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worldhealthday · 21 days

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Statement by European Commissioner; Mr. Kyriakides on behalf the World Health Day 2024.

“The theme for World Health Day 2024 is ¨My Health My Right”, emphasising that access to quality health care is a fundamental right.

This is the core principle that has shaped the strong European Health Union we have been building since 2020.

Over the past years, the COVID-19 pandemic irreversibly changed the world, testing our societies, our health systems, and our Union, to the limit. The EU as a whole rose to the challenge and built on this experience to emerge stronger as a Union.

Our response to the pandemic showed the power of solidarity and cooperation and the importance of delivering for all citizens, equally. The unprecedented EU Vaccine Strategy ensured that all EU citizens had access to safe and effective vaccines at the same time under the same conditions.

We saw that for a safer, healthier future for every EU citizen, we need stronger, more resilient and agile health systems prepared and equipped for the challenges of the 21stcentury.

This is a Union that reinforces EU health security, so we can be better prepared for future health threats and crises. New rules on serious cross-border health threats enshrined our cooperation in law. The European Medicines Agency and the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control have been reinforced, while the creation of the Health Emergency Preparedness and Response Authority (HERA) will enable us to do more to ensure that EU will respond robustly to health threats in the future.

Our Health Union makes our health systems stronger, putting patients at the centre. Our proposal for a historic reform of the EU's pharmaceutical legislation will ensure timely access to affordable medicines for all citizens, while supporting a thriving industry. The European Health Data Space will enable citizens, researchers and policymakers to harness the full potential of digital health data for the benefit of patients. Europe's Beating Cancer Plan is one of the world's most ambitious and comprehensive blueprints for action against cancer, backed by €4 billion in EU funding. Four years on, it is already making a real difference for millions of cancer patients, families, and carers. Our Comprehensive Approach to Mental Health has put mental and physical health on a par and is working to break the stigma for every citizen living with mental health challenges.

These actions cannot be limited to the EU's borders, and we are investing €4.4 billion to boost health in partner countries up to 2027 through the EU's Global Health Strategy, to deliver better health for people worldwide, advance universal health coverage, and support the work towards a stronger global health architecture. Good public health for every citizen is the very foundation of strong economies and societies around the world.

Recent surveys show that health remains one of the top priorities of European citizens. With the European Health Union, we now have a solid foundation to respond to their expectations in the years ahead, maximising the potential of our Member States and setting us on the path for a healthier, more resilient and more equitable future.

On this World Health Day, let us celebrate this progress and these achievements and let us continue on this path in the years to come for the benefit of everyone everywhere”.

#european commission #my health my right #worldhealthday #statement #Health Emergency Preparedness and Response Authority (HERA)#European Medicines Agency and the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control

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normal-thoughts-official · 5 months

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So apparently some Swiss company found out that Brazilian blood has more immunoglobulin (which is used in some medications made by pharma companies) than European blood, and now international pharma companies are lobbying to change Brazilian law to allow them to use our blood as a resource

There is no current evidence that those things are related, but it just so happens that at the same time there is also another law being discussed that would get rid of "bureaucracy" when it comes to ethics analyses of trials on humans. It would also remove the right, which all brazilians currently have, to access to the medication resulting from the trials they participated in

Both sources are in Portuguese because both news have been recently broke by a Brazilian investigative news agency, but if you don't speak it, you can always use automatic translation

I know there's a lot of fucked up shit happening in the world right now, but please pay attention to medical rights in Brasil right now. Especially if you're European, because virtually every company related to this is from your continent and plans to benefit you above all

ETA: using blood as a resource for these medications is not new; however, current law in brasil only allows that use to come from donated blood (because it comes from the plasma and apparently not all of it is used in blood transfusion; I'm not a doctor so I'm not clear on the details but that's the gist of it) and to be processed and used by Hemobrás, the State-owned company that handles this type of medical technology. The new law would allow for private companies to buy our blood from blood banks for their use. It is worth noting that at least one company has already explicitly stated that they won't be making the resulting medication available in the Brazilian market, so, essentially, they will be taking blood Brazilians donated to help other Brazilians and using it to treat immunocompromised Europeans, to the detriment of immunocompromised Brazilians that need the medicine. In the process, they will be making it harder for our State-owned company to use that same blood, forcing us to import from them and therefore making the medication more expensive. They also want to make it possible for Brazilians to sell their own blood - a deeply ethically questionable practice that is discouraged by the WHO and that has led to HIV outbreaks in Brasil in the past

#i hate it here i hate it here i HATE IT HERE im sick of this shit #social justice #geopolitics #latin america #brasil #brazil #social issues #latine shit

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sayruq · 16 days

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The Erez border crossing, which connects Israel with northern Gaza, remains closed and no humanitarian aid has been allowed to enter the Strip through it, according to Juliette Touma, director of communications for the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA), speaking to EL PAÍS from Jordan. Touma stresses that the announcement last Thursday by the Israeli authorities that they would reopen the crossing remains only “a promise.” The Israeli government implicitly confirmed the information to this newspaper. Supplies to alleviate the plight of Gaza’s population have also not yet begun arrive via the nearby port of Ashdod, 30 kilometers (18 miles) north of the enclave. These two concessions were the main commitments made by the Israeli War Cabinet following a telephone call between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and U.S. President Joe Biden.

