ANIMAL EXPERIMENTATION

Scientists have successfully cured diabetes in mice for the first time, giving hope to millions worldwide

Louis Staples in news


Image: ISTOCK


Diabetes is a disease that has a huge impact on peoples’ lives.

So far the disease, which is thought to affect over 400 million people worldwide, is understood to be incurable. But researchers at the Washington University School of Medicine in St Louis have just proved that it is possible to cure diabetes in mice in just a couple of weeks.

IFL Science’s Alfredo Carpineti reports that the researchers used human cells to keep the disease at bay for at least nine months and up to more than a year in some mice. The findings were published in Nature Biotechnology.

The mice were given severe diabetes using a substance known as streptozotocin, but human cells implanted in the animals were able to control their blood sugar levels, curing the disease.

Dr Jeffrey R. Millman, an assistant professor of medicine and of biomedical engineering, said in a statement:

These mice had very severe diabetes with blood sugar readings of more than 500 milligrams per deciliter of blood – levels that could be fatal for a person – and when we gave the mice the insulin-secreting cells, within two weeks their blood glucose levels had returned to normal and stayed that way for many months.

So what does this mean for humans with diabetes?

It’s still far to early to tell whether this means a cure for diabetes is on the horizon. But it’s certainly encouraging to see that some mammals can be cured of the disease, even momentarily.

A pro-Trump newspaper printed a 'privilege pyramid' diagram to mock minorities and got absolutely everything wrong
Posted 1 hour ago by 

Moya Lothian-McLean in news

Image: Twitter

Another day, another needlessly stupid feature in the media regarding race and privilege.

Most of the time it’s not even worth engaging with, but this particular incidence of foolery requires a little extra unpacking because it’s so egregious.

Right-wing US newspaper The Washington Examiner recently printed a helpful little diagram they labelled a “privilege pyramid”.

The graphic puts those at the top that it considers to have the most privilege and “power” in American society today.

Those at the bottom are the ones who apparently have the least “privilege”. But the Examiner’s definition of “privilege” appears to be majorly off. Quelle surprise!

At the bottom of its lil pyramid sit… white men.

Specifically the blocks read: “white”, “male”, “wealthy”, “college-educated”, “hetero”.

My heart bleeds.

At the top?

“Rape victim”, closely followed by “transsexual”.

The next row down is made up of blocks reading “queer” and “refugee”. Wonderful stuff.

Of course, the Examiner and the Eddie Scarry journalist who wrote the accompanying thinkpiece (a misnomer: clearly minimal thinking went into this) know that this is provocative.

In the article, Scarry argues that “social justice movements” are trying to “remake society from top to bottom”. 

Aka he thinks the aim of movements like the campaign for trans rights or #MeToo are not to ensure a fairer a society for all – but instead to upend the entire social hierarchy so straight, wealthy white men are at the bottom.

It says a lot that Scarry can’t just imagine a fairer world but instead thinks someone always has to suffer.

But he also makes an even more damaging claim.

Who has the power in America’s culture now?

The social justice movement does.

AS. IF.

If by “power” Scarry means “a small corner of the internet to organise but almost zero tangible real world authority” then, yes.

But if the “social justice movement” (which by the way, is a term broad enough to be useless, as it encompasses a huge swathe of groups with very different aims), had the power Scarry speaks of then, why are the people at the top of the pyramid still suffering to the degree they are?
Why are trans individuals being murdered at a disproportionate rate in the US?

Why do over half of trans male teens and non-binary individuals report attempting suicide?

Why do 0.7 per cent of reported rapes – nine out of 10 with women victims – not lead to a conviction?

Why are a third of rapes unreported in the US?

Why are anti-LGBTQ+ hate crimes on the rise, according to the FBI?

Why is the US closing its borders to refugees (admitting only 18,000 and building a border wall) at a time when the global number of asylum seekers has rated the highest level since World War II?

I could go on, but the point is clear. If people belonging to these groups – who also can fit into more than one at once and are so much more than the one singular identity Eddie Scarry assigns to them – now have the power in the US, why aren’t they flexing it?

Simple answer: they don’t.

indy100 contacted the illustrator behind the piece, who said that he regrets making the illustration.

I would want to apologize to anyone who was hurt by it. I do regret making it.

I assumed many people would disagree with the opinions presented, but I didn’t appreciate just harmful that image could be, and how many people could feel hurt by it.

I think the image can shame people for having suffered, and might encourage resentment against social policies and movements that are intended to provide support for historically persecuted groups and individuals. Which, as it would with anyone, sits terribly with m

I used to be a libertarian. Then the US healthcare system taught me how wrong I was

I needed a CT scan on my neck — and I opened the door to a Kafka-esque nightmare

RAND PAUL USED CANADIAN SOCIALIST HEALTH CARE SYSTEM FOR A HERNIA OPERATION 

Adam Weinstein New York

Why did it cost less for me to self-pay rather than use my insurance? 

( Getty Images/iStockphoto )

The task seemed easy enough. “I want a CT scan of your neck,” the specialist told me. After months of tonsillitis, sore throats, and unnerving fatigue, I’d grown edgy about the hard lump on my neck — enough to make an appointment with him in December, before my health insurance had even kicked in. He’d looked down my gullet, but held off on running any tests, telling me to come back in January when it wouldn’t cost me so much. A month later, he now agreed, it was time for some advanced imagery of the mass, just to be sure.

This shouldn’t be hard. The insurance policy I’d gotten — for $557 a month, on the Healthcare.gov exchange, since I worked remotely for my employer as a contractor, sans benefits — covered the hospital across the street, operated by my specialist’s healthcare group; I could walk over, get the scan, and he could access the imagery instantly.

But of course, as hundreds of millions of Americans know, nothing in our privately managed healthcare system is that easy. The radiologist across the street considered me a “hospital outpatient,” so my insurance treated the office as an out-of-plan provider, which would cost me thousands upfront. The radiologist, however, did offer me a cash “self-pay” rate of $300 for the procedure.

“Wait a minute,” I said. “How come self-pay is so much cheaper than if I use my insurance?

“Self-pay is based on the lowest negotiated rate,” the phone representative told me, “which is the Medicare rate.” Medicare, the government program that covers some 60 million American seniors and young people, has immense price-bargaining power, more than any private insurer. It’s almost enough to make one wonder why Americans don’t demand Medicare for all

However, there was a catch to paying in cash, the phone rep told me: Reading the imagery would cost extra, and he couldn’t tell me how much.

