Another Asbestos-Like Substance Associated With Mesothelioma Risk

Recent data presented at the 2010 Chicago Multidisciplinary Symposium in Thoracic Oncology demonstrates that people exposed to the mineral erionite found in the gravel of road materials in North Dakota may be at increased risk of developing mesothelioma.  Mesothelioma is a type of incurable cancer affecting the lining of the lung or abdomen that is most often associated with asbestos exposure.

The study that was conducted sought to examine the potential health risks for those exposed to erionite by comparing air samples, tissue samples and other data from North Dakota with those found in affected parts of Turkey where erionite exposure has been associated with an increased incidence of mesothelioma. According to the lead author of the study, Michele Carbone, MD, PhD, because of the long latency period we may not yet appreciate an increase in mesothelioma incidence in North Dakota, but there is cause for concern for the future.

Dr. Carbone noted that exposure levels measured along roads, indoors, and inside vehicles traveling along contaminated roads are equal or greater than those levels found in a Turkish village where malignant mesothelioma accounts for more than 6% of all deaths.

Erionite is a naturally occurring fibrous mineral that is part of a group of minerals called zeolites.  Erionite is often found in volcanic ash that has been altered by weathering and ground water. Erionite forms brittle, wool-like fibrous masses inside of rock formations.  Some properties of erionite are similar to asbestos but it is not currently regulated by the US EPA as one of the six asbestos fibers.

Erionite is a human carcinogen and has been listed by the International Agency for Research on Cancer as a Group 1 Carcinogen.  Erionite fibers, just like asbestos, when breathed can become lodged in the linings of lung and abdomen and can cause cancer.

Erionite deposits can be found in several parts of the United States, including California, Oregon, Arizona, Nevada, North Dakota and South Dakota.  In North Dakota, erionite was mined and used as gravel on many rural roads.

Dr. Carbone states that precautionary measures should be taken undertaken to reduce exposure to erionite.  Already, the state of North Dakota has limited Erionite’s use for state funded projects and has released advisories warning of the danger.  Roads containing erionite are planned to be paved over.

This entry was posted on Saturday, January 29th, 2011 at 6:42 am and is filed under Mesothelioma. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.

View the original article here

Another Court Decision Against Health Care Reform

The Affordable Care Act that became law last year promises to make health care affordable and accessible for nearly all Americans, including Americans with mesothelioma. However, many people object to the law and want it repealed and replaced with something else. Several states have challenged the act in court, mostly on the basis that mandating that people must purchase health insurance, which the Affordable Care Act stipulates, exceeds the constitutional powers of Congress.

Today a federal judge in Florida ruled that the mandate for individuals to purchase health insurance is unconstitutional. So far, two federal judges have said it is constitutional, and two have said it isn’t. About a dozen other federal judges have dismissed the suits against the Act.

Today’s ruling by Judge Roger Vinson of the Federal District Court in Pensacola, Fla.,goes further than the other “nay” opinion, by Judge Henry Hudson of Virginia. Judge Hudson had ruled that only the individual mandate was unconstitutional, but that the rest of the law could stand. Judge Vinson, on the other hand, struck down the entire Affordable Care Act.

The law will stay in effect until all court challenges are resolved by the Supreme Court, which  probably will take a couple of years.

A few days ago a repeal of the Affordable Care Act was passed in the House. There is little chance such a law would pass in the Senate, however, and in any event it would certainly be vetoed by President Obama. That means it is unlikely the law will be repealed unless it is struck down by the Supreme Court.

Could that happen? Anything is possible. Louis Seidman, a professor of constitutional law at Georgetown University, told Greg Sargent of the Washington Post that it will all come down to the Court’s “swing” voter, Justice Anthony Kennedy. Professor Seidman also found Judge Vinson’s reasoning to be flawed. The constitution’s “necessary and proper clause” provides for the regulation of anything that “has an effect” on interstate markets, Professor Seidman said.

A wrinkle in the repeal effort is that the insurance industry has signaled that it rather likes the individual mandate and doesn’t want it repealed. Insurance companies have been reworking their business models and preparing for millions of new customers. If the Affordable Care Act, or even just the individual mandate, is tossed out by the Court a couple of years from now, health insurance companies could see it as a big setback.

And, of course, the United States would go back to square one in reforming health care.

