Nobody Cares about Your Health

Isabeau

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This, from last month.

Oregon ambulance struck cyclist, then billed him $1,800 for ride to hospital

Hoesch is suing the Columbia River fire and rescue department for nearly $1m after the agency he blames for the accident sent him a $1,862 bill for the ambulance ride. The lawsuit claims Hoesch was left with permanent injuries and has accrued about $47,000 in medical expenses so far, with an additional $50,000 in costs anticipated after his visit to the hospital, the local news outlet OregonLive reported.
 

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Medical science by congressional politics. Sounds like the future.

Recently, Congress' Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic released its final report. The basic gist is about what you'd expect from a Republican-run committee, in that it trashes a lot of Biden-era policies and state-level responses while praising a number of Trump's decisions. But what's perhaps most striking is how it tackles a variety of scientific topics, including many where there's a large, complicated body of evidence.

Notably, this includes conclusions about the origin of the pandemic, which the report describes as "most likely" emerging from a lab rather than being the product of the zoonotic transfer between an animal species and humans. The latter explanation is favored by many scientists.
The conclusions themselves aren't especially interesting; they're expected from a report with partisan aims. But the method used to reach those conclusions is often striking: The Republican majority engages in a process of systematically changing the standard of evidence needed for it to reach a conclusion. For a conclusion the report's authors favor, they'll happily accept evidence from computer models or arguments from an editorial in the popular press; for conclusions they disfavor, they demand double-blind controlled clinical trials.
 

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I felt punked today at my annual checkup.

"Over the past two weeks, have you felt little interest or pleasure in doing things?",
"Have you been feeling down, depressed, or hopeless?",
"Do you have trouble falling or staying asleep, or sleep too much?",
"Have you noticed a change in your appetite?",
"Do you feel tired or have little energy?",
"Do you feel worthless or guilty?",
"Have you had thoughts of harming yourself or committing suicide?"

Resounding NO to all those... but also... "If I did, could you blame me? Have you seen what the next president promises to do and the idiots he's collecting to do it?"

Immediately after that barrage of questions... it was "Okay now, let's take your blood pressure."

Are you -serious- ? I'm too riled up now, it's gonna be high! (it was slightly, and my condescending GP jumped all over my case about it. Thank you ever so much... just renew my one damned prescription and save the attitude for your next patient. GRrrr.)
 

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They're getting high on life. Kidding...

In the latest update from the University of Michigan's half-century-long Monitoring the Future study, the school announced that its researchers found a trend of "historically large decreases" in adolescent drug use has only broadened in 2024.

Richard Miech, the study's team lead, said he was surprised by the findings.

"I expected adolescent drug use would rebound at least partially after the large declines that took place during the pandemic onset in 2020," Miech said.
As Miech noted in the press release, the peri-pandemic wave of drug abstention was the largest ever to be recorded — but experts expected "that drug use would resurge as the pandemic receded and social distancing restrictions were lifted."

"As it turns out," he said, "the declines have not only lasted but have dropped further."
In 2024, the researchers found that a whopping 67 percent of high school seniors abstained from drugs (including marijuana), alcohol, and smoking or vaping nicotine within 30 months of being surveyed. In 2017, when the Monitoring the Future study first began looking into drug and alcohol use among teens, that cohort was a far lower 53 percent.

Among high school sophomores, 80 percent said they hadn't had any drugs, alcohol, or nicotine in 30 days, and 90 percent of eighth graders said the same. In 2017, those proportions were 69 percent and 80 percent, respectively.
Maybe the next generation are smarter than we were. Certainly couldn't be any dumber, right?
 

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They're getting high on life. Kidding...







Maybe the next generation are smarter than we were. Certainly couldn't be any dumber, right?
I sure as hell hope that they are smarter than at least my generation was.

As someone who cares for a person who has spent a lifetime addicted to meth, I can say that I'm really glad to see this.

I think that if my brother had never tried meth, he'd be a completely different person today and have a completely different (and MUCH better) life.

Sadly, (and I specifically point out meth), this kind of addiction absolutely, without fail, destroys the person's body, their mind, their soul, their relationships and it also destroys and rips apart their families and kills everyone's trust in the addicted person forever.

 

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Heroin as well. I have a brother who I lost contact with years ago. He was as smart as I am years ago (not bragging, really) and he introduced me to classic SciFi. But he got into heroin and he lost his ability to really think, to make decisions on anything but impulse, and to hold down a job. He has as far as I can tell had lots of minor run ins with the law. He just turned into a shell of himself and the last anyone has heard from him was about 20 years ago.
 

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They're getting high on life. Kidding...







Maybe the next generation are smarter than we were. Certainly couldn't be any dumber, right?
Correlation is not causation, but the coincidence of this phenomenon and the onslaught of Trump as a politician is remarkable. The phrase "scared straight" comes to mind. When taking mind-altering drugs, one tries to seek a non-threatening environment which, with Trump still around, is extremely difficult.
 

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To misquote Gracie Abrams, this is not what the drugs are for.