So began a day-long odyssey of calling clinics and insurance reps, getting numerous approvals, reconciling conflicting and sometimes seemingly made-up information, just to find someone who could provide a fancy X-ray of the unwelcome swelling in my throat without bankrupting me.

As I worked my way through corporate phone trees and asked pointed questions to which there were apparently no answers, I live-tweeted the experience, and it apparently resonated with social media users (to the tune of 4.7 million impressions, a figure that’s almost as inscrutable to me as my policy’s copay for in-plan advanced imaging.) Americans shared my viral thread, adding their own billing, pre-approval, and care-delay horror stories to it; foreigners replied too, expressing their disbelief that such a basic medical need, provided to them at low or no cost by their governments, could become so costly or time-consuming.

I was not always so dogged in dealing with healthcare costs. When I went off to college, I became the first member of my immediate family to have medical insurance. My father was a self-employed laborer with a middle-school education; my mother was a homemaker. There was no employer to provide insurance, and no extra money to pay for a policy. I never went to doctors as a kid unless I was sick as hell, and then we went to a “doc in the box,” an urgent-care clinic. The first time I remember seeing a dentist was when I joined the Navy. During enlistment, I was asked for the name of my primary care physician; I needed someone to explain what that was to me. The concept of having a dedicated doctor seemed like a wild luxury.

Despite my relative inexperience, I was a healthy young white man, free from most wants, and I assumed the system in which I grew up was the best of all possible systems. I spent those early years in college as an Ayn Rand-loving libertarian who believed in freedom over safety, individualism over collectivism, and false dichotomies over nuanced understandings. America was great not in spite of its worship of the almighty dollar, but because of it: Corporations, I imagined, didn’t need regulations and laws to be honest, transparent, and decent to their consumers. The desire to make a profit kept us honest.

Healthcare was no exception to this fiscal-based ideology of mine. You got what you paid for, and medical innovation didn’t come cheap. Rich people get better care? They earned it, I’d tell people. To rely on government to provide your healthcare or cover its costs, I believed, was to give up your agency and dignity.

But if you’re an American and you’re reading this, be honest: When’s the last time you looked around in a clinic lobby, a specialist’s office, or a hospital waiting room, and saw agency and dignity?

We are all numbers — insurance IDs, group plan numbers, medical billing codes, far-into-the-future appointment times. All our lives, we have been told that long waits, impersonal care, incompetence, and indignity are the province of other countries’ socialized healthcare systems.

What, then, do you call the Kafka-esque 21st century American medical badlands?

Since my Atlas Shrugged-reading days, I’ve spent nearly two decades in the American workforce. I moved and changed jobs often, changing (or losing) insurance plans each time. I’ve been misdiagnosed by specialists running the same tests and reinventing the same wheels over and over again. I’ve lost weeks of my life and work productivity being an advocate for my own health, and, at times, my family’s, in a system that does you no favors and often insists that there is no easy answer to the question: “How much will this cost me”?

There’s that old saw about how a conservative is a liberal who’s been mugged by reality. Like most of the workers I know in my “millennial” generation, I've been mugged, beaten, and left for dead a couple of times by reality, but it's made me a believer in radical change. What I’ve concluded is that you can care about people, or you can care about maximizing revenues, but not both. America is the proof.

The American health system is an insane patchwork of privileged, cash-hoovering cartels and fiefdoms, and everyone knows it. I worry about its ability to address my health, sure, but more to the point, I worry about its capacity to bankrupt me and the people I love. And I worry about a thin, pale version of national patriotism that believes the fault lies with the underemployed, sick and afflicted, rather than the system that's supposed to tend to them.

The worst part of our system — besides the fact that it actively kills people, most of them poor or underprivileged — is that most of the health sector’s workers are sympathetic to the patient-consumer’s plight. But they, too, are hamstrung by arcane profit-making rules in a bureaucracy set up by stakeholders way above their pay grades.

That was my experience on the day I spent live-tweeting my healthcare experience. After hitting enough walls, I found one insurance rep who personally called local imaging centers to find one that could take me. We got the approvals and the appointment. Of course, I still had to call them, and my primary specialist, to make sure their offices coordinated. I had to personally request and take possession of the CD-ROM holding my test results, then ferry it over to my specialist for interpretation. And I had to fork over a considerable copayment. But this was a success story that many people couldn’t boast of: After all, I’m a journalist, and I know how to listen, take notes, and ask hard questions. How many people are just cowed into complacency by whatever a doctor or nurse or front-desk receptionist or billing specialist or insurance sales rep tells them?

It’s not a rhetorical question. It has an answer. It’s just that, like the cost of a potentially life-saving CT scan, nobody who’s in a position to know can really tell you the answer. This is America. And it’s a really great place to live, as long as you never get sick or poor.

Adam Weinstein is the national security editor at the New Republic

Dead over a $20 fee, charged $50,000 after losing a child: The horror health stories bringing Americans to Bernie Sanders

Scott Desnoyers says his son died because of $20 and Amy Sterling Casil was charged $50,000 after her baby died – they are among many Americans sharing their stories about the health system

Lucy Anna GrayNew York @LucyAnnaGray

Daniel was 29 when he died. He killed himself after failing to get his medication refilled because he missed a $20 premium he was not aware of.

“I promised his siblings and him at the funeral in front of everyone that I was going to make our lawmakers look me in the eye and see the consequences of their decisions,” his father, Scott Desnoyers, tells The Independent.

One of America’s worst kept secrets is just how flawed its healthcare system is.

The US has some of the best doctors and facilities in the world – but accessing them for many is a constant battle. Millions of Americans are uninsured, and high deductibles mean even those that have it often struggle to pay for treatment and medications. “Surveys show that many Americans with insurance are forgoing needed care because of cost,” Bob Doherty from the American College of Physicians (ACP) says. “Surveys also show that concern about not being able to afford care ranks among the top concerns of the public.”

Among the poorest 20 per cent of Americans, one-third of their income is spent on healthcare, according to a new study. Out of pocket payments have grown over recent years, and nearly half of millennials have put off needed medical care because they can’t afford it. 

In March 2019 Daniel Desnoyers from Saratoga, New York, tried to get his prescription of Risperidone refilled, which helped manage his mental health issues, but he couldn’t. He told his father that day: “Pops I know I need this medicine!”

Daniel called his provider – Fidelis Care – at the beginning of April and found out that he had missed a $20 premium. “He paid his $20 on the phone that day and was told his ‘plan’ would be reinstated on the next billing cycle of May 1st,” his father says. “On April 9th I saw his Facebook post only seconds after he posted it.”

