Hot Topics
Written by admin2 on March 23rd, 2009Filed under: Uncategorized
“Hot Topics” after the jump…
Right now, nearly 1 in 10 children attending public school in Minneapolis is homeless. Read that sentence again.
The Salvation Army says requests for help have increased by 35 percent. Many people walking through the doors are what the organization calls “first-timers.”
“There is a theory that people with Alzheimer’s heal themselves of their diseases. Because they forget they have them.” Read about a family that has, in a sense, been healed by Alzheimer’s.
Sue Fulford-Dobson explains how a GPS tracker on her partner Ian helps give the dementia patient his independence.
A collection of disability groups is demanding that Amazon fully restore Kindle 2’s text-to-speech feature, calling it a “momentous” development for the blind and others.
In an extraordinary segment for MSNBC’s Today Show, award-winning news correspondent Peter Alexander asked his sister to share some personal stories about her experience living with Usher syndrome, type III—her fears and the challenges she faces.
In a groundbreaking study, conducted on a small number of subjects, doctors found that exposing children with peanut allergies to a daily dose of peanuts in a carefully controlled setting (one-one thousandth of a peanut, then gradually building on their exposure) has been so successful in some patients that they are now off treatment and even eating the nut that once put them in danger.
Slip of the tongue lands Obama in gutter. Washington Post gives him flak. Obama apologizes with grace. Special Olympics Chairman Tim Shriver accepts the apology with grace. Legally blind NY Governor David Paterson (who says he’s a pretty good bowler) forgives. Sarah Palin criticizes the President. People who are the butt of a joke don’t get a job, says badcripple.blogspot.com. Are you angry?, asks gather.com. Award-winning Special Olympics bowler Tim Maloney offers Obama free bowling tips: “Focus, take his time, and relax.” Obama set to bowl against 12-year-old aspiring Special Olympian.
Boulder, Colorado-based Wide Mouth Grin is a truly unique three piece band, led by deaf guitarist/songwriter Steve Dicesare. The band members use a combination of American Sign Language, homemade hand signals, eye movements, and facial expressions to communicate to one another while playing. They have a loyal (and growing!) fan base of “Grinners.”
Hear Our Voices is a very, very cool website.
NBC has announced an upcoming episode of Law & Order: Criminal Intent featuring not one but many Deaf actors.
Howie Mandel is about to disclose a whole lot more about himself.
26-year-old Iftikhar Hussain was engrossed in a book when he found himself locked inside a library after closing time. And he suffered a panic attack.
Quebec entrepreneur Gerald Dominique hopes to remember the dead with ”Je me souviens,” an all-obituary cable channel.
Mary Pipher is the Worst Buddhist in the World. Mary Pipher makes The New York Times.
“Walking the thin line”—a student shares her struggle with anorexia, and elucidates the grim realities of this mental illness in The McGill Daily.
Northern Ireland’s health department published instructions to doctors Friday that for the first time explain the rare circumstances under which they can perform a legal abortion.
Archibishop Jose Cardoso Sobrinho of the coastal city of Recife, Brazil announced that the Vatican was excommunicating the family of a local 9-year-old girl who had been raped and impregnated with twins by her stepfather, because they had chosen to have the girl undergo an abortion. The Church excommunicated the doctors who performed the procedure as well. “God’s laws,” said the archbishop, dictate that abortion is a sin and that transgressors are no longer welcome in the Roman Catholic Church.
Dictionary definition of the verb Excommunicate: To officially exclude someone from participation in the sacraments and services of the Christian Church.
Rape of a man is not a crime in Brazil.
NPR Audio Interview: Sarah Van Zanten, a 19-year-old who survived domestic violence; Drew Crecente, who lost his teenage daughter, Jennifer Ann, to an abusive boyfriend, and Sheryl Cates, of the National Domestic Violence Hotline and the National Teen Dating Abuse Helpline, share personal stories of survival and loss.
2,923 people came forward to report sexual assaults in the U.S. military last year. The Pentagon office that collects the data estimates that only 10 percent to 20 percent of sexual assaults among members of the active duty military are reported—a figure similar to estimates of reported cases in the civilian sphere.
Army Vice Chief of Staff vows to tackle the spike in suicides among Army personnel ”aggressively by looking for ways to mitigate the stress on soldiers and eliminate the stigma associated with getting mental health help.”
The U.S. Department of State is sponsoring a study tour for 12 professionals in the area of substance abuse from Afghanistan and Kenya—the visitors will observe how treatment works at a model women and children’s addiction treatment center in Maryland.
Lawmakers in Florida are considering cutting education and substance abuse programs for rehabilitating prisoners.
Pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca silenced and buried a clinical study that was unfavourable to one of its drugs (Seroquel), leaving an 8 year gap until the same results were revealed by another (taxpayer-funded) study. The disclosures have raised some serious questions about Dr. S. Charles Schulz’s ties to the company.
