough water to go around. It also has announced another round of mandatory statewide restrictions on things like outdoor watering and car washing.
The state enacted mandatory conservation measures for the first time in 2015 to reduce usage by 25%. Many cities have generally sustained those savings, the result of converted landscaping and other measures.
But the state also widely missed its target last year to save an additional 15% – in part because those 2015 mandates took out the low-hanging fruit. If California wants to save more water now, it’ll require behavioral changes that residents may not be so eager to make, much less sustain over time.
That’s the downside of mandatory measures. If people aren’t willing to play along, the only way to get there is by enforcement, which is expensive, time consuming and usually anger producing.
That’s why Arizona cities are loath to use mandates.
Nearly all Arizona cities will mandate, eventually
But nearly all have plans to enact them, eventually.
Arizona water providers are required to create a drought preparedness plan – somewhat of a misnomer, considering that they are really about handling water shortages, not preparing for drought.
Actions increase as the stages progress, though the triggers for each stage vary by provider. Scottsdale and Tucson tie their stages in part to levels of shortage at Lake Mead, which makes sense, considering that they rely on a larger portion of Colorado River water than other major cities. Other cities base their triggers on more general reductions to surface water or their overall supply.
The actions that cities will take at each stage also vary. Most begin with cuts to water use at city facilities and voluntary actions for homeowners and businesses, which grow into mandates as the stages increase.
Most cities spell out which mandates they will consider at various stages, such as turning off water to splash pads, limiting ornamental turf, creating restrictions on outdoor watering or imposing fines on water wasters. Some require city council approval for actions taken in later stages.
Scottsdale and Tucson are already in stage 1
Because Lake Mead has reached its first level of shortage, Scottsdale and Tucson have already moved into stage 1 of their plans.
Scottsdale will no longer make water available to those who live outside city limits and is asking residents to voluntarily conserve 5%, perhaps by replacing turf and water-intensive landscaping, choosing not to overseed grass in the winter or by scheduling a free, city-provided review of their water use.
The water department is asking for additional money this year to fund its turf removal rebate and is ratcheting up its messaging about saving water. Officials hope that the more they can conserve voluntarily now, the less they will have to mandate later as Mead sinks into deeper levels of shortage.
Meanwhile, Tucson is sharing information with homes and businesses about their historical use and will send targeted conservation recommendations to those who use more water than their peers. The city also is reviewing whether to suspend new requests to join its water service area.
Do more to save – but voluntarily, for now
Some argue that cities should already be doing this stuff, and they have a point. If most actions in the first stage of cities’ plans are voluntary, why wait for a shortage trigger to enact them?
But cities also are right that rather than jumping to heavy-handed mandates that people may reject over time, the focus now should be on creating a positive culture of water conservation, where everyone agrees that if we’re going to live in the desert, we need to use less water, and any water we use must be done wisely.
Cities have done a decent job of that so far. Existing voluntary measures, along with more efficient appliance standards, have vastly cut water use over time. Arizona uses less water now than it did in the 1950s, even though millions more people live here.
It’s also worth noting that while metro Phoenix’s largest cities are home to half of the state’s 7-plus million population, they use 11% of Arizona’s water supplies. Even drastic cuts in use among these cities probably wouldn’t be enough to keep Lake Mead from falling into deeper tiers of shortage.
That doesn’t mean water is OK to waste, or that cities shouldn’t do more to encourage residents and businesses to use less water.
But the balance between carrots and sticks matters. And while mandates won’t be off the table forever, they are probably not the best way to compel lower use now.
Reach Allhands at joanna.allhands@arizonarepublic.com. On Twitter: @joannaallhands.
If you love this content (or love to hate it – hey, I won't judge), why not subscribe to get more?
This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Why don't Arizona cities mandate water conservation?
South America squid left exposed amid surge in China fishing
JOSHUA GOODMAN, Associated Press
Jan. 28, 2022
JOSHUA GOODMAN, Associated Press
Jan. 28, 2022
The Chinese squid fishing vessel Fu Yuan Yu 7880 sails on the Pacific Ocean, July 18, 2021. The Pingtan-affiliated vessel was arrested by South Africa in 2016 after it tried to flee a naval patrol that suspected it of illegal squid fishing. The ship's officers were found guilty of possessing illegal gear and disobeying a maritime authority but were released after paying a fine.
Joshua Goodman/AP
MIAMI (AP) — Negotiators from the U.S., China and 13 other governments failed to take action to protect threatened squid stocks on the high seas off South America amid a recent surge in activity by China's distant water fishing fleet.
The South Pacific Regional Fisheries Management Organization, or SPRFMO, is charged with ensuring the conservation and sustainable fishing off the west coast of South America.
At the SPRFMO's annual meeting that ended Friday, Ecuador and the European Union proposed measures that would require all ships to have observers on board by 2028 and mandate they unload their catches only in ports instead of at sea to giant refrigerated vessels — both considered key tools in limiting illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing.
There were also competing proposals, one of them from China, to limit the amount of squid that could be caught.
However, none of the proposed measures were adopted during the closed-door meeting, thwarting the efforts of environmentalists and some seafood importers in the U.S. and Europe who have been pushing for restrictions of fishing on the high seas that make up about half of the planet.
CALAMASUR, a group made up of squid industry representatives from Mexico, Chile, Peru and Ecuador, attended the four-day virtual meeting as an observer and said it was deeply disappointed by the results, which it said expose the SPRFMO to being seen as “non-cooperative” in the fight against illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing,
“This situation cannot be accepted as an outcome,” the group said in a statement.
Craig Loveridge, the executive secretary of the New Zealand-based SPRFMO, did not respond to a request for comment.
The number of Chinese-flagged vessels in the south Pacific has surged 13-fold from 54 active vessels in 2009 to 707 in 2020, according to the SPRFMO. Meanwhile, the size of China's squid catch has grown from 70,000 tons in 2009 to 358,000.
Biologists warn that the boom has left the naturally bountiful Humboldt squid — named for the nutrient-rich current found off the west coast of South America — vulnerable to overfishing, as has occurred in Argentina, Mexico, Japan and other places where squid stocks have disappeared in the past.
An investigation by The Associated Press and Spanish-language broadcaster Univision last year revealed how the traditionally lawless area has become a magnet for some of the seafood industry’s worst offenders, many of them Chinese-flagged vessels with a history of labor abuse accusations and convictions for illegal fishing.
Follow Goodman: @APJoshGoodman
MIAMI (AP) — Negotiators from the U.S., China and 13 other governments failed to take action to protect threatened squid stocks on the high seas off South America amid a recent surge in activity by China's distant water fishing fleet.
The South Pacific Regional Fisheries Management Organization, or SPRFMO, is charged with ensuring the conservation and sustainable fishing off the west coast of South America.
At the SPRFMO's annual meeting that ended Friday, Ecuador and the European Union proposed measures that would require all ships to have observers on board by 2028 and mandate they unload their catches only in ports instead of at sea to giant refrigerated vessels — both considered key tools in limiting illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing.
There were also competing proposals, one of them from China, to limit the amount of squid that could be caught.
