FDA approves cancer treatment that uses virus to attack tumors

Explanation: The federal Food and Drug Administration has just approved a modified herpes simplex virus as a treatment for advanced-stage melanoma. The virus, which is designed to activate patients’ own immune systems, has been shown to shrink tumors for at least six months in patients who have run out of treatment options. This story does a nice job of explaining the way the virus works and offers readers reactions from a variety of scientists. Clearly a lot of legwork went into this story. But we were disappointed to see that none of these sources provided any critical evaluation of the research or pointed to any caveats — of which there are quite a few. In addition, while the piece’s patient stories don’t overdo the “good news” aspect of the treatment, we wished for more data and a more thorough discussion of the ultimate outcomes that matter to patients such as survival time. Newer and experimental treatments for malignant melanoma have changed the uniformly poor outcome for this cancer. But the legitimate excitement surrounding these treatments must be tempered with acknowledgment that the benefits are limited and not everyone benefits. The treatments are very costly and can still cause significant harm to patients.

The story nods to costs when it says the company will charge the patient $65,000 for a treatment. But they actually will be trying to charge insurance companies this amount. How widely will it be covered and when? How many courses of treatment will be necessary? We’ll give the benefit of the doubt here but the story could have done more to clarify. The story indicates that the treatment caused some tumors to shrink for at least 6 months, particularly in those whose cancer had not yet spread to internal organs. But the overall discussion of benefits is lacking some important details. What does “shrink” mean? And when it says that 16% “responded,” what exactly does that mean? (Of course, 84% did not respond — a statistic that was also worthy of comment in our view.) Finally, important outcomes, such as length of survival, are not presented or compared with alternatives. One study reported that median survival was 23.3 months with the new drug vs. 18.9 months with the comparison treatment — a finding that would have been easy to include. The FDA cautioned in a news release that “Imlygic has not been shown to improve overall survival.” This is a close call, but we think the story downplays the significance of the harms attributable to these drugs. The story quotes a researcher who calls one drug “low-toxicity” and lists 3 adverse effects, but does not say with what frequency they occurred. According to the linked study, 11% of patients developed grade 3 (severe) and 4 (life-threatening) adverse events related to the treatment. We don’t think that’s what readers have in mind when they hear “low-toxicity.” No real study results are provided for us to assess. We aren’t told how the 436 patients mentioned in one study were selected, what the comparison treatment was, if there was a random assignment, and so on. The study itself mentions an open label design (both researchers and patients knew who was getting what treatment) that “may have influenced assessment of some end points.” We wish the story had delved a bit deeper into the research and discussed the potential limitations. Metastatic melanoma is a serious disease that is difficult to treat successfully. The story heralds this use of a genetically modified herpes simplex virus as important, and we think that is an appropriate judgment. The story quotes a number of experts and clearly a lot of legwork went into the reporting. But two of the sources quoted in the story consult for Amgen, the company that will sell this treatment, and they are not so identified. From the description provided in the story, some readers can probably gather that these experts are involved with the company. But it would have been better to state clearly that these are paid consultants. In addition, we wish that any of the sources quoted in the story had raised questions, pointed to limitations, or provided some critical analysis of the research. The overall tone of the piece is optimistic and positive — overly so in our view. The story mentions another drug called Yervoy and also mentions conventional treatments. It also describes other virus-based treatments that are under development. The story notes that the drug has been approved by the FDA, so we’ll award a Satisfactory grade here. But the story could have gone further. Folks with advanced-stage melanoma do not have anywhere to turn; they will be keen to follow up on this information. A news release from Amgen indicated that the company would make the treatment available within a week, so more thorough availability information appears to have been, well, available. One of the main points of the story is that this is the first virus to be approved by the FDA for advanced-stage melanoma. That’s about as novel as you can get! Amgen issued a news release on the same day as the Boston Globe/Stat story was published; there is enough original reporting that we can be sure the story went beyond this or any other news release.


White House adviser Valerie Jarrett once said she seeks "to help change America to be a more Islamic country.

Explanation: Moreover, the wording of the meme in its commonly reproduced form was too stilted to be believable as the utterance of a fluent English speaker (e.g., “I am an Iranian by birth and of [sic] my Islamic faith”). Finally, no news article or document associated with Stanford University records Jarrett as having made this statement back in 1977; and if there were any credible evidence Jarrett had ever said anything remotely like this, it would have been a well-covered news story since shortly after the 2008 presidential election and not a obscure meme that didn’t pop up until several years later.

Politics Quotes, islam, muslim, valerie jarrett

Valerie Jarrett was offered a role as a White House Senior Advisor at the very beginning of the Obama administration in January 2009 and held the position of Senior Advisor to the President of the United States. President Obama said he consulted Jarrett on every major decision, and the New Republic‘s Noam Scheiber reported thus of her influence with the White House: “Her role since she has been at the White House is one of the broadest and most expansive roles that I think has ever existed in the West Wing,” says Anita Dunn, Obama’s former communications director. Broader, even, than the role of running the West Wing. This summer, the call to send Attorney General Eric Holder on a risky visit to Ferguson, Missouri, was made by exactly three people: Holder himself, the president, and Jarrett, who were vacationing together on Martha’s Vineyard. When I asked Holder if Denis McDonough, the chief of staff, was part of the conversation, he thought for a moment and said, “He was not there.” Jarrett holds a key vote on Cabinet picks (she opposed Larry Summers at Treasury and was among the first Obama aides to come around on Hillary Clinton at State) and has an outsize say on ambassadorships and judgeships. She helps determine who gets invited to the First Lady’s Box for the State of the Union, who attends state dinners and bill-signing ceremonies, and who sits where at any of the above The level of influence Jarrett held with the Obama administration prompted many detractors to complain she wielded too much control over the President and decisions about who should have access to him, and one expression that detraction commonly took was the assertion that Jarrett was a foreign-born Islamic “mole” who was pushing for (or furthering) a Muslim agenda through the executive branch. One quote attributed to Jarrett is a typical example, holding that while she was an undergraduate psychology student at Stanford University in 1977, she proclaimed herself to be an Iranian who sought “to help change America to be a more Islamic country” and she felt “like it is going well in the transition of using freedom of religion in America against itself”:  Contrary to common rumor, however, neither Jarrett nor her parents are Iranian, nor (as far as we can tell) are any of them Muslim. Jarrett’s parents, James E. Bowman and Barbara Taylor Bowman, were both American-born U.S. citizens from Washington, D.C. and Chicago, respectively; the couple merely lived in Iran for about six years in the late 1950s and early 1960s while James served as chair of pathology at Nemazee Hospital in Shiraz as part of a program that sent American physicians to work in developing countries. Valerie was born in Shiraz during the Bowmans’ sojourn in Iran; she returned to the U.S. with her parents in 1962 (when she was five years old), whereupon she attended prep school in Massachusetts, graduated with a B.A. in psychology from Stanford University in 1978, and earned a J.D. from the University of Michigan Law School in 1981 before returning to Chicago to begin her working career. We’ve found no evidence Valerie Jarrett is (or ever was) Muslim, her only apparent connection to that religion being the incidental one that she temporarily lived in a predominantly Muslim country with her American parents for the first few years of her life. The quote to attributed “Valerie Jarrett, Stanford University, 1977” about her “seek[ing] to help change America to be a more Islamic country” is an unfounded one that has no source other than recent repetition (primarily on right-wing web sites and blogs). It’s also an anachronism, as “Valerie Jarrett” didn’t exist in 1977: she was born Valerie Bowman and didn’t take the latter surname until she married William Jarrett in 1983.


