February 20, 2014 archive

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New study calls for improved medical care for transgender patients

Daphna Stroumsa, an obstetrics and gynecology resident at Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit, has published research on medical discrimination against transgender people whichis available in the American Journal of Public Health:  The State of Transgender Health Care:  Policy, Law and Medical Frameworks.  Access to the full document requires APHA membership or paid subscription, which I do not have.

Abstract:

I review the current status of transgender people’s access to health care in the United States and analyze federal policies regarding health care services for transgender people and the limitations thereof.  I suggest a preliminary outline to enhance health care services and recommend the formulation of explicit federal policies regarding the provision of health care services to transgender people in accordance with recently issued medical care guidelines, allocation of research funding, education of health care workers, and implementation of existing nondiscrimination policies.  Current policies denying medical coverage for sex reassignment surgery contradict standards of medical care and must be amended.

Dr. Strousma is a graduate of The Hebrew University Haddassah Medical School in Jerusalem, Israel.  She calls for the medical establishment to immediately address of the situation.

On This Day In History February 20

Cross posted from The Stars Hollow Gazette

This is your morning Open Thread. Pour your favorite beverage and review the past and comment on the future.

Find the past “On This Day in History” here.

February 20 is the 51st day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. There are 314 days remaining until the end of the year (315 in leap years).

On this day in 1792, President George Washington signs legislation renewing the United States Post Office as a cabinet department led by the postmaster general, guaranteeing inexpensive delivery of all newspapers, stipulating the right to privacy and granting Congress the ability to expand postal service to new areas of the nation.

History

William Goddard, a Patriot printer frustrated that the royal postal service was unable to reliably deliver his Pennsylvania Chronicle to its readers or deliver critical news for the paper to Goddard, laid out a plan for the “Constitutional Post” before the Continental Congress on October 5, 1774. Congress waited to act on the plan until after the Battle of Lexington and Concord on April 19, 1775. Benjamin Franklin promoted Goddard’s plan and served as the first postmaster general under the Continental Congress beginning on July 26, 1775, nearly one year before the Congress declared independence from the British Crown. Franklin’s son-in-law, Richard Bache, took over the position on November 7, 1776, when Franklin became an American emissary to France.

Franklin had already made a significant contribution to the postal service in the colonies while serving as the postmaster of Philadelphia from 1737 and as joint postmaster general of the colonies from 1753 to 1774, when he was fired for opening and publishing Massachusetts Royal Governor Thomas Hutchinson‘s correspondence. While postmaster, Franklin streamlined postal delivery with properly surveyed and marked routes from Maine to Florida (the origins of Route 1), instituted overnight postal travel between the critical cities of New York and Philadelphia and created a standardized rate chart based upon weight and distance. [3]

Samuel Osgood held the postmaster general’s position in New York City from 1789, when the U.S. Constitution came into effect, until the government moved to Philadelphia in 1791. Timothy Pickering took over and, about a year later, the Postal Service Act gave his post greater legislative legitimacy and more effective organization. Pickering continued in the position until 1795, when he briefly served as secretary of war, before becoming the third U.S. secretary of state. The postmaster general’s position was considered a plum patronage post for political allies of the president until the Postal Service was transformed into a corporation run by a board of governors in 1971 following passage of the Postal Reorganization Act.

What’s the Fracking Problem in OK, KS & PA?

Cross Posted from The Stars Hollow Gazette

If rising temperatures and sea levels from climate change don’t get us, maybe an earthquake or toxic fumes from hydraulic fracturing will. Meanwhile the oil companies continue to dig these wells with minimum regulation or information on the impact to the environment. What we do know is rather frightening when the earth moves under your feet especially where it’s not expected

No strangers to nature’s fury, Oklahomans grow up accustomed scorching heat, blizzards, wrecking-ball thunderstorms and tornadoes. What they don’t see a lot of are earthquakes, which have been rattling the Sooner State with rare frequency of late – at least 115 earthquakes of varying intensities in the last week. [..]

State authorities are now trying to get the bottom of the unusual seismic activity. Holland is amassing resources and data to figure out what might be to blame, and the Oklahoma Corporation Commission, which oversees the oil and gas industry, has already proposed new testing and monitoring requirements for wells injected with drilling wastewater, which some have blamed for the increase in earthquakes. Hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking”, involving explosions being set off underground, has also been blamed by some for the swarm. [..]

It’s true that Oklahoma has a history of earthquake swarms that spike and then die down, but it’s also true that humans have caused earthquakes in the past. And previous swarms have been nowhere near as serious as this latest one. “We do know there have been some earthquakes caused by oil and gas activity in the state,” Holland, the research seismologist, said. “The hard part is figuring out which is which.”

At least on governor is concerned about public safety enough to appoint a commission to look into the unusual seismic activity in his state.

Calling it a “matter of public safety,” Gov. Sam Brownback has appointed a committee to study whether oil and gas activity is behind the recent spate of minor earthquakes in Kansas.

Expansion of the oil and gas recovery method known as “fracking” has coincided with a series of small quakes in areas that had long been seismically stable. Fracking doesn’t appear to cause the problem, but an increase in oil and gas production and disposal of waste fluids associated with fracking could be behind the recent temblors that have shaken south-central Kansas and northern Oklahoma, scientists said Monday.

Free Pizza & Soda from Chevron photo pizza-letter_zps695dcf1c.jpg In Dunkard Township, Pennsylvania, 50 miles south of Pittsburgh, two of Chevron’s natural gas wells exploded last week burning for five days, leaving one worker injured and another missing and presumed dead. After the fires were out, Chevron sent a letter of apology to the residents of the nearby town of Bobtown. Included in the letter was a coupon for a free large pizza and a 2-liter bottle of soda.

