The hidden ways your gender affects your healthcare

Women are more likely to wait longer for a health diagnosis and to be told it’s ‘all in their heads’. That can be lethal: diagnostic errors cause 40,000-80,000 deaths in the US alone.

Brain tumours are only one example. A 2015 study revealed a longer lag time from the onset of symptoms to diagnosis in female patients in six out of 11 types of cancer. It isn’t that women wait longer to seek medical attention – the delay occurs after they’ve first visited their GP. A 2013 study concluded that more than twice as many women as men had to make more than three visits to a primary care doctor in the UK before getting referred to a specialist for suspected bladder cancer. So did nearly twice as many with renal cancer.  

Women have long been considered the typical patients with psychogenic symptoms, so it’s no wonder that they are especially likely to find their symptoms dismissed as “all in their heads”. In a 1986 study, for example, researchers looked at a group of patients with serious organic neurological disorders who’d initially been diagnosed with hysteria. They identified the characteristics that made a patient vulnerable to such a misdiagnosis. One was having a prior diagnosis of a psychiatric disorder. Another was being a woman.

But while women may truly have a higher risk, the difference in prevalence rates may be at least partly a consequence of overdiagnosis in women and underdiagnosis in men. Studies in the 1990s suggested that as many as 30-50% of women diagnosed with depression were misdiagnosed. Furthermore, depression and anxiety are themselves symptoms of other diseases, which often go unrecognised in women. And, of course, the stress of suffering from an undiagnosed – and therefore untreated – disease often takes its mental toll. As one article points out, “Ironically, medical misdiagnoses of physical conditions may induce depressive reactions in female patients."

http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20180523-how-gender-bias-affects-your-healthcare

California Is Now World's 5th Largest Economy, Surpasses UK

Illinois town votes to ban assault rifles, fine violators up to $1,000 per day

The Chicago suburb of Deerfield, Illinois voted on Monday to ban the possession, sale, and manufacture of assault weapons and large capacity magazines to "increase the public's sense of safety." What's more, CBS Chicago reports, anyone refusing to give up their banned firearm will be fined $1,000 a day until the weapon is handed over or removed from the town's limits.

The ordinance states, "The possession, manufacture and sale of assault weapons in the Village of Deerfield is not reasonably necessary to protect an individual's right of self-defense or the preservation or efficiency of a well-regulated militia."

So, beginning June 13, banned assault weapons in Deerfield will include semiautomatic rifles with a fixed magazine and a capacity to hold more than 10 rounds of ammunition, shotguns with revolving cylinders, and conversion kits from which assault weapons can be assembled. And those are just a few of the firearm varieties banned. The list is long and includes all the following models or duplicates thereof: AK, AKM, AKS, AK-47, AK-74, ARM, MAK90, Misr, NHM 90, NHM 91, SA 85, SA 93, VEPR, AR-10, AR-15, Bushmaster XM15, Armalite M15, Olympic Arms PCR, AR70, Calico Liberty, Dragunov SVD Sniper Rifle, Dragunov SVU, Fabrique NationalFN/FAL, FN/LAR, FNC, Hi-Point Carbine, HK-91, Kel-Tec Sub Rifle, SAR-8, Sturm, Ruger Mini-14, and more.
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The nearby suburb of Highland Park passed a similar ban in 2013, which was contested as unconstitutional by one of the city's residents and the Illinois State Rifle Association. Ultimately, however, the ordinance was upheld in court.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/illinois-town-votes-to-ban-assault-rifles-fine-violators-1000-per-day/

RedState Issues Insane Correction to Article Implying David Hogg Wasn't At School During Shooting

On Monday evening, conservative site RedState ran an article that initially implied Marjory Stoneman Douglas student David Hogg — who in recent weeks has become an outspoken advocate for gun control — wasn’t actually at school the day of the tragic Parkland shooting. Within hours, the site ended up issuing two major updates to the story and striking through the original text of the article.

As originally published with the headline ‘New Video Casts Doubt on Whether David Hogg Was at School on the Day of the Shooting,’ writer Sarah Rumpf compared an interview Hogg gave to TIME Magazine to a recent CBS documentary that included an interview with Hogg. Hogg told TIME about his experience in school the day of the shooting, which included him hiding in a school closet while the massacre occurred.

Rumpf then highlighted that in the recent CBS documentary, Hogg said that on the day of the shooting, he got on his bike and rode as fast as he could to get from his house to the school, which he said was three miles. He did that so he could interview as many people as possible with his camera.

Rumpf wrote the following for the second update:
UPDATE #2: This Vox article indicates that Hogg went back to the campus area at 6 pm and did not actually enter campus, but had his camera and interviewed people across the street from campus. Here’s his quote:At 6 pm after the shooting, I took my camera, got on my bike. I rode in basically twilight. And I ride my bike three miles down winding sidewalks and find my way to the school, as I’ve done in previous years. All the while, I was making sure my camera bag didn’t rip open, because if you zip it a certain way, the camera falls out, and it would be destroyed.After reviewing all of this, it appears that the problem was that CBS included a very confusing quote without context. Hogg was on campus during the shooting and returned several hours later to interview people across the street. The original story remains below, in strikethrough. I am sorry for the error and have updated the post accordingly.

https://www.mediaite.com/online/redstate-issues-insane-correction-to-article-implying-david-hogg-wasnt-at-school-during-shooting/
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The right wing just can't stop trying to smear these brave MSD kids. This particlar smear fell apart quickly, but not before my right wing in-laws posted breathlesly on facebook about how CBS "admitted" the "face of the Never Again movement" is a "fraud who was not even at school during the shooting."