Mixed Outcomes in Laparoscopy for Prostates

Explanation: This newspaper article reports on the findings of a study that compares prevalence and outcomes of minimally invasive laparoscopic prostate removal with the standard "open" surgical method. The findings, published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology provide a useful snapshot at a time when laparoscopic surgery is rapidly becoming popular. The news article does a solid job of describing the findings in detail and providing comments from independent sources who help interpret them. The reader takes away the idea that laparoscopic surgeries, despite their increased popularity, appear to have significant potential harms. But the article leaves some major questions unanswered. First, the newspaper report does not mention costs. Robot-assisted procedures are inherently controversial because the equipment is so costly but the benefits unknown. By not mentioning costs of the surgery, the article strips the findings of context. Second, the study itself looks at a very narrow question–it compares the two surgical approaches in a 65-plus population. But the analysis did not account for disease state, mortality, the side effects of surgery men are most likely to care about (impotence and incontinence), or even whether the laparoscopic procedures were robot-assisted. The possibility that selection bias colors the findings is obvious. This is an important piece of research in the field. But given its limitations, it’s not clear that reporting on the findings to a large audience has much public value.

The story does not report how much the laparoscopic surgery costs, either directly or over time due to fewer complications or more treatments. One assumes that robot-assisted surgeries are more expensive, though again the story should have specified. Given the possibility of economic self-interest by proponents of laparoscopic surgery, this information would have been very useful. A daVinci machine reportedly costs over a million dollars, with signficant annual maintenance costs in addition. The article does a thorough job of describing the findings by specifying the percentage of patients who had minor and more serious complications. It also compares days spent in the hospital. However, the article reports a 27 percent reduction in risk of short-term complications and a 40 percent greater risk of scarring without indicating the underlying risks for either of these outcomes. See our primer on absolute versus relative risk statements. The story explictly compares the harms of the two surgical approaches in terms of short-term complications and longer-term consequences. The article is based on a retrospective study of outcomes in a large population, conducted by university researchers and published in a major peer-reviewed journal. However, there have been no head-to-head randomized trials comparing open vs. laparoscopic prostatectomies. Since outcomes in observational studies are subject to selection bias, the article should have plainly indicated this. The story does nothing to exaggerate the complications of prostatectomy or the success of the procedures studied. The article uses as sources the study itself, the lead author, and two independent medical specialists. This is sufficient sourcing. It is not known if any of the researchers had ties to interested parties such as device makers. The published abstract does not include this information. The article, like the study upon which it is based, compares only two treatment options–miniminally invasive laparoscopic surgery and traditional "open" surgery to remove the prostate. It would have been helpful, but not necessary, to place these two approaches in the context of the many choices men with prostate cancer face based on age, severity, co-morbidities, personal preference and other factors. The story implies that laparoscopic prostatectomies are widely available, and in fact are done about a third of the time in the studied population. But it would have been useful to state how difficult it is (or is not) to find a surgeon experienced with laparoscopic procedures. The story plainly states that the procedure is increasingly common and widely advertised. It cites figures from the study that demonstrate the increase of use between 2003 and 2005. It does not appear that a press release is associated with this journal article.


Arkansas approves new date for concert shut down by virus.

Explanation: A country-rock concert that Arkansas officials said could not happen on Friday because of restrictions to control the coronavirus will be allowed to take place next week.

Nathaniel Smith, Fort Smith, Health, General News, Entertainment, Arkansas, Virus Outbreak

The Department of Health said Friday that it approved the plan by TempleLive, a Fort Smith theater, to move its show by singer Travis McCready to Monday night. The theater had initially planned the show for Friday, three days before the state is allowing indoor entertainment venues to reopen. The concert is expected to draw at least 200 people. “They made some modifications that allowed us to approve it,” said Dr. Nathaniel Smith, the state’s health secretary. The state had ordered  operators of the former Masonic Temple to cancel or postpone the show and temporarily pulled the facility’s alcohol permit until it agreed to do so. TempleLive said Thursday it would postpone  the show. A Health Department spokeswoman said the primary changes were the date and adding a requirement that anyone over the age of 10 wear a mask. The plan also requires performers to be at least 12 feet away from the audience and all patrons to have their temperature checked at the door. The theater is reducing its capacity from 1,100 people to 239 for the event. Arkansas is allowing arenas, theaters and other indoor entertainment facilities to reopen Monday, but with a limit of 50 people in the audience. That limit can be increased to one-third capacity, but only after the state approves the venue’s plan. Gov. Asa Hutchinson also said the state has approved plans for all three of the state’s casinos  to reopen on Monday. The state last week said casinos could open at one-third capacity if they would enforce new social distancing rules approved by the Health Department. The Health Department said at least 4,463 people in Arkansas have tested positive for the coronavirus, an increase over the 4,366 reported Thursday. The true number is likely higher because many people have not been tested, and studies suggest people can be infected and not feel sick. Ninety-eight people in the state have died from COVID-19, the illness caused by the virus. Smith also said the state is loosening its requirement that anyone undergoing elective surgery have a negative coronavirus test before their procedure. Starting Monday, Smith said, the requirement will be eased from 48 hours before the procedure to 72 hours. The requirement sparked a legal challenge from the state’s only surgical abortion clinic, which said the rule was preventing many women from undergoing the procedure. A federal judge last week blocked the clinic’s request  to prevent the state from enforcing the requirement on three women who were nearing the state’s limit on when an abortion can be performed. ___ Check out more of the AP’s coronavirus coverage at https://apnews.com/VirusOutbreak and https://apnews.com/UnderstandingtheOutbreak ___ Follow Andrew DeMillo on Twitter: https://twitter.com/ademillo


