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Lauren Davis - July 6, 2018 - Race/Class/Gender/Society

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Lauren Davis - July 6, 2018 - Race/Class/Gender/Society

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Podcast - Hidden Brain by NPR host Shankar Vedantam looks at the language we use around race and religion, and what it says about the culture we live in.

This is a really interesting podcast on the language being used today and how it is impacting our society - and even how the leaders of our country are impacting the way we speak to each other.

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subscribe to Hidden Brain podcast

This week, we look at the language we use around race and religion, and what it says about the culture we live in.

In 2014, two shooting sprees occurred six months apart in busy American cities. They had uncanny similarities: in both events, multiple people were shot and killed, including two police officers. Both ended with suicides, and both involved ominous, anti-government messages left on social media. But one crime received nearly five times as much coverage as the other one. The key difference? One shooter, Ishmael Brinsley, was Muslim, and the other shooters, a white supremacist couple named Jerad and Amanda Miller, were not.

These biases are not just simply something that's in our head, but they are in fact affecting our behaviors and our public policy decisions towards Muslims.

New research finds that print journalists are about four times more likely to report on terror attacks when the perpetrator is Muslim. In fact, according to Erin Kearns and colleagues at Georgia State University, "a perpetrator who is not Muslim would have to kill on average about seven more people to receive the same amount of coverage as a perpetrator who's Muslim."

But there are disturbing implications for the way Americans perceive Muslims, and the way Muslims perceive themselves. As we'll discover, reporters (and all of us, of course,) are battling psychological biases about members of groups who are unfamiliar.

"These biases are not just simply something that's in our head," social psychologist Muniba Saleem tells us. "But they are in fact affecting our behaviors and our public policy decisions towards Muslims."

We'll also look at how President Trump's rhetoric is changing the way Americans talk. It's based on the work of Chris Crandall, a researcher at the University of Kansas who studies prejudice. In 2016, he found that Trump's disparaging comments about Muslims, Mexicans, and even overweight people may have altered basic social norms.

"The election changed people's notion of what was tolerable," says Crandall.
This week's episode was produced by Rhaina Cohen, Lucy Perkins, and Maggie Penman. Our team includes Jenny Schmidt, Parth Shah, Thomas Lu and Laura Kwerel. Our supervising producer is Tara Boyle.

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subscribe to Hidden Brain podcast This week, we look at the language we use around race and religion, and what it says about the culture we live in. In 2014, two shooting sprees occurred six months apart in busy American cities. They had uncanny similarities: in both events, multiple people were shot and killed, including two police officers.

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Sari Ennis - July 9th - Mental/Social/Emotional/Behavioral Health

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Sari Ennis - July 9th - Mental/Social/Emotional/Behavioral Health

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In Thailand, there was a recent incident where several young boys and their coach who were part of a football were trapped in a cave. It has taken many days and divers and still extracting people from the cave.
What is unique in this article is how the event will impact the mental health of the boys. It is important since even after the trauma is so recent experts are providing advice in regards to how to help these children mentally so that they have as few complications and issues as possible while continue to live their lives after this incident.

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A CHILD psychiatrist has warned the Thai football team trapped in Tham Luang Cave could develop mental health conditions such as depression, anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder after being stranded in darkness for over two weeks.

The Thailand cave rescue in pictures
Mon, July 9, 2018
Thailand cave rescue: Pictures show the dramatic rescue operation of a trapped youth football team and their coach.

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Thailand cave rescue: Thai boys will be left with 'mental health conditions' after rescue

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A CHILD psychiatrist has warned the Thai football team trapped in Tham Luang Cave could develop mental health conditions such as depression, anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder after being stranded in darkness for over two weeks. Mon, July 9, 2018

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This article shows research conducted on a woman who received an HPV vaccine and saw a reduction in size of her squamos cell carcinoma on her skin. There have been many articles that theorize certain viruses can actually cure certain types of cancer. This article provides that data needed for scientists to pursue this further as an alternative method for targeted cancer treatment which has the potential to out-compete traditional chemotherapy.

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A doctor has injected a woman whose skin cancers were too widespread to be treated in other ways with Gardasil. Not only did the cancers clear up, but they have not reoccurred since. Although case notes from a single patient are no match for controlled trials, the outcome raises the possibility the much-derided vaccine could be saving even more lives than we realized.

Squamous cell carcinoma is the second-most common type of skin cancer after basal cell carcinoma. While not as deadly as melanoma, it still accounts for thousands of deaths each year worldwide, along with much suffering.

Certain strains of the human papillomavirus (HPV) are known to cause almost all cervical cancers, as well as many cancers of the anus, vagina, and vulvar. The presence of the virus in many squamous cancer cells alerted medical researchers to the likelihood that some skin cancers could be added to this list.

