Jilly_in_VA
Jilly_in_VA's JournalThis Couple Died by Suicide After the DEA Shut Down Their Pain Doctor
It was a Tuesday in early November when federal agents from the Drug Enforcement Administration paid a visit to the office of Dr. David Bockoff, a chronic pain specialist in Beverly Hills. It wasn’t a Hollywood-style raid—there were no shots fired or flash-bang grenades deployed—but the agents left behind a slip of paper that, according to those close to the doctor’s patients, had consequences just as deadly as any shootout.
On Nov. 1, the DEA suspended Bockoff’s ability to prescribe controlled substances, including powerful opioids such as fentanyl. While illicit fentanyl smuggled across the border by Mexican cartels has fueled a record surge in overdoses in recent years, doctors still use the pharmaceutical version during surgeries and for soothing the most severe types of pain. But amid efforts to shut down so-called “pill mills” and other illegal operations, advocates for pain patients say the DEA has gone too far, overcorrecting to the point that people with legitimate needs are blocked from obtaining the medication they need to live without suffering.
One of Bockoff’s patients who relied on fentanyl was Danny Elliott, a 61-year-old native of Warner Robins, Georgia. In March 1991, Elliott was nearly electrocuted to death when a water pump he was using to drain a flooded basement malfunctioned, sending high-voltage shocks through his body for nearly 15 minutes until his father intervened to save his life. Elliott was never the same after the accident, which left him with debilitating, migraine-like headaches. Once a class president and basketball star in high school, he found himself spending days on end in a darkened bedroom, unable to bear sunlight or the sound of the outdoors.
“I have these sensations like my brain is loose inside my skull,” Elliott told me in 2019, when I first interviewed him for the VICE News podcast series Painkiller. “If I turn my head too quickly, left or right, it feels like my brain sloshes around. Literally my eyes burn deep into my skull. My eyes hurt so bad that it hurts to blink.”
After years of trying alternative pain treatments such as acupuncture, along with other types of opioids, around 2002 Elliott found a doctor who prescribed fentanyl, which gave him some relief. But keeping a doctor proved nearly impossible amid the ongoing federal crackdown on opioids. Bockoff, Elliott said, was his third doctor to be shut down by the DEA since 2018. As Elliott described it, each transition meant weeks or months of desperate scrambling to find a replacement, plus excruciating withdrawals due to his physical dependence on opioids, followed by the return of that burning eyeball pit of despair.
https://www.vice.com/en/article/wxnyb9/dea-fentanyl-doctor-patient-suicide
I have worked with chronic pain patients and I believe the DEA is overreaching. There's a difference between them and the doctor-shopping addicts. I know, my ex DIL was one of the latter.
Man dies after catching on fire at Tennessee hospital
A Middle Tennessee woman became a widow on Thanksgiving after she says her husband caught fire while being treated at TriStar Centennial Medical Center.
Kathy Stark has been by her husband’s side for the past 35 years, through sickness and in health. She said Bobby Ray was bedridden for the last seven years, and earlier this month, went to the hospital for bed sores and a foot infection.
Eventually, he was transferred to TriStar Centennial, where Kathy said he coded and staff tried to revive him.
“Then they started the paddles, and it just blew up, everything,” Kathy said. “I saw that and I just burst out.”
Kathy said she saw flames cover her husband’s body.
https://www.wate.com/news/man-dies-after-catching-on-fire-at-nashville-hospital/
Weird, but also a horror story.
Florida's Child Welfare System Is Found to Be Complicit in Sex Trafficking
As the recently reelected Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) continues to demonize drag queens, trans kids, and queer people in general as threats to Florida’s children, a sex trafficking crisis amongst teens in the state is metastasizing under his care.
According to a stunning new report published in the South Florida Sun Sentinel Monday, Florida’s foster care system has for years proven to be a breeding ground for sex trafficking victims, placing vulnerable kids and teens directly in the path of drug use, sexual and physical violence and, often, death. More damning, though, is the revelation that Florida’s elected officials have long been well aware of the crisis and have taken little to no action to save the state’s most at-risk girls.
The Sentinel’s analysis of data from Florida’s Department of Children and Families (DCF) showed that when a girl enters the state’s welfare system, her chances of being sex trafficked increase. Already a “top venue” for trafficking due to high volume of tourists and hotels, Florida has seen alarming increases in reports of child sex trafficking to the Florida Abuse Hotline, with 3,182 reports last year alone. Despite the increased risk, as of last month, the Sentinel reports there are just 18 family foster homes approved to care for trafficking victims in the entire state, and documents reviewed by the Sentinel show the state has for years known that sex traffickers specifically target underaged girls within its care.