Influential Harvard child psychiatrist Dr. Joseph Biederman—the world’s most prominent advocate of diagnosing bipolar disorder in even the youngest children and of using antipsychotic medicines to treat the disease—assured the drug giant Johnson & Johnson that planned studies of its medicines in children would “yield results benefiting the company,” according to court documents dating over several years that the psychiatrist wants sealed.
Just weeks after prosecutors accused Forest Laboratories Inc of illegally marketing its anti-depressants Celexa and Lexapro to children and paying pediatricians kickbacks, U.S. health regulators have approved Lexapro for depression in kids.
The top-selling medicines in the U.S. in 2008 were antipsychotics, used to treat schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, with $14.6 billion in sales. Pills to treat cholesterol had $14.5 billion in sales. Retail sales of prescription drugs rose at the slowest rate in at least 47 years.
A study by Palermo University on the island of Sicily found clinical anxiety in 20 per cent of Mafia relatives and personality disorders in 17 per cent. Godfathers and their relatives are breaking the Mafia’s code of silence to discuss their problems with psychiatrists. Dr Lo Verso said that food disorders, anxiety and depression, sexual problems and a sense of inadequacy and shame at failing to live up to macho stereotypes were the most common problems encountered.
Dante Nicholson, a former Los Angeles hospital executive, pleaded guilty Wednesday to paying recruiters who brought in homeless people for unnecessary medical treatment in a scheme to collect millions of dollars from government health programs.
“Some type of organizer” approached homeless people in Houston area shelters, recruited them, and paid them as much as $90 to go on “scrip runs.”
A carpenters union in Tulsa, Oklahoma that’s currently waging a “shame” campaign against a nonunion contractor paid about 200 homeless people to picket on their behalf. The homeless people allegedly “earn $10 an hour and work between 20 and 30 hours a week.”
Remembering Theresa ”TK” Simon: “There wasn’t anyone she wouldn’t help.”
Thanks to 16-year-old Elizabeth Bucklen, an adaptive wheelchair swing soon will be added to the playground at Kenston High School.
Dublin’s promise that all city-based taxis would be wheelchair-accessible by 2010 will not be met, and the best that people with disabilities may hope for is a target of 20 per cent nationally.
Commercial TV stations in Finland resent the idea of providing all programmes with subtitles.
Psychiatric disabilities need accommodation in the workplace, too.
Kojiro Hirose, who is blind and an expert on international disability culture, took the Birmingham Museum of Art’s tour for the visually impaired.
Researchers are one step closer to finding a cure for a leading cause of blindness, thanks to University of Alberta professor Dr. Michael Walter.
“The people who had [umbilical stem cell] treatments want you to know it’s not wishful thinking.”
Spinal cord stimulator helped rodents with Parkinson’s disease move more easily: ”We see an almost immediate and dramatic change in the animal’s ability to function,” says Dr. Miguel Nicolelis of Duke University. “This is a big change in the way we look at the circuit,” says his colleague Romulo Fuentes.
Braces are the most common treatment for scoliosis, but results take years. Surgery is used for extreme cases. Now, there’s a less invasive way to correct the curve: staples.
A cheap all-terrain wheelchair made from mountain bike frames and a microwave-based system that makes finding land mines carefree—that and so much more at “March Madness for the Mind.”
Houston, Texas-based plastic surgeon Dr. Michel Siegel introduces LATISSE™, the latest innovation in…eyelash extension technology.
A modern dance company that calls itself “Gimp”: its members have undeveloped or amputated limbs, and bodies beset with physical challenges.
Why one-armed BBC presenter Cerrie Burnell was proud of the debate her disability provoked.
Nike’s Reuse-A-Shoe program takes your worn-out kicks and turns them into Nike Grind, a material used in sports surfaces, playgrounds and even new Nike products.
Blind German shepherd puppy found in Wal-Mart parking lot opens foster’s eyes to capabilities of disabled animals.
Conquer your math phobias. Conquer your frog phobias. Conquer your cobia phobia. Conquer your genuphobia, lachanophobia, coulrophobia, xanthophobia, myctophobia, caligynephobia, eisoptrophobia, vestiphobia, uranophobia, and brontophobia.
Seriously… genuphobia.
An agoraphobe stands up for herself.
Friendly Faces
Karen Putz is urging the state of Illinois to pass a bill in the Senate that would provide insurance coverage for hearing aids…for people of ALL ages. Karen Putz quotes George Bernard Shaw.
Glenda Watson Hyatt and Karen Putz are presenting at SOBCon! And Glenda has already booked her flight and hotel.
Tony Clemens owes the government $150.
Helen McFadyen is caustic-as-ever as she vents her spleen against Metro Transit. But a few days later she proves that she’s really a big ol’ softie at heart.
Craig Grimes makes #4 of the Rolling Rains Report.
Philip Patston gets mentioned as one of the big names of New Zealand’s comedy past. Philip Patston gets a new intern.
Donna Williams’ recent essay has triggered quite the conversation. Donna Williams interviews her husband Chris Samuel.