Besides the ground shaking, contamination of underground water supplies, explosions and fires, another problem has arisen, literally, increased air pollution to the point that the air is so toxic that it is making people sick. A study released by The Weather Channel, the Center for Public Integrity and InsideClimate News looked into just how bad the air quality has become near the Eagle Ford Shale site in southern Texas. The summary of their findings describes how the Texas regulators are protecting the industry rather than the public:

   

  • Texas’ air monitoring system is so flawed that the state knows almost nothing about the extent of the pollution in the Eagle Ford. Only five permanent air monitors are installed in the 20,000-square-mile region, and all are at the fringes of the shale play, far from the heavy drilling areas where emissions are highest.
  • Thousands of oil and gas facilities, including six of the nine production sites near the Buehrings’ house, are allowed to self-audit their emissions without reporting them to the state. The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ), which regulates most air emissions, doesn’t even know some of these facilities exist. An internal agency document acknowledges that the rule allowing this practice “[c]annot be proven to be protective.”
  • Companies that break the law are rarely fined. Of the 284 oil and gas industry-related complaints filed with the TCEQ by Eagle Ford residents between Jan. 1, 2010, and Nov. 19, 2013, only two resulted in fines despite 164 documented violations. The largest was just $14,250. (Pending enforcement actions could lead to six more fines).
  • The Texas legislature has cut the TCEQ’s budget by a third since the Eagle Ford boom began, from $555 million in 2008 to $372 million in 2014. At the same time, the amount allocated for air monitoring equipment dropped from $1.2 million to $579,000.
  • The Eagle Ford boom is feeding an ominous trend: A 100 percent statewide increase in unplanned, toxic air releases associated with oil and gas production since 2009. Known as emission events, these releases are usually caused by human error or faulty equipment.
  • Residents of the mostly rural Eagle Ford counties are at a disadvantage even in Texas, because they haven’t been given air quality protections, such as more permanent monitors, provided to the wealthier, more suburban Barnett Shale region near Dallas-Fort Worth.

MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow examined some of the ills of fracking and discusses the report with Jim Morris, senior reporter and editor at the Center for Public Integrity.



Transcript can be read here



Transcript can be read here

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That mean old judge wouldn’t budge

Late Night Karaoke

Boston Symphony Orchestra/West Side Story (film) Concert at Symphony Hall, here in Boston, MA:

Hi, everybody!

I’m here to say that I attended all three of the performances of the recent Boston Symphony Orchestra/West Side Story (HD film) concert, and the performances were absolutely fabulous! Since I’d always wanted to see the film West Side Story on Valentine’s Day, I finally got my wish! (The BSO/WSS concert performances took place on 2/14/-2/15, at 8:00 p. m., and on Sunday, 2/16, at 3:00 p. m. Friday and Sunday, the weather was okay, but on Saturday night, I braved the Boston area snowstorm, trekked over to the MBTA subway stop nearest to where I live, and took public transportation to the meeting place of 14 other people. We all took a bus over to Symphony Hall together, and had a wonderful evening out, and one couple who’d come with us was kind enough to drive me home afterwards.

On Sunday afternoon (yesterday), I took an absolutely packed MBTA (Mass. Bay Transit Authority) train to the Symphony stop, near Boston Symphony Hall, and met my friends there. We had a fun-packed afternoon, and we went our own separate ways. Even more heartening, one of the two women who attended yesterday afternoon’s performance of the BSO/West Side Story concert called me up this morning specially to thank me for having invited them to come along to the concert with me, and I told her that I was glad that they were both able to make it and come with me, and that it had been a wonderful afternoon.

West Side Story is a fantastic movie to begin with, but having a famous live orchestra play a live rendition of an already-brilliant musical score, while the singing and dialogues in the film were kept intact, brought this great, golden oldie but keeper of a classic film to a whole new level. Through great creativeness via modern technology, a great feat was accomplished; melding a live orchestral rendition to Bernstein’s musical score with the singing and dialogue of a beautifully dynamic movie.

Since I had seats that had me and my friends/classmates looking directly at the center of the stage, I was able to watch the movie while eyeing the orchestra players and the conductor at the same time. The conductor was especially interesting to watch; he seemed totally into what he was conducting, and to enjoy himself, nonetheless. Although looking at it from the back of the orchestral tier of Symphony Hall gave a good viewing, sitting on a balcony of Symphony Hall, especially with a movie such as West Side Story, which, imho, is better viewed from the balcony of any movie theatre, to begin with, presented a view where one could look slightly downward, thus getting a better view of the stage and to not have people’s heads directly in the viewer’s way, enabling the viewer to really take in both the movie and the live orchestra at the same time. (Btw, the film was a HD digitally-restored, cleaned up, remastered and reprinted version of the film West Side Story, so it was even more beautiful!)

The orchestra added its own perks to an already-great and brilliant musical score, and all of the characters seemed to be brought even further up into the heavens, if one gets the drift. Had the screen been at least 2 or 3 feet longer on each end, however, it would’ve added more to an already great restoration of a great movie, and to the Boston Symphony Orchestra’s live rendition of this great movie musical score. It was well worth braving unpredictable public transportation, not to mention the stormy weather on Saturday night, in order to get there. All three performances were pretty much sold out, with the exception of a small minority of people who’d probably bought tickets and couldn’t make it, for whatever reason.

This was an even better performance than at Tanglewood, and it was well worth going to.

Tags:

• 1961 film, leonard bernstein