This Indian Express article goes into detail about the volume of humanitarian aid entering Gaza

Israel says aid is moving into Gaza more quickly after international pressure to increase access, but the amount is disputed and the United Nations says it is still much less than the bare minimum to meet humanitarian needs. Israel said 419 trucks – the highest since the conflict began – entered on Monday, though the Red Crescent and United Nations gave much lower figures, with the UN saying many were only half full because of Israeli inspection rules.

Aid agencies have complained that Israel is not ensuring enough access for food, medicine and other needed humanitarian supplies and the European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell has accused it of using starvation as a weapon of war. UN humanitarian agency (OCHA) spokesperson Jens Laerke also pointed to severe restrictions on delivery of aid inside Gaza itself last month, saying Israel had denied permission for half the convoys it tried sending to the north in March, with UN aid convoys three times more likely to be refused than any other.

An increase in aid flows into Gaza over recent days has also been noted by Red Crescent officials in Egypt, who said more than 350 trucks had crossed from there into Gaza on Monday and 258 on Sunday. That was much more than in recent weeks, when the number was usually fewer than 200, they said. However UNRWA, the main United Nations agency in Gaza, said 223 trucks had entered on Monday, fewer than half the 500 trucks it says are required daily.In its daily situation report on Tuesday, UNRWA said “there has been no significant change in the volume of humanitarian supplies entering Gaza or improved access to the north”.

#yemen #jerusalem #tel aviv #current events #palestine #free palestine #gaza #free gaza #news on gaza #palestine news #news update #war news #war on gaza #famine #gaza genocide #genocide #genocide joe #joe biden

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fatehbaz · 3 months

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hi! SUPER interesting excerpt on ants and empire; adding it to my reading list. have you ever read "mosquito empires," by john mcneill?

Yea, I've read it. (Mosquito Empires: Ecology and War in the Greater Caribbean, 1620-1914, basically about influence of environment and specifically insect-borne disease on colonial/imperial projects. Kinda brings to mind Centering Animals in Latin American History [Few and Tortorici, 2013] and the exploration of the centrality of ecology/plants to colonialism in Plants and Empire: Colonial Bioprospecting in the Atlantic World [Schiebinger, 2007].)

If you're interested: So, in the article we're discussing, Rohan Deb Roy shows how Victorian/Edwardian British scientists, naturalists, academics, administrators, etc., used language/rhetoric to reinforce colonialism while characterizing insects, especially termites in India and elsewhere in the tropics, as "Goths"; "arch scourge of humanity"; "blight of learning"; "destroying hordes"; and "the foe of civilization". [Rohan Deb Roy. “White ants, empire, and entomo-politics in South Asia.” The Historical Journal. October 2019.] He explores how academic and pop-sci literature in the US and Britain participated in racist dehumanization of non-European people by characterizing them as "uncivilized", as insects/animals. (This sort of stuff is summarized by Neel Ahuja, describing interplay of race, gender, class, imperialism, disease/health, anthropomorphism. See Ahuja's “Postcolonial Critique in a Multispecies World.”)

In a different 2018 article on "decolonizing science," Deb Roy also moves closer to the issue of mosquitoes, disease, hygiene, etc. explored in Mosquito Empires. Deb Roy writes: 'Sir Ronald Ross had just returned from an expedition to Sierra Leone. The British doctor had been leading efforts to tackle the malaria that so often killed English colonists in the country, and in December 1899 he gave a lecture to the Liverpool Chamber of Commerce [...]. [H]e argued that "in the coming century, the success of imperialism will depend largely upon success with the microscope."''

Deb Roy also writes elsewhere about "nonhuman empire" and how Empire/colonialism brutalizes, conscripts, employs, narrates other-than-human creatures. See his book Malarial Subjects: Empire, Medicine and Nonhumans in British India, 1820-1909 (published 2017).

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Like Rohan Deb Roy, Jonathan Saha is another scholar with a similar focus (relationship of other-than-human creatures with British Empire's projects in Asia). Among his articles: "Accumulations and Cascades: Burmese Elephants and the Ecological Impact of British Imperialism." Transactions of the Royal Historical Society. 2022. /// “Colonizing elephants: animal agency, undead capital and imperial science in British Burma.” BJHS Themes. British Society for the History of Science. 2017. /// "Among the Beasts of Burma: Animals and the Politics of Colonial Sensibilities, c. 1840-1940." Journal of Social History. 2015. /// And his book Colonizing Animals: Interspecies Empire in Myanmar (published 2021).

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Related spirit/focus. If you liked the termite/India excerpt, you might enjoy checking out this similar exploration of political/imperial imagery of bugs a bit later in the twentieth century: Fahim Amir. “Cloudy Swords” e-flux Journal Issue #115. February 2021.

Amir explores not only insect imagery, specifically caricatures of termites in discourse about civilization (like the Deb Roy article about termites in India), but Amir also explores the mosquito/disease aspect invoked by your message (Mosquito Empires) by discussing racially segregated city planning and anti-mosquito architecture in British West Africa and Belgian Congo, as well as anti-mosquito campaigns of fascist Italy and the ascendant US empire. German cities began experiencing a non-native termite infestation problem shortly after German forces participated in violent suppression of resistance in colonial Africa. Meanwhile, during anti-mosquito campaigns in the Panama Canal zone, US authorities imposed forced medical testing of women suspected of carrying disease. Article features interesting statements like: 'The history of the struggle against the [...] mosquito reads like the history of capitalism in the twentieth century: after imperial, colonial, and nationalistic periods of combatting mosquitoes, we are now in the NGO phase, characterized by shrinking [...] health care budgets, privatization [...].' I've shared/posted excerpts before, which I introduce with my added summary of some of the insect-related imagery: “Thousands of tiny Bakunins”. Insects "colonize the colonizers". The German Empire fights bugs. Fascist ants, communist termites, and the “collectivism of shit-eating”. Insects speak, scream, and “go on rampage”.

