NEWSBIOETHICS

Last Friday's decision by the House GOP to defund Planned Parenthood wasn't surprising, but it was a major blow to women's health advocates across the country. Now, hopes are pegged on the Senate to stand up against this and other controversial bills, collectively known as the "war on women."

It's generally believed that the Democratic-majority Senate will shoot down three pieces of legislation moving through the house. They include H.R. 3, the "No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act," which gained notoriety for its attempts to redefine rape; H.R. 358, the "Protect Life Act," which protects doctors and health care providers that refuse to perform abortions, even if it means saving a woman's life; and the proposal to eliminate funds for Title X family planning programs, including the Pence Amendment, which specifically defunded Planned Parenthood.

But, according to a petition by CREDO Action, a victory in the Senate isn't so clear-cut. The anti-choice Senators outnumber pro-choice Senators by 46-40, and 41 votes are needed to sustain a filibuster of the bills.

Members of the group Arizona 98 are asking supporters to contact Governor Brewer's office this Valentine's Day to urge her to "have a heart" and finally restore funding for the transplant funding program she cut last year.

The group was started after Brewer cut coverage for 98 organ transplant patients enrolled in state's Medicaid program, the Arizona Health Care Cost Containment System (AHCCCS).

Steven Daglas, co-founder of the group, suggests calling or emailing Governor Brewer's office with this message: "Arizona legislators on both sides of the aisle now agree funding exists to restore the eliminated organ transplants for AHCCCs patients. Prominent physicians and surgeons agree AHCCCS medical data shows heart, liver, lung, pancreas and bone-marrow transplants work. On this Valentine's Day, please have a heart and restore Arizona transplant funding NOW!"

Daglas also has a petition on Change.org, which is asking Brewer to restore funding for the program, that has already gathered over 1,890 signatures.

This past Saturday, people around the world staged an event in which popular homeopathic remedies were taken in 'overdose' quantities. Everyone survived, even though handfuls and entire bottles of pills were swallowed in one sitting, well over the recommended dosage.  The international protest proved its point: with homeopathic drugs, there's nothing in them.

The event was organized by the UK-based 10:23 Campaign and James Randi, who has an educational foundation focusing on exposing charlatans and pseudoscientific claims. Randi renewed his offer of $1 million to any homeopathic manufacturer that can prove, in a scientifically-backed study, that their product does what the label says it does. His foundation is also using a Change.org petition to challenge major pharmacies to accurately label homeopathic products so that consumers realize there is no evidence proving the products work.

Many consider homeopathy to be the ultimate snake oil. Homeopathic medicine rests on the assertion that a disease can be cured by a substance that produces the same symptoms in healthy people, that is, "like cures like." According to the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM), homeopathy is widely criticized because "a number of its key concepts are not consistent with the current understanding of science, particularly chemistry and physics." Specifically, homeopathic medicines are often diluted to the point where there are no molecules of the purported healing substance left. For instance, a typical dilution is 30C; meaning that the active substance is diluted by one drop in 100, then diluted 30 more times. The result? A dilution so great that nothing remains but water.

What brings the belief system over the realm of make-believe, though, is that practitioners of homeopathy believe that it works because the active substance has left its imprint or "essence" in the water, and this spurs the body to heal itself. This theory is the called the "memory of water."

In Arizona, the situation for transplant patients has gotten so dire that students are holding benefit concerts to help pay for life-saving treatments denied by the state.

Recently, students at Seton Catholic Prep High School raised $10,000 for their assistant basketball coach, Tiffany Tate, who has cystic fibrosis, a chronic lung disease. Diagnosed at four months, Tate, now 27, was enrolled in the state's organ transplant program until Governor Jan Brewer cut funding last year.

Tate had qualified for a double lung transplant, but after being dropped from the program, the surgery was exorbitant -- $250,000 out-of-pocket. As covered on the Examiner.com, the community has held various fundraising programs to help pay for her life-saving operation -- golf tournaments, a silent auction and donations.

The students did their part for the coach by holding a benefit concert and raising funds online through the National Transplant Assistance Fund.

Perhaps Governor Jan Brewer realized that cutting funding for a life-saving program went too far.

Yesterday, after months of protests from patients, the medical community and advocates, Brewer came up with a measure that could provide funds for the life-saving organ transplant program, which did away with as part of cost-containment measure. In her newly-released executive budget summary, she proposes to put up $50 million -- to be matched by $101 million in federal funds -- that would be used in an uncompensated-care pool to pay health-care providers. According to the summary, "the executive's intention is that providers use this funding to continue life-saving care for the most seriously ill Arizonans to the greatest extent possible."

That doesn't exactly mean that the patients on the organ transplant waiting list are going to get what they need, however. The reimbursements are to be determined by medical professionals. And while obviously they're the best ones to decide, there are many situations that might be deemed a "life-saving" situation. But the main hang-up with the uncompensated pool is the way in which Brewer proposes to fund it  -- by ending Medicaid coverage for 280,000 Arizonans.