This entry was posted on Monday, January 31st, 2011 at 6:59 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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Another Problem With Hate Crime Laws Is That They Make No Sense

Posted on July 30th, 2010 Tina

Unless, that is, you subscribe to the the notion that sticks and stones and fists and kicks don’t hurt nearly as much as name-calling.  From the N.Y. Daily News, which, like every other newspaper in the country, wouldn’t be covering this garden-variety Florida assault if it were not being labeled a hate crime:

David McKnight, 22, was playing the song “Wasted” by Gucci Mane when, he says, he was confronted by 14-year-old Joshua Lamb, WFTV.com reports.  “The argument involved the black male suspect saying, ‘You shouldn’t be listening to rap music because you’re white,’ ” said Palm Bay police spokeswoman Yvonne Martinez.  When McKnight, who is Caucasian, refused to turn off the music, Lamb and a group of friends assaulted him.  “I couldn’t get away fast enough,” McKnight told WFTV. “One of them spit on me, punched me, knocked me down … I got a couple of kicks in from a couple of them.”  McKnight told police Lamb was with at least seven others.  “I told him to drop it. I was like, ‘Just drop it, let’s go, there is eight of you and one of me. Just drop it,’ ” McKnight said. “And he says, ‘I’m not dropping anything.’ Bam! [He] punched me.”  McKnight did not retaliate and, according to the police report obtained by The Smoking Gun, he “fled before any further battery could take place.”  But WFTV reported that he suffered a swollen eye, broken toe, concussion and choke marks around his neck in the fight.

This account raises questions.  Why did the reporter use the term “didn’t retaliate” to describe a victim trying to avoid serious harm while being randomly attacked by a gang of young men?  Why was only one man charged in the assault?

It’s difficult to avoid the conclusion that Joshua Lamb was the only assailant charged because only Joshua Lamb’s assault can be “counted” as a hate crime, also that the other physical attacks on McKnight are being deemed inconsequential precisely because there’s a so-called “hate crime” to trumpet.

That’s the problem with these laws: if you insist that “hate crime” is “worse than other crime,” as our Attorney General is so fond of saying, you’re already half-way to dismissing “non-hate” acts as inconsequential.  Thanks to the existence of hate crime laws, the fact that Joshua Lamb said something stupid to a total stranger is officially of more consequence than the fact that he and a gang of his peers ambushed and punched, kicked, and choked a man, sending him to the hospital.

If Lamb had committed the same crime against a black youth, he probably would not face many consequences: the assault, severe as it was, would merely be filed away as one of the hundreds of thousands (millions?) of non-hate crime assaults that largely get dismissed by prosecutors and the juvenile courts.

If Lamb had not uttered some belligerent teenage nonsense while assaulting McKnight, the same would probably occur: a slap on the wrists in juvenile court, at the very most.  The New York Post, and virtually every other paper in America, certainly would not be reporting the story.  Lamb would not be facing prison time.

And, quite creepily, if McKnight were a female, and Lamb had attacked her while spouting sexist slurs, instead of spouting schoolyard anti-white taunts while attacking a white man, it wouldn’t count as hate . . . though if Lamb had called a male victim “bitch” while kicking him, it might count as anti-gay bias.  Hate crime laws inevitably normalize certain types of hate speech in order to promote the “principled opposition” of other types.

So we now have a legal system that — in practice — minimizes crimes like striking and kicking a person while maximizing the consequences for select types of speech.  And once you get in the practice  of deeming some types of people more important; others things naturally follow, including playing down anything done to the “less important” victims, like normalizing calling a woman “bitch” as you punch her, or normalizing black-on-black crime.

Hate crime laws actually codify prejudice.

Joshua Lamb would have faced no more than a first-degree misdemeanor charge if he had jumped McKnight without expressing his opinion of rap music first.  The maximum sentence for this crime in Florida is one year of incarceration or probation (likely the latter, at the very most).  Now he faces a possible five years in prison because of an opinion he expressed regarding rap music while incidentally beating a total stranger.