Ryan Frazier Says "Michael Bennet votes for President Obama's agenda 98 percent of the time. Hardly independent, hardly bipartisan.

Colorado, Bipartisanship, Voting Record, Ryan Frazier,

At a recent debate, Colorado U.S. Senate candidate Ryan Frazier made a plea for party unity with his opponents. "We as Republicans must unify, because the stakes are that important. And I believe any of us on this stage would be a heck of a lot better than Michael Bennet," said Frazier, a former Aurora city councilman, referring to Colorado’s incumbent Democratic senator. "You see, Michael Bennet votes for President Obama's agenda 98 percent of the time. Hardly independent, hardly bipartisan," Frazier stressed. (Watch debate video clip, courtesy KKTV) It’s a no-brainer for a Republican candidate to portray Bennet as marching in lockstep with a president who’s unpopular with GOP primary voters. Frazier is among five Republicans scrapping to win the June 28 primary and a shot at toppling Bennet in the general election. So let’s look deeper at Frazier’s claim that Bennet votes for Obama's agenda 98 percent of the time, and whether that makes him "hardly independent, hardly bipartisan." Here’s Bennet’s presidential support rate since he and Obama took office in 2009, according to CQ: Year Presidential support rate 2009 96.2 percent 2010 98.4 percent 2011 95.5 percent 2012 98.7 percent 2013 98.2 percent 2014 99.3 percent 2015 89.7 percent We asked the Frazier campaign for evidence supporting the statement. The campaign cited a Jan. 12 online statement by the National Republican Senatorial Committee, which cited the annual percentage of Bennet’s votes where he supported the president’s position from 2009 through 2014. The average for those years is 97.5 percent, which rounds up to 98 percent, the figure Frazier cited. The NRSC attributed the data to CQ Roll Call, a nonpartisan news service that tracks congressional data. But the NRSC statement misstated the percentage for Bennet’s 2014 votes with Obama as "100 Percent Of The Time." CQ’s Vote Watch database says Bennet voted with Obama 99.3 percent of the time in 2014. The NRSC also left out data for 2015, when Bennet backed the president’s positions 89.7 percent of the time, according to CQ. When we add the 2015 voting data, Bennet’s seven-year average of voting with the president is 96.57 percent — just a bit lower than Frazier’s claim of 98 percent. However, Bennet’s campaign spokesman Andrew Zucker said it’s easy to use the CQ figures to distort a lawmaker’s overall record in Congress. Zucker noted that Bennet has opposed Obama’s plans when they conflict with Colorado’s interest. He successfully fought the administration’s 2010 plan to slash funding for a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention laboratory in Fort Collins that is working to combat the Zika virus. He also pushed back against the administration’s proposal to cut funding for the Orion aerospace program in Colorado that supported 1,000 jobs in the state. Bennet has also voted against the president on major issues. He was one of nine Democrats to side with Republicans on a bill to approve construction of the Keystone XL pipeline. Obama vetoed that bill and Bennet voted for an unsuccessful effort to override the veto. Here’s some background to keep in mind when sifting through CQ’s presidential support statistics. First of all, they only deal with a fraction of votes cast by Bennet. CQ only counts those votes where the president takes a "clear position" on an issue. For example, according to CQ, Obama only staked out a position on 145 of the 366 votes the Senate took in 2014. And the vast majority of the presidential support votes in 2014 — 125, or 86 percent — involved a glut of presidential nominees for federal posts, because the Democrats controlled the Senate then and had lowered the threshold for approving most nominees from 60 votes to a simple majority, CQ reported. In fact, in every year but 2009 (40 percent), a majority of the votes Obama has supported were on his nominees. Bennet called ‘party loyalist’ and ‘bipartisan problem solver’ While Frazier calls Bennet "hardly independent, hardly bipartisan," there is evidence the senator works across the aisle. Last year, the Washington Post ranked him fifth among Democratic senators who "vote against their party the most." The chart below shows how often Bennet has voted with Senate Democrats, compared to how the party majority voted, according to CQ. Bennet voted closest with the Democratic Party in 2014 -- he voted 98.8 percent to the party’s average of 98.6 percent -- but his support for the party’s position dropped down to 82.9 percent in 2015. Over seven years, Bennet voted with the Democratic Party on average 91.29 percent of the time — a few points less than the average for all Democratic senators voting with the party (94.51 percent) during that period. A CQ profile of the senator said, "Bennet has played dual roles, as a party loyalist and a bipartisan problem solver." As a Democratic loyalist, he’s fought to protect Medicare, saying, "We can’t attempt to balance the nation’s budget on the backs of our seniors," CQ reported. Wearing his problem-solver hat, Bennet worked with Republican Sens. Richard Burr of North Carolina and Orrin G. Hatch of Utah to win FDA support for "breakthrough therapies" legislation in 2012 that sped approval of new drug treatment for cystic fibrosis, lung cancer and leukemia. Bennet often joins groups seeking compromise Bennet has been a frequent member of bipartisan groups of lawmakers working to find compromise on major legislation, the CQ profile said. He was one of three Democratic senators to oppose the January 2013 "fiscal cliff" deal, which averted income tax increases on earnings under $400,000 but didn’t cut federal spending — a deal-breaker for Bennet. Bennet, a former Denver Public Schools superintendent, has earned praise from Republicans for reaching across the aisle, including for his work on the overhaul of the No Child Left Behind law. "Michael understands that the Senate is a place where you have extended debate on important subjects and work across party lines until you come to a consensus — that’s how you get a result, and that’s how you govern a complex country," Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., chairman of the Senate education committee, told the Denver Post in 2015. Our ruling Frazier said, "Michael Bennet votes for President Obama's agenda 98 percent of the time. Frazier cited the frequency of Bennet voting with the president as proof he is "hardly independent, hardly bipartisan." In this case, Bennet is close on the available numbers, but they don’t indicate a blind allegiance to Obama’s agenda, as Frazier argues. CQ data show Bennet voting for the president’s position on legislation an average of 96.57 percent over seven years. That’s just over 1 percentage point below Frazier’s figure. However, the CQ data distorts the senator’s voting record, because a majority of the time the president expresses his position is when a vote involves someone he’s nominated for a federal post. There is also independent support for the view that Bennet is a "bipartisan" lawmaker who works with and votes with Republicans more often than the Senate’s Democratic caucus as a whole. The statement is partially accurate but leaves out important details or takes things out of context.