The post in question was a heartbreaking suicide note from Daniel, suggesting he was going to drive his car into a lake. Scott rushed to stop him, but was too late.
Daniel Desnoyers died in 2019 aged 29

When asked to comment on the case, a Fidelis Care spokesperson said: “We were deeply saddened to hear of Mr Desnoyers’ loss, and our hearts go out to the family.” The multi-billion-dollar company says they take the health of members “very seriously” but were unable to comment on Daniel’s case specifically due to privacy regulations. “We can say that for members who have a monthly premium, Fidelis Care provides approximately 60 days (including a grace period) to make their payment.”

Mr Desnoyers has channelled his grief into political action. From attending rallies to lobbying lawmakers, speaking at public hearings to being active on social media, he does all he can to share Daniel’s story.

The now 50-year-old first made contact with the Bernie Sanders campaign after a post about his son was shared thousands of times on Twitter, and someone who worked for Texas Democrat Sema Hernandez got in touch with him. “Before Bernie I was not aware that other countries had universal care. I had bought all the media bulls*** and thought, this is America, we have the best of everything including healthcare.” Now Mr Desnoyers campaigns regularly for Medicare for All, and says his “entire life from the time I get woken up at 3am almost every day” is dedicated to the fight. “This fight is all I can do for Danny now.”

The Bernie Sanders campaign is an electrifying movement – regardless of what you think of his policies. An engaged left show up in their thousands at rallies, with many sharing their personal stories online in an attempt to galvanise movements.

Sanders is not the only 2020 presidential candidate backing Medicare for All. Elizabeth Warren also supports it, but with a slight difference. Whereas Bernie Sanders would prohibit private plans after a brief transition period, Warren’s plan would offer a public option alongside existing private insurance plans before passing Medicare for All in her third year as president.

A November poll found that 53 per cent of voters support a Medicare for All plan that would cover everyone through a single government plan. However, 65 per cent said they support a government-run health plan that would compete with private insurance. The same poll found that Senator Sanders, who has long championed Medicare for All, is the most trusted candidate on healthcare among voters under 34, at 47 per cent. Joe Biden, however, was the most trusted candidate among senior voters.

There is resistance to Medicare for All, with questions surrounding cost estimates and people with effective insurance not wanting to give it up among the criticisms, but the tide seems to be turning.

The American Medical Association (AMA), the largest physician group in the United States, last year left the Partnership for America’s Health Care Future, an industry opposing Medicare for All, and the ACP – America’s second-largest physician group – recently backed Medicare for All.

Joe Kassabian from Michigan was won over by Bernie Sanders after his family’s traumatic difficulties with affording healthcare. The 31-year-old, who served two tours in Afghanistan, says his family “nearly lost everything” because of having to pay approximately $100,000 for his sister’s kidney treatment. His mother, who was a single parent working two jobs, did not have health coverage through her work. During this time Mr Kassabian would only eat once a day on weekends, twice on school days because of free lunches. “We did not have birthdays or Christmas. After school activities had to be stopped so we could all get whatever jobs we could in order to help out. It led me to enlist in the US Army when I was 17 so I could send more money home.”

He says they were forced to leverage the house and car to pay for the treatment. “If she had required a transplant we would have been on the streets.” Thirteen years later and the debts are still not paid off.

Mr Kassabian heard about Bernie Sanders after leaving the army, and, once he found out more about him, decided to support him as “one of the few politicians in the US that actually seems like he gives a s***”.

“I believe Medicare for All is the only way forward ... Our current system deems those with more money or better jobs more deserving of life and health.”

Janet Mullen, 49, actually did lose her home in Massachusetts after struggling to pay $75,000 out of pocket.

Ms Mullen – also known by her online persona ‘Lumpy Louise’ – suffers from a rare disorder called Dercum’s disease, among a range of other health ailments and conditions. “Even when I was actively working and on insurance ... I had $75,000 in out of pocket expenses just for my treatments and medicines.” After trying various different loans she ended up losing her home of 12 years, eventually quitting her job and filing for disability. “I’m almost 50 and my husband and I cannot afford to live on our own.”

Some do manage to avoid extortionate costs billed to them, such as Amy Sterling Casil, who was charged $50,000 after her baby died. In 2005, Ms Sterling Casil, from South Carolina, arrived home where her husband at the time and two children were. “My daughter Meredith, age 12 at the time, found Anthony ... Meredith had Anthony in her arms, and there was milk all over his face. I will never ever forget her face, or her voice when she said: ‘Mom...’”

Anthony, known to his family as ‘Lali‘, died in 2005

Despite performing CPR, and an ambulance arriving to take Anthony to the hospital, he did not survive. Ms Sterling Casil claims the ambulance took him to a hospital where the family was not insured, despite there being a hospital 15 minutes nearer where they were insured. “The total bill I got about a week after Anthony died was about $50,000. I was asked to pay $20,000 of that.”

After writing a letter to the president of the hospital explaining her situation, she paid $1,000 and was forgiven the remainder of the debt.

Ten years later, when she went with some friends to see Bernie Sanders speak, the senator talked about healthcare. “I hadn’t heard of Bernie Sanders before 2015 but my entire life experience says he and Our Revolution are the only hope we’ve got.”

There are still many hurdles – one of these candidates actually winning the presidential election being the greatest of all – but this is the closest the US has been to approving a universal healthcare system since the 1930s. The battle has raged for decades, and candidates such as Bernie Sanders are willing to lead their entire campaign on it.

“There have been many efforts over the last 100 years to establish a national system of insurance,” Dr Laugesen says. “The one thing that is palpable in public discussions today is a new degree of consternation or frustration with hospitals and other organisations’ pricing and billing – previously people blamed insurance companies, and now people are beginning to realise that there is something deeply off. It’s not only Democrats, it’s across the partisan spectrum.”

Many of these tragic stories have turned into action, with Americans volunteering, campaigning and sharing their stories online in a bid to encourage others to back Sanders. Mr Desnoyers and Ms Sterling Casil's tweets about their children have been shared thousands of times, with hundreds more posting their own experiences online.

As we saw in 2016, having the most passionate and engaged supporters does not always translate into a primary win. But with soaring healthcare costs, and polls suggesting more young people are likely to vote in presidential caucuses and primaries in 2020 than 2016, this year's election could be different.

Today, Mr Desnoyers struggles to make ends meet and regularly uses food banks. His financial difficulties prove a constant obstacle for his campaigning, making it difficult for him to afford to attend events, but he continues to fight. “This is just one more obstacle that I have to overcome to be an activist. It will not stop me!