Bryan Johnson has long been obsessed with “de-aging” himself. The 46-year-old multimillionaire, who made his money by founding various tech companies, has spent years of his life and millions of dollars trying to get his body to resemble that of a teenager. His wellness regimen includes taking 54 different supplements every day for breakfast. Those pills are ostensibly helping him to extend his lifespan and, as he has put it, “break the world record in age reversal.” In recent months, however, Johnson quit taking at least one of those supplements for fear that, instead of de-aging him, it was actually “accelerating” his aging.
 

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“I take this because there’s potentially some longevity benefits,” he adds, noting that it’s “the kind of thing in the longevity community that people are excited about,” whereas “outside the longevity community, it’s still kind of crazy.”
 

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Because we cannot allow profits to be cut for pharmaceutical companies. That's what matters now!
 

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Last year, a study highlighted that your doctor's office might be taking your blood pressure wrong. The current best practice is to take seated blood pressure readings with a detailed protocol: Patients must not eat, drink, or exercise for 30 minutes prior; they must have an empty bladder and sit calmly for five minutes prior to the first reading; they must sit with their feet uncrossed and flat on the floor; their back should be supported; and—a big one that's often overlooked—they must keep the arm to be measured resting on a flat surface at the height of their heart, not higher or lower.

While the setup is often different from what happens in a bustling medical office, a new study blows away quibbles over protocol and suggests that even when done perfectly, the method is second-rate. We shouldn't be sitting at all when we take our blood pressure—we should be lying down.
 

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A future of PCPs. Joy...

If you weren't convinced we're spiraling toward an actual cyberpunk future, a new bill seeking to let AI prescribe controlled drugs just might.

The proposed law was introduced in the House of Representatives by Arizona's David Schweikert this month, where it was referred to the House Committee on Energy and Commerce for review. Its purpose: to "amend the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act to clarify that artificial intelligence and machine learning technologies can qualify as a practitioner eligible to prescribe drugs."
In theory, it sounds good. Engaging with the American healthcare system often feels like hitting yourself with a slow-motion brick, so the prospect of a perfect AI-powered medical practitioner that could empathically advise on symptoms, promote a healthy lifestyle, and dispense crucial medication sounds like a promising alternative.

But in practice, today's AI isn't anywhere near where it'd need to be to provide any of that, nevermind prescribing potentially dangerous drugs, and it's not clear that it'll ever get there.
 
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And an AI is not going to be able to spot people gaming the systems. Use a cheat sheet of code phrases and get opioids. Doctors know what to look for in behavior and can ask follow up questions. Of course that leads to racial bias in prescriptions.
 

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Joy...

An old bacterial foe has been making itself very cozy in Kansas. Local health officials reported this month that the state is in the midst of a large outbreak of tuberculosis—reportedly now the largest outbreak of the disease ever documented in the United States.

Ashley Goss, a deputy secretary at the Kansas Department of Health and Environment (KDHE), gave an update on the state’s TB outbreak to the Senate Public Health and Welfare Committee last week. Dozens of active and latent TB cases have been linked to the outbreak dating back to last year. And the danger has not yet passed.

“The current KCK Metro TB outbreak is the largest documented outbreak in U.S. history, presently,” Jill Bronaugh, a spokesperson for KDHE, told local media outlet The Topeka Capital-Journal Friday. “This is mainly due to the rapid number of cases in the short amount of time. This outbreak is still ongoing, which means that there could be more cases.”
 

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Joy...

This is particularly scary in light of the fact that the CDC's wings have been clipped and their communications have been halted as well has their interactions with WHO. TB is exactly the kind of illness that the CDC should be managing.

 

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Sounds interesting...

The Food and Drug Administration announced the approval of a new non-opioid pain medication this week, marking the first time in over two decades that the agency has approved a non-opioid pain drug with a novel mechanism of action.

The drug, Journavx (suzetrigine), is an oral pill that treats acute pain, such as from surgery or injuries. Unlike opioids, which work by latching onto receptor proteins on nerves in the central nervous system, suzetrigine works only in peripheral nerves—that is, those outside the brain and spinal cord. Specifically, the drug inhibits a voltage-gated sodium ion channel called 1.8 (NaV1.8) that is known to relay pain signals, but only in peripheral nerves.

Because it works outside the brain by a different mechanism than opioids, the new medication offers a safe alternative to opioids, which can be highly addictive.
 

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The title of this thread is becoming more and more on point.

Health officials in Texas are battling a growing measles outbreak in an area that has some of the state's lowest vaccination rates and highest non-medical exemptions.

On January 30, officials reported two measles cases in unvaccinated, school-aged children in Gaines County, which sits at the border of New Mexico and is around 90 miles southwest of Lubbock, Texas. Both children were hospitalized in Lubbock and had been discharged.
As of mid-day February 7, the outbreak total reached nine confirmed measles cases in the South Plains Public Health District (SPPHD) that includes Gaines, according to Zach Holbrooks, Executive Director for SSPHD. In an interview with Ars, Holbrooks reported that there were three additional probable cases that are linked to the confirmed cases. These are cases in the same household or family—maybe a cousin or sibling—that are showing measles symptoms but haven't been tested yet or gotten their test results back yet, Holbrooks said. So far, there have been no other reports of hospitalizations besides those in the first two cases.