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In that Deb Roy article, there is a section where we see that some Victorian writers pontificated on how "ants have colonies and they're quite hard workers, just like us!" or "bugs have their own imperium/domain, like us!" So that bugs can be both reviled and also admired. On a similar note, in the popular imagination, about anthropomorphism of Victorian bugs, and the "celebrated" "industriousness" and "cleverness" of spiders, there is: Claire Charlotte McKechnie. “Spiders, Horror, and Animal Others in Late Victorian Empire Fiction.” Journal of Victorian Culture. December 2012. She also addresses how Victorian literature uses natural science and science fiction to process anxiety about imperialism. This British/Victorian excitement at encountering "exotic" creatures of Empire, and popular discourse which engaged in anthropormorphism, is explored by Eileen Crist's Images of Animals: Anthropomorphism and Animal Mind and O'Connor's The Earth on Show: Fossils and the Poetics of Popular Science, 1802-1856.

Related anthologies include a look at other-than-humans in literature and popular discourse: Gothic Animals: Uncanny Otherness and the Animal With-Out (Heholt and Edmunson, 2020). There are a few studies/scholars which look specifically at "monstrous plants" in the Victorian imagination. Anxiety about gender and imperialism produced caricatures of woman as exotic anthropomorphic plants, as in: “Murderous plants: Victorian Gothic, Darwin and modern insights into vegetable carnivory" (Chase et al., Botanical Journal of the Linnean Society, 2009). Special mention for the work of Anna Boswell, which explores the British anxiety about imperialism reflected in their relationships with and perceptions of "strange" creatures and "alien" ecosystems, especially in Aotearoa. (Check out her “Anamorphic Ecology, or the Return of the Possum.” Transformations. 2018.)

And then bridging the Victorian anthropomorphism of bugs with twentieth-century hygiene campaigns, exploring "domestic sanitation" there is: David Hollingshead. “Women, insects, modernity: American domestic ecologies in the late nineteenth century.” Feminist Modernist Studies. August 2020. (About the cultural/social pressure to protect "the home" from bugs, disease, and "invasion".)

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In fields like geography, history of science, etc., much has been said/written about how botany was the key imperial science/field, and there is the classic quintessential tale of the British pursuit of cinchona from Latin America, to treat mosquito-borne disease among its colonial administrators in Africa, India, and Southeast Asia. In other words: Colonialism, insects, plants in the West Indies shaped and influenced Empire and ecosystems in the East Indies, and vice versa. One overview of this issue from Early Modern era through the Edwardian era, focused on Britain and cinchona: Zaheer Baber. "The Plants of Empire: Botanic Gardens, Colonial Power and Botanical Knowledge." May 2016. Elizabeth DeLoughrey and other scholars of the Caribbean, "the postcolonial," revolutionary Black Atlantic, etc. have written about how plantation slavery in the Caribbean provided a sort of bounded laboratory space. (See Britt Rusert's "Plantation Ecologies: The Experiential Plantation [...].") The argument is that plantations were already of course a sort of botanical laboratory for naturalizing and cultivating valuable commodity plants, but they were also laboratories to observe disease spread and to practice containment/surveillance of slaves and laborers. See also Chakrabarti's Bacteriology in British India: laboratory medicine and the tropics (2012). Sharae Deckard looks at natural history in imperial/colonial imagination and discourse (especially involving the Caribbean, plantations, the sea, and the tropics) looking at "the ecogothic/eco-Gothic", Edenic "nature", monstrous creatures, exoticism, etc. Kinda like Grove's discussion of "tropical Edens" in the colonial imagination of Green Imperialism.

Dante Furioso's article "Sanitary Imperialism" (from e-flux's Sick Architecture series) provides a summary of US entomology and anti-mosquito campaigns in the Caribbean, and how "US imperial concepts about the tropics" and racist pathologization helped influence anti-mosquito campaigns that imposed racial segregation in the midst of hard labor, gendered violence, and surveillance in the Panama Canal zone. A similar look at manipulation of mosquito-borne disease in building empire: Gregg Mitman. “Forgotten Paths of Empire: Ecology, Disease, and Commerce in the Making of Liberia’s Plantation Economy.” Environmental History. 2017. (Basically, some prominent medical schools/departments evolved directly out of US military occupation and industrial plantations of fruit/rubber/sugar corporations; faculty were employed sometimes simultaneously by fruit companies, the military, and academic institutions.) This issue is also addressed by Pratik Chakrabarti in Medicine and Empire, 1600-1960 (2014).

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Meanwhile, there are some other studies that use non-human creatures (like a mosquito) to frame imperialism. Some other stuff that comes to mind about multispecies relationships to empire:

Lawrence H. Kessler. “Entomology and Empire: Settler Colonial Science and the Campaign for Hawaiian Annexation.” Arcadia (Spring 2017)

No Wood, No Kingdom: Political Ecology in the English Atlantic (Keith Pluymers)

Archie Davies. "The racial division of nature: Making land in Recife". Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers Volume 46, Issue 2, pp. 270-283. November 2020.