However, none of the proposed measures were adopted during the closed-door meeting, thwarting the efforts of environmentalists and some seafood importers in the U.S. and Europe who have been pushing for restrictions of fishing on the high seas that make up about half of the planet.
CALAMASUR, a group made up of squid industry representatives from Mexico, Chile, Peru and Ecuador, attended the four-day virtual meeting as an observer and said it was deeply disappointed by the results, which it said expose the SPRFMO to being seen as “non-cooperative” in the fight against illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing,
“This situation cannot be accepted as an outcome,” the group said in a statement.
Craig Loveridge, the executive secretary of the New Zealand-based SPRFMO, did not respond to a request for comment.
The number of Chinese-flagged vessels in the south Pacific has surged 13-fold from 54 active vessels in 2009 to 707 in 2020, according to the SPRFMO. Meanwhile, the size of China's squid catch has grown from 70,000 tons in 2009 to 358,000.
Biologists warn that the boom has left the naturally bountiful Humboldt squid — named for the nutrient-rich current found off the west coast of South America — vulnerable to overfishing, as has occurred in Argentina, Mexico, Japan and other places where squid stocks have disappeared in the past.
An investigation by The Associated Press and Spanish-language broadcaster Univision last year revealed how the traditionally lawless area has become a magnet for some of the seafood industry’s worst offenders, many of them Chinese-flagged vessels with a history of labor abuse accusations and convictions for illegal fishing.
Follow Goodman: @APJoshGoodman
An ICU nurse went viral for quitting after 19 grueling months of the pandemic. Now, he says he's more relaxed and is encouraging other healthcare workers to do the same.
%26utm_source%3Dfacebook.com%26utm_medium%3Dreferral&name=South%20America%20squid%20left%20exposed%20amid%20surge%20in%20China%20fishing&description=MIAMI%20(AP)%20%E2%80%94%20Negotiators%20from%20the%20U.S.%2C%20China%20and%2013%20other%20governments%20failed%20to%20take...&picture=https%3A%2F%2Fs.hdnux.com%2Fphotos%2F01%2F23%2F62%2F53%2F21965549%2F3%2FrawImage.jpg&redirect_uri=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.sfgate.com%2Fnews%2Farticle%2FSouth-America-squid-left-exposed-amid-surge-in-16813997.php%3Futm_campaign%3DCMS%2520Sharing%2520Tools%2520(Premium)%26utm_source%3DUTMSOURCE%26utm_medium%3DUTMMEDIUM){kind=link}
Andrew Hudson had nervous breakdowns after working an ICU for 19 months during COVID.
Hudson posted a video explaining why he quit and it went viral, with half a million views on Twitter.
He said he's happier podcasting and creating art, and encourages other nurses to quit.
Before nursing school, Andrew Hudson worked at a bar for five years where he became familiar with the smell of Tito's vodka.
In early 2020, as Hudson treated COVID-19 patients in a step-down unit at a major Detroit hospital, he noticed his hand sanitizer smelled like booze. He looked down at the packaging saw a Tito's label. At the time, the US allowed distillers to make ethanol-based sanitizers due to a nationwide supply shortage crippling healthcare's pandemic response.
Hudson laughed as he recounted the ironic twist of fate, but said these kind of federal stop-gap measures and the overall lack of support he and other nurses received led to burnout and mental health distress in his nearly two years as a COVID ICU nurse.
Hudson said he did not receive any hazard pay working between March 2020 and December 2021 as an ICU nurse in Michigan and Colorado. He re-used masks and gowns, and sent his patients' bodies to freezer trucks outside of his hospital.
By the end of his tenure in the ICU, Hudson came home from shifts in nervous breakdowns.
Hudson finally quit nursing in December 2021, in a now-viral video that has half a million views on Twitter.
Hudson said helping patients for months without proper staff and equipment "feels like emptying the ocean with a bucket."
"The way it is right now isn't normal," he said in an interview with Insider, "and I don't think it's helping patients in any way."
The earliest days of the pandemic were dark and uncertain
Hudson's first few months treating patients with COVID were a whirlwind. His team would experiment with the now-debunked treatment hydroxychloroquine because, back then, no clinician knew for sure how to treat the disease.
With his voice low, Hudson recalled calling 30 rapid responses in 2020 when his own patients went into a critical level, and many more for other nurses' patients. In the early months, Hudson bagged up dead patients and brought them to the morgue — and sometimes freezer trucks brought to hospitals to store bodies when death rates were over 100 per week in Michigan — several times a night.
What's worse, to protect morticians from exposure, Hudson gauzed and taped the eyelids, nostrils, and mouth of his dead patients.
"It felt macabre," he said. "It was pretty grim to look at and I felt like this feels kind of medieval in a way."
Insufficient staffing, aggressive patients, and nervous breakdowns
In 2021, Hudson moved to a small hospital in Denver treating underserved communities. He was again met with treating mostly COVID ICU patients due to the Delta variant.
Due to staffing challenges, Hudson said he cared for at least three patients at once. Safe staffing laws in Massachusetts recommend nurses care for just one ICU patients at once, and research from the University of Pennsylvania finds the more patients a nurse must care for, the worse care becomes.
Hudson's hospital hired travel nurses and newly graduated students to help on ICU floors, but their lack of experience wasn't enough to help manage the pandemic's toll.
Last year also brought out aggression from patients he hadn't seen before. Patients' families would tell Hudson not to intubated dying patients and instead give them the ivermectin, a parasite killer that does not work against COVID-19. "We just feel like we've vanished, like we can't do anything," he added.
Shortly before leaving his job, Hudson recalled coming home from his shifts feeling defeated.
Hudson said he became a nurse to help people and make a living wage out of it. In the last two years, he felt he was no longer making a reasonable wage for the unprecedented amount of work he did, and felt no matter how hard he tried to help, his patients would continue to die.
'The system is already collapsed, but now they're gonna have to deal with the ramifications of that collapse'
Hudson handed in his letter of resignation in the second week of December. Though he felt bad for his manager, he does not regret his decision.
"It was kind of the wild west," he said. "The units were a mess. We didn't have the resource as we need."
After spending some time with his family over the holidays, Hudson threw himself into hobbies: a comedy podcast he co-hosts with his friends, called E1 Podcast, and digital art. He said he'll use some time to "decompress" due to the stress of the past two years.
Hudson has a message for other fed up healthcare workers: quit.
"I'm encouraging healthcare workers, not just nurses, if you can leave your job, I think you should," he said. "I think that they should see that they need us more than we need them. And the system is already collapsed, but now they're gonna have to deal with the ramifications of that collapse."
Just-in-time gives way to "buy everything you can" as U.S. supply disruptions persist
FILE PHOTO: Container trucks , ships and cranes are shown
FILE PHOTO: Container trucks , ships and cranes are shown
at the Port of Long Beach. California
Fri, January 28, 2022
By Timothy Aeppel
(Reuters) - Stephen Bullock eight months ago gave up on the idea of buying raw materials and parts only shortly before they were needed on his assembly line.
Instead, he told his purchasing manager to "just buy everything you can," and they could store the excess, said Bullock, chief executive of Power Curbers Companies, a maker of heavy equipment used to build concrete sidewalks and other infrastructure projects.
