sjsci

We work in a climate of inquiry where a mainstream knowledge industry works constantly to undermine our confidence in our perceptions, where political exigencies tempt us to forced unity, and where everything would keep women from forming epistemic community.

Marilyn Frye, “The Possibility of Feminist Theory” (via ellesugars)

4

Ad Featuring Undocumented PoC Ask Whether They Deserve Healthcare Too

California has more uninsured people than other some states have people. It’s also home to the largest number of undocumented immigrants in the country.

The state is launching its insurance exchange program that will make health care more affordable for residents once Obamacare kicks in but it’s planning but it’s planning on leaving undocumented immigrants out.

The California Endowment, a health foundation, is running TV ads across the state to make sure undocumented have access to healthcare. The Endowment is pushing the state to keep county-run programs open and expand Medicaid on the government’s dime.

In the 60-second ad running across the state, several undocumented PoCs look into the camera and ask if California stands for universal coverage. “Does that mean everyone, everyone? Does everyone include me? Us too?”

(via navigatethestream)

1 day ago -

54

3D printed fetuses: picturing the real?

It’s interesting to think about what general kind of material “evidence” a plastic 3D model of a fetus can be, given that a fetus is already a strange materiality or precarious embodiment. In other words, what kind of knowledge about a potential body does a plastic object provide, as compared to other forms of material evidence, such as genetic material? How does the availability of a material object that shows potential supposed anomalies or malformations affect the way that doctors and others can make claims about disabled lives as not worth living?

2 days ago

sinidentidades:

Hospitals Caught Deporting Sick, Undocumented Immigrants

Hundreds of undocumented immigrants have been deported back to their country of origin by hospitals seeking to curb high costs. According to a recent report compiled by immigrant advocacy groups, at least 600 immigrants were removed over a five-year period because they were ineligible for public insurance as a result of their immigration status.

The report published by the Center for Social Justice (CSJ) at Seton Hall University School of Law and New York Lawyers for the Public Interest (NYLPI) cites more than 800 cases of attempted or actual medical deportations across the country in recent years, including: a nineteen-year-old girl who died shortly after being wheeled out of a hospital back entrance typically used for garbage disposal and transferred to Mexico; a car accident victim who died shortly after being left on the tarmac at an airport in Guatemala; and a young man with catastrophic brain injury who remains bed-ridden and suffering from constant seizures after being forcibly deported to his elderly mother’s hilltop home in Guatemala.

“When immigrants are in need of ongoing medical care, they find themselves at the crossroads of two systems that are in dire need of reform—health care and immigration law. Aside from emergency care, hospitals are not reimbursed by the government for providing ongoing treatment for uninsured immigrant patients. Therefore, many hospitals are engaging in de facto deportations of immigrant patients without any governmental oversight or accountability,” Lori A. Nessel, director of CSJ said in a statement.

“This type of situation is ripe for abuse.” Nessel went on to say.

(via so-treu)

3 days ago -

511

soulbrotherv2:

Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present by Harriet A. Washington

From the era of slavery to the present day, the first full history of black America’s shocking mistreatment as unwilling and unwitting experimental subjects at the hands of the medical establishment.

Medical Apartheid is the first and only comprehensive history of medical experimentation on African Americans. Starting with the earliest encounters between black Americans and Western medical researchers and the racist pseudoscience that resulted, it details the ways both slaves and freedmen were used in hospitals for experiments conducted without their knowledge—a tradition that continues today within some black populations. It reveals how blacks have historically been prey to grave-robbing as well as unauthorized autopsies and dissections. Moving into the twentieth century, it shows how the pseudoscience of eugenics and social Darwinism was used to justify experimental exploitation and shoddy medical treatment of blacks, and the view that they were biologically inferior, oversexed, and unfit for adult responsibilities. Shocking new details about the government’s notorious Tuskegee experiment are revealed, as are similar, less-well-known medical atrocities conducted by the government, the armed forces, prisons, and private institutions.