In 2017, Dr Anna Nicols of the University of Miami reported that, after being given the anti-HPV vaccine Gardasil, two people who suffered from squamous cell cancers experienced fewer new cancers. Inspired by this success, Nicols' colleague Dr Tim Ioannides suggested injecting Gardasil directly into skin tumors to see if it could also kill existing cancers.

Most squamous cell cancers are treated through surgery, radiation therapy, or both. However, one of Nichols' patients was a 97-year-old woman whose leg had so many tumors none of these options were considered safe. Nichols got approval from the patient to inject two doses of Gardasil in her arm, six weeks apart, followed by injections into several of the tumors, repeated over a period of 11 months.

"I think we had a really reasonable expectation and good data that this was actually going to, at the very least, do no harm to this patient, and possibly provide some benefit," said Ioannides in a statement.

They got something much better. "All of her tumors completely resolved 11 months after the first direct tumor injection, and she has had no recurrence," Nichols said. "It has been about 24 months now since we started with the treatment." The patient, who will soon turn 100, is understandably delighted.

The work, reported in JAMA Dermatology, raises the possibility that Gardasil could be used much more widely in treatment, being much less invasive than existing options. Moreover, it seems possible the widespread provision of Gardasil to prevent cervical cancer could be causing an as-yet unmeasured reduction in skin cancers.

The campaign against Gardasil has been even more virulent than against other vaccines, combining extraordinary exaggeration of side effects with denial of its success against cervical cancer. It's possible these falsehoods are doing even more damage than anyone realized.

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This Woman's 'Untreatable' Cancer Was Cured With A Routine Vaccination

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A doctor has injected a woman whose skin cancers were too widespread to be treated in other ways with Gardasil. Not only did the cancers clear up, but they have not reoccurred since. Although case notes from a single patient are no match for controlled trials, the outcome raises the possibility the much-derided vaccine could be saving even more lives than we realized.

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Jimmy Winslow    7/9/2018 Mental/Social/Emotional/Behavioral Health

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Jimmy Winslow    7/9/2018 Mental/Social/Emotional/Behavioral Health

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This TED talk is about the often ignored mental health crisis that accompanies other more sensational problems with the global refugee crisis. Dr. Daod explains how he has been working with refugees to implement short, powerful interventions in an attempt to give vulnerable people as much mental health care as possible.

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Essam Daod: How we can bring mental health support to refugees

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The global refugee crisis is a mental health catastrophe, leaving millions in need of psychological support to overcome the traumas of dislocation and conflict. To undo the damage, child psychiatrist and TED Fellow Essam Daod has been working in camps, rescue boats and the shorelines of Greece and the Mediterranean Sea to help refugees (a quarter of which are children) reframe their experiences through short, powerful psychological interventions.

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Aspen Becker, 7/10/18, Environmental Health

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Aspen Becker, 7/10/18, Environmental Health

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This presentation is an interesting overview of the 2018 Boulder County Agricultural Community Survey. The results from the survey showed many positive results. For example, more than half of farmers in the country reported an increased awareness of state and county agricultural public health requirements.

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Alyssa Valentine Laws/Policies/Politics July 11, 2018

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Alyssa Valentine Laws/Policies/Politics July 11, 2018

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While this might be older news, with the drought in Colorado I thought this was an interesting topic. There is a documentary on Netflix, Water and Power, that I wanted to include, but since not everyone has access I included a brief article discussing the issue. Clean water should be accessible for all but this is not the case and with the wet season becoming shorter and shorter, water will become an even larger issue than it already is.

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COURTS

Control of California's largest underground water bank was illegally bestowed on a handful of private, wealthy agriculture and real estate companies in the 1990s, according to a group of environmentalists, sport fishermen and delta farmers.

Now, as the Golden State grapples with an aging water network, declining fish species and climate change, a lawsuit argues that the Kern Water Bank should be returned to the state agency that bankrolled it.

"In times of drought, (the water bank) is a dry-day fund that means we don't have to shut people's taps off during drought," said Adam Keats, senior attorney with the Center for Biological Diversity, one of five groups that filed the lawsuit July 2 in state superior court in Kern County. "But rather than protect key populations, it's increasing the profit potential for a small group of water barons in Kern County."

The Kern Water Bank, a vast system of wells, pipelines and underground cisterns spread over 20,000 acres in the southern San Joaquin Valley, was developed as a key surplus reservoir by California in the late 1980s. After sinking about $75 million into the bank, however, the state handed it over to the Kern County Water Agency in 1995 in exchange for water rights to 45,000 acre-feet of water, or enough to supply 90,000 households for a year.