Roughly two years into a pandemic that has snarled supply chains across the globe, U.S. companies are scrambling not just to produce enough to feed current demand - but to also refill inventory shelves. That buildup was key to the fourth quarter’s hefty 6.9% annualized growth in gross domestic product, with inventory investment contributing 4.9 percentage points, according to the U.S. Commerce Department.
Spending shifted during the pandemic from services to goods, a boom that has strained supply chains and emptied warehouses. Excluding inventories, GDP grew at a more modest 1.9% rate in the latest period.
This boom in demand, coupled with shortages, has fueled a wave of inflation that increased at a pace last year not seen in nearly 40 years. This set the stage for the Federal Reserve to now look towards raising interest rates in March.
Bullock, whose company is based in Salisbury, North Carolina, said supply chain problems have continued to grow worse in recent months - not better.
Ditching the "just-in-time" inventory model in favor of building up supply to buffer stocks only made sense, he said, referring to a system that aims to buy parts and materials shortly before they're needed - to minimize the cost of holding supplies. Just-in-time has evolved into a standard worldwide in the era of globalized trade, one embraced across corporate America - until COVID-19's emergence upended it. Since the pandemic struck, many businesses found the system left them stranded when orders that normally took weeks suddenly took months to arrive.
Bullock's goal now is to snap up materials like steel whenever he can. "We've had to get creative in where to put all of it," he added. "We're using all the nooks and crannies to house those incoming items."
Supply chain problems are weighing on the results of some companies. On Thursday, Tesla Inc.'s shares slid after the electric car maker said it would delay releasing new vehicles until next year because of supply chain breaks that it said could last through this year. Earlier in the week, General Electric Co. reported a decline in quarterly revenue amid supply chain shortages.
Companies have grown creative to deal with the gaps in supplies.
Rockwell Automation Inc. Chief Executive Blake Moret, said his company has increased amount of "work in progress," in order to keep workers assembling goods as they wait for shipments of scarce computer chips. The chips are added just before the product is sent out the door.
Rockwell, which has benefited from a push to automate factories and warehouses during the pandemic, has "slightly" increased its inventory levels, said Moret, but not enough to have a meaningful impact on overall inventories.
The Milwaukee-based company on Thursday raised its earnings forecast for its fiscal year as it reported a 40% jump in orders in its first quarter, compared to a year ago. "We're in the early phase of multi-year economic expansion," said Moret.
(Reporting by Timothy Aeppel; Editing by Dan Burns and Diane Craft)
Fri, January 28, 2022
By Timothy Aeppel
(Reuters) - Stephen Bullock eight months ago gave up on the idea of buying raw materials and parts only shortly before they were needed on his assembly line.
Instead, he told his purchasing manager to "just buy everything you can," and they could store the excess, said Bullock, chief executive of Power Curbers Companies, a maker of heavy equipment used to build concrete sidewalks and other infrastructure projects.
Roughly two years into a pandemic that has snarled supply chains across the globe, U.S. companies are scrambling not just to produce enough to feed current demand - but to also refill inventory shelves. That buildup was key to the fourth quarter’s hefty 6.9% annualized growth in gross domestic product, with inventory investment contributing 4.9 percentage points, according to the U.S. Commerce Department.
Spending shifted during the pandemic from services to goods, a boom that has strained supply chains and emptied warehouses. Excluding inventories, GDP grew at a more modest 1.9% rate in the latest period.
This boom in demand, coupled with shortages, has fueled a wave of inflation that increased at a pace last year not seen in nearly 40 years. This set the stage for the Federal Reserve to now look towards raising interest rates in March.
Bullock, whose company is based in Salisbury, North Carolina, said supply chain problems have continued to grow worse in recent months - not better.
Ditching the "just-in-time" inventory model in favor of building up supply to buffer stocks only made sense, he said, referring to a system that aims to buy parts and materials shortly before they're needed - to minimize the cost of holding supplies. Just-in-time has evolved into a standard worldwide in the era of globalized trade, one embraced across corporate America - until COVID-19's emergence upended it. Since the pandemic struck, many businesses found the system left them stranded when orders that normally took weeks suddenly took months to arrive.
Bullock's goal now is to snap up materials like steel whenever he can. "We've had to get creative in where to put all of it," he added. "We're using all the nooks and crannies to house those incoming items."
Supply chain problems are weighing on the results of some companies. On Thursday, Tesla Inc.'s shares slid after the electric car maker said it would delay releasing new vehicles until next year because of supply chain breaks that it said could last through this year. Earlier in the week, General Electric Co. reported a decline in quarterly revenue amid supply chain shortages.
Companies have grown creative to deal with the gaps in supplies.
Rockwell Automation Inc. Chief Executive Blake Moret, said his company has increased amount of "work in progress," in order to keep workers assembling goods as they wait for shipments of scarce computer chips. The chips are added just before the product is sent out the door.
Rockwell, which has benefited from a push to automate factories and warehouses during the pandemic, has "slightly" increased its inventory levels, said Moret, but not enough to have a meaningful impact on overall inventories.
The Milwaukee-based company on Thursday raised its earnings forecast for its fiscal year as it reported a 40% jump in orders in its first quarter, compared to a year ago. "We're in the early phase of multi-year economic expansion," said Moret.
(Reporting by Timothy Aeppel; Editing by Dan Burns and Diane Craft)
RIGHT WING CANCEL CULTURE VS FREEDOM OF SPEECH
NYC actress fired after rant over Jason Rivera funeral: Streets closed 'for one f------ cop'
Brie Stimson
Thousands of police officers from around the country gather at St. Patrick's Cathedral to attend the funeral for fallen NYPD Officer Jason Rivera on Jan. 28, 2022 in New York City. Getty Images
She continued, "Like this is f–----- ridiculous. This is f–----- ridiculous. What if somebody is having a heart attack in this area? Nobody can get to them because it’s all blocked off for one f–----- cop."
She later deleted the post.
FALLEN NYPD OFFICER JASON RIVERA HONORED WITH MILES-LONG PROCESSION, HUNDREDS FLOCK TO ST. PATRICK'S CATHEDRAL
Police officers and social media commenters rebuked Guzman’s complaints, calling her "disrespectful" and saying she should be "ashamed" of herself.
"Twitter is forever. Bless your unemployed heart," another wrote.
"New Yorkers turned out by the thousands yesterday to help us honor our fallen brother," New York City Police Benevolent Association President Patrick Lynch said in a statement, according to the Post. "One person spreading hate cannot erase that. This kind of garbage has polluted the conversation for far too long. We need the New Yorkers who are standing with us to speak up and push back."
Her employer, Face to Face Films, wrote on its Facebook page Saturday, it had "just been made aware of an insensitive video involving one of our members, Jacqueline Guzman. Face to Face Films does not support nor can condone these comments made about fallen Officer Rivera. As a result, she is no longer a member of our company."
Rivera’s partner Wilbert Mora, 27, also died of his wounds days after the attack.
NYC actress fired after rant over Jason Rivera funeral: Streets closed 'for one f------ cop'
Brie Stimson
FOX NEWS
Sun, January 30, 2022
A New York City-based actress was fired this weekend after backlash over her viral TikTok complaint that the city didn’t need to be shut down for "one f------ cop" whose funeral was held Friday at St. Patrick’s Cathedral, according to a report.