The product of years of prodigious research into medical journals and experimental reports long undisturbed, Medical Apartheid reveals the hidden underbelly of scientific research and makes possible, for the first time, an understanding of the roots of the African American health deficit. At last, it provides the fullest possible context for comprehending the behavioral fallout that has caused black Americans to view researchers—and indeed the whole medical establishment—with such deep distrust. No one concerned with issues of public health and racial justice can afford not to read Medical Apartheid, a masterful book that will stir up both controversy and long-needed debate.

(via jovem-gorda-esquisita-queer)

4 days ago -

53

Fracking debris considered too radioactive even for waste site

crookedthinking95:

A truck carrying drill cuttings from a fracking site set off a radiation alarm at a landfill in Pennsylvania. Emitting gamma radiation ten times higher than the permitted level, the waste was rejected by the landfill.

After the alarm went off, the MAX Environmental Technologies truck was immediately quarantined and sent back to the Marcellus Shale fracking site it had come from in Greene County, Va. The 159-acre Pennsylvania landfill site accepts residual and hazardous waste, but the cuttings were too radioactive for the site to safely dispose.

The Pennsylvania landfill, located in South Huntingdon, rejects waste that emits more than 10 microerm per hour of radiation. The fracking materials were found to emit 96 microerm per hour of Radium 226 – a rate that is 84 times higher than the Environmental Protection Agency’s air-pollution standard and ten times higher than the landfill’s permitted level, Forbes reports.

Exposure to the materials taken from the fracking site can have serious health consequences, including the risk of developing cancer. The high level of radiation emitted by the materials serves as alarming news for environmentalists and residents located near hydraulic fracturing sites across the US.

“Long-term exposure to radium increases the risk of developing several diseases,” the EPA writes.“Inhaled or ingested radium increases the risk of developing such diseases as lymphoma, bone cancer and diseases that affect the formation of blood, such as leukemia and aplastic anemia… External exposure to radium’s gamma radiation increases the risk of cancer to varying degrees in all tissues and organs.”

The drill cuttings have been sent back to the well pad where they were extracted. The production company, Rice Energy, must now apply to have the waste discarded at other landfill sites that accept materials with higher levels of radiation.

DEP spokesperson Jon Poister told The Tribune-Review that the cuttings emitted “low-level radiation, but we don’t want any radiation in South Huntingdon.” He said it was not typical for the landfill to reject waste based on radiation levels, but this case provides reassurance that the radiation detection system functions properly.

“It’s not too frequent that this occurs, but it’s not totally infrequent either,” he told the local newspaper.“There are all kinds of sources for that type of material, including medical materials, and this is a huge safeguard we have in place.”

But environmentalists remain concerned about the effects of the radiation produced by hydraulic fracturing sites. The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) this year began analyzing wastewater from fracking sites and testing waste products for radioactivity. The investigation is ongoing.

“We are sampling the wastewater and wastes, the treatment equipment used to treat it, the trucks used to transport it, the tanks and pits used to store it and the landfills or treatment plants used to dispose of it,”DEP spokesman Kevin Sunday told shalereporter.com.

The consequences of long-term exposure to Radium 226 are known, but the effects of specially formulated chemicals used at US fracking sites still remain widely unknown. With the Obama administration overlooking environmental concerns and distributing oil drilling rights without a comprehensive review of fracking, it is difficult to know just how much radiation the sites produce.

But with landfill sites rejecting drill cuttings based on high levels of radiation, the waste produced is not an insignificant matter.

(via thepeoplesrecord)

5 days ago -

125

Not long after the diagnosis [of ALS], my wife at the time and I were discussing my future with the neurologist. He began going over the disease progression in a matter of fact way. He said your breathing muscles will become paralyzed and you will go to sleep and die. He quickly added that some patients decide to go on a ventilator, but there is no quality of life living that way. I shook my head in agreement.

It is extremely easy for a healthy individual to say how they would not live. I am guilty myself. If someone had told me prior to the diagnosis that I would be totally paralyzed, fed by a feeding tube, communicate via computer with a voice synthesizer and tethered to a ventilator that I would find more meaning in life and living I am certain that person telling me such a tale was insane.