Michigan mom pushes for meningitis vaccination requirement.

Explanation: A Detroit-area mom whose daughter died of bacterial meningitis is asking universities to require that students get the meningitis B vaccine.

Alicia Stillman’s 19-year-old daughter, Emily Stillman, died of the disease in 2013, when the vaccine had not yet been approved for use in the U.S., The Detroit News reported. The vaccine was approved in 2014. “I remember taking the buses to Canada to get my other two children vaccinated because it wasn’t approved in the U.S. yet. If it had, my daughter would still be here pursuing her dreams,” Alicia Stillman of West Bloomfield said. She started the Emily Stillman Foundation in 2015 to raise awareness about the meningitis vaccine. She wants students at Big 10 universities to be vaccinated against meningitis. Health care organizations, including the Michigan State Medical Society, have joined Stillman’s effort. “Meningitis B is a deadly disease that’s especially dangerous for college students, but it can be prevented,” said Betty Chu, president of the society. “Students and young adults are among those most likely to contract meningitis B, especially in settings where students are living in close proximity to each other and sharing drinks and food. Indiana University and Purdue University began requiring the vaccination this spring. The University of Michigan and Michigan State University recommend the vaccination but haven’t made it mandatory. Meningitis B is spread through saliva and nose secretions, Stillman said. Symptoms include fever, nausea, vomiting, headache, a stiff neck, joint pain, confusion, sensitivity to light and a red or purple skin rash. ___ Information from: The Detroit News, http://detnews.com/


Blood test that could predict arthritis risk

Explanation: This release from the University of Oxford describes a new blood test that researchers there developed after zeroing in on the protein that collects in the joints of people with rheumatoid arthritis. The presence of the protein can predict the advance of rheumatoid arthritis many years before arthritis symptoms develop, according to the research findings published in the journal Annals of the Rheumatic Diseases. Among some of the 2,000 individuals who were part of the study, the protein, called tenascin-C, was found as many as 16 years before disease symptoms appeared. The release does a good job describing the science behind the test but may leave readers wondering, “What’s next?” That’s because we aren’t told when and where the test will be available and there’s no mention of early treatment strategies — what the options are, what they entail, how long it lasts and what it might cost. Most doctors screen for rheumatoid arthritis among patients presenting with joint symptoms. Tests to diagnose RA aren’t perfect but have gotten better over time. This news release highlights a new test that may be able to identify patients who have not yet been diagnosed. As such, it would be predicting future RA in patients who do not yet have symptoms or other findings such as arthritis changes on x-rays. Identifying patients with so-called “pre-RA” might appear to be a good thing, but it may not be as simple as implied in this news release. First, it is one thing to retrospectively examine whether blood samples performed years earlier can identify people we’ve already classified. The next logical step would be to prospectively see if we can take patients who don’t have any symptoms and use the test to say “positive or negative” and then wait to see if the test correctly predicts a future diagnosis. This is complicated by the need to say who should we use the test on. Everyone? Someone who may be at risk for other reasons? It isn’t clear and the news release doesn’t help us. Second, since no test is perfect and there inevitably will be false-positives, what does it mean to label someone as being likely to develop future RA if in fact they won’t? Third, even if the test is correct, it isn’t clear what to do with the results. Should we start treating these patients with medications to prevent future symptoms? If the treatments had no side effects, one could argue to do so. But we know that the treatments for RA all have side effects, some quite serious. For those with debilitating symptoms, the risks of such medications may be justified. But for someone who has no such symptoms, it isn’t as clear. One would like to see studies saying that use of this test result leads to better outcomes. No such data exists. Finally, there is no effort to state what would be the potential costs of using such a test in routine practice. One would not only need to consider the cost of the test itself, but also the downstream costs associated with treatment and the potential savings in terms of RA complications avoided.