Yellow Fever, Race, and Ecology in Nineteenth-Century New Orleans (Urmi Engineer Willoughby, 2017)

Pasteur’s Empire: Bacteriology and Politics in France, Its Colonies, and the World (Aro Velmet, 2022)

Tom Brooking and Eric Pawson. “Silences of Grass: Retrieving the Role of Pasture Plants in the Development of New Zealand and the British Empire.” The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History. August 2007.

Under Osman's Tree: The Ottoman Empire, Egypt, and Environmental History (Alan Mikhail)

The Herds Shot Round the World: Native Breeds and the British Empire, 1800-1900 (Rebecca J.H. Woods, 2017)

Imperial Bodies in London: Empire, Mobility, and the Making of British Medicine, 1880-1914 (Kristen Hussey, 2021)

Red Coats and Wild Birds: How Military Ornithologists and Migrant Birds Shaped Empire (Kirsten Greer, 2020)

Animality and Colonial Subjecthood in Africa: The Human and Nonhuman Creatures of Nigeria (Saheed Aderinto, 2022)

Imperial Creatures: Humans and Other Animals in Colonial Singapore, 1819-1942 (Timothy P. Barnard, 2019)

Biotic Borders: Transpacific Plant and Insect Migration and the Rise of Anti-Asian Racism in America, 1890-1950 (Jeannie N. Shinozuka)

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workersolidarity · 1 month

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[ 📹 Scenes of massive destruction and smoke filled rooms resulting from a Zionist missile strike on the Al-Helu Hospital, adjacent to the Al-Shifa Medical Complex in the Al-Rimal neighborhood of Gaza City. Patients being treated who were in the building at the time of the attack are escorted out to safety.]

🇮🇱⚔️🇵🇸 🚀🚀🚀🏘️💥🚑 🚨

9 NEW MASSACRES OF PALESTINIAN FAMILIES ON DAY 169 OF "ISRAEL'S" ONGOING WAR OF GENOCIDE IN GAZA

On the 169th day of "Israel's" ongoing war of genocide against the Palestinian population of the Gaza Strip, the Israeli occupation forces (IOF) committed a total of 9 new massacres of Palestinian families, resulting in the deaths of at least 82 Palestinians, and wounding another 110 others, over the previous 24-hours.

Local ambulance and civil defense personnel remain unable to reach many of the victims, who remain trapped under the rubble of local buildings and residential homes, while the IOF continues heavily bombing and shelling in the vicinity of the sites of "Israeli" massacres.

Even as the attacks on Palestinian civilians by the occupation army increased, IOF warplanes continued to fire missiles into southern Lebanon, bombing several sites over the last day.

According to reports, Zionist warplanes bombed the villages of Ayta ash-Shaab, Al-Khiyam, and Al-Taybeh, while occupation artillery forces shelled the towns of Mari, Aitaroun and Houla in southern Lebanon.

At the same time, occupation reconnaissance aircraft flew over the coastal Lebanese city of Tyre, as well as Bint Jbeil and over the Litani River, while also dropping flares over nearby border villages.

Meanwhile, the genocide in the Gaza Strip continues unabated, with IOF aircraft resuming and even intensifying airstrikes targeting nearly every sector of the Palestinian enclave.

In just one example of the occupation's war crimes, Zionist artillery forces shelled a residential home belonging to the Al-Qouqa family, northwest of Gaza City, resulting in the deaths of at least 10 civilians.

Similarly, an "Israeli" drone fired a missile towards a group of civilians in the Al-Zana neighborhood, east of Khan Yunis, located in south-central Gaza, killing at least three civilians who's bodies were taken to the European Gaza Hospital.

In the south of Gaza, occupation warplanes bombed the Abu Thabet family residence in the Nasr neighborhood of Rafah, martyring no less than 8 civilians and wounding several others.

In the meantime, the "Israeli" occupation army resumed its bombardment of the Al-Rimal neighborhood, north of Gaza City, in the vicinity of the Al-Shifa Medical Complex, firing several missiles alongside intense artillery shelling, which witnesses said led to thick, black smoke rising from the complex and nearby buildings.

Local medical sources with Al-Shifa Hospital told Palestinian news agency WAFA that three civilian patients had died as a result of the occupation army's fifth consecutive day of blockading and besieging of the hospital, preventing crucial medical supplies, medicines, food and fuel from reaching the complex. Families of the hospital's patients appealed to the media and occupation authorities to allow the transfer of sick or wounded relatives, in desperate need of proper medical care and treatments, to other hospitals not under attack.

Elsewhere, Zionist air forces bombed the residential home of the Abu Eisha family in Deir al-Balah, in the central Gaza Strip, while at the same time, occupation airstrikes also targeted homes and buildings in the Nuseirat Refugee Camp, as well as several sites in Jabalia and Beit Lahia in Gaza's north.

In Deir al-Balah, occupation aircraft bombed a residential home east of the city, in the central Gaza Strip, wounding a woman, while "Israel's" intense bombardment also targeted the Al-Baraka neighborhood, killing several civilians and wounding a number of others.

Simultaneously, Zionist soldiers fired live bullets towards displaced Palestinian civilians in the Al-Mawasi neighborhood near Al-Qarara, northwest of the city of Khan Yunis, wounding dozens of people.

Another "Israeli" occupation fighter jet bombed a two-story residential building in the Al-Mirage area, north of Rafah city, martyring at least five Palestinians and wounding several others.

Air forces with the occupation army also bombarded several sites in Al-Qarara, dealing significant damage to the city, according to local witnesses.

While in yet another crime, Zionist occupation forces bombed a site near the Mediterranean beach, north of Rafah, killing at least one Palestinian man who was transported to the Al-Kuwaiti Hospital.