“I can truly say if I did not decide to fight like this I do not know if I could survive.”

‘I’m not sure if the country’s ready for Bernie’: What Sanders’ hometown makes of his chances

In Burlington, Vermonters are used to seeing Sanders at the local store pushing his grocery cart. They’ve known him for decades. Now he may be president

Clark Mindock Burlington, Vermont @ClarkMindock 

Late last week as Bernie Sanders and the top 2020 Democratic contenders campaigned in New Hampshire, a massive storm rolled through the northeast of the United States, dumping snow across the Green Mountains and pine trees of Vermont.

Outside the senator’s home in Burlington, an inches-thick blanket of snow covered his car, a bright red Chevy Bolt parked up against a garage door. The white “Bernie” bumper sticker was visible from the street.

In a city that has been shaped by Sanders over decades and which has adopted the Brooklyn-born politician as something of a local folk hero, the sticker is hardly a shock. The house itself is not particularly notable – not small but not a mansion either. It doesn’t have a modicum of the security one might expect to surround the potential future leader of the US, nor even a hedge out front.

“I’ve known him ever since he was mayor,” says Barry DeLaDuca, an 80-year-old who has lived in the neighbourhood since before Sanders moved in. “I think it’s interesting and nice and a good change. He hasn’t changed his viewpoints since I’ve known him.”

Is he a fun neighbour to have? “We kind of respect these people in our neighbourhood and in Vermont, too. We like to give them their space and let them be people along with whatever they’re trying to achieve. I see him, say 'Hello'. He’s polite, says 'Hello' back. He’s not – in my viewpoint – one of those with a gotta-go-out-and-shake-their-hand kind of attitude.”

The quiet could soon change, though, as could the security outside Sanders’ home if he marches closer to the Democratic nomination and the presidency. Among his neighbours who spent their Saturday morning with snow shovels in hand, that fairly new possibility conjures up a sense of pride, and an odd reckoning that the man they have seen pushing a cart at the Hannaford’s grocery store down the street may soon be the most powerful man in the world.

Sanders’ house after a heavy snow (Clark Mindock/The Independent

Sanders has had a good start to 2020. Since the launch of his campaign a year ago, he has made a consistently strong showing in the once-burgeoning Democratic field, and has won the popular vote of both states that have voted so far in the Democratic primaries and caucuses.

In Iowa, Sanders came out behind Pete Buttigieg in delegates but beat his rival and fellow former mayor (Sanders represented Burlington in the 1980s, while Buttigieg gave up his South Bend, Indiana, office earlier this year) by some 6,000 votes overall.

After both declared victory amid the meltdown of an app that Iowa's Democrats thought would streamline their voting process, Sanders went on to win the New Hampshire primary.

Back in Burlington, where Sanders launched his political career with a long-shot campaign for mayor that he won by just 10 votes, his neighbours say that he was a regular sight around town even as he became one of the best known politicians in the country.



He tips well when he stops by for takeaway, one observes, and says 'Hi' to his neighbours when he’s around. They insist that he is treated like anyone else in this community just 20 miles south of the US-Canada border, where car radios pick up French and country stations alike.

“He’s a good tipper, he’s always in a hurry, he’s always busy,” says David Beams, a bartender and restaurant worker who lives just a few houses down from him. “I think one thing about Burlington is that when you see celebrities around town or well-known people, I don’t think they behave any differently and nobody really bothers them. I’ve always appreciated that. He’s just another guy around here.”

Still, his name is on murals in town, and bumper stickers, and the 78-year-old senator is something of a draw for students at the University of Vermont, which is around 15 minutes from his home. He may be treated like anybody else, but he has certainly left his mark.


“Well, there’s diversity, but people are really proud that he was one of our neighbours. We talk about that a lot,” says Jim Palmer, a landscape architect and former professor who has lived in the neighbourhood across the street from Sanders for about eight years.

He continues: “We travel a fair amount and everybody’s always amazed when we tell them that he’s our neighbour.”
A grafitti-covered building near Sanders' home in Burlington (Clark Mindock/The Independent)

But the question remains: even in this liberal college-town that sways state elections, do people think he can win the the presidency in 2020?


And, if he does, will he have any chance of making good on his vision of social and economic equality that has made him a hero to young Democrats but has been rejected by other voters as an impractical fad?

“I thought his time had passed,” says Brian Neufeld, a middle-school science teacher, referring to the enthusiasm around Sanders' campaign in 2016 election and his eventual defeat in that race. “I see he’s garnered a lot of enthusiasm after Iowa. I’m excited about that for him. My entire investment is who can beat Trump, so I want to put my momentum behind the candidate that can unseat the incumbent.”

On that point, Neufeld has some reservations about the senator’s candidacy: “I’m not sure if the country’s ready for Bernie. I love his ideas, I’m just afraid that the moderate portion of our society sees him as too radical, and I’d hate to set him up for that failure.”


It is certainly a question that Democrats across the country have been wrestling with. While many seem to support some of Sanders’ most ambitious proposals – 77 per cent of Democrats support Medicare for All, for instance – others have expressed concern that he is a bit too radical compared with those promising more incremental change.

However, while Sanders’ run for president doesn’t necessarily have everyone’s support in Burlington – a Trump bumper sticker was spotted at a nearby police station – his consistency on policy dating back to the 1980s is often celebrated.

“Bernie has always been the guy that just runs by his own rules. He’s never let anything sort of influence him in one way or another. He has his track record that speaks for itself, really,” says Tim Sharbaugh, a medical worker who lives down the street from the senator. “He doesn’t let money influence his politics. He puts the human first and that’s what I really like about him, which is something that is pretty lost in politics these days.”


Nick Stephany, a solar-industry worker who works just outside of Burlington, is among those who isn’t really "feeling the Bern", but his hesitancy is rooted in the belief that Sanders is a better leader for Vermont in the Senate than the country as a whole.

“Bernie’s a good guy. I’ve either known him or known of him my entire life,” he says.

Stephany is among those who are suspicious of national politicians as a whole: “Any individual who seeks to be the president of the United States is immediately suspect in my eyes.”

In addition, he has concerns about what that national prominence could do to Sanders: “I’m worried if he gets elected, he gets brought into the room with the joint chiefs of staff and they say, ‘That was all good talk – this is how it works.’”

It’s a question that pulls at a thread that a Sanders presidency would almost surely unravel: can a political revolution for the working class at the expense of billionaires – and one that is contrary to the military-industrial complex, with its links to almost every community in the country – ever truly take root in the US?