New York City police Officer Jason Rivera was killed Jan. 21 by a suspect while responding to a domestic dispute in Harlem. A second police officer died days later.
On Friday, thousands lined Manhattan’s streets to mourn the 22-year-old Rivera, but actress Jacqueline Guzman likely wasn’t one of them, the New York Post reported.
The actress posted a TikTok rant about street closures prompted by the funeral.
"We do not need to shut down most of Lower Manhattan because one cop died for probably doing his job incorrectly," she said. "They kill people who are under 22 every single day for no good reason and we don’t shut down the city for them."
Sun, January 30, 2022
A New York City-based actress was fired this weekend after backlash over her viral TikTok complaint that the city didn’t need to be shut down for "one f------ cop" whose funeral was held Friday at St. Patrick’s Cathedral, according to a report.
New York City police Officer Jason Rivera was killed Jan. 21 by a suspect while responding to a domestic dispute in Harlem. A second police officer died days later.
On Friday, thousands lined Manhattan’s streets to mourn the 22-year-old Rivera, but actress Jacqueline Guzman likely wasn’t one of them, the New York Post reported.
The actress posted a TikTok rant about street closures prompted by the funeral.
"We do not need to shut down most of Lower Manhattan because one cop died for probably doing his job incorrectly," she said. "They kill people who are under 22 every single day for no good reason and we don’t shut down the city for them."
Thousands of police officers from around the country gather at St. Patrick's Cathedral to attend the funeral for fallen NYPD Officer Jason Rivera on Jan. 28, 2022 in New York City. Getty Images
She continued, "Like this is f–----- ridiculous. This is f–----- ridiculous. What if somebody is having a heart attack in this area? Nobody can get to them because it’s all blocked off for one f–----- cop."
She later deleted the post.
FALLEN NYPD OFFICER JASON RIVERA HONORED WITH MILES-LONG PROCESSION, HUNDREDS FLOCK TO ST. PATRICK'S CATHEDRAL
Police officers and social media commenters rebuked Guzman’s complaints, calling her "disrespectful" and saying she should be "ashamed" of herself.
"Twitter is forever. Bless your unemployed heart," another wrote.
"New Yorkers turned out by the thousands yesterday to help us honor our fallen brother," New York City Police Benevolent Association President Patrick Lynch said in a statement, according to the Post. "One person spreading hate cannot erase that. This kind of garbage has polluted the conversation for far too long. We need the New Yorkers who are standing with us to speak up and push back."
Her employer, Face to Face Films, wrote on its Facebook page Saturday, it had "just been made aware of an insensitive video involving one of our members, Jacqueline Guzman. Face to Face Films does not support nor can condone these comments made about fallen Officer Rivera. As a result, she is no longer a member of our company."
Rivera’s partner Wilbert Mora, 27, also died of his wounds days after the attack.
Greenpeace fears 100,000 'ghost flights' in Europe this winter will cause major climate damage
By UPI Staff
German carrier Lufthansa said earlier this month that expects to operate 18,000 half-empty flights this winter to avoid losing access to some airports.
"Pointless, polluting 'ghost flights' are just the tip of the iceberg. It would be irresponsible of the EU to not take the low-hanging fruit of ending ghost flights and banning short-haul flights where there's a reasonable train connection."
"Under normal circumstances, airlines are required to run at least 80% of booked flights to secure their airport slots according to EU law," the environmental group added. "Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the European Commission temporarily reduced this threshold to at least 50% of flights, but it will be increased again to 64% of flights in March."
Greenpeace said that operating 100,000 ghost flights would be the emissions equivalent of 1.4 million vehicles on the road for a year.
Earlier this month, German carrier Lufthansa said it would have to operate about 18,000 ghost flights this winter to keep its runway slots. The airline operates about 17% of all European flights. Greenpeace said those flights alone would emit 360,000 tons of carbon dioxide.
By UPI Staff
German carrier Lufthansa said earlier this month that expects to operate 18,000 half-empty flights this winter to avoid losing access to some airports.
File Photo by Jim Bryant/UPI | License Photo
Jan. 27 (UPI) -- Environmental advocates are expressing concern about a tactic that some airlines are taking this winter in order to keep their airport permits -- "ghost flights," which are commercial flights that carry few or no passengers.
Some carriers have said they have had to resort to ghost flights just to avoid losing the ability to fly into any given airport. The reason is because of fewer travelers due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Environmental advocacy group Greenpeace said this week that it's concerned about the emissions those flights would create -- and worries that there could be more than 100,000 ghost flights across Europe this winter.
"We're in a climate crisis, and the transport sector has the fastest-growing emissions in the EU," Greenpeace spokesman Herwig Schuster said in a statement.
Jan. 27 (UPI) -- Environmental advocates are expressing concern about a tactic that some airlines are taking this winter in order to keep their airport permits -- "ghost flights," which are commercial flights that carry few or no passengers.
Some carriers have said they have had to resort to ghost flights just to avoid losing the ability to fly into any given airport. The reason is because of fewer travelers due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Environmental advocacy group Greenpeace said this week that it's concerned about the emissions those flights would create -- and worries that there could be more than 100,000 ghost flights across Europe this winter.
"We're in a climate crisis, and the transport sector has the fastest-growing emissions in the EU," Greenpeace spokesman Herwig Schuster said in a statement.
"Pointless, polluting 'ghost flights' are just the tip of the iceberg. It would be irresponsible of the EU to not take the low-hanging fruit of ending ghost flights and banning short-haul flights where there's a reasonable train connection."
"Under normal circumstances, airlines are required to run at least 80% of booked flights to secure their airport slots according to EU law," the environmental group added. "Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the European Commission temporarily reduced this threshold to at least 50% of flights, but it will be increased again to 64% of flights in March."
Greenpeace said that operating 100,000 ghost flights would be the emissions equivalent of 1.4 million vehicles on the road for a year.
Earlier this month, German carrier Lufthansa said it would have to operate about 18,000 ghost flights this winter to keep its runway slots. The airline operates about 17% of all European flights. Greenpeace said those flights alone would emit 360,000 tons of carbon dioxide.
Is it ethical to use animals as organ farms for humans?
Mike Bebernes
·Senior Editor
January 22, 2022·
What’s happening
Doctors in Maryland earlier this month completed the world’s first heart transplant using a heart that came from a genetically modified pig. The experimental procedure, performed on a 57-year-old man with a terminal heart condition, is seen as a major breakthrough in the burgeoning field of cross-species organ transplants.
The heart transplant came just a few months after two teams of scientists broke new ground in separate experiments testing the viability of pig kidney transplants conducted on brain-dead bodies that had been donated to science.
The theory of animal-to-human transplants, known as xenotransplantation, dates back hundreds of years. Only recently, though, has that goal appeared to be within reach. Advances in gene-editing technology now allow scientists to overcome what was once an insurmountable barrier to cross-species transplantation: The human immune response that recognizes and attacks foreign tissues in the body. The heart used by doctors in Maryland came from a pig that had 10 separate gene modifications, including pig genes that were inactivated and human genes that were added, to prevent the recipient’s body from rejecting the organ.