Jayden Alexis Frisbee, the Sentinel reported, is one of the girls lost to Florida’s welfare system. She died last year at the age of 16 after she was shuffled between 16 different group foster homes within the span of a year and a half, only to repeatedly run away and fall prey to sex traffickers in the area. After she was beaten, abused, and drugged, she died in a Jacksonville Studio 6 motel bathroom. She had become the state’s responsibility but, following her death, officials took over a month to identify her body.
The insufficient care and concern well documented across the DCF is in part due to the Florida legislature’s 1998 decision to privatize the foster care system. Each county works with a private contractor who then hires subcontractors to run group homes. This vote, the Sentinel explains, took place after years of negative headlines detailing “neglected, abused or missing children” within the foster care system caused outrage amongst the public. The transfer of power to private organizations, then, was a means of “deflect[ing] blame away from the state.”
https://jezebel.com/floridas-child-welfare-system-is-found-to-be-complicit-1849827559
And this surprises anyone exactly how? Look at some of their elected officials...Matty Gaetz, for example
Uvalde mom files a federal lawsuit against police, gunmaker in school massacre
The last conversation Sandra Torres had with her 10-year-old daughter was about her nervous excitement over whether she’d make the all-star softball team. Hours later, Eliahna Torres was one of 19 children and two teachers massacred at their elementary school in Uvalde, Texas.
With little closure and few answers about law enforcement’s 77-minute wait on May 24 in the school hallway rather than confronting the gunman, Sandra Torres filed a federal lawsuit on Monday against police, the school district and the maker of the gun the shooter used.
“My baby never made it out of the school,” she said. “There’s no accountability or transparency. There’s nothing being done.”
The lawsuit accuses the city, the school district and several police departments of a “complete failure” to follow active shooter protocols and violations of the victims’ constitutional rights by “barricading them” inside two classrooms with the killer for more than an hour. The city said it doesn’t comment on pending litigation and the school district and police did not immediately return messages.
Torres is being helped by the legal arm of the group Everytown for Gun Safety. Her suit also names the manufacturer of the AR-style semiautomatic rifle that Salvador Ramos used to fire more than 100 rounds in the horrific mass shooting.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/texas-mom-sues-police-gunmaker-uvalde-school-shooting-rcna59139
Frontier Airlines drops its customer service line
Frontier airlines will no longer let customers call a phone number in order to speak with a live agent. And while the budget airline is known for its cost-cutting measures, most major airlines still operate customer service lines.
Customers will instead have to rely on other ways to contact the airline: a chatbot on its website, a live chat available 24/7, its social media channels and even WhatsApp, according to Frontier spokesperson, Jennifer De La Cruz, who confirmed the news to NPR on Saturday.
The change, said De La Cruz, "enables us to ensure our customers get the information they need as expeditiously and efficiently as possible." She said the airline found that most customers preferred communicating through online channels.
When customers call the airline's now-defunct customer service line, they hear a prerecorded message telling travelers about the other options they have for contacting the airline.
"At Frontier, we offer the lowest fares in the industry by operating our airline as efficiently as possible," the airline's customer service line now replies.
https://www.npr.org/2022/11/26/1139291958/frontier-airlines-drops-its-customer-service-line
Here is your clear "shithouse of the skies" winner for the week!
Researchers hope to give the American chestnut a leg up on climate change
As the earth warms and the precipitation patterns change, trees are expected to migrate north seeking weather they are adapted to. Scientists project trees will need to move faster than their natural abilities through seed spreading.
That’s led some scientists at the University of Vermont to try to jumpstart this process for an already beleaguered tree: the American chestnut.
“We're simultaneously trying to restore the chestnut in our experiment, as well as testing how well it will perform in a future environment if moved a bit farther north,” said Peter Clark, the study’s lead researcher.
After a blight fungus decimated American chestnut trees across the eastern U.S. in the mid-20th century, dedicated naturalists have kept the species alive by breeding hybrids of the American chestnut with the Chinese chestnut.
https://www.wbur.org/news/2022/11/14/research-american-chestnut-tree-climate-change
Now can we have more whining about how this isn't the "original" tree, a la the bison thread?
Ex-Prosecutor Says 7 Words Should Disqualify Pence From Holding Office Again
Seven words that Mike Pence said about declining to appear before the House committee investigating the U.S. Capitol riot should prohibit the former vice president from ever holding public office again, a former federal prosecutor has argued.