That same year, a public-private partnership called the Kern Bank Water Authority was formed among four water districts and one private company, Westside Mutual Water Company.

Today, the lawsuit argues, about 84 percent of the water bank is effectively in the grip of two mammoth businesses: Paramount Farms, an agricultural holding company that owns Westside and is controlled by Los Angeles billionaire Stewart Resnick; and Tejon Ranch Company, a real estate firm proposing a resort, 3,500-home development and shopping center in the Tehachapi Mountains.

While the Tejon Ranch proposal marches forward and Paramount Farms - the largest grower of almonds and pistachios in the world - grows apace, dry spells brought on by climate change and environmental restrictions on water pumping are likely to mean water shortages for most other cities and farmers in the state, the plaintiffs contend.

At the same time, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and many large water agencies have voiced support for new dams and reservoirs.

Officials with Kern Water Bank Authority, Paramount Farms and Westside Mutual Water Company did not return calls seeking comment. Attorneys with the state Department of Water Resources are reviewing the lawsuit.

Officials with Tejon Ranch referred comment about the content of the lawsuit to the Kern Water Bank Authority. But Tejon Ranch spokesman Barry Zoeller indicated the legal action came as no surprise given the Center for Biological Diversity's long-held opposition to the development. The group maintains that building on the site will destroy critical California condor habitat.

"The center... has been at this for a long time," Zoeller said. "I expect them to continue."

This month's lawsuit was the second filed by the coalition this year over the so-called " Monterey Plus Amendments," measures enacted in 1995 that changed some aspects of how the state manages the water network supplying about 25 million people and 750,000 acres of farmland.

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Suit to get Kern Water Bank returned to state

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Control of California's largest underground water bank was illegally bestowed on a handful of private, wealthy agriculture and real estate companies in the 1990s, according to a group of environmentalists, sport fishermen and delta farmers.

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Infectious/Communicable Disease

This New York Times article explains a new method for "tweaking genes" in immune cells, which could lead to possible treatments for cancer and infectious diseases. The process involves inserting replacements for white blood cells removed from the immune system, using electrical fields. While the technique is new, many scientists and doctors are enthusiastic about its potential.

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Scientists report that they have discovered a way to tweak genes in the body's immune cells by using electrical fields.

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A colored scanning electron micrograph of a white blood cell amid red blood cells. Researchers hope a new method to boost immune systems could make a treatment available to patients with almost any type of cancer. Credit Steve Gschmeissner/Science Source

For the first time, scientists have found a way to efficiently and precisely remove genes from white blood cells of the immune system and to insert beneficial replacements, all in far less time than it normally takes to edit genes.

If the technique can be replicated in other labs, experts said, it may open up profound new possibilities for treating an array of diseases, including cancer, infections like H.I.V. and autoimmune conditions like lupus and rheumatoid arthritis.

The new work, published on Wednesday in the journal Nature, "is a major advance," said Dr. John Wherry, director of the Institute of Immunology at the University of Pennsylvania, who was not involved in the study.

But because the technique is so new, no patients have yet been treated with white blood cells engineered with it.

"The proof will be when this technology is used to develop a new therapeutic product," cautioned Dr. Marcela Maus, director of cellular immunotherapy at Massachusetts General Hospital.

That test may not be far away. The researchers have already used the method in the laboratory to alter the abnormal immune cells of children with a rare genetic condition. They plan to return the altered cells to the children in an effort to cure them.
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Currently, scientists attempting to edit the genome often must rely on modified viruses to slice open DNA in a cell and to deliver new genes into the cell. The method is time-consuming and difficult, limiting its use.

Despite the drawbacks, the virus method has had some success. Patients with a few rare blood cancers can be treated with engineered white blood cells - the immune system's T-cells - that go directly to the tumors and kill them.

This type of treatment with engineered white cells, called immunotherapy, has been limited because of the difficulty of making viruses to carry the genetic material and the time needed to create them.

But researchers now say they have a found a way to use electrical fields, not viruses, to deliver both gene-editing tools and new genetic material into the cell. By speeding the process, in theory a treatment could be available to patients with almost any type of cancer.

"What takes months or even a year may now take a couple weeks using this new technology," said Fred Ramsdell, vice president of research at the Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy in San Francisco. "If you are a cancer patient, weeks versus months could make a huge difference."

"I think it's going to be a huge breakthrough," he added.

The Parker Institute already is working with the authors of the new paper, led by Dr. Alexander Marson, scientific director of biomedicine at the Innovative Genomics Institute - a partnership between University of California, San Francisco and the University of California, Berkeley - to make engineered cells to treat a variety of cancers.

