Michigan Disability Resistance

https://goo.gl/kvzb2b

André McCollins is the victim in one of the few videos of students receiving repeated shocks investigators were able to retrieve from the Judge Rotenberg Center. His screams of agony now fuel the rallying cry of disability rights activists and organizations calling for an end to the use of electric shocks on disabled children.

She went to court and fought for that horrific tape and won.

https://goo.gl/K6AuQK

Long-term, low-level lead exposure may be linked with more than 256,000 premature deaths from heart disease in middle-aged and older Americans each year, according to a new study.

The researchers analyzed data from 14,300 people in the United States, covering nearly 20 years. All participants had a medical exam and a blood test for lead at the start of the study.

The findings revealed a link between low-level exposure and increased risk of premature death. Lead exposure has been associated with hardened arteries, high blood pressure and coronary heart disease, according to the researchers.

"Our study estimates the impact of historical lead exposure on adults currently aged 44 years old or over in the USA, whose exposure to lead occurred in the years before the study began," said study lead author Dr. Bruce Lanphear. He's a professor at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia, Canada.

Historical exposure occurs from lead present in the environment because of past use in fuel, paint and plumbing. There's also ongoing exposure from foods, emissions from industrial sources and contamination from lead smelting sites and lead batteries, the researchers explained.

"Today, lead exposure is much lower because of regulations banning the use of lead in petrol, paints and other consumer products so the number of deaths from lead exposure will be lower in younger generations," Lanphear said.

https://goo.gl/AhohH1

ADAPT enters the 5th day of its vigil outside FDA Director Scott Gottlieb’s home, what is becoming evident is that the disability rights organizations greatest strength is its membership. ADAPTers are a collection of strong individuals who make an even stronger collective. As the snow and cold engulfed their makeshift encampment last night the group of roughly 50 activists kept their focus on the reason they were there. “What keeps me going is shame” said Mike Oxford of Kansas. “Shame that we live in a country that is willing to look the other way as disabled people are abused. Shame that someone like Scott Gottlieb has so little respect for disabled lives that he feels no need to do anything while disabled people are tortured.”

The torture Oxford is referring to and the reason these activists have come from across the country to live outside in front of Gottlieb’s home is to put an end to the use of electro shock devices at the Judge Rotenberg Center (JRC) in Canton Massachusetts. At a time when their own discomfort could easily dominate their thinking these activists are focused on freeing others in their community from the horrific abuses of an institution that uses repeated electro shock to discipline the individuals who are placed there. “I don’t know how Scott Gottlieb thinks it is ok to use aversive shocks on the skin of any disabled people.” said activist Pilgrim Tierney of Wisconsin.

Instead of the miserable weather, or the pain it causes many of them, these activists are looking for any means to bring an end to the Massachusetts house of horrors. They have gone to the White House to try and convince President Trump to intervene and convince Gottlieb to take action and release the 2-year-old regulations that would instantly put an end to the JRC’s awful practices. They have also met with Chief White House Counsel Don McGahn who came to their encampment. What they haven’t done is met Gottlieb who has dodged them both at home and at FDA headquarters.

The ADAPTers vow to keep fighting for as long as it takes. “He is kidding himself if he thinks we are going anywhere. We crawled up the Capitol steps 28 years ago to show congress they couldn’t deny us! We won’t let Scott Gotlieb avoid doing his job and ending the torture!” said Anita Cameron an ADAPTer who has been with the organization since 1986 and been arrested 134 times in the fight for Disability Rights. There is a chant these activists use frequently, “There ain’t no power, like the power of ADAPT, because the power of ADAPT, don’t stop!” and it isn’t likely to stop as long as these activists are here.

https://goo.gl/SXPLcP

Death due to alcohol, drugs, suicide, and interpersonal violence – sometimes characterized as "deaths of despair" are on the rise in the U.S., particularly among white males, reversing a centuries-long improvement in life expectancy.

But these deaths are not distributed evenly around the country. In a new analysis appearing in the Journal of the American Medical Association, researchers from the University of Washington used county level data to characterize the extent, and variation, of deaths from these causes.

The study of variation in medicine is more important than it seems at first blush. High levels of geographic variation in a disease or a treatment strategy suggest that potentially modifiable factors are at play. Put it this way, if I told you that the rate of cholangiocarcinoma was fairly evenly distributed throughout the country, you might conclude that what we're seeing is more or less a baseline rate, something stochastic, where only really broad changes in diagnosis or treatment will make an impact.

What this study shows us, is that these "deaths of despair" are by no means uniform. In fact, variation is highly pronounced and dramatic.

You see a 58-fold range in the death rate from the lowest to the highest counties, with West Virginia and Kentucky particular hot spots.

Deaths due to drug use did not decline over these two and a half decades in a single county in the United States. Not one. And the rate in those hot spot areas has increased fifty-fold.

Moreover, the extent of variation from county to county has increased dramatically. What this tells us is that these deaths are not due to some baseline physiology, but rather to local factors. Lead author Dr. Laura Dwyer-Lindgren told me she wasn't comfortable with the "deaths of despair label," as they don't really know what's driving these changes.

"A lot of the discourse around the just massive increase in deaths from drug use disorders is around the massive increase in deaths specifically from opioids and around how that relates to prescribing and availability."

We actually have data on the rate of prescribing of opioids on a county level in the U.S., though not from Dr. Dwyer-Lindgren's paper.

Here is a map from the CDC looking at opioid prescription rates. We'll put it up next to the map documenting the increase in deaths from drug abuse.

https://goo.gl/nnXRxi

Disabled people have the right to receive home and community-based services in a manner that maximizes our personal autonomy and independence and that does not compromise our privacy. EVV could potentially infringe on these principles. Chief concerns include:

• EVV typically requires workers to check in from the homes of clients, yet consumer directed attendant programs allow services to be delivered anywhere they are needed, such as schools and workplaces. This conflict creates the potential for an atmosphere of ‘house arrest,’ limiting community participation, and perpetuating the outmoded stereotype that disabled people cannot or do not leave their homes.
• GEO tracking, which could be used to verify the service location, infringes on fundamental privacy rights and liberties of disabled people.
• Multiple, daily, task-by-task electronic check-ins, if required, are needlessly burdensome, will disrupt daily routines and worker-client communications and will take up valuable and limited service time.
• Not all disabled people have digital access or landlines, generally required by EVV.
• The state might be viewed as a joint-employer, triggering additional costs for unpaid overtime.
• EVV companies will likely receive contracts primarily on the bases of their promised technical capacity and the amount of their bid, without any regard for whether their proposals violate the rights of disabled people.