Researchers hope these experiments prove to be the early steps of a process that ultimately turns animals into a viable solution to the severe organ supply shortage, which leads to thousands of deaths in the U.S. each year. Even though a record 41,000 organ transplants were conducted in the U.S. last year, more than 100,000 Americans are estimated to be on the transplant waiting list. An average of 17 people die each day waiting for an organ transplant.
Why there’s debate
The case for continuing to pursue research into xenotransplantation is straightforward. If science advances to the point where animal organs are a readily available option for human transplants, it could prevent countless deaths worldwide every year. In the eyes of the scientists, the value to humans would outweigh the harm caused to animals. “People talk about the ethics of doing the science,” one researcher told Nature, “but I would also argue that we should consider the ethics of not doing this science.”
Animal rights groups, unsurprisingly, oppose the idea of using animals for human transplants. “Animals aren’t toolsheds to be raided but complex, intelligent beings,” a spokesperson from People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals said. Others question the ethics of creating a class of animal for the sole purpose of slaughtering them to harvest organs. Some also argue that there is a lot that can be done to increase the supply of certain organs, like kidneys, from human sources that wouldn’t require anyone to die.
There are also concerns about the process of creating transplant-ready animals in the first place. Many bioethicists say creating creatures with both human and animal genes raises complicated questions about where the line between human and beast really is. They also call for strict guidelines for how much human material a creature can have before it starts to deserve considerations that wouldn’t be afforded to regular animals.
What’s next
There are still enormous scientific, logistical and legal obstacles that will have to be overcome before animal-to-human transplants can become a realistic option for the typical transplant patient. Most experts say it will likely be several years before xenotransplantation will be conducted outside of scientific research.
Perspectives
Supporters
A future where no one dies waiting for a transplant is worth pursuing
“The door to using bioengineered nonhuman organs has been opened — and with it, the promise of an almost unlimited supply of donor organs could follow.” — Jonathan Reiner, CNN
Transplants are close to harmless when compared to livestock slaughter
“The place to worry about animal welfare is breakfast, not the medical use of pigs.” — Art Caplan, bioethicist, to USA Today
Xenotransplantation can help reverse racial inequities in who receives transplants
“A Black, Asian or Indigenous person is less likely to get an organ donation than is a white person. ... Xenotransplantation has the potential to further democratize organ donation.” — Sylvain Charlebois, Ottawa Citizen
Human lives are simply more valuable than animal lives
“I can’t think of any reason to oppose this approach — assuming safety and efficacy — unless one is an animal-rights believer who thinks that pigs have equal value to humans. But they don’t. A rat is not a pig, is not a dog, is not a boy.” — Wesley J. Smith, National Review
The organ shortage creates its own, much more profound, ethical issues
“Treatment should be allocated equitably. Doctors are not qualified to distinguish 'sinners from saints,' nor do we think they should be deciding which patients are more deserving.” — Dominic Wilkinson, Conversation
Skeptics
Killing animals for human needs is indefensible in all cases
“The practice of breeding, raising and killing pigs for our purposes is deeply problematic as well. Pigs have consciousness, emotionality, bonds of care and more. This is more than enough to render the practice of breeding pigs for xenotransplantation massively harmful for pigs, even if the practice is beneficial for some humans.” — Jeff Sebo, Chicago Tribune
Gene editing raises troubling questions about the line between humans and animals
“Receiving a pig kidney won’t magically transform anyone into Babe, but what about a pig liver? Or better yet, a pig heart? You know the slippery slope — today it’s just a pig kidney, but tomorrow, we’re all galloping across the Island of Dr. Moreau. That’s a little dramatic, of course, but fears about violating the barrier between humans and animals are enduring and inexorable.” — Peter McKnight, Vancouver Sun
Major ethical questions are being ignored in pursuit of a medical breakthrough
“Assuming that pigs are the future of xenotransplantation assumes that there is no ethical problem with creating a new form of animal farming predicated on genetic modification and on-demand slaughter for spare parts. And yet a surprising number of medical professionals, bioethicists, and the media covering xenotransplantation have been mum on the subject.” — Jan Dutkiewicz, New Republic
There is a lot that can be done to make organs more available without killing animals
“Mostly, the development makes me sad that humans have been so unwilling to step up and donate kidneys to each other — or create the policies that would encourage such an act — that they are resorting to taking them from another species. Donating a kidney is a routine, safe procedure, one that humans could and would likely be more willing to provide if compensated.” — Dylan Matthews, Vox
The debate changes depending on which organ is being manipulated
“It seems likely we’d view an animal with brain or reproductive cells from a human differently than one with, say, human liver cells. In those cases, the ethics of ‘humanization’ start to become more meaningful.” — Nathaniel Scharping, Discover
There are serious ethical challenges concerning humans involved in the research too
“There is no question that using pigs as organ sources is the future. ... But first efforts often fail. Those brave enough to jump into the unknown need to be especially clear that they went forward at the right time and with the right patient, who fully understood the risks involved.” — Multiple authors, Washington Post
Is there a topic you’d like to see covered in “The 360”? Send your suggestions to the360@yahoonews.com.
Photo illustration: Yahoo News; photos: Getty Images
Mike Bebernes
·Senior Editor
January 22, 2022·
What’s happening
Doctors in Maryland earlier this month completed the world’s first heart transplant using a heart that came from a genetically modified pig. The experimental procedure, performed on a 57-year-old man with a terminal heart condition, is seen as a major breakthrough in the burgeoning field of cross-species organ transplants.
The heart transplant came just a few months after two teams of scientists broke new ground in separate experiments testing the viability of pig kidney transplants conducted on brain-dead bodies that had been donated to science.
The theory of animal-to-human transplants, known as xenotransplantation, dates back hundreds of years. Only recently, though, has that goal appeared to be within reach. Advances in gene-editing technology now allow scientists to overcome what was once an insurmountable barrier to cross-species transplantation: The human immune response that recognizes and attacks foreign tissues in the body. The heart used by doctors in Maryland came from a pig that had 10 separate gene modifications, including pig genes that were inactivated and human genes that were added, to prevent the recipient’s body from rejecting the organ.
Researchers hope these experiments prove to be the early steps of a process that ultimately turns animals into a viable solution to the severe organ supply shortage, which leads to thousands of deaths in the U.S. each year. Even though a record 41,000 organ transplants were conducted in the U.S. last year, more than 100,000 Americans are estimated to be on the transplant waiting list. An average of 17 people die each day waiting for an organ transplant.
Why there’s debate
The case for continuing to pursue research into xenotransplantation is straightforward. If science advances to the point where animal organs are a readily available option for human transplants, it could prevent countless deaths worldwide every year. In the eyes of the scientists, the value to humans would outweigh the harm caused to animals. “People talk about the ethics of doing the science,” one researcher told Nature, “but I would also argue that we should consider the ethics of not doing this science.”