Academic medical center news release,Diagnostic tests

The release doesn’t provide discussion of what the cost of the blood test might be. If the test is promising enough to issue a news release about it, readers should be given some idea of the cost. A related test called the CCP assay, which detects certain peptides that also predict future RA, is already in use and would make a good comparison. Moreover, there would not only be the cost for this test, but also the downstream costs of earlier treatment (and potential benefits). In general, the potential benefits in terms of cost savings are usually offset by higher costs associated with treatment for a longer duration of time (earlier diagnosis = earlier “longer” treatment). The release asserts that the key benefit of the test for tenascin-C protein is early detection of RA that can be used to initiate early treatment. After looking at results from 2,000 patient volunteers, the lead researcher was quoted saying the test “could diagnose RA in about 50% of cases” and that the test was 98% accurate in ruling out RA. It isn’t clear from the release if all 2,000 patients started out healthy and half went on to develop RA, or if the test accurately detected the RA precursor protein in only half the patients that went on to develop RA. Overall, the release provides insufficient information to quantify the benefits. Accuracy is a reflection of both sensitivity (diagnosing the condition when it really exists) and specificity (not diagnosing the condition when it doesn’t exist). The very high accuracy implies the test is both sensitive and specific. However, this may be misleading depending on the nature of the population studied. If the population includes patients with established rheumatoid arthritis it may make the test look better than studying a population of individuals who don’t have the condition or may have a different condition. The release briefly notes that the test carries a very low rate of false positives. However, the harms from screening tests are well-known. A false positive can result in additional tests, unnecessary treatment, anxiety and financial strains. A major concern is using the test in asymptomatic individuals who may be at risk for future development of symptoms due to rheumatoid arthritis. If the test isn’t 100% specific, it means we’re telling some patients who are otherwise fine that they’re going to develop something bad in the future – when in fact they won’t. Oops! Second, it isn’t clear that treating such asymptomatic patients may benefit them long-term. Remember the drugs for rheumatoid arthritis all have side effects – some of which can be quite serious. These potential harms are not mentioned at all. The research is a statistical analysis of data from four separately conducted studies of patients in four different geographic locations. The study cohorts varied which could affect accuracy of the findings. One group included 20 British RA patients and 20 healthy controls; one included 101 pre-RA cases and 326 matched controls compiled from four Southern European cohorts; a Swedish study involving 1985 RA patients and 160 health controls; and 287 RA patients and 330 control patients with osteoarthritis (OA) in the United States. The key missing point is that these are all retrospective cohorts. What one would like to see is a prospective cohort where you apply the test and classify the patient as positive or negative and then see what happens. Even before that, one would like information on the cut-points used in this study to define what is positive or not. Understanding whether there is a clear point where the test is positive or not would be useful information. In practice, that cut point is usually never 100% obvious. One could argue that this study and news release are pushing for the creation of a new disease – called “pre-rheumatoid arthritis.” But the value of classifying people with such a condition is not established, and the release doesn’t explore any of the downsides of such an approach. Expanding the boundaries of disease without sufficient evidence that this is justified constitutes disease-mongering. So we’ll flag the release here. There’s no mention of the funders in the release. According to the published study, funding was provided by the Arthritis Research UK, the Kennedy Trust for Rheumatology Research and BT CURE. In addition, it was disclosed that “data in this manuscript are the subject of a patent filing” and that the lead investigator sits on the board of and is a consultant to Nascient. The release provides some information about the cyclic citrullinated peptide (CCP) test, the standard test used, and states that the new blood test appears to be more accurate and reliable in comparison. The true alternative is actually to wait until symptoms develop. As noted above under “Cost,” if the test is promising enough to issue a news release about it, readers should be given some idea of when and where it might be available. We aren’t told until the very last paragraph that the research “provides the basis of tests that could improve diagnosis and, importantly, detect disease at a very early stage, with the promise even that people at risk of developing rheumatoid arthritis can be followed before the disease begins.” In other words, it could be a very long way off. We think there should have been a caveat that more studies are needed or that this test may be years off before it will be ready for routine practice. Research into different proteins to diagnose RA in patients prior to the appearance of symptoms isn’t new. In fact, HealthNewsReview.org reviewed a WebMD news story on early detection of RA in 2010. Another blood test for RA is already on the market in the United States, Canada, Europe, Japan and Australia.The JOINTstat test looks for another protein called 14-3-3η. The release suggests the test will “improve diagnosis” and help patients get the right treatment early in order to manage their disease. It’s too early to make such claims about a test still under development. For the reasons cited, this release does an inadequate job in placing this potential test into a larger context.


New genetic links to same-sex sexual behavior found.

Explanation: The largest study of its kind found new evidence that genes contribute to same-sex sexual behavior, but it echoes research that says there are no specific genes that make people gay.

The genome-wide research on DNA from nearly half a million U.S. and U.K. adults identified five genetic variants not previously linked with gay or lesbian sexuality. The variants were more common in people who reported ever having had a same-sex sexual partner. That includes people whose partners were exclusively of the same sex and those who mostly reported heterosexual behavior. The researchers said thousands more genetic variants likely are involved and interact with factors that aren’t inherited, but that none of them cause the behavior nor can predict whether someone will be gay. The research “provides the clearest glimpse yet into the genetic underpinnings of same-sex sexual behavior,” said co-author Benjamin Neale, a psychiatric geneticist at the Broad Institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts. “We also found that it’s effectively impossible to predict an individual’s sexual behavior from their genome. Genetics is less than half of this story for sexual behavior but it’s still a very important contributing factor,” Neale said. The study was released Thursday by the journal Science. Results are based on genetic testing and survey responses. Some of the genetic variants found were present in both men and women. Two in men were located near genes involved in male-pattern baldness and sense of smell, raising intriguing questions about how regulation of sex hormones and smell may influence same-sex behavior. Importantly, most participants were asked about frequency of same-sex sexual behavior but not if they self-identified as gay or lesbian. Fewer than 5% of U.K. participants and about 19% of U.S. participants reported ever having a same-sex sexual experience. The researchers acknowledged that limitation and emphasized that the study’s focus was on behavior, not sexual identity or orientation. They also note that the study only involved people of European ancestry and can’t answer whether similar results would be found in other groups. Origins of same-sex behavior are uncertain. Some of the strongest evidence of a genetic link comes from studies in identical twins. Many scientists believe that social, cultural, family and other biological factors are also involved, while some religious groups and skeptics consider it a choice or behavior that can be changed. A Science commentary notes that the five identified variants had such a weak effect on behavior that using the results “for prediction, intervention or a supposed ‘cure’ is wholly and unreservedly impossible.” “Future work should investigate how genetic predispositions are altered by environmental factors,” University of Oxford sociologist Melinda Mills said in the commentary. Other experts not involved in the study had varied reactions. Dr. Kenneth Kendler a specialist in psychiatric genetics at Virginia Commonwealth University, called it “a very important paper that advances the study of the genetics of human sexual preference substantially. The results are broadly consistent with those obtained from the earlier technologies of twin and family studies suggesting that sexual orientation runs in families and is moderately heritable.” Former National Institutes of Health geneticist Dean Hamer said the study confirms “that sexuality is complex and there are a lot of genes involved,” but it isn’t really about gay people. “Having just a single same sex experience is completely different than actually being gay or lesbian,” Hamer said. His research in the 1990s linked a marker on the X chromosome with male homosexuality. Some subsequent studies had similar results but the new one found no such link. Doug Vanderlaan, a University of Toronto psychologist who studies sexual orientation, said the absence of information on sexual orientation is a drawback and makes it unclear what the identified genetic links might signify. They “might be links to other traits, like openness to experience,” Vanderlaan said. The study is a collaboration among scientists including psychologists, sociologists and statisticians from the United States, United Kingdom, Europe and Australia. They did entire human genome scanning, using blood samples from the U.K. Biobank and saliva samples from customers of the U.S.-based ancestry and biotech company 23andMe who had agreed to participate in research. ___ Follow AP Medical Writer Lindsey Tanner at @LindseyTanner . ___ The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives %href_on(file:


Zafgen reports promising results from weight-loss drug study

Explanation: This article presents business developments related to Zafgen’s beloranib drug in a clear and accessible manner. But there was room for improvement in several areas, including sourcing. The only sources interviewed have links to Zafgen and were involved with the study being reported on. The story also could have done a better job reporting on the quantitative results of the study. For example, it never defines what it means by “significant” when discussing the weight loss achieved by study participants. Prader-Willi syndrome is a rare but life-threatening cause of obesity for which there is no current treatment. The drug candidate beloranib, if successful, would then be the first treatment for this patient population.

As the drug is still pending approval from the FDA, the exact cost of the drug is unknown. However, it seems close enough to approval that some cost estimate should have been attempted — perhaps via a market analyst or company officials. Should it be approved, the drug will most likely be quite expensive. The article only states that the data shows beloranib met its two primary endpoints of significantly reducing weight and decreasing excessive eating. No numbers are attached to these statements, however. In particular, how is excessive eating measured? Clearly this is harder to define than weight loss. Presumably, surrogate variables were introduced to quantify the degree of excessive eating. A significant decrease in these surrogate variables can be difficult to interpret in many situations. The article discloses the possible side effects of beloranib related to blood clotting along with the caveat that Prader-Willi patients are predisposed to clotting issues. Two deaths out of 100 patients is a significant issue, even if they can’t be linked definitively to the drug, so it’s good that this is a focal point. But the story mentions no other adverse effects that were observed in the study, and it should have. We’ll give the benefit of the doubt and hope for improvement next time. From the presentation of the results, it is not clear exactly how many patients were included in the final analysis. It is said that the six-month study involved 107 patients who showed significant weight loss and reduction in excessive eating. However, the very next paragraph reveals that only 68 patients completed the full study, while 27 patients completed only 20 of the trial’s scheduled 26 weeks. Furthermore, it is reported that a “small number other patients withdrew early.” This small number, by our calculation, is 107 – 68 – 27 = 12, which is not such a small number considering there were only 107 patients to begin with. The article provides an accurate profile of the Prader-WIlli syndrome emphasizing its life-threatening consequences but also conceding that it is a rare disease affecting roughly 6,000 to 8,000 Americans. Two sources appeared to have been interviewed for this piece, Dr. Hughes and Dr. Butler. The former is the chief executive of Zafgen while the latter is a medical researcher serving as a principal investigator of the clinical trial at the University of Kansas Medical Center. To meet our standard here, the story would have had to interview a source completely independent of the company and the trial. We rate this Not Satisfactory, but at least the article makes it clear that the studies under consideration are for a commercial drug. It is stated that there are no current treatments for Prader-Willi syndrome. It is made clear that the beloranib drug is still under experimentation and pending FDA approval. Having stated that there are currently no treatments for Prader-Willi, the novelty of the beloranib should be self-evident to the reader. There’s enough original reporting that we can be sure the story isn’t based entirely on a news release.


Men in Uxbridge and South Ruislip live 14 years longer than they do in Stockton North.

Explanation: Surf culture often prides itself on an affinity for nature. But there’s a dirty secret hiding in many surfers’ cupboards - old wetsuits.

A combination of salt water, UV rays and the wear-and-tear of life in the surf means most wetsuits only last a couple of years before they start to lose warmth and elasticity. Made from non-biodegradable rubber neoprene, surfers are often stuck with their old gear. “There’s a lot of wetsuits out in people’s garages and houses,” Tom Kay, founder of sustainable outdoor wear brand Finisterre, told Reuters from the company’s headquarters near the rugged headlands of St Agnes in Cornwall. “Most wetsuits only last two years and after that there’s no known guidance about what to do with them at the end of their life... And neoprene is a very unbiodegradable fabric,” he added. Neoprene is a widely used petroleum-based synthetic rubber known for its thermal insulation and snug fit, making it wetsuit manufacturers’ go-to choice for decades. But unlike many plastics that can be broken down and recycled, neoprene is a ‘thermoset’ where its molecules are locked in position. “It basically means that it’s processed in a way that can’t (easily) be reversed. So that’s why it’s so challenging to recycle,” explained materials scientist-turned fulltime wetsuit designer Jenny Banks, who is employed by Finisterre specifically to figure out how to bring recycling into the wetsuit industry. She added that traditional wetsuit design also involves the use of fabric linings which pose further challenges when it comes to recycling. After two years of research and experimentation, they’ve created what they believe is the first fully recyclable wetsuit. “We’ve been trying to find other ways to keep the wetsuit performing and staying strong and having reinforcement but actually eliminating the (nonrecyclable) fabrics,” said Banks. The first prototype was recently tested by Kay in the surf. It was warmer than his usual wetsuit, he found. Some tweaks were needed on the fit and ease of getting in and out of, “but it’s a really exciting start. We are still testing before we refine for the next prototype,” he said in a statement. When it does hit the shelves, Finisterre says its price must be comparable to a regular wetsuit. Eventually, the team says they want to make the design construction open-source in a bid to help the wetsuit industry as a whole become more environmentally friendly. “We want to say to bigger brands ‘look, we can do this’ and if we can do this together, we can all do it,” said Banks. As well as trying to eliminate wetsuit waste at the design phase, Finisterre has also partnered with UK-based company Renew ELP to trial their innovative recycling technology - breaking down and transforming existing wetsuits into a non-virgin crude oil that can be re-used by the plastics industry. As part of these ongoing trials, Finisterre is launching a wetsuit buy-back scheme in October, where surfers can drop off their old wetsuits to be used in a test recycling programme.