In the new study, Dr. Marson and his colleagues engineered T-cells to recognize human melanoma cells. In mice carrying the human cancer cells, the modified T-cells went right to the cancer, attacking it.

The researchers also corrected - in the lab - the T-cells of three children with a rare mutation that caused autoimmune diseases. The plan now is to return these corrected cells to the children, where they should function normally and suppress the defective immune cells, curing the children.

The technique may also hold great promise for treating H.I.V., Dr. Wherry said.

The H.I.V. virus infects T-cells. Ifthey can be engineered so that the virus cannot enter the T-cells, a person infected with H.I.V. should not progress to AIDS. Those T-cells already infected would die, and the engineered cells would replace them.

Previous research has shown it might be possible to treat H.I.V. in this way. "But now there is a really efficient strategy to do this," Dr. Wherry said.

The idea of engineering T-cells without using a virus is not new, but the immune cells are fragile and hard to keep alive in the lab, and it has always been difficult to get genes into them.

Scientists usually introduced replacement genes into T-cells with a type of virus that was disarmed so that it would not cause disease and that can insert new genes into cells. But when these viruses insert the genes into a cell's DNA, they do so haphazardly, sometimes destroying other genes.

"We needed something targeted, something fast and something efficient," Dr. Marson said. "What if we could just paste in a piece of DNA and avoid the viruses altogether?"

The idea would be to slip a type of molecular scissors, known as Crispr, into cells that would slice open DNA wherever scientists wanted a new gene to go. That would avoid the problem of using a virus that inserts genes pretty much at random.

And along with the scissors, they would add a piece of DNA containing the new gene to be added to the cells.

One way to do that would be to use an electrical fieldto make the cells permeable. It required a herculean effort by a graduate student, Theo Roth, to finally figure out the right molecular mixture of genes, gene-editing tools and electrical fields to modify T-cells without a virus.

"He tested thousands of conditions," Dr. Marson said.

Already the scientists are talking to the Food and Drug Administration about using the new method to precisely attack solid tumors, as well as blood cancers.

"Our intent is to try to apply this as quickly as possible," Dr. Ramsdell said.

So when they knew they had a system that worked, did they break out the champagne? Have a party?

Well, no, Mr. Roth said in an interview. He just took the data to Dr. Marson.

"We certainly had an exuberant walk to Alex's office," he recalled.

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A13 of the New York edition with the headline: Technique Shortens Time It Can Take to Edit Genes. Order Reprints | Today's Paper | Subscribe

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Swift Gene-Editing Method May Revolutionize Treatments for Cancer and Infectious Diseases

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Scientists report that they have discovered a way to tweak genes in the body's immune cells by using electrical fields. For the first time, scientists have found a way to efficiently and precisely remove genes from white blood cells of the immune system and to insert beneficial replacements, all in far less time than it normally takes to edit genes.

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Human trafficking victims suffer from serious medical and mental health issues ranging from physical and sexual abuse to malnutrition and post-traumatic stress disorder. Yet a 2014 study found that 88 percent of trafficking survivors had contact with the health care system but were not identified as victims.

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Meet Josie - Human Trafficking Response Program 2017

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Hunter Hudson, Environmental Health, July 11th

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Hunter Hudson, Environmental Health, July 11th

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Gina McCarthy was the 13th Administrator of the EPA and a strong advocate for solutions to climate change. This article provides her insights into what the public can do to help combat climate change from an informed citizens point of view. She argues that creating change needs to come from the public in a sort of 'citizen science movement' where citizens become more involved in the health of their community and other factors, such as water quality. Overall, an interesting article from a former EPA head.
Link: https://www.usnews.com/news/the-report/articles/2018-07-06/gina-mccarthy-on-how-the-environment-is-a-public-health-issue

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Melissa Lowe - Laws/Policies/Politics, 7/11/18

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Melissa Lowe - Laws/Policies/Politics, 7/11/18

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The US decided to withdraw support and undermine a UN World Health Assembly resolution on encouraging breastfeeding around the globe. Specifically, they pushed to remove a segment of the resolution focused on limiting the advertisement of milk products that claim incorrectly to be adequate substitutes for infant formula. The US focused on the interests of baby food manufacturers and threatened the withdrawal of military aid and aggressive trade policies against Ecuador, the country that introduced the resolution. According to the Lancet 2016, breastfeeding would prevent the deaths of up to 800,000 children each year.

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A resolution to encourage breast-feeding was expected to be approved quickly and easily by the hundreds of government delegates who gathered this spring in Geneva for the United Nations-affiliated World Health Assembly.

Based on decades of research, the resolution says that mother's milk is healthiest for children and countries should strive to limit the inaccurate or misleading marketing of breast milk substitutes.