At the same time, occupation aircraft and artillery shelling targeted the Ayad family home in the Al-Shati Refugee Camp, west of Gaza City, killing two civilians and wounding a number of others.

Occupation artillery forces also resumed the bombardment of the eastern neighborhoods of Khan Yunis, in the southern Gaza Strip, while bombing and shelling also intensified in the Nuseirat Camp in central Gaza.

At least one civilian shot by an occupation sniper in the village of Mughragha, north of Al-Nuseirat.

In the southern Gazan city of Rafah, local paramedic crews recovered the bodies of four martyred children as a result of "Israel's" intensifying bombing of the city, while just north of Rafah, occupation aircraft bombarded a residential home inhabited by a local family, resulting in 5 deaths and 7 injuries.

In another drone strike, an occupation quadcopter fired a missile towards agricultural lands adjacent to the municipal stadium in the Al-Mawasi neighborhood, west of Rafah city, murdering displaced 22 year-old Abdul Karim Saeed Daoud Talib, who was a resident of Jabalia, and wounding another six others.

As a result of "Israel's" ongoing war of genocide against the Palestinian population of the Gaza Strip, the endlessly rising death toll has now exceeded 32'070 martyrs, more than 25'000 of which being women and children according to the United States Pentagon, while another 74'298 civilians have been wounded in "Israeli" attacks on Gaza, with the current round of Zionist aggression beginning on October 7th, 2023.

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pressnewsagencyllc · 15 days

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European Union watchdog says it found no link to weight loss drugs, suicidal thoughts

April 12 (UPI) — The European Union pharmaceutical watchdog said on Friday that diabetes and weight loss drugs like Ozempic and Wegovy are not tied to arise in suicidal thoughts and self-injury after a nine-month review of those and other drugs. The European Medicines Agency examined the treatment called GLP-1, the class that mocks a hormone inside the gut to curb a person’s appetite. The drugs…

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#diabetes drugs #diabetes treatment #European Medicines Agency #European Union #Ozempic #Suicidal thoughts

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religion-is-a-mental-illness · 3 months

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By: Bernard Lane

Published: Jan 5, 2024

The World Health Organisation’s new guideline project for transgender health has ignored the intense international debate about youth gender medicine and overlooked key reformist experts, according to the prominent American gender clinician Dr Erica Anderson.

“[The WHO] seem to be oblivious to the issues with transgender healthcare, particularly as they are playing out in the developed world,” she told GCN, adding that the agency had failed to draw on the expertise of leading clinicians who come informed by systematic reviews of the evidence base.

Dr Anderson, a “gender-affirming” clinician and past president of the United States Professional Association for Transgender Health, said none of the 21 panel members chosen by the WHO to develop the new guideline seemed qualified to address the issue of social influence as a factor in the explosion of trans and non-binary identities.

“Social media and peer influence have had a huge impact upon the rise in minority sexual and gender identities,” she said.

“Previous research done on prior cohorts of youth cannot account for the rise in such identities. We may need a new biopsychosocial epidemiology in this social media era.”

The WHO’s panel is due to make crucial decisions about development of the guideline at meetings in Geneva on February 19-21.

One of the expert clinicians overlooked by the WHO, Finland’s Professor Riittakerttu Kaltiala, an early adopter of paediatric gender transition and now a reformist critic, said she was “really worried that the WHO—which should represent responsibility for the health of all people—appears to have committed itself to a fully political initiative promoting treatments based on no evidence.”

“The WHO initiative openly seeks to promote medical gender reassignment, not to find out what is [the quality of the] evidence base, in the best interests particularly of adolescents who, in increasing numbers, problematise their gender.

“Several countries have carried out their own systematic reviews after Finland did so in 2019-2020, and all have concluded that particularly the gender-identity based, body-modifying medical treatments on minors have not been researched appropriately, lack evidence of beneficial effects and have great potential to harm.”

Professor Kaltiala told GCN that the WHO “should seek to balance this overheated and over-politicised field of medicine, not go along with political initiatives. Medicine must be based on science, not on politics.”

On December 18, the WHO announced the guideline project and the final seven members of the panel. Public comment on issues such as conflicts of interest affecting panel members ends on January 8.

A near identical announcement of the WHO project—together with biographies of the first 14 panel members—was issued on June 28, also with a short period for public comment. Both announcements came during holidays in affected parts of the world.

Trans rights activists should “get ahead of the government agenda and the media story” by early intervention in policymaking, according to a notorious 2019 report spon.sored by queer lobby IGLYO, the Thomson Reuters media foundation and law firm Dentons.

The report also warns activists to limit “press coverage and exposure” because it seems that “public campaigning has been detrimental to progress, as much of the general public is not well informed about trans issues, and therefore misinterpretation can arise.”

“It has become a throwaway line in some media coverage of transgender care in the United States that even liberal European countries are restricting care for transgender children. But this is a misleading notion. No democracy in Europe has banned, let alone criminalised, care, as many states have done in the US. What has happened is that under increasing pressure from the right, politicians in some countries have begun to limit access to certain kinds of treatment for children…”—Journalist Lydia Polgreen, opinion column, The New York Times, 1 December 2023

“Polgreen is repeating [misinformation in The Times] about what’s motivating European health systems to restrict kids’ access to gender [prescriptions]. It’s not ‘pressure from the right,’ it’s [systematic] reviews of the evidence finding it too weak to justify high risks, e.g., to brain [development], sexual function, fertility.”—Journalist Jennifer Block (author of the BMJ investigation feature on the rise of youth gender dysphoria), tweet, 31 December 2023

Who’s pushing back?