Animal rights groups, unsurprisingly, oppose the idea of using animals for human transplants. “Animals aren’t toolsheds to be raided but complex, intelligent beings,” a spokesperson from People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals said. Others question the ethics of creating a class of animal for the sole purpose of slaughtering them to harvest organs. Some also argue that there is a lot that can be done to increase the supply of certain organs, like kidneys, from human sources that wouldn’t require anyone to die.
There are also concerns about the process of creating transplant-ready animals in the first place. Many bioethicists say creating creatures with both human and animal genes raises complicated questions about where the line between human and beast really is. They also call for strict guidelines for how much human material a creature can have before it starts to deserve considerations that wouldn’t be afforded to regular animals.
What’s next
There are still enormous scientific, logistical and legal obstacles that will have to be overcome before animal-to-human transplants can become a realistic option for the typical transplant patient. Most experts say it will likely be several years before xenotransplantation will be conducted outside of scientific research.
Perspectives
Supporters
A future where no one dies waiting for a transplant is worth pursuing
“The door to using bioengineered nonhuman organs has been opened — and with it, the promise of an almost unlimited supply of donor organs could follow.” — Jonathan Reiner, CNN
Transplants are close to harmless when compared to livestock slaughter
“The place to worry about animal welfare is breakfast, not the medical use of pigs.” — Art Caplan, bioethicist, to USA Today
Xenotransplantation can help reverse racial inequities in who receives transplants
“A Black, Asian or Indigenous person is less likely to get an organ donation than is a white person. ... Xenotransplantation has the potential to further democratize organ donation.” — Sylvain Charlebois, Ottawa Citizen
Human lives are simply more valuable than animal lives
“I can’t think of any reason to oppose this approach — assuming safety and efficacy — unless one is an animal-rights believer who thinks that pigs have equal value to humans. But they don’t. A rat is not a pig, is not a dog, is not a boy.” — Wesley J. Smith, National Review
The organ shortage creates its own, much more profound, ethical issues
“Treatment should be allocated equitably. Doctors are not qualified to distinguish 'sinners from saints,' nor do we think they should be deciding which patients are more deserving.” — Dominic Wilkinson, Conversation
Skeptics
Killing animals for human needs is indefensible in all cases
“The practice of breeding, raising and killing pigs for our purposes is deeply problematic as well. Pigs have consciousness, emotionality, bonds of care and more. This is more than enough to render the practice of breeding pigs for xenotransplantation massively harmful for pigs, even if the practice is beneficial for some humans.” — Jeff Sebo, Chicago Tribune
Gene editing raises troubling questions about the line between humans and animals
“Receiving a pig kidney won’t magically transform anyone into Babe, but what about a pig liver? Or better yet, a pig heart? You know the slippery slope — today it’s just a pig kidney, but tomorrow, we’re all galloping across the Island of Dr. Moreau. That’s a little dramatic, of course, but fears about violating the barrier between humans and animals are enduring and inexorable.” — Peter McKnight, Vancouver Sun
Major ethical questions are being ignored in pursuit of a medical breakthrough
“Assuming that pigs are the future of xenotransplantation assumes that there is no ethical problem with creating a new form of animal farming predicated on genetic modification and on-demand slaughter for spare parts. And yet a surprising number of medical professionals, bioethicists, and the media covering xenotransplantation have been mum on the subject.” — Jan Dutkiewicz, New Republic
There is a lot that can be done to make organs more available without killing animals
“Mostly, the development makes me sad that humans have been so unwilling to step up and donate kidneys to each other — or create the policies that would encourage such an act — that they are resorting to taking them from another species. Donating a kidney is a routine, safe procedure, one that humans could and would likely be more willing to provide if compensated.” — Dylan Matthews, Vox
The debate changes depending on which organ is being manipulated
“It seems likely we’d view an animal with brain or reproductive cells from a human differently than one with, say, human liver cells. In those cases, the ethics of ‘humanization’ start to become more meaningful.” — Nathaniel Scharping, Discover
There are serious ethical challenges concerning humans involved in the research too
“There is no question that using pigs as organ sources is the future. ... But first efforts often fail. Those brave enough to jump into the unknown need to be especially clear that they went forward at the right time and with the right patient, who fully understood the risks involved.” — Multiple authors, Washington Post
Is there a topic you’d like to see covered in “The 360”? Send your suggestions to the360@yahoonews.com.
Photo illustration: Yahoo News; photos: Getty Images
Famine, subjugation and nuclear fallout: How Soviet experience helped sow resentment among Ukrainians toward Russia
The Conversation
January 30, 2022
‘We have a chance to show the truth’: Inside Chernobyl's 'death zone' 30 years later
Ukraine and Russia share a great deal in the way of history and culture – indeed for long periods in the past, the neighboring countries were part of larger empires encompassing both territories.
But that history – especially during the Soviet period from 1922 to 1991, in which Ukraine was absorbed into the communist bloc – has also bred resentment. Opinions of the merits of the Soviet Union and its leaders diverge, with Ukrainians far less likely to view the period favorably than Russians.
Nonetheless, President Vladimir Putin continues to claim Soviet foundations for what he sees as “historical Russia” – an entity that includes Ukraine.
As scholars of that history, we believe that an examination of Soviet-era policies in Ukraine can offer a useful lens for understanding why so many Ukrainians harbor deep resentment toward Russia.
RAWSTORY+
Revisiting 'The Lost Boys of Ukraine': How the war abroad attracted American white supremacists
Stalin’s engineered famine
Throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries, Ukraine was known as the breadbasket of Europe and later of the Soviet Union. Its rich soil and ample fields made it an ideal place to grow the grain that helped feed the entire continent.
After Ukraine was absorbed into the Soviet Union beginning in 1922, its agriculture was subject to collectivization policies, in which private land was taken over by the Soviets to be worked communally. Anything produced on those lands would be redistributed across the union.
In 1932 and 1933, a famine devastated the Soviet Union as a result of aggressive collectivization coupled with poor harvests.
A deliberate famine?
Daily Express/Hulton Archive/Getty Images
Millions starved to death across the Soviet Union, but Ukraine felt the brunt of this horror. Research estimates that some 3 million to 4 million Ukrainians died of the famine, around 13% of the population, though the true figure is impossible to establish because of Soviet efforts to hide the famine and its toll.
Scholars note that many of the political decisions of the Soviet regime under Joseph Stalin – such as preventing Ukrainian farmers from traveling in search of food, and severely punishing anyone who took produce from collective farms – made the famine much worse for Ukrainians. These policies were specific to Ukrainians within Ukraine, as well as Ukrainians who lived in other parts of the Soviet Union.
Some historians claim that Stalin’s moves were done to quash a Ukrainian independence movement and were specifically targeted at ethnic Ukrainians. As such, some scholars call the famine a genocide. In Ukrainian, the event is known as “Holodomor,” which means “death by hunger.”
Recognition of the full extent of the Holodomor and implicating Soviet leadership for the deaths remains an important issue in Ukraine to this day, with the country’s leaders long fighting for global recognition of the Holodomor and its impact on modern Ukraine.
Countries such as the United States and Canada have made official declarations calling it a genocide.
But this is not the case in much of the rest of the world.
Just as the the Soviet government of the day denied that there were any decisions that explicitly deprived Ukraine of food – noting that the famine affected the entire country – so too do present-day Russian leaders refuse to acknowledge culpability.