Then the United States delegation, embracing the interests of infant formula manufacturers, upended the deliberations.

[Read more about how the Trump administraton's stance conflicts with existing medical advice.]

American officials sought to water down the resolution by removing language that called on governments to "protect, promote and support breast-feeding" and another passage that called on policymakers to restrict the promotion of food products that many experts say can have deleterious effects on young children.

When that failed, they turned to threats, according to diplomats and government officials who took part in the discussions. Ecuador, which had planned to introduce the measure, was the first to find itself in the cross hairs.

The Americans were blunt: If Ecuador refused to drop the resolution, Washington would unleash punishing trade measures and withdraw crucial military aid. The Ecuadorean government quickly acquiesced.

The showdown over the issue was recounted by more than a dozen participants from several countries, many of whom requested anonymity because they feared retaliation from the United States.

Health advocates scrambled to find another sponsor for the resolution, but at least a dozen countries, most of them poor nations in Africa and Latin America, backed off, citing fears of retaliation, according to officials from Uruguay, Mexico and the United States.

"We were astonished, appalled and also saddened," said Patti Rundall, the policy director of the British advocacy group Baby Milk Action, who has attended meetings of the assembly, the decision-making body of the World Health Organization, since the late 1980s.

"What happened was tantamount to blackmail, with the U.S. holding the world hostage and trying to overturn nearly 40 years of consensus on the best way to protect infant and young child health," she said.

In the end, the Americans' efforts were mostly unsuccessful. It was the Russians who ultimately stepped in to introduce the measure - and the Americans did not threaten them.

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The United States ambassador to Ecuador, Todd C. Chapman, left, in Quito's historical center with a guide, center, and the undersecretary of state for political affairs, Thomas A. Shannon. Credit Jose Jacome/EPA, via Shutterstock

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The State Department declined to respond to questions, saying it could not discuss private diplomatic conversations. The Department of Health and Human Services, the lead agency in the effort to modify the resolution, explained the decision to contest the resolution's wording but said H.H.S. was not involved in threatening Ecuador.

"The resolution as originally drafted placed unnecessary hurdles for mothers seeking to provide nutrition to their children," an H.H.S. spokesman said in an email. "We recognize not all women are able to breast-feed for a variety of reasons. These women should have the choice and access to alternatives for the health of their babies, and not be stigmatized for the ways in which they are able to do so." The spokesman asked to remain anonymous in order to speak more freely.

Although lobbyists from the baby food industry attended the meetings in Geneva, health advocates said they saw no direct evidence that they played a role in Washington's strong-arm tactics. The $70 billion industry, which is dominated by a handful of American and European companies, has seen sales flatten in wealthy countries in recent years, as more women embrace breast-feeding. Over all, global sales are expected to rise by 4 percent in 2018, according to Euromonitor, with most of that growth occurring in developing nations.

The intensity of the administration's opposition to the breast-feeding resolution stunned public health officials and foreign diplomats, who described it as a marked contrast to the Obama administration, which largely supported W.H.O.'s longstanding policy of encouraging breast-feeding.

During the deliberations, some American delegates even suggested the United States might cut its contribution to the W.H.O., several negotiators said. Washington is the single largest contributor to the health organization, providing $845 million, or roughly 15 percent of its budget, last year.

The confrontation was the latest example of the Trump administration siding with corporate interests on numerous public health and environmental issues.

In talks to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement, the Americans have been pushing for language that would limit the ability of Canada, Mexico and the United States to put warning labels on junk food and sugary beverages, according to a draft of the proposal reviewed by The New York Times.
[Read more about the Trump administration's stance on junk food warning labels during Nafta talks.]
During the same Geneva meeting where the breast-feeding resolution was debated, the United States succeeded in removing statements supporting soda taxes from a document that advises countries grappling with soaring rates of obesity.

The Americans also sought, unsuccessfully, to thwart a W.H.O. effort aimed at helping poor countries obtain access to lifesaving medicines. Washington, supporting the pharmaceutical industry, has long resisted calls to modify patent laws as a way of increasing drug availability in the developing world, but health advocates say the Trump administration has ratcheted up its opposition to such efforts.

The delegation's actions in Geneva are in keeping with the tactics of an administration that has been upending alliances and long-established practices across a range of multilateral organizations, from the Paris climate accord to the Iran nuclear deal to Nafta.

Ilona Kickbusch, director of the Global Health Centre at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva, said there was a growing fear that the Trump administration could cause lasting damage to international health institutions like the W.H.O. that have been vital in containing epidemics like Ebola and the rising death toll from diabetes and cardiovascular disease in the developing world.