The new WHO guideline is to cover “gender-affirming care, including hormones” and “health policies that support gender-inclusive care”, among other aims such as “legal recognition of self-determined gender identity [known as self-ID].”

The timing and activist language of the WHO announcement, together with the makeup of the panel membership, have mobilised organisations and individuals worried about the international spike in medicalised gender change that disproportionately affects teenage girls who present with atypical gender dysphoria.

A fast-growing petition calls on the WHO to cancel next month’s meetings in Geneva; deal with conflicts of interest and bias affecting the guideline development panel; consider hiring an independent methodologist; and include expert members alert to the potential harm of gender-affirming interventions, as well as detransitioners.

At the time of writing, the petition had more than 5,000 signatures, including many health professionals, as well as detransitioners and LGB groups critical of Queer Theory-driven trans activism. Also signed up is the LGBT Courage Coalition, which was founded by gender clinic whistleblower Jamie Reed and trans man Aaron Kimberly.

“The current panel is highly biased in favour of ‘gender-affirming’ approaches, with an absence of critical perspectives,” says the petition, which was reportedly organised by an informal coalition of those concerned about the safety of the gender-affirming model.

The petition says: “The majority of the [WHO] panel members have expressed strong views in favour of hormonal and surgical interventions for transition, dismissed known and potential risks associated with these interventions, and denigrated psychotherapeutic approaches as [unethical] ‘conversion therapy’.”

“The panel does not include any experts in child and adolescent development or any critics of the affirmation model. Detransitioners and desisters are also excluded. Given the panel’s composition, there is strong reason to believe that the guideline will be similarly biased.

“The final composition of the panel was only announced on December 18 but, according to the WHO, this group will evaluate the evidence and formulate recommendations across a range of topics including healthcare, clinician education, health policies, and laws by February 21.

“To call this a rushed procedure would be a dramatic understatement. Compare this to the process embarked upon by the Cass Review in the UK, for example—a multi-year effort to address the health care needs of just one patient demographic (under-18s) within a single country (England).”

Video: ‘One of the people on that [WHO] panel has said we should be stopping all children’s puberty, we should give all children puberty blockers, so that they can make a decision, when they are old enough, what [gender] they want to be’—Helen Joyce of the group Sex Matters; from the 4:06 time mark

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No panacea

A 2023 study by Professor Kaltiala and colleagues using a Finnish healthcare register to follow up patients after gender reassignment delivered results contradicting the familiar claim that the mental health problems of troubled young people will resolve after medical transition.

“The number of people contacting specialised [gender clinics] has increased vastly since the 1990s… and their mean age has become steadily younger,” say the authors of the paper in the journal European Psychiatry.

“Along with this, their needs for psychiatric treatment have increased. Both before and after contacting [the clinic], they present with many more common psychiatric needs than do their matched population controls, even when medical [gender reassignment] interventions are carried out.

“Among people seeking [gender reassignment], psychiatric needs have to be carefully assessed and addressed… This vastly increased pursuit of [gender reassignment] with increases in psychiatric comorbidities warrants cautious assessment of the timeliness of medical [gender reassignment] and of other [non-gender] treatment needs that may be more urgent.”

The WHO’s statement says its “new guideline will provide evidence and implementation guidance on health sector interventions aimed at increasing access and utilisation of quality and respectful health services by trans and gender diverse people [Emphasis added].”

Asked about criticism of the guideline project, a WHO spokesman said “this is a notice phase for the Guideline Development Group [or panel] process, so WHO can solicit feedback”.

“All views will be weighed on the composition of the GDG as part of the guideline development process,” he said.

He said WHO guidelines were “always based on balancing of available evidence, human rights principles, consideration of harms and benefits and inputs of end users and beneficiaries.”

He told GCN that the WHO’s trans health guideline would be “focused on adults only”. He did not reply when asked for documentary proof of this; the WHO announcements simply refer to “people”.

“It is probable that the few cases currently before the courts in the United States, Australia and elsewhere, will be the beginning of a torrent of malpractice suits against doctors and surgeons given the massive increase in children and adolescents attending gender clinics. The WHO guideline therefore must address comprehensively the issues that medical practitioners should consider, and the precautions they should take, to avoid a conclusion by a court that the doctor has engaged in malpractice.”—Queensland University Emeritus Professor of Law Patrick Parkinson, submission to the WHO guideline project, January 2024

Conflicts aplenty

In its statement of concern about the WHO project, the Society for Evidence-based Gender Medicine (SEGM) says: “Since adolescents and young adults are the largest and fastest-growing group of transgender-identified individuals, it is likely that the WHO guidelines will apply to this vulnerable group as a target population.”

SEGM says the language of the WHO announcement “does not appear to be neutral.”

“It states the goal of ‘increasing access and utilisation’ of, presumably, gender-affirmative interventions by ‘trans and gender diverse people,’ and declares the goal of legal recognition of ‘self-determined gender identity’,” SEGM says.

“This suggests that the decision to promote gender transition in the respective societal arenas (medical, policy, legal) has already been made before the group has even met to review and interpret the evidence—a step that must both precede and inform the guideline recommendations.”

SEGM says that “even a cursory review” of the guideline panel membership reveals multiple conflicts of interest, including authorship of past papers that would have to be assessed by the panel; membership or past leadership roles in gender-affirming lobby the World Professional Association for Transgender Health; intellectual bias towards gender affirmation; and a record of strong opinions on issues relevant to the guideline and its evidence base.