Why would anyone want to associate themselves with Andrew Wakefield?

Wakefield is the notorious physician who, in a 1998 paper published in the medical journal Lancet, promoted the idea that the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine causes autism. But since then, he and his work have been thoroughly discredited. Last year, he was found guilty of professional misconduct, Lancet retracted his paper and his medical license was revoked. Just this month, investigative journalist Brian Deer published a three-part series in the British Medical Journal, revealing that Wakefield had conducted an "elaborate fraud." In addition to fabricating data, his own financial gains were behind the hoax -- he was paid by a law firm that was suing the maker of the MMR vaccine, and Wakefield was hoping to introduce his own measles vaccine after he had discredited the other.

But some people are still ardently defending Wakefield and his shoddy science. And this includes a professor at the University of Louisiana-Lafayette (ULL).

John W. Oller, Jr. holds a tenured position in the Department of Communicative Disorders at the ULL. A creationist, he has fought to keep evolution out of science textbooks. Perhaps even more troubling, given his position and departmental affiliation, he rigorously defends the autism-vaccine link. In his 2010 book, The Autism Epidemic and Related Issues, he even has Wakefield write the foreword.

When Arizona's governor, Jan Brewer, decided to cut funding for the state's transplant program, she was literally dictating the fate of almost one hundred people awaiting new organs. Though her office claims it must make tough choices in the face of budget shortfalls, a group of patients is proving there are many ways to find the funds to restore the program -- and to immediately save lives.

Five transplant patients, their families, and a Republican Committeeman from Illinois launched the website arizona98.com, for the 98 patients who had been enrolled in the life-saving organ transplant program. The state saves about $1.36 million by cutting the program, so the group came up with 26 alternative funding sources that would supplant these savings. None of the proposals require new spending or cuts other services.

One of the potential funding sources is a $1.25 million dollar "squirrel bridge" that Arizona tried to implement last year. The bridge was going to save endangered red squirrels and was expected to save five critters a year -- until it received widespread media attention and became the source of national ridicule. The unspent money could go to save the lives of 98 humans.

When Republicans talk about health care rationing, they are almost always hoping to equate it (erroneously) to health care reform. But in Arizona, Republican rationing has led to the denial of life-saving treatments -- and has resulted in another death.

As reported in The Arizona Republic, a second transplant candidate has died because they were denied coverage after Governor Jan Brewer slashed funding for the state's Medicaid program for organ transplants.

Hospital officials say that the budget cuts were to blame for the patients death. "We believe that it's likely that they died because they were unable to get a transplant," a University Medical Center spokesperson told the paper.

This is the second patient to have died since Brewer pulled the plug on certain transplants in Arizona's Medicaid program, the Health Care Cost Containment System. Patients that were covered by the state and waiting for a transplant were cut from the program effective October 1st, leading to what some doctors are calling "death by budget cuts."

The Age of Autism (AoA) is an anti-vaccine group that propagates the unfounded notion that vaccines play a role in autism.  As covered on a previous post, AoA, in conjunction with Safe Minds, another anti-vax group, recently tried to put a sponsored public-service-type announcement in AMC movie theaters across the country. The PSA warned about the "dangers" of the flu vaccine, right in the middle of flu season.

But Elyse Anders, a Skepchick blogger, mom and vaccine advocate, rallied her supporters to email AMC asking them to drop the PSA. After recieving hundreds of responses, AMC did the right thing and dropped the PSA. But AoA decided to start a smear campaign against Anders, putting her Facebook picture on their wall, accompanied by threats, insults and general nastiness.

Despite reports of abuse, Anders wasn't initially able to get FB to remove the picture, even though the comment stream listed her full name, place of employment and personal threats. So, Anders recruited her legion of Skepchick followers, and a Change.org petition asking FB to remove the picture gathered over 800 signatures in just two days.

And it worked. The picture and vicious comments are gone from AoA's wall.

For transplant patients in Arizona, the warnings about death panels and health care rationing have come true, but they have nothing to do with health care reform. Instead, a Republican Governor and her allies are standing in the way of patient care, declining requests to reinstate funding for a critical, life-saving program.

Facing state budget problems, Arizona Governor Jan Brewer slashed funding for the state's Medicaid program that covered organ transplants. As a result some patients that were covered by the state and waiting for a transplant were cut from the program effective October 1st, leading to what some doctors are calling "death by budget cuts."

The impact on patients has been swift and dramatic. The Tuscon Sentinel profiles Randy Shepherd, a 36-year-old father of three, that has been living with a pacemaker for the past three years and was moving on to his last treatment option, a heart transplant. Shepherd had rheumatic fever as a child and the disease damaged his heart. Unable to get coverage because of the pre-existing condition (with health care reform, denials of this type will not be allowed), he went on Medicaid.

But while he was waiting for the heart transplant, Brewer cut funding for certain transplants under Arizona's Medicaid program, the Health Care Cost Containment System.  His heart transplant would no longer be covered.