"It's making everyone very nervous, because if you can't agree on health multilateralism, what kind of multilateralism can you agree on?" Ms. Kickbusch asked.

The opening of the World Health Assembly in May. After American officials pressured Ecuador, it was Russia that introduced a resolution in support of breast-feeding. Credit Peter Klaunzer/EPA, via Shutterstock

A Russian delegate said the decision to introduce the breast-feeding resolution was a matter of principle.

"We're not trying to be a hero here, but we feel that it is wrong when a big country tries to push around some very small countries, especially on an issue that is really important for the rest of the world," said the delegate, who asked not to be identified because he was not authorized to speak to the media.

He said the United States did not directly pressure Moscow to back away from the measure. Nevertheless, the American delegation sought to wear down the other participants through procedural maneuvers in a series of meetings that stretched on for two days, an unexpectedly long period.

In the end, the United States was largely unsuccessful. The final resolution preserved most of the original wording, though American negotiators did get language removed that called on the W.H.O. to provide technical support to member states seeking to halt "inappropriate promotion of foods for infants and young children."

The United States also insisted that the words "evidence-based" accompany references to long-established initiatives that promote breast-feeding, which critics described as a ploy that could be used to undermine programs that provide parents with feeding advice and support.

Elisabeth Sterken, director of the Infant Feeding Action Coalition in Canada, said four decades of research have established the importance of breast milk, which provides essential nutrients as well as hormones and antibodies that protect newborns against infectious disease.

A 2016 study in The Lancet found that universal breast-feeding would prevent 800,000 child deaths a year across the globe and yield $ 300 billion insavings from reduced health care costs and improved economic outcomes for those reared on breast milk.

Scientists are loath to carry out double-blind studies that would provide one group with breast milk and another with breast milk substitutes. "This kind of 'evidence-based' research would be ethically and morally unacceptable," Ms. Sterken said.

Abbott Laboratories, the Chicago-based company that is one of the biggest players in the $70 billion baby food market, declined to comment.

Nestlé, the Switzerland-based food giant with significant operations in the United States, sought to distance itself from the threats against Ecuador and said the company would continue to support the international code on the marketing of breast milk substitutes, which calls on governments to regulate the inappropriate promotion of such products and to encourage breast-feeding.

In addition to the trade threats, Todd C. Chapman, the United States ambassador to Ecuador, suggested in meetings with officials in Quito, the Ecuadorean capital, that the Trump administration might also retaliate by withdrawing the military assistance it has been providing in northern Ecuador, a region wracked by violence spilling across the border from Colombia, according to an Ecuadorean government official who took part in the meeting.

The United States Embassy in Quito declined to make Mr. Chapman available for an interview.

"We were shocked because we didn't understand how such a small matter like breast-feeding could provoke such a dramatic response," said the Ecuadorean official, who asked not to be identified because she was afraid of losing her job.

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: U.S. Delegation Disrupts Accord On Breast Milk. Order Reprints | Today's Paper | Subscribe

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Opposition to Breast-Feeding Resolution by U.S. Stuns World Health Officials

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A resolution to encourage breast-feeding was expected to be approved quickly and easily by the hundreds of government delegates who gathered this spring in Geneva for the United Nations-affiliated World Health Assembly. Based on decades of research, the resolution says that mother's milk is healthiest for children and countries should strive to limit the inaccurate or misleading marketing of breast milk substitutes.

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Visitors to a zip line in Tennessee experienced vomiting from something other than the thrill of the ride. Investigators believe that the well water at CLIMB Works ziplining was contaminated with E. coli, and this caused upwards of 500 people to become ill.

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More than 500 people who rode a zipline in Tennessee are sick with E. coli infections.

Health inspectors think they got sick after drinking contaminated well water.

E. coli is a species of bacteria that live in the intestines of people and animals. S ome E. coli are harmless, but other strains can cause kidney failure or death.

A trip down the zipline ended in misery and vomit for more than 500 people who visited Gatlinburg, Tennessee this summer.

The Tennessee Department of Health found E. coli bacteria present in the water at CLIMB Works ziplining tours in the Great Smoky Mountains, as The Knoxville News Sentinel reported.

At least 548 sick people have said they ziplined at CLIMB Works between mid-June and early July. The tree-topping tours include water stops, and the coolers are filled with well water, according to the Atlanta Journal Constitution. That's likely where the contamination came from.

Emily Oney, who vacationed in the area with her family, wrote on Facebook that she visited the zipline with a group of seven other people on June 31. By the following afternoon, six of them were "throwing up and terribly sick," she said.

"Upon further investigation, I found a review online from Sunday where more families were claiming to be sick from the contaminated coolers of water on the course," Oney said. "Do not drink the water here."