As an example, SEGM cites a claim by an Australian member of the panel, Teddy Cook, who is a trans man and former vice-president of the Australian Professional Association for Trans Health (AusPATH). He is also director of LGBTQ+ Community Health for ACON, the former gay rights lobby responsible for the TransHub website.

In 2021, Mr Cook wrote: “The actual side effects of gender-affirming medical care, for those who can access it, include a significantly improved quality of life, significantly better health and wellbeing outcomes, a dramatic decrease in distress, depression and anxiety and a substantial increase of gender euphoria and trans joy... We are not at risk of harm by affirming our gender.”

This is a mere opinion unsupported by the evidence, according to SEGM. (GCN sought comment from ACON and Mr Cook.)

AusPATH has been critical of the Cass review for “questioning an affirmative approach to gender-affirming care”. The AusPATH board says it does “not support ‘exploratory therapy’ which is often used as a euphemism for conversion therapy.”

“[Given the long waiting list, we] prioritise young people who are in the youth forensic system, young people in out-of-home care and young people who are from Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities”—Australian psychiatrist Dr Tram Nguyen, co-head of the Royal Children’s Hospital gender-affirming clinic, media interview, The Age, 30 December 2023

Blots on the escutcheon

Gender-affirming clinician Dr Anderson said she was worried about the WHO making “a new unforced error regarding transgender healthcare” and cited the agency’s “tarnished reputation” after the Covid pandemic and recent scrutiny of its record in the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip.

“Unlike with Covid and HIV/Aids, we have no virus nor well-documented aetiology [for gender dysphoria],” she told GCN.

“The tools of epidemiology and virology will not yield immediate answers on how to address growing controversies with gender-questioning youth.

“Blistering hot disputes over self-ID [gender] have spilled over into major institutions like schools, prisons, sports, and the healthcare delivery system.”

Dr Anderson said it was the WHO that had “set this in motion [by] moving trans identification, as ‘gender incongruence’, out of psychiatry over to sexual health [in the agency’s diagnostic manual the International Classification of Diseases, ICD-11].”

“While this step is a laudable improvement in depathologising trans identities, the hard work of applying such a change across society and its institutions remains to be done.

“I’m deeply sceptical that, without taking time to think, the WHO can do what needs to be done, let alone win support across the world.

“I try to help gender-questioning people every day. I’ve been concerned about the disputes and controversies for years. Now I’m worried that the WHO will make a mess of it.”

“In working with minors, the affirmative approach that I’ve always used involves a lot of mental health therapy, assessment, exploration to really individualise the treatment to the specific young person, to involve the parents in the process, to look through a developmental lens, to really understand all the other complex factors, and the medical [option] was a part of it, if and when it was appropriate for that individual child, but in my experience over the years, it wasn’t always the main focus.”—Dr Laura Edwards-Leeper, who was the founding psychologist at the Boston Children’s Hospital gender clinic, The Umbrella Hour podcast interview, December 2023

Missed opportunity

Dr Anderson noted the absence from the WHO guideline project of leading reformists of youth gender care such as the United Kingdom’s Dr Hilary Cass, Finland’s Professor Kaltiala and Sweden’s Professor Mikael Landén; each being guided by systematic reviews of the (weak and uncertain) evidence base.

To this list Dr Anderson added America’s Dr Edwards-Leeper, Dr Scott Leibowitz and herself as clinicians “at the forefront of youth gender issues” but overlooked by the WHO.

In The Washington Post in 2021, Drs Edwards-Leeper and Anderson, both clinical psychologists who use the gender-affirming approach, expressed concern about a surge in cases of rushed medicalisation of troubled minors without careful exploration of their non-gender problems.

That same year, Dr Anderson talked to journalist Abigail Shrier, author of the book Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters, about her concern that today’s teenage female patients might need a different therapeutic response than the classic male patients with onset of gender dysphoria in early childhood.

This is what institutional ideological capture looks like.

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maaarine · 4 months

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Amsterdam sex workers protest against plan to move red light district (The Guardian, Oct 19 2023)

"Halsema has long opposed the centuries-old red light district, known as De Wallen, where sex workers stand in windows waiting for customers.

The city council has earmarked three possible sites for the erotic centre, which would have 100 rooms for sex workers.

One sex worker, who identified herself as Lucie, dismissed the idea as “one big gentrification project”.

She said: “It’s mainly about combating the crowds in De Wallen, but that is not the sex workers’ fault so I don’t see why we should be punished for it.”

The European Medicines Agency has been caught up in the controversy after it emerged that one possible site for the erotic centre was near its headquarters.

The EMA voiced outrage, saying it could affect the safety of people working late at the office. (…)

Moving the red light district is Amsterdam’s latest effort to transform its image as a party capital.

It has also launched a “stay away” campaign to discourage stag nights and boozy tourists, which caused a stir in Britain after the council said it would start by targeting British men aged 18 to 35."

#article #weaker sex

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allthebrazilianpolitics · 11 months

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Brazilian regulators greenlight HIV prevention drug

Brazil’s federal health regulator Anvisa has approved injectable cabotegravir, a pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) medication for HIV. The registration was published in the official gazette on June 5.

Injectable cabotegravir has been recommended as a preventative treatment for HIV by the European Medicines Agency (EMA) since October 2020. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved it in late 2021 for use in at-risk adults and adolescents over at least 35 kilograms for pre-exposure prophylaxis to reduce the risk of sexually acquired HIV.