Russia’s refusal to admit that the famine disproportionately affected Ukrainians has been taken by many in Ukraine as an attempt to downplay Ukrainian history and national identity.
Soviet annexation of Western Ukraine
This attempt to suppress Ukrainian national identity continued during and after World War II. In the early years of the Soviet Union, the Ukrainian national movement was concentrated in the western parts of modern-day Ukraine, part of Poland until the Nazi invasion in 1939.
Before Gemany’s invasion, the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany entered into a secret agreement, under the guise of the Molotov-Ribbentrop nonaggression pact, which outlined German and Soviet spheres of influence over parts of central and east Europe.
David Low’s famed cartoon depicting Stalin and Hitler’s pact over Poland.
David Low/British Cartoon Archive at the University of Kent
After Germany invaded Poland, the Red Army moved into the eastern portion of the country under the pretense of stabilizing the failing nation. In reality, the Soviet Union was taking advantage of the provisions laid out in the secret protocol. The Polish territories that now make up western Ukraine were also incorporated into Soviet Ukraine and Belarus, subsuming them into the larger Russian cultural world.
At the end of the war, the territories remained part of the Soviet Union.
Stalin set about suppressing Ukrainian culture in these newly annexed lands in favor of a greater Russian culture. For example, the Soviets repressed any Ukrainian intellectuals who promoted the Ukrainian language and culture through censorship and imprisonment.
This suppression also included liquidating the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, a self-governing church that has allegiance to the pope and was one of the most prominent cultural institutions promoting Ukrainian language and culture in these former Polish territories.
Its properties were transferred to the Russian Orthodox Church, and many of its priests and bishops were imprisoned or exiled. The destruction of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church is still a source of resentment for many Ukrainians. It stands, we believe as scholars, as a clear instance of the Soviets’ intentional efforts to destroy Ukrainian cultural institutions.
The legacy of Chernobyl in Ukraine
Just as disaster marked the early years of Ukraine as a Soviet republic, so did its final years.
In 1986 a nuclear reactor at the Soviet-run Chernobyl nuclear power in the north of Ukraine went into partial meltdown. It remains the worst peacetime nuclear catastrophe the world has seen.
It required the evacuation of nearly 200,000 people in the areas surrounding the power plant. And to this day, approximately 1,000 square miles of Ukraine are part of the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, where radioactive fallout remains high and access is restricted.
Soviet lies to cover up the extent of the disaster – and missteps that would have limited the fallout – only compounded the problem. Emergency personnel were not given proper equipment or training to deal with the nuclear material.
It resulted in a heavy death toll and a higher than normal incidence of radiation-induced disease and complications such as cancer and birth defects among both former residents of the region and the workers sent in to deal with the disaster.
Other Soviet republics and European countries faced the fallout from Chernobyl, but it was the authorities in Ukraine who were tasked with organizing evacuations to Kyiv while Moscow attempted to cover up the scope of the disaster.
Meanwhile, independent Ukraine has been left to attend to the thousands of citizens who have chronic illnesses and disabilities as a result of the accident.
An abandoned fun fair, two kilometers from the Chernobyl power station.
Martin Godwin/Getty Images
The legacy of Chernobyl looms large in Ukraine’s recent past and continues to define many people’s memory of living in the Soviet era.
Memories of a painful past
This painful history of life under Soviet rule forms the backdrop to resentment in Ukraine today toward Russia. To many Ukrainians, these are not merely stories from textbooks, but central parts of people’s lives – many Ukrainians are still living with the health and environmental consequences of Chernobyl, for instance.
As Russia amasses troops at Ukraine’s borders, and the threat of an invasion increases, many in Ukraine may be reminded of past attempts by its neighbor to crush Ukrainian independence.
The Conversation
January 30, 2022
‘We have a chance to show the truth’: Inside Chernobyl's 'death zone' 30 years later
Ukraine and Russia share a great deal in the way of history and culture – indeed for long periods in the past, the neighboring countries were part of larger empires encompassing both territories.
But that history – especially during the Soviet period from 1922 to 1991, in which Ukraine was absorbed into the communist bloc – has also bred resentment. Opinions of the merits of the Soviet Union and its leaders diverge, with Ukrainians far less likely to view the period favorably than Russians.
Nonetheless, President Vladimir Putin continues to claim Soviet foundations for what he sees as “historical Russia” – an entity that includes Ukraine.
As scholars of that history, we believe that an examination of Soviet-era policies in Ukraine can offer a useful lens for understanding why so many Ukrainians harbor deep resentment toward Russia.
RAWSTORY+
Revisiting 'The Lost Boys of Ukraine': How the war abroad attracted American white supremacists
Stalin’s engineered famine
Throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries, Ukraine was known as the breadbasket of Europe and later of the Soviet Union. Its rich soil and ample fields made it an ideal place to grow the grain that helped feed the entire continent.
After Ukraine was absorbed into the Soviet Union beginning in 1922, its agriculture was subject to collectivization policies, in which private land was taken over by the Soviets to be worked communally. Anything produced on those lands would be redistributed across the union.
In 1932 and 1933, a famine devastated the Soviet Union as a result of aggressive collectivization coupled with poor harvests.
A deliberate famine?
Daily Express/Hulton Archive/Getty Images
Millions starved to death across the Soviet Union, but Ukraine felt the brunt of this horror. Research estimates that some 3 million to 4 million Ukrainians died of the famine, around 13% of the population, though the true figure is impossible to establish because of Soviet efforts to hide the famine and its toll.
Scholars note that many of the political decisions of the Soviet regime under Joseph Stalin – such as preventing Ukrainian farmers from traveling in search of food, and severely punishing anyone who took produce from collective farms – made the famine much worse for Ukrainians. These policies were specific to Ukrainians within Ukraine, as well as Ukrainians who lived in other parts of the Soviet Union.
Some historians claim that Stalin’s moves were done to quash a Ukrainian independence movement and were specifically targeted at ethnic Ukrainians. As such, some scholars call the famine a genocide. In Ukrainian, the event is known as “Holodomor,” which means “death by hunger.”
Recognition of the full extent of the Holodomor and implicating Soviet leadership for the deaths remains an important issue in Ukraine to this day, with the country’s leaders long fighting for global recognition of the Holodomor and its impact on modern Ukraine.
Countries such as the United States and Canada have made official declarations calling it a genocide.
But this is not the case in much of the rest of the world.
Just as the the Soviet government of the day denied that there were any decisions that explicitly deprived Ukraine of food – noting that the famine affected the entire country – so too do present-day Russian leaders refuse to acknowledge culpability.
Russia’s refusal to admit that the famine disproportionately affected Ukrainians has been taken by many in Ukraine as an attempt to downplay Ukrainian history and national identity.
Soviet annexation of Western Ukraine
This attempt to suppress Ukrainian national identity continued during and after World War II. In the early years of the Soviet Union, the Ukrainian national movement was concentrated in the western parts of modern-day Ukraine, part of Poland until the Nazi invasion in 1939.
Before Gemany’s invasion, the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany entered into a secret agreement, under the guise of the Molotov-Ribbentrop nonaggression pact, which outlined German and Soviet spheres of influence over parts of central and east Europe.