CLIMB Works, which bills itself as the top-rated zipline tour in Tennessee, responded to Oney saying the company feels "awful" if it had "any part in anyone getting sick."

"We worry something might have contaminated the water during the dates of your visit," the company wrote.

It turned out to be a dangerous strain of a common bacteria.

What is E. coli?

E. coli has a bad reputation as an illness-causing bacteria, but you probably have some good E. coli inside your body right now.

Escherichia coli is a broad term for a species of diverse bacteria. Certain strains of E. coli colonize our guts almost immediately after birth and stick to the mucus of our intestines, keeping our intestinal tract humming along smoothly.

Some of the most common signs of infection with the bad type of E. coli include bloody diarrhea, stomach cramps, and vomiting. It can take 10 days for symptoms of E. coli to show up, and an additional two to three weeks for the illness to be reported to health officials.

"People have gotten infected by swallowing lake water while swimming, touching the environment in petting zoos and other animal exhibits, and by eating food prepared by people who did not wash their hands well after using the toilet," according to the CDC.

Because E. coli contamination comes from little bits of poo, any person or animal along the path that food or water take from a field or well to your mouth can easily contaminate produce, meat, or water.

Most people can survive E. coli poisoning - the miserable symptoms usually last five to seven days. There's not much you can do to treat the illness, though, except to stay well hydrated until it's over.

Pregnant women, young children, older adults, and people with compromised immune systems need to be extra careful about steering clear of E. coli-contaminated food and water. The infection's more severe complications can include kidney failure, which happens in about 5% to 10% of cases and usually affects people under the age of 5 and over 60, according to the Merck Manual.

The best way to kill E. coli is to boil it. The CDC recommends bringing water to a rolling boil for a minute (or if you're at elevations above 6,500 feet, three minutes), then cool and store the liquid in a clean, sanitized container with a tight cover and keep it refrigerated. There is no filter that's certified to work for all E. coli strains.

NOW WATCH: Get your meal delivered to you via zip line at this treetop restaurant

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More than 500 people who rode a zipline are sick with E. coli - here's what to know about the infection

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More than 500 people who rode a zipline in Tennessee are sick with E. coli infections. Health inspectors think they got sick after drinking contaminated well water. E. coli is a species of bacteria that live in the intestines of people and animals. S ome E.

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Arianna Roberts, July 12, 2018, Laws/Policies/Politics

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Arianna Roberts, July 12, 2018, Laws/Policies/Politics

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Safe injection sites give drug users a place to use drugs under medical supervision. Supporters argue that the sites could reduce the number of deaths from overdose because, if needed, medical professionals could provide onsite treatment. Although some city officials agree that the sites could offer potential health benefits to users, they are still hesitant to open them. Some of this hesitation is due to legal uncertainty. For example, it is unclear how the Department of Justice will respond to them. As of today, there are no safe injection sites available in the United States.

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In parts of the country hit hard by addiction, some public health officials are considering running sites where people can use heroin and other illegal drugs under medical supervision. Advocates say these facilities, known as supervised injection sites, save lives that would otherwise be lost to overdoses, and provide a bridge to treatment.

There are at least 13 efforts underway in U.S. cities and states to start an official supervised injection site - with advocates in several cities saying they want to be the first. And the forms vary. Seattle is planning a safe injection van; Philadelphia is considering pop-up tents; some elected officials in places like Denver, Vermont, Delaware and San Francisco, are trying to gather support for proposals.

Harm reduction advocates hope supervised injection sites can follow the path of needle exchange programs which have gained wider acceptance over the years, thanks to their role in containing the spread of HIV and AIDS. There are now needle exchange programs in 39 states.

But many safe injection site proposals seem to be waylaid in community debate and legal uncertainty.

Scott Burris, director of Temple University's Center for Public Health Law Research, says municipalities are worried about a showdown with Jeff Sessions' Department of Justice.

"You can talk about cities racing to be first," Burris says. "But my guess is that you have a lot of cities who are actually racing to be second."

When officials with the Justice Department are asked where Sessions stands on the issue, they offer a statement issued late last year by a U.S. Attorney in Vermont saying health workers at a supervised injection site would be vulnerable to criminal charges and property housing it could be at risk of being seized by federal law enforcement.

Burris says there could be a public backlash to Justice Department lawyers asking a judge to sign warrants for the arrest of social workers and nurses working to save lives in the facilities, but the fear of a hardline response is still giving local officials pause.

In Philadelphia, where overdoses kill four times as many people as murder, it has been six months since top city officials, including the mayor and the city's district attorney, announced they were advancing the idea of a supervised injection site. Now, city officials say they are still searching for private funders and launching new outreach efforts in many neighborhoods to help make the controversial concept more palatable.