In 2022, the World Health Organization also recommended that member countries approve injectable cabotegravir as PrEP for HIV.

#brazil #politics #healthcare #hiv aids #brazilian politics #anvisa #mod nise da silveira #image description in alt

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vbadabeep · 10 months

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heliosphoenix · 4 months

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State of the Planet: 2023 Edition

Here we are once again. Hours to go until the new year is upon us. Even though when you read this you may very well be in the future, it's time once again to use the few hours we have left in 2023 to take a look at the state of the planet. And...what a state it is. I said last year that 2022 may have very well been the inflection point for this decade, the moment that the 2020's truly began to come into their own. I think that's held true for this year, even though it still feels like folks are trying to find their feet in some aspects. But even in all this confusion and uncertainty, there is still progress to be had. So let's take a look back at some of the good things that happened this year:

The European Parliment commited to ending the sale of petrol and diesel fueled vehicles in the EU by 2035 in an effort to push the adoption of electric vehicles.

The High Seas Treaty was signed by the member states of the UN, this treaty commits to the conservation of 30% of the world's oceans by 2030.

The ozone hole continues to shrink, projections have it on track to recover to 1980's levels by 2050.

Finland became the 31st member of NATO.

The World Health Organization declared that COVID-19 and Monkeypox are no longer a global health emergencies.

The first synthetic human embryo was created from the use of stem cells.

The African Union became the 21st permanent member of the G20 (wouldn't it be G21 now?).

Katalin Karikó & Drew Weissman won the Nobel Prize in medicine for their contributions towards the development of mRNA vaccines against COVID-19.

The FDA approved of a treatment for sickle cell disease involving the use of the gene-editing technique Crispr.

Scientists announced the ability to use AI to decode people's thoughts from brain scans.

King Charles III ascended to the throne in the UK.

Pope Francis decreed that Roman Catholic priests would be allowed to bless same-sex marraiges.

Mexico decriminalized abortion at the federal level.

Despite projections of a recession, the United States economy experienced it's biggest growth since before the pandemic, adding 2.5 million jobs and inflation decreasing to 3.1%.

Spain won the Women's World Cup for the first time in a 1-0 victory over England.

SpaceX's fully stacked Starship flew twice this year, the largest rocket to ever fly (now if only they can get it to stop exploding).

The Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (JUICE) was launched by the European Space Agency, it's expected to arrive at Jupiter in 2031.

The European Ariane 5 rocket flew its 117th and final mission.

India's Chandrayaan-3 landed at the Moon's south pole, the first spacecraft to do so.

Oppenheimer and Barbie released the same day in theaters and the internet had a lot of fun with that.

Michigan went 13-0 agian and won their third straight Big Ten championship (BEAT BAMA!)

The Pistons actually won a game before the end of the year.

Remember all that? It's okay if you didn't. But once again, this is where I'm at right now.

You are in the future. Every single word on this post is already confined to the history books. How you remember this year is ultimately up to you, but keep in mind that the reason I make these posts is a counterpoint to the many forces out there who have a lot to gain if everyone is under the impression that everything is always terrible all the time.

And that leads me to my word of the year. It's a bit unusual but I think it fits:

The word of the year is: Perception.

At our core, all of us are truth seekers. Whether it's objective truth or personal truth, we all want to find it. One of the benefits of the internet age that, in my opinion, gets taken for granted is that we now have more information available to us than at any time in human history. Our ancestors had to deal with incomplete and contradictory information, but now we can find out pretty much anything in a matter of seconds.

But with that information comes a host of issues. We unfortunately live in an age where a commitment to objective truth is being overshadowed by a desire for personal truth. We're putting less emphasis on what is true and more on what we want to be true. Unfortunately, as Carl Sagan once said, our preferences do not determine what is true.

And there are those who seek to exploit this. There are people in this world that are willing to alter your own perception on how things are. But not to benefit you, but to benefit them. They wish to take advantage of your desire for your own beliefs to be validated for time evermore and turn that against you, so that they can create a better world for themselves even at your own expense.

But you can stop them. All you have to do is be aware that perception doesn't always equal reality.

2024 will be a consequential year. For one thing, it's an election year in the United States which means the stakes are high enough as is. There will be a lot of consequential events over the next 366 days (yay for leap years!), and a lot of people that you've never met will be trying to tell you how to think and what to believe.

Remember that at the end of the day, the most important values are the ones you hold dear. Just because something gets a lot of engagement on your socials doesn't mean it's the best way to contextualize something. Don't allow your beliefs and values to be compromised for the sake of fitting in with trends or trying to cash in on some vague notion of importance; especially when there's people trying to exploit that at your expense.

The first step to healthy civic engagement is a body politic that is informed and questioning. It will do you no harm to read up on whatever topic is trending on the socials. It will only make you informed and then you will be able to decide if a position or a policy is truly the right one for you, based on what you hold to be important.

Knowledge can be scary at times. It may cause us to reevaluate our position, as well as come to realize that something we felt or believed or even wished to be true now has to be totally re-examined in a new light. But all that is what helps us grow, that's what helps us evolve and become stronger.

They used to tell us that "knowledge is power." I can tell you that knowledge only makes you better.

Remember these words as you head into the new year. Rather than wishing for your perception to be reality, base your perception on reality. And then those who thrive on the exploitation of ignorance will have no power over you.

Have a great New Year's Eve, friends. And I'll see you all in 2024.

Helios.

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