David Low’s famed cartoon depicting Stalin and Hitler’s pact over Poland.
David Low/British Cartoon Archive at the University of Kent
After Germany invaded Poland, the Red Army moved into the eastern portion of the country under the pretense of stabilizing the failing nation. In reality, the Soviet Union was taking advantage of the provisions laid out in the secret protocol. The Polish territories that now make up western Ukraine were also incorporated into Soviet Ukraine and Belarus, subsuming them into the larger Russian cultural world.
At the end of the war, the territories remained part of the Soviet Union.
Stalin set about suppressing Ukrainian culture in these newly annexed lands in favor of a greater Russian culture. For example, the Soviets repressed any Ukrainian intellectuals who promoted the Ukrainian language and culture through censorship and imprisonment.
This suppression also included liquidating the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, a self-governing church that has allegiance to the pope and was one of the most prominent cultural institutions promoting Ukrainian language and culture in these former Polish territories.
Its properties were transferred to the Russian Orthodox Church, and many of its priests and bishops were imprisoned or exiled. The destruction of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church is still a source of resentment for many Ukrainians. It stands, we believe as scholars, as a clear instance of the Soviets’ intentional efforts to destroy Ukrainian cultural institutions.
The legacy of Chernobyl in Ukraine
Just as disaster marked the early years of Ukraine as a Soviet republic, so did its final years.
In 1986 a nuclear reactor at the Soviet-run Chernobyl nuclear power in the north of Ukraine went into partial meltdown. It remains the worst peacetime nuclear catastrophe the world has seen.
It required the evacuation of nearly 200,000 people in the areas surrounding the power plant. And to this day, approximately 1,000 square miles of Ukraine are part of the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, where radioactive fallout remains high and access is restricted.
Soviet lies to cover up the extent of the disaster – and missteps that would have limited the fallout – only compounded the problem. Emergency personnel were not given proper equipment or training to deal with the nuclear material.
It resulted in a heavy death toll and a higher than normal incidence of radiation-induced disease and complications such as cancer and birth defects among both former residents of the region and the workers sent in to deal with the disaster.
Other Soviet republics and European countries faced the fallout from Chernobyl, but it was the authorities in Ukraine who were tasked with organizing evacuations to Kyiv while Moscow attempted to cover up the scope of the disaster.
Meanwhile, independent Ukraine has been left to attend to the thousands of citizens who have chronic illnesses and disabilities as a result of the accident.
An abandoned fun fair, two kilometers from the Chernobyl power station.
Martin Godwin/Getty Images
The legacy of Chernobyl looms large in Ukraine’s recent past and continues to define many people’s memory of living in the Soviet era.
Memories of a painful past
This painful history of life under Soviet rule forms the backdrop to resentment in Ukraine today toward Russia. To many Ukrainians, these are not merely stories from textbooks, but central parts of people’s lives – many Ukrainians are still living with the health and environmental consequences of Chernobyl, for instance.
As Russia amasses troops at Ukraine’s borders, and the threat of an invasion increases, many in Ukraine may be reminded of past attempts by its neighbor to crush Ukrainian independence.
Emily Channell-Justice, Director of the Temerty Contemporary Ukraine Program, Harvard University and Jacob Lassin, Postdoctoral Research Scholar in Russian and East European Studies, Arizona State University
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
SEE
Book Review: Marxism and the Philosophy of Science
Nikolai Vavilov in the years of Stalin's ‘Revolution from Above’ (1929–1932)
AbstractThis paper examines new evidence from Russian archives to argue that Soviet geneticist and plant breeder, Nikolai I. Vavilov's fate was sealed during the ‘Cultural Revolution’ (‘Revolution from Above’) (1929–1932). This was several years before Trofim D. Lysenko, the Soviet agronomist and widely portrayed archenemy and destroyer of Vavilov, became a major force in Soviet science. During the ‘Cultural Revolution’ the Soviet leadership wanted to subordinate science and research to the task of socialist reconstruction. Vavilov, who was head of the Institute of Plant Breeding (VIR) and the All-Union Academy of Agricultural Sciences (VASKhNIL), came under attack from the younger generation of researchers who were keen to transform biology into a proletarian science. The new evidence shows that it was during this period that Vavilov lost his independence to determine research strategies and manage personnel within his own institute. These changes meant that Lysenko, who had won Stalin's support, was able to gain influence and eventually exert authority over Vavilov. Based on the new evidence, Vavilov's arrest in 1940 after he criticized Lysenko's conception of Non-Mendelian genetics was just the final challenge to his authority. He had already experienced years of harassment that began before Lysenko gained a position of influence. Vavilov died in prison in 1943.
Politics of Perseverance: Ukrainian Memories of “Them” and the “Other” in Holodomor Survivor Testimony,
1986-1988
Johnathon K. Vsetecka,
.Unpublished Master of Arts thesis,
University of Northern Colorado, May 2014.
ABSTRACT
This thesis examines the famine of 1932-33 in Ukraine, now known as the Holodomor, from a survivor’s point of view. The Commission on the Ukraine Famine, beginning work in 1986, conducted an investigation of the famine and collected testimony from Holodomor survivors in the United States. This large collection of survivor testimonies sat quietly for many years, even though the Holodomor is now a recognized field of study in history, among other disciplines. A great deal of scholarship focuses on the political, genocidal, and ideological aspects of the famine, but few works explore the roles of everyday Ukrainian people. This thesis utilizes the testimonies to examine how everyday survivors construct memories based on their famine experiences. Survivors often share memories of themselves, but they also elaborate on the roles of others, which included Soviets, German villagers, and even other Ukrainians. These testimonies transcend the common victim and genocide narratives, showing that not all Ukrainians suffered equally. In fact, some survivors note that the famine did not disrupt their everyday lives at all. Collectively, these testimonies present a more complex narrative of everyday events in Ukraine and elucidate on the ways that survivors remember, interpret, and construct memories related to the Holodomor.
Johnathon K. Vsetecka,
.Unpublished Master of Arts thesis,
University of Northern Colorado, May 2014.
ABSTRACT
This thesis examines the famine of 1932-33 in Ukraine, now known as the Holodomor, from a survivor’s point of view. The Commission on the Ukraine Famine, beginning work in 1986, conducted an investigation of the famine and collected testimony from Holodomor survivors in the United States. This large collection of survivor testimonies sat quietly for many years, even though the Holodomor is now a recognized field of study in history, among other disciplines. A great deal of scholarship focuses on the political, genocidal, and ideological aspects of the famine, but few works explore the roles of everyday Ukrainian people. This thesis utilizes the testimonies to examine how everyday survivors construct memories based on their famine experiences. Survivors often share memories of themselves, but they also elaborate on the roles of others, which included Soviets, German villagers, and even other Ukrainians. These testimonies transcend the common victim and genocide narratives, showing that not all Ukrainians suffered equally. In fact, some survivors note that the famine did not disrupt their everyday lives at all. Collectively, these testimonies present a more complex narrative of everyday events in Ukraine and elucidate on the ways that survivors remember, interpret, and construct memories related to the Holodomor.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)