For Stephany, that potential reality could be devastating: “That changes the Bernie, and we don’t want to change the Bernie.”

HE HEARS WHAT HE WANTS TO HEAR

Trump repeatedly misunderstands health officials advising him about coronavirus

Chuck Schumer slams president, saying he is 'downplaying' threat from virus

John T Bennett Washington @BennettJohnT

Donald Trump contended on Monday that a vaccine to prevent coronavirus cases could be ready in three months, only to be corrected by one of his top public health officials after he repeatedly appeared to misunderstand drug company executives' statements about their plans to test possible vaccines.

The president, during a Cabinet Room meeting with top pharmaceutical industry executives, said he has heard a vaccine could be ready in just three or four months. But Anthony Fauci, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases director, later clarified the remark, telling reporters getting a vaccine properly tested, cleared and distributed likely would take one year.

It was merely the latest time Mr Trump and his top health officials have contradicted one another since the coronavirus outbreak hit US soil. They also have issued different messages about the potential severity of the flu-like ailment and the likelihood that a significant number of cases is inevitable in the United States.

Mr Trump made the forecast even after being told by one industry bigwig that it would take "a year" for his company just to get a potential vaccine into clinics. Repeatedly during the confusing session, Mr Trump latched onto executives' mentions of moving into new phases of testing in the next few months. But Mr Fauci at one point broke in to try and explain to the president that required testing would not allow the drugs to actually reach Americans by summer.

Meantime, another top Trump administration official said the president is pressing drug manufacturers to shed their usually methodical development process to find a coronavirus vaccine and rush it to market.

During the same meeting that featured the president, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar said Mr Trump pressed the industry officials to "challenge some of those normal Pharma timelines that can be a little slow and bureaucratic." Other Trump administration officials spoke vaguely of possibly getting "new countermeasures" available quickly without offering specifics.

Those remarks came a few hours after the president told reporters his team and drug makers are "talking about a vaccine, maybe a cure, it's possible".
Donald Trump and Mike Pence at a meeting with pharmaceutical executives in the Cabinet Room of the White House to discuss the coronavirus crisis (AFP via Getty Images)

"We'll see about that," he said of a drug to cure coronavirus victims, something Mr Azar and other Trump health officials have not said is possible. They have focused instead on a vaccine to prevent people from contracting the virus.

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention explains the difference between a cure and a vaccine this way on its website: "Unlike most medicines, which treat or cure diseases, vaccines prevent them."

Executives for several major drug manufacturers were in the Oval Office for the meeting, including GlaxoSmithKline, Johnson & Johnson, Pfizer Inc and Sanof.

As the two sides met, US markets were closing up for the first time in a few days – and following a coronavirus-triggered slide. The S&P 500 rose 4.6 per cent on Monday, as markets around the world added value ahead of a G7 ministers conference call on Tuesday that fed hopes the central banks of the globe's biggest economies might slash interest rates together as a hedge against the virus's economic impacts.

But congressional Democrats continued to criticise the president.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer accused him of "downplaying" the threat from the mysterious virus.

"Even now, President Trump seems to be spending more of his time blaming the media, blaming the Democrats than being constructive," the New York Democrat said on the Senate floor. "He is downplaying the threat of coronavirus to a dangerous degree."

If the UK is serious about the climate crisis, we must start investing in new synthetic fuels

The Heathrow decision is a good first step, but the government needs to take more revolutionary action if it wants to see results

Chris Goodall @ChrisGoodall2

The block to the expansion of Heathrow is an early victory in the fight against climate change. The third runway would have expanded the number of flights from the airport by more than 40 per cent. If the decision is upheld by the Supreme Court, emissions from aviation will be lower than they otherwise would have been.

But our celebrations should be muted. We still need to address the underlying problem. How does the UK achieve a target of zero emissions by 2050 while aviation remains such a large source of CO2? There is only one way forward: the UK needs to focus on making jet fuel from man-made sources that don’t add to carbon emissions.

Flights from the UK add almost 40 million tons of CO2 to the atmosphere each year, around 7 per cent of the national total. These numbers are particularly high by international standards. Another way of expressing the unusual importance of aviation to UK emissions is to note that more British people engage in international air travel than Americans or Chinese citizens, even though those countries have vastly greater populations.

The carbon consequences of individual trips are severe. A return flight to New York adds more than a tonne of CO2 to an individual’s carbon footprint, almost as much as the typical annual emissions from a small modern car. Moreover, that figure excludes the extra impacts of burning fossil fuels high up in the atmosphere, which scientists estimate may roughly double the overall greenhouse effect of flying.

Unfortunately, the energy for flying will need to come from liquid fuels into the foreseeable future. Batteries are too heavy to power any but the very shortest flights, such as between Scottish islands. Hydrogen, another alternative sometimes mentioned, cannot compete with the energy contained in an equivalent weight of aviation kerosene. “Flight shaming” may reduce the number of people in the air, but even a halving of departures would still require the UK to shift 15 per cent of its land area into forestry to fully offset the remaining emissions. 

Read more

After Heathrow, what else must be cancelled to avert climate change?

Fortunately, there is a route forward, although many technical and financial obstacles remain to its full implementation. We can chemically create man-made alternatives to fossil oil so that we can continue to fly without a net impact on emissions (although the extra effects of burning fuels at 35,000 feet will persist).

Are man-made alternatives to aviation fuels really possible? Yes. The molecules contained in fuels such as aviation kerosene are composed of atoms of hydrogen and carbon (hence the expression “hydrocarbon”). If we have supplies of these two basic chemical elements we can use well-understood engineering techniques to create complex hydrocarbons that are full replacements for fossil fuels. The processes employed have been in active use for many decades and already make hundreds of millions of tons of useful chemicals each year.

The crucial question to answer is this: how can we create abundant amounts of hydrogen and carbon in a way that doesn’t add greenhouse gases to the atmosphere, and at a reasonable price? Hydrogen is the simpler case. All we need is a supply of renewable electricity which we then use in a machine called an electrolyser. This uses the electric power to separate out the hydrogen and the oxygen in water molecules. The hydrogen can then be stored.

Heathrow boss warns of French threat

Carbon is a little more difficult. The conventional source in today’s chemical processes is carbon monoxide, a molecule that is a mixture of one atom of carbon and one atom of oxygen. We can generate carbon monoxide very simply from carbon dioxide.