Doesn’t this simply reinforce Lamb’s perception that what he thinks about rap music is the important thing?

~~~

Wasted, by Gucci Mane, the song David McKnight was listening to when he was attacked — the song Joshua Lamb felt enough prejudice over to commit a so-called “hate crime” to defend his racial right of ownership  — is littered with hateful slurs and degrading references . . . directed at women, of course:

I don’t wear tight jeans like the white boys
But I do get wasted like the white boys
Now I’m looking for a bitch to suck dis almond joy
Said she gotta stop sucking ’cause her jaw’s sore
Gotta bitch on the couch, bitch on the floor . . .

and so on.

How unsurprising.  Good thing hating women isn’t ever hate crime.  It would simply be impossible to fit it in the headlines.

View the original article here

Another Problem With Hate Crime Laws Is That They Make No Sense

Posted on July 30th, 2010 Tina

Unless, that is, you subscribe to the the notion that sticks and stones and fists and kicks don’t hurt nearly as much as name-calling.  From the N.Y. Daily News, which, like every other newspaper in the country, wouldn’t be covering this garden-variety Florida assault if it were not being labeled a hate crime:

David McKnight, 22, was playing the song “Wasted” by Gucci Mane when, he says, he was confronted by 14-year-old Joshua Lamb, WFTV.com reports.  “The argument involved the black male suspect saying, ‘You shouldn’t be listening to rap music because you’re white,’ ” said Palm Bay police spokeswoman Yvonne Martinez.  When McKnight, who is Caucasian, refused to turn off the music, Lamb and a group of friends assaulted him.  “I couldn’t get away fast enough,” McKnight told WFTV. “One of them spit on me, punched me, knocked me down … I got a couple of kicks in from a couple of them.”  McKnight told police Lamb was with at least seven others.  “I told him to drop it. I was like, ‘Just drop it, let’s go, there is eight of you and one of me. Just drop it,’ ” McKnight said. “And he says, ‘I’m not dropping anything.’ Bam! [He] punched me.”  McKnight did not retaliate and, according to the police report obtained by The Smoking Gun, he “fled before any further battery could take place.”  But WFTV reported that he suffered a swollen eye, broken toe, concussion and choke marks around his neck in the fight.

This account raises questions.  Why did the reporter use the term “didn’t retaliate” to describe a victim trying to avoid serious harm while being randomly attacked by a gang of young men?  Why was only one man charged in the assault?

It’s difficult to avoid the conclusion that Joshua Lamb was the only assailant charged because only Joshua Lamb’s assault can be “counted” as a hate crime, also that the other physical attacks on McKnight are being deemed inconsequential precisely because there’s a so-called “hate crime” to trumpet.

That’s the problem with these laws: if you insist that “hate crime” is “worse than other crime,” as our Attorney General is so fond of saying, you’re already half-way to dismissing “non-hate” acts as inconsequential.  Thanks to the existence of hate crime laws, the fact that Joshua Lamb said something stupid to a total stranger is officially of more consequence than the fact that he and a gang of his peers ambushed and punched, kicked, and choked a man, sending him to the hospital.

If Lamb had committed the same crime against a black youth, he probably would not face many consequences: the assault, severe as it was, would merely be filed away as one of the hundreds of thousands (millions?) of non-hate crime assaults that largely get dismissed by prosecutors and the juvenile courts.

If Lamb had not uttered some belligerent teenage nonsense while assaulting McKnight, the same would probably occur: a slap on the wrists in juvenile court, at the very most.  The New York Post, and virtually every other paper in America, certainly would not be reporting the story.  Lamb would not be facing prison time.

And, quite creepily, if McKnight were a female, and Lamb had attacked her while spouting sexist slurs, instead of spouting schoolyard anti-white taunts while attacking a white man, it wouldn’t count as hate . . . though if Lamb had called a male victim “bitch” while kicking him, it might count as anti-gay bias.  Hate crime laws inevitably normalize certain types of hate speech in order to promote the “principled opposition” of other types.

So we now have a legal system that — in practice — minimizes crimes like striking and kicking a person while maximizing the consequences for select types of speech.  And once you get in the practice  of deeming some types of people more important; others things naturally follow, including playing down anything done to the “less important” victims, like normalizing calling a woman “bitch” as you punch her, or normalizing black-on-black crime.

Hate crime laws actually codify prejudice.

Joshua Lamb would have faced no more than a first-degree misdemeanor charge if he had jumped McKnight without expressing his opinion of rap music first.  The maximum sentence for this crime in Florida is one year of incarceration or probation (likely the latter, at the very most).  Now he faces a possible five years in prison because of an opinion he expressed regarding rap music while incidentally beating a total stranger.

Doesn’t this simply reinforce Lamb’s perception that what he thinks about rap music is the important thing?

~~~

Wasted, by Gucci Mane, the song David McKnight was listening to when he was attacked — the song Joshua Lamb felt enough prejudice over to commit a so-called “hate crime” to defend his racial right of ownership  — is littered with hateful slurs and degrading references . . . directed at women, of course:

I don’t wear tight jeans like the white boys
But I do get wasted like the white boys
Now I’m looking for a bitch to suck dis almond joy
Said she gotta stop sucking ’cause her jaw’s sore
Gotta bitch on the couch, bitch on the floor . . .

and so on.

How unsurprising.  Good thing hating women isn’t ever hate crime.  It would simply be impossible to fit it in the headlines.

