Gun violence has become a public health epidemic. Despite countless deaths in mass shootings over the last 2 decades, the Dickey Amendment—a provision inserted into the 1996 spending bill which blocked federal funding for research on gun violence—remains on the books. While every politician, media pundit, and policy expert “know” the solution, the answers are not that simple.
Is the notion of adult males having sex with tweens considered quasi-acceptable by society at-large? After all, Epstein told the New York Post in 2011, “I’m not a sexual predator, I’m an ‘offender,’…It’s the difference between a murderer and a person who steals a bagel.” The pediatrician in me finds this notion reprehensible. The mother in me is scared beyond belief. Teenage girls are still children. It is high-time our society started seeing them that way. Bagels, however, will never quite be the same for me, again.
Why did this picture seize our attention? Is it because Valeria’s’ tiny body is tucked inside her father’s shirt and we can vividly see her clinging to him as they drowned? Or is it because we know if they had made it across safely, the two would have been separated anyway? Or is it because every parent understands the desperation it took for a father to swim across a swirling river while carrying his 2-year-old daughter on his back?
Structural racism is the biased societal approach to housing, education, employment, healthcare, and criminal justice. As scientists study racial health disparities in depth, a picture begins to emerge that there are bigger, stronger, and more insidious forces at play than economics alone. The psychological stress generated by unfair treatment may trigger a biological series of events that lead to worsened health outcomes in the long term.
Disempowerment of Physicians. Defamation of Physicians. False Accusations against Physicians. Fight Back.
While Washington lawmakers had good intentions, their actions were largely symbolic, because they overlooked a few issues that will interfere with this law having its’ intended effect. According to the Washington State Constitution, “absolute freedom of conscience in all matters of religious sentiment, belief and worship shall be guaranteed to every individual…” And to that end, the new vaccine exemption form replaced the philosophical exemption with a new box for parent-initiated religious exemption.