In turn, our carbon dioxide can come from two main sources. We can burn natural materials such as wood, perhaps in a power station, and collect the CO2 that arises. Because the carbon in that wood had been originally collected from the atmosphere by the process of photosynthesis we can use it to make aviation fuel without any net consequences for greenhouse gas levels in the atmosphere. The problem is that we have restricted supplies of wood or other biological fuels to burn, particularly because we are trying to add forests to the world’s land surfaces.

Probably the best way of getting large quantities of carbon dioxide is to collect it directly from the air. This is possible, but the technology is still at an early (and expensive) stage. Once we have good supplies of CO2 and hydrogen we can manufacture abundant amounts of a fuel that will not result in net additions to greenhouse gases.

We cannot completely avoid the need for flying, even though each of us has an obvious responsibility to avoid taking the plane when we can. Because of the particular importance of aviation to the UK economy, it now makes clear sense for the country to invest in the research and development to push synthetic fuels forward, probably using money raised from taxation on today’s ultra-polluting aviation sector.

Trump and other populists are using coronavirus for their own political ends – and we will all suffer for it

The Trump administration’s handling of the virus illustrates the dangers of the politicisation of everything under this president and his ilk across the world

Borzou Daragahi @borzou
Sunday 1 March 2020

A note by a hospital in California released late on Wednesday suggested that the United States government health officials under the authority of President Donald Trump were deliberating for nearly a week before administering a coronavirus test to a patient suspected of carrying the illness.

“Since the patient did not fit the existing CDC [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] criteria for Covid-19, a test was not immediately administered,” said the note, which went on to explain how the patient turned out to be the first person in the US to contract the virus from a local community rather than carry it in from abroad.

It’s no mystery why Trump may have potentially wanted to suppress information about the spread of the virus, which has hammered the stock market just as the 2020 presidential election campaign gets underway. In a tweet, Trump raged that news channels were “doing everything possible to make the Caronavirus [sic] look as bad as possible, including panicking markets, if possible.”

On Saturday, facing a potential political crisis, Trump to the podium to address the coronavirus outbreak, before veering off towards talk about the new Afghanistan peace deal.

The administration’s handling of the virus illustrates the dangers of the politicisation of everything under Trump and his ilk across the world.

Just a couple of years ago, Trump looked to gut the CDC, including its pandemic response team, attempting to slash $1.2 billion from the agency’s budget and use the savings to reward the military contractors that are the pillars of his Republican Party.

“Proposed CDC budget: unsafe at any level of enactment,” Tom Frieden, the former head of the agency, wrote back then. “Would increase illness, death, risks to Americans, and health care costs.”

Even as late as two weeks ago, Trump was pushing to slash government spending on healthcare research and public health, as well as reducing US funding for the World Health Organisation, the commendable United Nations agency now on front lines of fighting coronavirus.

US officials have repeatedly criticised other countries for their handling of the coronavirus. Trump’s secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, took Iran and China to task last week for being less than forthcoming about the outbreak of the disease, which has struck both countries hard.

“All nations, including Iran, should tell the truth about the coronavirus and cooperate with international aid organisations,” he told reporters.

But while authoritarian regimes with little history of transparency or accountability are ill-equipped to deal responsibly with crises that require public trust and professionalism, so too are democracies dominated by cynical populists like Trump or Boris Johnson. 

Such characters have shown a willingness to twist the truth for political gain at times of crisis, even at the cost of human lives.

As if to confirm Trump’s cynicism, he has named his obsequious vice president Mike Pence the point person for the US response to the coronavirus. Pence is not a public health professional, nor even a doctor like sometimes White House ally Senator Rand Paul. He’s a former governor and rightwing radio host who allegedly badly bungled his home state of Indiana’s response to a HIV crisis.

Pence’s only qualification appears to be unswerving loyalty to the president, and a willingness to lie for him, which makes him not so different than the Communist Party apparatchiks in China, or the clerical loyalists to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei in Iran, accused of downplaying coronavirus for political ends.

According to the New York Times, one of his first orders of business was to get the nation’s top health officials to stop talking about coronavirus, as if the “prayers” Pence hoped would ward away HIV during his tenure as governor of Indiana would work better than the needle-exchange programmes he rejected.

In addition to rejecting science, Trump, along with like-minded rightwingers across the Atlantic like Hungary’s Victor Orban, have already exploited the coronavirus epidemic to justify their hostility to immigrants, which they often equate to germs or infestations in racist tropes that harken back to the darkest moments of the 20th century.

“The free circulation of goods and people, immigration policies and weak controls at the borders obviously allow the exponential spread of this type of virus,” Aurélia Beigneux, a member of the European Parliament from France’s far right, said during a rally in February.

Loudmouth populists like Trump and Johnson may be more entertaining than straitlaced professional politicians, and for the media, they draw more readers and viewers than Germany’s Angela Merkel or the Netherlands’ Mark Rutte. But real the cost of having such ideologues in charge is needless suffering and death.

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WHY WOULD A WOMAN WANT TO BE A PRIEST?

 SHE IS ALREADY A PRIESTESS!

Pope’s view on women in the church has brought frustration, anger and tears

Rite and Reason: Francis’s dream for women in the latest papal document is more like a nightmarish vision

Soline Humbert

Where and when have Roman Catholic women with a sense of vocation to the priesthood been listened to by Francis or his predecessors? Photograph: Getty Images

 

Pope Francis’s reaffirmation of the exclusion of women from ordination (Holy Orders) in his recent exhortation Beloved Amazonia (Querida Amazonia) reminded me of a comment heard when I was still in my teens. “The only orders you will ever receive are orders telling you what to do,” said a young fellow student to whom I confided my nascent sense of vocation to the priesthood. That was 45 years ago.

In Beloved Amazonia, Pope Francis refers to his many dreams for the region in beautiful, inspiring, poetic form. Yet when it comes to chapter 4 his ecclesial dream there has a very distinct change of style. One can only speculate that another writer is behind this chapter, but in any case it comes under Francis’s name.

I have heard several people talk of frustration, anger, devastation, dismay and even tears at the description of women and their roles in the church contained in this latest papal document, quite a few saying it is the end of the road for them.

For many women – and men who support them – this particular pope ’s dream is more akin to a nightmarish vision.

All my tears, and they were copious and anguished, have been shed long ago

Theologian Tina Beattie refers to Francis’s views as based on a “frozen idea of the feminine”. A frozen view of the feminine which would leave women like me frozen out.

Francis often talks about opening doors and dialogue, but this does not apply to women’s ordination: the door that St John Paul II slammed violently and abusively in our faces in 1994 is to be kept firmly shut.