View the original article here

Another Problem With Hate Crime Laws Is That They Make No Sense

Posted on July 30th, 2010 Tina

Unless, that is, you subscribe to the the notion that sticks and stones and fists and kicks don’t hurt nearly as much as name-calling.  From the N.Y. Daily News, which, like every other newspaper in the country, wouldn’t be covering this garden-variety Florida assault if it were not being labeled a hate crime:

David McKnight, 22, was playing the song “Wasted” by Gucci Mane when, he says, he was confronted by 14-year-old Joshua Lamb, WFTV.com reports.  “The argument involved the black male suspect saying, ‘You shouldn’t be listening to rap music because you’re white,’ ” said Palm Bay police spokeswoman Yvonne Martinez.  When McKnight, who is Caucasian, refused to turn off the music, Lamb and a group of friends assaulted him.  “I couldn’t get away fast enough,” McKnight told WFTV. “One of them spit on me, punched me, knocked me down … I got a couple of kicks in from a couple of them.”  McKnight told police Lamb was with at least seven others.  “I told him to drop it. I was like, ‘Just drop it, let’s go, there is eight of you and one of me. Just drop it,’ ” McKnight said. “And he says, ‘I’m not dropping anything.’ Bam! [He] punched me.”  McKnight did not retaliate and, according to the police report obtained by The Smoking Gun, he “fled before any further battery could take place.”  But WFTV reported that he suffered a swollen eye, broken toe, concussion and choke marks around his neck in the fight.

This account raises questions.  Why did the reporter use the term “didn’t retaliate” to describe a victim trying to avoid serious harm while being randomly attacked by a gang of young men?  Why was only one man charged in the assault?

It’s difficult to avoid the conclusion that Joshua Lamb was the only assailant charged because only Joshua Lamb’s assault can be “counted” as a hate crime, also that the other physical attacks on McKnight are being deemed inconsequential precisely because there’s a so-called “hate crime” to trumpet.

That’s the problem with these laws: if you insist that “hate crime” is “worse than other crime,” as our Attorney General is so fond of saying, you’re already half-way to dismissing “non-hate” acts as inconsequential.  Thanks to the existence of hate crime laws, the fact that Joshua Lamb said something stupid to a total stranger is officially of more consequence than the fact that he and a gang of his peers ambushed and punched, kicked, and choked a man, sending him to the hospital.

If Lamb had committed the same crime against a black youth, he probably would not face many consequences: the assault, severe as it was, would merely be filed away as one of the hundreds of thousands (millions?) of non-hate crime assaults that largely get dismissed by prosecutors and the juvenile courts.

If Lamb had not uttered some belligerent teenage nonsense while assaulting McKnight, the same would probably occur: a slap on the wrists in juvenile court, at the very most.  The New York Post, and virtually every other paper in America, certainly would not be reporting the story.  Lamb would not be facing prison time.

And, quite creepily, if McKnight were a female, and Lamb had attacked her while spouting sexist slurs, instead of spouting schoolyard anti-white taunts while attacking a white man, it wouldn’t count as hate . . . though if Lamb had called a male victim “bitch” while kicking him, it might count as anti-gay bias.  Hate crime laws inevitably normalize certain types of hate speech in order to promote the “principled opposition” of other types.

So we now have a legal system that — in practice — minimizes crimes like striking and kicking a person while maximizing the consequences for select types of speech.  And once you get in the practice  of deeming some types of people more important; others things naturally follow, including playing down anything done to the “less important” victims, like normalizing calling a woman “bitch” as you punch her, or normalizing black-on-black crime.

Hate crime laws actually codify prejudice.

Joshua Lamb would have faced no more than a first-degree misdemeanor charge if he had jumped McKnight without expressing his opinion of rap music first.  The maximum sentence for this crime in Florida is one year of incarceration or probation (likely the latter, at the very most).  Now he faces a possible five years in prison because of an opinion he expressed regarding rap music while incidentally beating a total stranger.