Eva Gladstein, deputy managing director of the city's Health and Human Services, says it's time to act.

"We estimate that we would save up to 75 lives in one year, and if any of those 75 people are a member of your family, you would, I think, agree that that's something that's desirable," she says.

In a survey Gladstein's department conducted in Philadelphia's Kensington neighborhood, seen as ground-zero of the city's opioid crisis, more than two-thirds of drug users said they would go to a supervised injection site.

"In communities that have been living with this addiction," she says. "Everybody knows someone or has a family member who is affected."

Philadelphia-based federal prosecutor Louis Lappen is more skeptical. "You're talking about an extremely dangerous situations with people injecting these drugs into their veins," he says. "That is killing them at rates we have never seen before in the history of the world. So, it's not something we can just say, 'Wow, that's a really great idea.' "

It is not just prosecutors who are unsettled by the concept. Massachusetts state senator Will Brownsberger sponsored a bill to jumpstart a safe injection site there, but some Boston elected officials and residents remained leery that a supervised injection site would enable and even acerbate drug use.

"If we had a place where people were ready for it, then we could probably get it done. But we don't have that right now," says Brownsberger.

While the issue has recently heated up in the U.S., in Canada, the city of Vancouver has run a safe injection site, called Insite, for 15 years. It navigated its own legal challenges. The Supreme Court of Canada ruled in 2011 that the facility should be granted an exemption from federal law since, the court wrote, saving lives outweighs any benefit of prohibiting the use of illegal drugs at the site.

In the U.S., where all official supervised injection sites remain pending, the issue has never been tested in the courts. Still, legal scholars are already gearing up for future legal fights by considering federal drug law loopholes or novel arguments that could convince a judge to rule in favor of harm reduction.

Yet before the courts weigh in, a site has to open.

In May, New York City mayor Bill de Blasio endorsed a proposal to open four safe injection spaces. The plan still needs the blessing of the state Department of Health. Some drug users say they would embrace such a facility. Take Jeff, who says he has been struggling with addiction for more than 25 years.

"This thing is not a joke. It really isn't," Jeff says. (NPR agreed to use just his first name since he uses illegal drugs.)

Jeff says using on the streets is risky - especially when using alone. If New York's safe injection sites open, people would bring their own drugs and use them under the eye of trained health-care providers, who stand by with the overdose-reversing drug Naloxone.

"It's not good to have a person strung out on this stuff. But you definitely don't want them doing this alone," Jeff says. "And you definitely don't want to find out that they died alone."

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Cities Planning Supervised Drug Injection Sites Fear Justice Department Reaction

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In parts of the country hit hard by addiction, some public health officials are considering running sites where people can use heroin and other illegal drugs under medical supervision. Advocates say these facilities, known as supervised injection sites, save lives that would otherwise be lost to overdoses, and provide a bridge to treatment.

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Sierra Svendsen - 7/12/18 - Noninfectious/Lifestyle Diseases

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Sierra Svendsen - 7/12/18 - Noninfectious/Lifestyle Diseases

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In this TED Talk, Travis Rieder recounts the painful, often-hidden struggle of opioid withdrawal and reveals how doctors who are quick to prescribe (and overprescribe) opioids aren't equipped with the tools to eventually get people off the meds. This talk brings up an interesting side of the opioid crisis that shows that there may be a lack of communication between doctors and public health officials for opioid withdrawal.

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Travis Rieder: The agony of opioid withdrawal -- and what doctors should tell patients about it

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The United States accounts for five percent of the world's population but consumes almost 70 percent of the total global opioid supply, creating an epidemic that has resulted in tens of thousands of deaths each year. How did we get here, and what can we do about it?

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Hadley Kelly- July 11, 2018Mental/Social/Emotional/Behavioral Health 

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Hadley Kelly- July 11, 2018Mental/Social/Emotional/Behavioral Health 

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TED Talk host, Guy Winch questions, “why don’t we see a health professional when we feel emotional pain: guilt, loss, loneliness?” Winch identifies the need in practicing, “emotional hygiene” by taking our emotional pain as serious as physical pain. He continues to note the importance to take the time to check in with one’s self and to be more aware of our emotional state.

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Why we all need to practice emotional first aid

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We’ll go to the doctor when we feel flu-ish or a nagging pain. So why don’t we see a health professional when we feel emotional pain: guilt, loss, loneliness? Too many of us deal with common psychological-health issues on our own, says Guy Winch. But we don’t have to. He makes a compelling case to practice emotional hygiene — taking care of our emotions, our minds, with the same diligence we take care of our bodies.