Yes, my life is very difficult and requires a lot of resources to keep me alive, human and financial. I have considered disconnecting from the ventilator several times, but the reason is never because I had lost my appreciation for life and living.

I was admitted into the hospital and scheduled for tracheotomy surgery the next morning. That night my now ex-wife told me how selfish I was for wanting to live. That my young children had suffered enough and it would cause them only more pain. It was a sickening sense of abandonment. I have absolutely no doubt if I did not have the ability to communicate my desires the surgery would have not taken place.

David Jayne

See? The pressure to die is fucking everywhere. My experiences aren’t unique. Medical professionals tell you there’s no quality of life. Your own family calls you selfish. It’s everywhere. And for some reason feeding tubes are right about the first step along the way where you really start getting pressured to die rather than accept a medical device into your life. My experiences are the norm not the exception and disabled people are pressured into death constantly when otherwise we might choose to live.

(via youneedacat)

(via strugglingtobeheard)

6 days ago -

406

Corexit, Oil Dispersant Used By BP, Is Destroying Gulf Marine Life, Scientists Say

nezua:

kameelahwrites:

Three years ago, when BP’s Deepwater Horizon began leaking some 210 million gallons of Louisiana Crude into the Gulf of Mexico, the U.S. government allowed the company to apply chemical “dispersants” to the blossoming oil slick to prevent toxic gunk from reaching the fragile bays, beaches, and mangroves of the coast, where so much marine life originates. But a number of recent studies show that BP and the feds may have made a huge mistake, for which everything from microscopic organisms to bottlenose dolphins are now paying the highest price.

Of course.

1 week ago -

7

therunningrunaway:

rarely-pure-never-simple:

thecornercoffeeshoppe:

hickshannary:

small-and-misunderstood:

Saw this somewhere else and felt the need to post it cause no one else ever really tells you this stuff

My mom never really noticed. She noticed when she was breast feeding my little brother and blood started coming out instead of milk.

My mom said she felt and saw a little lump in the shower. She was lucky enough she found it at stage 2

My mom had a mammogram. The radiologist thought the spots were just regular calcium deposits.

Turns out it was triple negative breast cancer that had spread to her lymph nods. Mastectomy, radiation and chemo saved her life.

This could SAVE a life.

i’m so scared

(via heysoapie)

1 week ago -

127864

thenapturalone:

ishkwaakiiwan:

anarcho-queer:

[tw: forced sterilization, eugenics]

Israel Admits To Giving Ethiopian Women Birth Control Shots

A government official has for the first time acknowledged the practice of injecting women of Ethiopian origin with the long-acting contraceptive Depo-Provera.

Health Ministry Director General Prof. Ron Gamzu has instructed the four health maintenance organizations to stop the practice as a matter of course. The ministry and other state agencies had previously denied knowledge or responsibility for the practice, which was first reported five years ago. Gamzu’s letter instructed “all gynecologists in the HMOs not to renew prescriptions for Depo-Provera for women of Ethiopian origin if for any reason there is concern that they might not understand the ramifications of the treatment.” Gamzu also instructed physicians to avail themselves of translators if need be.

Gamzu’s letter came in response to a letter from Sharona Eliahu-Chai of the Association of Civil Rights in Israel, representing several women’s rights and Ethiopian immigrants’ groups. The letter demanded the injections cease immediately and that an investigation be launched into the practice.

About six weeks ago, on an Educational Television program journalist Gal Gabbay revealed the results of interviews with 35 Ethiopian immigrants. The women’s testimony could help explain the almost 50-percent decline over the past 10 years in the birth rate of Israel’s Ethiopian community. According to the program, while the women were still in transit camps in Ethiopia they were sometimes intimidated or threatened into taking the injection. “They told us they are inoculations,” said one of the women interviewed. “They told us people who frequently give birth suffer. We took it every three months. We said we didn’t want to.”

WHAT

THE FUCK

FUCKING WOW ISREAL

(via latinosexuality)

1 week ago -

2945