To deny us

As for dialogue and discernment, where and when have Roman Catholic women with a sense of vocation to the priesthood been listened to by Francis or his predecessors?

• The Irish Times view on women in the Catholic Church: invisible and powerless
• Josepha Madigan criticises Catholic Church's lack of women in clergy
• Unequal treatment of women the greatest challenge for the Catholic Church

"The teenage girl with a vocation to the priesthood is now a grandmother who has found papal utterances and dictats on women again and again to be ridiculously inaccurate, severely limiting, woefully wrapped up in fanciful praise of the feminine genius, 'codology dressed up as theology’ (Mary McAleese - above). File photograph: Patsy McGarry

The official attitude over the past decades has been to shun us, to deny us any form of recognition, to render us invisible and voiceless in official church fora.

Our sense of vocation is treated a priori as an egotistic delusion, a sinful hankering for power, a failure to accept our womanhood, the product of a clericalist mentality, an evil threat to the church.

We are dangerous women to be kept out in the cold. No warm embrace from male-governed Mother Church for us.

I was not one of the women who shed tears reading the pope’s latest words on what women can and cannot be, can and cannot do. All my tears, and they were copious and anguished, have been shed long ago.

These words no longer held any power over me, no longer had the power to wound me. To put it bluntly, I do not recognise myself in the pope’s view of women, and haven’t done so for a very long time.

The teenage girl with a vocation to the priesthood is now a grandmother who has found papal utterances and dictats on women again and again to be ridiculously inaccurate, severely limiting, woefully wrapped up in fanciful praise of the feminine genius, “codology dressed up as theology’’ (Mary McAleese).

I have a dream too. That some day soon women will no longer be the ecclesial 'other’

For me these words have lost all their authority, meaning they were found out not to be truth-telling, life-giving or liberating. I respect Pope Francis and find him in many ways inspiring, but this does not extend to his views on women.

God’s hands

My life, lived in the light of my faith, has led me to the same conclusion that St Teresa of Avila, doctor of the church, had reached a few centuries ago: When it comes to women, churchmen are forever trying to tie up God’s hands. And forever failing....For God opens doors for women that no man, even a pope, can close.

In answer to Pope Francis’s ecclesial dream, I have a dream too. That some day soon women will no longer be the ecclesial “other’’, and that women’s hands, feet, faces and lips, indeed whole sexual bodies, are acknowledged to be as Christ-like as men’s are, and true sacramental representations of Christ.

We are no less the body of Christ, and in truth we can say and do say: “This is my body.”

Francis exhorts us not to clip the wings of the Holy Spirit. Removing the ban on women’s ordination would be a good start.

Soline Humbert is a spiritual guide and member of We Are Church Ireland which will mark International Women’s Day next Sunday, March 8th, by handing a message and flowers to Papal Nuncio Archbishop Jude Okolo at his residence in Dublin at 12.30pm. It is part of a global action by the Catholic Women’s Council

HERSTORY MONTH WOMEN ROCK N ROLL BANDS

BIRTHA -
1970'S ALL GIRL HARD ROCK BAND ROSEMARY BUTLER - BASS & VOCALS SHERRY HAGLER - KEYBOARDS SHELE PINIZZOTTO - GUITAR & VOCALS LIVER (OLIVIA) FAVELA - DRUMS & VOCALS THIS IS THEIR LAST SINGLE "THE ORIGINAL MIDNIGHT MAMA / DIRTY WORK" FROM 1973, WHICH DOES NOT APPEAR ON EITHER OF THEIR ALBUMS OR THE RE-ISSUE ON CD. VINYL TRANSFER, AUDIO RESTORATION and DIGITAL AUDIO ENHANCEMENTS BY: TUSCADERO10

During World War II, women ran America. They built the planes, ships, and equipment to win the war. They built the economy that pulled the country out of the Depression and then emerge as a new Superpower. For the first time they integrated into the work force, the military, and the society. They were expected to give all that up at the war's end. Having tasted freedom, many Americans refused to surrender for themselves what they had been fighting for abroad. The Civil Rights movement, the farm rights activism of Cesar Chavez, the Counterculture, Stonewall, the American Indian Movement, and Feminism are the children of that democratic spirit of freedom for all. Birtha's first album shows an apt metaphor; a 1948 jukebox being shook righteously with their music. Mothers from WWII wanted more for their daughters. That hope flourished in the 60's and 70's when their children rose to the challenge of bettering society. It's a shake-up that reverberates to this day. Since we are the sum of our memories and experience, the diner herein reflects that mutual arc. Included are idealized women in pin-ups by such artists as Alberto Vargas and Joyce Ballantyne (who was her own model; 00:42); the real Rosie the Riveters and Wendy the Welders who made the country stable; the integrated work forces that opened up the future of civil rights; the Japanese Americans who were interned in concentration camps by their own nation; and the Counterculture opening all the doors of progress. Free your spirit... About BIRTHA: In the mid-60's, bassist Rosemary Butler was in The Ladybirds, an all-female band who toured opening for The Rolling Stones. She hooked up with guitarist friend Shele Pinizzotto in the Los Angeles psychedelic group, The Daisy Chain. By the early 70's they became Birtha, with keyboardist Sherry Hagler and drummer Olivia "Liver" Favela. Fanny had just broken through as the first all-female rock band making major label LPs. Dunhill Records responded by pairing Birtha up with Gabriel Mekler, producer of label mates Steppenwolf. Their especially hard, heavy sound provoked the infamous ad campaign, "Birtha Has Balls", which shocked Playboy so much they wouldn't print it. But the T-shirts were a smash. "When (Birtha) played the 1972 Rockingham Festival, members of Alice Cooper, Fleetwood Mac and the James Gang all chose to wear them for their own sets," writes reviewer Mrs. Ahab, "and revelers could clearly see the logo disappear from view as Alice left the arena hanging out of a helicopter still sporting his Birtha shirt. " Billboard gasped, "they project more power and drive than most male groups," with astonishment. Birtha made two albums but despite touring with the hardest and playing harder, they didn't break through and broke apart. Almost immediately on their heels would be The Runaways and the Punk grrrls to carry the torch. Shele Pinizzotto (guitar, vocals) Rosemary Butler (bass, vocals) Sherry Hagler (keyboards) Liver Favela (drums, lead vocals on "Free Spirit") http://www.birtharocks.com/ http://www.myspace.com/birthasite http://www.myspace.com/rosemarybutler http://www.rosemarybutler.com/

HERSTORY MONTH

The Girls In The Band: All women bands of the 30's and 40's

HERSTORY MONTH FEMINIST SF/UTOPIA'S

A Perfect World or an Oppressive World:

A Critical Study of Utopia and Dystopia as Subgenres of Science Fiction

Synopsis

In this article, I investigate the concept of utopia and dystopia in literature since the time of
Plato and Thomas More and how it became a significant subgenre of science fiction. I
present the kinds of utopia and its fundamental purposes as well as the different explanations for the term utopia and dystopia by numerous critics. I stress the function of science fiction as a literary tool to depict the grim picture and the weaknesses of current societies, dystopias, and to provide a warning for the future of these societies by presenting alternative peaceful societies; utopias. Therefore, I seek to investigate how utopian writings play a central role in uncovering the shortcomings of societies and presenting a formative criticism towards them.