Doesn’t this simply reinforce Lamb’s perception that what he thinks about rap music is the important thing?

~~~

Wasted, by Gucci Mane, the song David McKnight was listening to when he was attacked — the song Joshua Lamb felt enough prejudice over to commit a so-called “hate crime” to defend his racial right of ownership  — is littered with hateful slurs and degrading references . . . directed at women, of course:

I don’t wear tight jeans like the white boys
But I do get wasted like the white boys
Now I’m looking for a bitch to suck dis almond joy
Said she gotta stop sucking ’cause her jaw’s sore
Gotta bitch on the couch, bitch on the floor . . .

and so on.

How unsurprising.  Good thing hating women isn’t ever hate crime.  It would simply be impossible to fit it in the headlines.

View the original article here

Another Problem With Hate Crime Laws Is That They Make No Sense

Posted on July 30th, 2010 Tina

Unless, that is, you subscribe to the the notion that sticks and stones and fists and kicks don’t hurt nearly as much as name-calling.  From the N.Y. Daily News, which, like every other newspaper in the country, wouldn’t be covering this garden-variety Florida assault if it were not being labeled a hate crime:

David McKnight, 22, was playing the song “Wasted” by Gucci Mane when, he says, he was confronted by 14-year-old Joshua Lamb, WFTV.com reports.  “The argument involved the black male suspect saying, ‘You shouldn’t be listening to rap music because you’re white,’ ” said Palm Bay police spokeswoman Yvonne Martinez.  When McKnight, who is Caucasian, refused to turn off the music, Lamb and a group of friends assaulted him.  “I couldn’t get away fast enough,” McKnight told WFTV. “One of them spit on me, punched me, knocked me down … I got a couple of kicks in from a couple of them.”  McKnight told police Lamb was with at least seven others.  “I told him to drop it. I was like, ‘Just drop it, let’s go, there is eight of you and one of me. Just drop it,’ ” McKnight said. “And he says, ‘I’m not dropping anything.’ Bam! [He] punched me.”  McKnight did not retaliate and, according to the police report obtained by The Smoking Gun, he “fled before any further battery could take place.”  But WFTV reported that he suffered a swollen eye, broken toe, concussion and choke marks around his neck in the fight.

This account raises questions.  Why did the reporter use the term “didn’t retaliate” to describe a victim trying to avoid serious harm while being randomly attacked by a gang of young men?  Why was only one man charged in the assault?

It’s difficult to avoid the conclusion that Joshua Lamb was the only assailant charged because only Joshua Lamb’s assault can be “counted” as a hate crime, also that the other physical attacks on McKnight are being deemed inconsequential precisely because there’s a so-called “hate crime” to trumpet.

That’s the problem with these laws: if you insist that “hate crime” is “worse than other crime,” as our Attorney General is so fond of saying, you’re already half-way to dismissing “non-hate” acts as inconsequential.  Thanks to the existence of hate crime laws, the fact that Joshua Lamb said something stupid to a total stranger is officially of more consequence than the fact that he and a gang of his peers ambushed and punched, kicked, and choked a man, sending him to the hospital.

If Lamb had committed the same crime against a black youth, he probably would not face many consequences: the assault, severe as it was, would merely be filed away as one of the hundreds of thousands (millions?) of non-hate crime assaults that largely get dismissed by prosecutors and the juvenile courts.

If Lamb had not uttered some belligerent teenage nonsense while assaulting McKnight, the same would probably occur: a slap on the wrists in juvenile court, at the very most.  The New York Post, and virtually every other paper in America, certainly would not be reporting the story.  Lamb would not be facing prison time.

And, quite creepily, if McKnight were a female, and Lamb had attacked her while spouting sexist slurs, instead of spouting schoolyard anti-white taunts while attacking a white man, it wouldn’t count as hate . . . though if Lamb had called a male victim “bitch” while kicking him, it might count as anti-gay bias.  Hate crime laws inevitably normalize certain types of hate speech in order to promote the “principled opposition” of other types.

So we now have a legal system that — in practice — minimizes crimes like striking and kicking a person while maximizing the consequences for select types of speech.  And once you get in the practice  of deeming some types of people more important; others things naturally follow, including playing down anything done to the “less important” victims, like normalizing calling a woman “bitch” as you punch her, or normalizing black-on-black crime.

Hate crime laws actually codify prejudice.

Joshua Lamb would have faced no more than a first-degree misdemeanor charge if he had jumped McKnight without expressing his opinion of rap music first.  The maximum sentence for this crime in Florida is one year of incarceration or probation (likely the latter, at the very most).  Now he faces a possible five years in prison because of an opinion he expressed regarding rap music while incidentally beating a total stranger.

Doesn’t this simply reinforce Lamb’s perception that what he thinks about rap music is the important thing?

~~~

Wasted, by Gucci Mane, the song David McKnight was listening to when he was attacked — the song Joshua Lamb felt enough prejudice over to commit a so-called “hate crime” to defend his racial right of ownership  — is littered with hateful slurs and degrading references . . . directed at women, of course:

I don’t wear tight jeans like the white boys
But I do get wasted like the white boys
Now I’m looking for a bitch to suck dis almond joy
Said she gotta stop sucking ’cause her jaw’s sore
Gotta bitch on the couch, bitch on the floor . . .

and so on.

How unsurprising.  Good thing hating women isn’t ever hate crime.  It would simply be impossible to fit it in the headlines.

View the original article here