Study: Millions should stop taking aspirin for heart health.

Explanation: Millions of people who take aspirin to prevent a heart attack may need to rethink the pill-popping, Harvard researchers reported Monday.

Heart disease, AP Top News, Health, General News, Heart attack, Heart health, U.S. News

A daily low-dose aspirin is recommended for people who have already had a heart attack or stroke and for those diagnosed with heart disease. But for the otherwise healthy, that advice has been overturned. Guidelines released this year ruled out routine aspirin use for many older adults who don’t already have heart disease — and said it’s only for certain younger people under doctor’s orders. How many people need to get that message? Some 29 million people 40 and older were taking an aspirin a day despite having no known heart disease in 2017, the latest data available, according to a new study from Harvard and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. About 6.6 million of them were doing so on their own — a doctor never recommended it. And nearly half of people over 70 who don’t have heart disease — estimated at about 10 million — were taking daily aspirin for prevention, the researchers reported in Annals of Internal Medicine. “Many patients are confused about this,” said Dr. Colin O’Brien, a senior internal medicine resident at Beth Israel who led the study. After all, for years doctors urged people to leverage aspirin’s blood-thinning properties to lower the chances of a first heart attack or stroke. Then last year, three surprising new studies challenged that dogma. Those studies were some of the largest and longest to test aspirin in people at low and moderate risk of a heart attack, and found only marginal benefit if any, especially for older adults. Yet the aspirin users experienced markedly more digestive-tract bleeding, along with some other side effects. . In March, those findings prompted a change in guidelines from the American Heart Association and American College of Cardiology: —People over 70 who don’t have heart disease — or are younger but at increased risk of bleeding — should avoid daily aspirin for prevention. —Only certain 40- to 70-year-olds who don’t already have heart disease are at high enough risk to warrant 75 to 100 milligrams of aspirin daily, and that’s for a doctor to decide. Nothing has changed for heart attack survivors: Aspirin still is recommended for them. But there’s no way to know how many otherwise healthy people got the word about the changed recommendations. “We hope that more primary care doctors will talk to their patients about aspirin use, and more patients will raise this with their doctors,” O’Brien said. ___ The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content.


The purpose of the 'crash' or 'brace' position in airliners is to kill passengers quickly in the event of an crash, or to preserve their remains so as to make identification of bodies easier.

Explanation: Johnson & Johnson’s DePuy Orthopaedics unit is in settlement talks to resolve the bulk of individual lawsuits alleging the company’s metal-on-metal Pinnacle hip implants were defective and caused severe injuries, a lawyer for the plaintiffs said on Monday.

Texas-based plaintiff lawyer Mark Lanier said lawyers for the consumers had talked to the company in recent days to reach an agreement to resolve the long-running litigation that includes more than 10,000 cases. “It’s still not a done deal, but we’re getting close,” Lanier said, adding that plaintiffs hope to reach a final agreement by the end of the year. Lanier said it was uncertain at this point how many of the roughly 10,000 Pinnacle lawsuits would be subject to the settlement. He declined further comment. A spokeswoman for DePuy on Monday declined to comment. Bloomberg first reported on the settlement talks. In 2013, DePuy ceased selling the metal-on-metal Pinnacle devices after the U.S. Food and Drug Administration strengthened its artificial hip regulations. The Pinnacle system continues to be sold with other material combinations. Metal-on-metal hip implants have come under scrutiny over allegations that the products cause a build-up of metal ions in the blood, causing groin pain, allergic reactions, bone erosion and tissue death. J&J denies those allegations, saying the company acted appropriately and responsibly in the development, testing and marketing of the devices. Last month, J&J agreed to pay $120 million to resolve deceptive marketing claims by several U.S. states over metal-on-metal hip implants. DePuy said the settlement involved no admission of liability or misconduct on the part of the companies. J&J to date has faced several federal jury trials over the Pinnacle hip implants. It won the first case in 2014, but lost all subsequent trials, with verdicts ranging from $151 million to $540 million. J&J has appealed those verdicts. News of the settlement talks on Monday caused a federal judge overseeing an ongoing Pinnacle trial in Dallas to dismiss the jury in that case. Lanier said that case, involving five Texas plaintiffs, has not been settled yet.