I also discuss how utopia and dystopia give women the chance to present their feminist
demands using science fiction.

Key Words: Utopia, Dystopia, Science fiction, Feminism

HERSTORY MONTH
Radical Utopias of the 20th century: Anti-authoritarian Perspectives in Feminist Science Fiction

Andriana Kossiva
MASTERS THESIS

Feminist science fiction as a literary sub-genre emerged in the 1960s, next to the development of radical feminism as a political theory, and was clearly influenced by it. At the same time, in an era when gender equality has been only ostensibly attained, and when social and political organization continue to be based upon patriarchal structures, feminism remains relevant. In the framework of the present, where patriarchy remains a fundamental basis for social and political organization, reinforced by capitalism (as an economic as well as a political system), the reconsideration and in-depth examination of works of feminist science fiction that not only criticize the patriarchal/ capitalist system, but also elaborate on alternative forms of organization (such as the novels discussed in this paper), continue to be meaningful.

This thesis explores the relationships between science fiction, radical feminism, and social transformation through an analysis of feminist science fiction novels by Marge Piercy, Monique Wittig and Ursula Le Guin – works that also draw connections to radical feminism. The particular novels were chosen because, as argued by this thesis, they embrace anti-authoritarian perspectives through utopian and dystopian tensions incorporating an understanding of utopia as both a literary mode and a form of social struggle, which involves gender liberation, class struggle and the abolition of hierarchical and capitalist structures. The tensions between the contemporary reality and the utopian vision involve the likelihood of a dystopian future; social transformations on a collective level so as to evade the possibility of a dystopian future; and the need to radically change intersubjective relations in order to attain a eutopian future.

The argument this thesis seeks to demonstrate is that feminist science fiction provides a meaningful context to both criticize the existing patriarchal/ capitalist system, but also to envision alternative forms of organization that are based on autonomy and collectivity. The rethinking of gender identities, the elimination of class divisions, and the complete rejection of discrimination play a vital role towards this direction. At the same time, works of feminist science fiction establish a dialectical relationship with the reader, engaging her/him not only in a critique of the contemporary structures of organization, but also in a critique of the utopian texts’ own structures, and demanding from her/him to take political decisions regarding her/his own position towards her/his contemporary social, political, and economic system. This argument is analyzed in the following manner:

Chapter One examines linguistic utopias in feminist science fiction, looking at works by Monique Wittig and Ursula Le Guin, as well as Marge Piercy’s Woman on the Edge of Time. What is argued in this chapter is that language is yet another system (a system of communication), which is based on patriarchal structures. Language has been developed in the patriarchal context of ‘Logos’ and thus, it contains and also promotes patriarchal believes, ideas, and stereotypes. Feminist science fiction exposes the inherently phallogocentric structures of language, but it also endeavors to reconstruct language as a tool towards gender liberation. Language as ‘écriture feminine’ engages repressed female voices, giving space to ‘otherness,’ to a multiplicity of othernesses, and thus undermining the idea that woman is merely ‘not man’ and rejecting all stereotypes imposed by patriarchal order. Écriture feminine has been long discussed with respect to canonical francophone literature, but rarely in relation to feminist science fiction, which is what this chapter attempts to do.

Chapter Two reflects on the potential of anarchist (e)utopias and the problematic of the capitalist state (as a dystopia) in feminist science fiction, particularly in Ursula Le Guin’s The Dispossessed and Marge Piercy’s Woman on the Edge of Time. In the term ‘anarchist (e)utopias’ ‘e’ is put in parentheses with the purpose of raising the question whether such depictions constitute eutopias (a Greek word translated as “good places”) or utopias (again a Greek word translated as “no places”). The argument this chapter seeks to make is that feminist science fiction depicts ‘utopias’ and ‘dystopias’ in situations of mutual tension, so as to produce a critique of the dystopic capitalist system, and so as to open the way towards envisioning alternative, non-hierarchical forms of social, and political organization. Moreover, this chapter seeks to demonstrate that feminist utopias are in essence critical utopias, in Moylan’s terms, since they constitute a better alternative to the contemporary society, but they are not devoid of difficulties.

Finally, Chapter Three considers the relationship between feminist science fiction and cyberpunk dystopias and its dynamics, and examines Marge Piercy’s He, She and It in an attempt to demonstrate that the adoption of cyberpunk dystopias by feminist science fiction has opened up the space for a political critique of capitalism through critical dystopias. Moreover, it reflects on the notion of the cyborg, endeavoring to reveal its radical (and) feminist dynamics.

HERSTORY MONTH - WOMEN ROCK N ROLL 
FANNY AKA FANNY HILL 

Fanny was an American all-female band, active in the early 1970s. They were one of the first notable rock groups to be made up entirely of women, the third to sign with a major label (after Goldie & the Gingerbreads and the Pleasure Seekers), and the first to release an album on a major label (in 1970). They achieved two top 40 singles on the Billboard Hot 100 and released five albums.

FANNY AND ANOTHER ALL WOMEN BAND; BIRTHA WERE CONTEMPORARIES OF SUSIE QUATRO
https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/2020/03/herstory-month-women-rock-n-roll-bands.html

Sisters June Millington (born April 14, 1948, Manila, Philippines) and Jean Millington (born May 25, 1949, Manila, Philippines) moved with their family from the Philippines to Sacramento, California in 1961. In high school they formed an all-girl band called the Svelts with June on guitar, Jean on bass, Addie Lee on guitar, and Brie Brandt on drums. Brandt was later replaced by Alice de Buhr (born September 4, 1949, Mason City, Iowa). When the Svelts disbanded, de Buhr and Lee formed another all-female group called Wild Honey. The Millington sisters later joined this band, which played Motown covers and eventually
moved to Los Angeles.

LIVE STUDIO SESSION