Thought I'd post this here in case you have similar relatives...

Did the new spending bill really end the hold on gun violence research? Maybe not.

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“I think a bigger signal that gun violence research is going to be endorsed would be if Congress puts money behind it, creates a stream of revenue for gun violence research. That would be the real signal — that it’s safe to get back in the water.”
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That's because former President Barack Obama used similar language in a 2013 presidential memorandum issued in the wake of the 2012 Newtown shooting that directed the CDC to research the causes and prevention of gun violence. It didn’t do the trick.
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Daniel Webster, director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy & Research, believes the language concerning the Dickey Amendment may actually make gun violence research “more restrictive” by limiting its parameters.

“The new language limits spending to only research on the causes of gun violence,” Webster told NBC. “...Funding could not examine solutions, especially any solution that threatens the status quo on gun commerce and ownership.”

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/did-new-spending-bill-really-end-hold-gun-violence-research-n859141

California Leads U.S. Economy, Away From Trump

Whatever the president says, this state does the opposite. It's working.

That's a claim worth exploring. Look at California, which is one-eighth of the U.S. population with 39 million people and one-seventh of the nation's gross domestic product of $2.3 trillion. Far from being a mess, California's economy is bigger than ever, rivaling the U.K. as No. 5 in the world, when figures for 2016 are officially tabulated. 

California is the chief reason America is the only developed economy to achieve record GDP growth since the financial crisis of 2008 and ensuing global recession, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Much of the U.S. growth can be traced to California laws promoting clean energy, government accountability and protections for undocumented people. Governor Jerry Brown, now in his fourth term, considers immigrants a major reason for the state's success: "39 percent of us are Latino and the majority are from Mexico," he said in a March 2 interview in his Sacramento office.

https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-05-10/california-leads-u-s-economy-away-from-trump

Hilarious James Corden/Shaggy cover of "It Wasn't Me" as Mueller & Trump!

"lingering like a fart in a public elevator"

This is the best description of Cohn's departure that I have read:

Mike Pence says making abortion illegal saves lives. History proves the opposite.

Speaking at an event hosted by an anti-abortion group in Nashville on Feb. 27, Vice President Mike Pence delivered a speech highlighting the numerous anti-choice initiatives the Trump administration has launched and suggesting (hoping?) that legal abortion will end “in our time.”
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There’s only one problem: Making abortion illegal will not in fact end abortion in America. Doing so will merely drive it underground, making it unsafe and unregulated, and will result in the needless deaths of women. How’s that for restoring the sanctity of life?
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Because we know what will happen if we make abortion illegal. Before the Supreme Court legalized abortion in its historic Roe v. Wade decision in 1973, scores of women died from illegal abortion care. According to the Guttmacher Institute, a research and policy organization that focuses on reproductive health, the death toll associated with illegal abortions was significant: In 1930, abortion was listed as the official cause of death for almost 2,700 women, or 18% of maternal deaths recorded in that year. In 1965, death-by-illegal-abortion accounted for 17% of all deaths attributed to pregnancy and childbirth that year. And those are just the reported cases.
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Desperation drove up to 1.2 million women per year to terminate their pregnancies in the 1950s and 1960s, even though it meant putting their lives and health at risk. Where there is a will, there’s a way. And this pattern will surely repeat if Pence gets his way.

https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/mike-pence-says-making-abortion-illegal-saves-lives-history-proves-ncna853031

Georgia Violated Deltas First Amendment Rights

If corporations are people, the airline has a free speech case against the state over its stance against the NRA.

On Monday, Georgia Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle lashed out at Delta, announcing he would seek to kill broader tax legislation that also would provide the company a $50 million tax break on jet fuel. He made his rationale clear on Twitter, saying the benefit would not be returned unless Delta “changes its position and fully reinstates its relationship with @NRA.” Cagle concluded: “Corporations cannot attack conservatives and expect us not to fight back.” On Thursday, the Georgia Legislature passed the larger tax measure, now stripped of the jet-fuel cut, and the GOP governor announced he would sign it.
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If the legislature punished Delta by taking away a state benefit because of its stand on the NRA, it would be a clear violation of the First Amendment’s restriction on viewpoint-based discrimination. Should it matter that the tax benefits were new? Probably not. Georgia could not, for example, make admission to a new state college exclusive to NRA supporters. The reason we don’t see many such cases is a matter not of principle but of evidence. There might be a host of reasons why a provision in a proposed bill gets yanked, and courts would not want to assume legislators have unconstitutional motives. But retaliation for a disfavored viewpoint is a constitutional harm. And while it might be difficult to prove sometimes, it is not here. Just reread the lieutenant governor’s tweet.

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2018/03/georgia-violated-deltas-first-amendment-rights.html?via=homepage_taps_top