In a YouTube video released Thursday, Glenn Kirschner issued a damning critique of Pence’s recent claim that “Congress has no right to my testimony” about the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection.
Kirschner, who was a prosecutor in the U.S. attorney’s office in Washington for more than two decades, said Congress has a legitimate purpose in investigating Donald Trump’s attempted overthrow of the 2020 election result, which indicated that rival Joe Biden would be taking his place in the White House.
Pence ultimately did not go along with the insurrectionist effort, despite pressure from Trump and his supporters — many of whom chanted, “Hang Mike Pence” on the day of the violence.
Pence, a potential 2024 GOP candidate, has “some of the most directly relevant evidence [as] to what happened,” Kirschner continued.
“Let’s be clear: By extension, Mike Pence is saying, ‘The American people have no right to my relevant testimony as Congress goes about trying to craft laws to keep this from ever happening again,’” Kirshner said.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/mike-pence-7-words_n_6381c2e7e4b0e4c77592f76a
Ukrainian women have started learning a crucial war skill: how to fly a drone
Ukrainian women have played a crucial part in their country's resistance to Russia's full-scale invasion. Now, a new school is training women to play a vital new role.
The Female Pilots of Ukraine is the country's first school dedicated to solely teaching women — both civilians as well as those serving in Ukraine's security forces — how to fly drones.
Both the Ukrainian and Russian militaries have been using drones in the war in Ukraine, for reconnaissance and fighting. Ukraine has many women in the military but they rarely work as drone pilots, according to the school's administrators.
The school, which started in Kyiv in August and is privately run, aims to change that.
"We all realize that this is a war of the 21st century," Tatyana Kuznetsova, one of the school's first enrollees, tells NPR during a class in Kyiv's giant Pyrohiv Park.
The seven-year police veteran says she decided to enroll in the free classes to learn new skills "just in case."
https://www.npr.org/2022/11/26/1135633681/ukraine-women-drones-russia-war
Look out, Vlad!
As climate warms, a China planner advocates "sponge cities"
To cushion the impact of extreme weather due to climate change, a Chinese landscape architect has been making the case for China and other countries to create so-called “sponge cities.”
Yu Kongjian, who spoke to The Associated Press in Beijing, uses sweeping language to express his vision for cities that can withstand variable temperatures, drought and heavy rainfall. The challenges for implementing this vision at a time of ambitious economic development in China are multifold.
Yu criticizes much of Asia’s modern infrastructure for being built on ideas imported from Europe, which he says are ill-fitted to the monsoon climate over much of the Asian continent. He points to recent floods that have wreaked havoc in many Asian cities, which he says are caused by this architectural mismatch.
“There’s no resilience at all,” Yu says of the concrete and steel infrastructure of major cities, and of using pipes and channels to funnel away water. “Those are useless, they will fail and continue to fail.”
Instead, Yu proposes using natural resources, or “green infrastructure” to create water-resilient cities. It’s part of a global shift among landscape design and civil engineering professionals toward working more in concert with the natural environment. By creating large spaces to hold water in city centers — such as parks and ponds — stormwater can be retained on site, helping prevent floods, he says. Sponge infrastructure also, in theory, offers ways for water to seep down and recharge groundwater for times of drought.
“The idea of a sponge city is to recover, give water more space,” Yu said.
https://apnews.com/article/floods-entertainment-asia-beijing-climate-and-environment-54f2b3282cad5ce8f165914f38023bdb
Colorado deputies indicted, fired after fatal shooting of man, 22, who called 911 for help
Two officers involved in the fatal shooting of a Colorado man who called 911 for help after his SUV got stuck this summer have been indicted by a county grand jury and fired from their jobs, officials said.
A grand jury on Wednesday delivered an indictment against Clear Creek County Sheriff's deputies Andrew Buen and Kyle Gould, Fifth Judicial District Attorney Heidi McCollum’s office said in a news release.
Buen has been charged with second degree murder, official misconduct and reckless endangerment, while Gould is charged with criminally negligent homicide and reckless endangerment in the fatal shooting of Christian Glass, 22, of Boulder, it said.
Bond was set at $50,000 for Buen and at $2,500 for Gould. No attorney appeared to be listed for either. NBC News contacted a LinkedIn account appearing to belong to Gould for comment but did not immediately receive a response. Contact details could not be found for Buen.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/colorado-deputies-indicted-fired-fatal-shooting-man-22-called-911-help-rcna58645
This happened not too far from where I spent summers as a kid. It creeps me out to think about that.
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