Abortion, National, Health Care, Hillary Clinton,

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton called out Republican rival Ted Cruz for a contradiction on contraception after Cruz made a widely aired comment about condoms on his college campus. It started when Cruz mocked a consistent charge from Democrats that Republicans are against birth control during a Nov. 30, 2015, campaign stop in Bettendorf, Iowa. "Last I checked," Cruz said, "we don’t have a rubber shortage in America. Look, when I was in college, we had a machine in the bathroom, you put 50 cents in and voila. So, yes, anyone who wants contraceptives can access them, but it’s an utter made-up nonsense issue." The Clinton campaign didn’t think much of his comment, challenging Cruz with a post on its website headlined, "Ted Cruz says no one's trying to ban contraception. Here are 5 times Ted Cruz tried to ban contraception." It added, "Cruz has personally tried to make it harder for women to get birth control." The post’s fine print includes more nuanced language than the headline lets on -- that Cruz is "trying to limit access to contraception," "tried to make it harder for women to get birth control," and is pursuing policies that "could ban some forms of birth control." The details in the softened (and more accurate) statements are lost in the blaring headline that Cruz "tried to ban contraception" five times." None of the Clinton campaign’s examples supports the idea that Cruz seeks a flat-out ban on contraception. The Clinton campaign took issue with our characterization of the post, saying that they never meant for the headline to say that Cruz tried to ban all contraceptives on five separate occasions. However, we think ours is the most obvious interpretation of the language in question. 1. "The time he supported a so-called personhood amendment, which could criminalize abortion and could ban some forms of birth control." This example offers the most support for Cruz trying to ban contraception, but it still overreaches. Cruz signed a "personhood affirmation" circulated by Georgia Right to Life this summer that commits him to a "human life amendment" to the U.S. Constitution that would define life as beginning at fertilization. As we have noted, the impact of such proposed "personhood" amendments on birth control is in dispute. Opponents, along with some legal scholars and medical organizations, say that giving a fertilized egg all the rights of a person could make several FDA-approved contraceptives illegal. But that would depend on how courts interpret personhood. A "personhood" provision has not yet passed at the federal or state level. Even more complicated is the meaning of "fertilization," according to a 2011 op-ed in the New York Times by Glenn Cohen, co-director of Harvard University’s Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology and Bioethics, and Jonathan Will, law professor at Mississippi College. Fertilization, they wrote, could mean at least four different things: "penetration of the egg by a sperm," successful combination of the genetic information from sperm and egg, activation of the genetic information, or implantation of the embryo in the uterus, Cohen and Will wrote. Sperm penetration occurs almost immediately, but implantation can take up to two weeks. "Thus, on some reasonable readings of the amendment, certain forms of birth control ... would seem impermissible, while on other equally reasonable readings they are not." A relatively narrow judicial interpretation could allow the use of the pill and intrauterine devices, or IUDs, while a broader interpretation may not. But even if an enacted personhood amendment was interpreted by judges in the most expansive fashion possible, it would still not limit spermicides and -- notably given Cruz’s comments -- condoms, since these prevent fertilization from taking place at all. So the first of Clinton’s examples holds some plausibility as supporting evidence for her overall claim, but it’s overly broad in suggesting that Cruz would ban all contraception and more speculative than she lets on. 2. "The time he was willing to shut down the government to cut funding from Planned Parenthood." Cruz was indeed willing to shut down the federal government if lawmakers and President Barack Obama maintained federal funding of Planned Parenthood. (Combined, state and federal funding accounts for about 41 percent of Planned Parenthood’s yearly revenue, or about $528 million, according to the group’s most recent annual report.) "It will be a decision of the president's and the president's alone whether he would veto funding for the federal government because of a commitment to ensuring taxpayer dollars continue to flow to what appears to be a national criminal organization," Cruz said in August 2015. But even if this shutdown had happened -- and it didn’t -- the result would have been more indirect than an attempted ban on contraception. At most, it might have hampered the ability of individuals to receive contraceptives from one specific provider, albeit a significant one. 3. "The time he called for the Supreme Court to turn women’s personal health decisions over to their employers by striking down the Obamacare birth control co-pay provision" in the Hobby Lobby ruling. In Burwell vs. Hobby Lobby, the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that a closely held, private corporation could decline on religious grounds to pay for certain kinds of contraceptives otherwise mandated in employee health coverage by the Affordable Care Act. Hobby Lobby’s Christian owners said they objected to four of 20 Food and Drug Administration-approved forms of contraception that prevent implantation of the embryo. These include two forms of emergency contraception, also known as the morning-after pill, and two forms of intra-uterine devices, or IUDs. (The FDA considers these four methods to be contraception, but the company’s owners consider them to be a form of abortion.) The way the decision was written leaves some question about whether closely held, religious companies can choose to opt out of supporting any of the remaining 16 forms of contraception in their health plans. Already, some companies have been allowed by lower courts to stop paying for a wider range of contraceptives than were at issue in the Hobby Lobby case, though some of those cases are still working their way through the courts. Still, Cruz’s support for the Hobby Lobby decision does not by itself mean that he supports banning all contraceptives. First, the case involved employer co-payments for contraceptives, making it financially harder but not impossible for an individual to obtain contraceptives. And second, that case involved only four of the 20 FDA-approved contraceptives; whether the Supreme Court might some day support a broader interpretation that permits closely held companies to opt out of all contraceptives remains to be seen. 4. "The time he tried to get rid of a law that made it so women couldn’t be fired for their personal reproductive decisions (including birth control)." The Washington, D.C., law in question -- the Reproductive Health Non-Discrimination Amendment Act of 2014 -- says employers cannot use their personal beliefs to discriminate against an employee for his or her reproductive health choices. Cruz took issue with the law in his capacity as a member of Congress, which is allowed a 30-day period to object to D.C. laws. (Congressional opponents were unable to derail the law, which would have also required the cooperation of Obama.) The potential to be fired or demoted from a job for using contraception is a heavy penalty. Still, opposing this bill is not the same thing as advocating for a ban on contraception. 5. "And the time he used a medically and scientifically incorrect argument to try to ban emergency contraception." The Clinton campaign cites an article in the liberal publication Salon.com that takes Cruz to task for saying that the federal government wants to make private companies (like those in the Hobby Lobby case) provide "abortifacients" to employees. The article draws a distinction between abortifacients, such as the pill RU-486, and "emergency contraceptives" that may be taken up to three days after unprotected sex. The medical community also draws a distinction between the two methods. The Association of Reproductive Health Professionals, for instance, writes that RU-486 "ends pregnancy" whereas emergency contraception "prevent(s) unintended pregnancy." The group states flatly that "emergency contraception is not the same as medical abortion." A potential gray area -- emphasized by anti-abortion advocates -- is that emergency contraception may take effect after fertilization has already taken place. Regardless of how early that occurs, this is enough for some abortion opponents to classify it as causing a pregnancy to be aborted. Setting aside this difference of opinion, it’s not clear that this example supports Clinton’s overall point that Cruz has sought to "ban contraception." By focusing on "emergency contraception," it addresses Cruz’s position on one type of contraception but not all types. Our ruling The post on Clinton’s website claims "Ted Cruz tried to ban contraception" five times. There’s little doubt that Cruz is a strong opponent of abortion, and as such, he and other anti-abortion advocates find certain types of contraception objectionable. But the Clinton campaign’s examples don’t exactly show Cruz trying to push across-the-board bans on contraception. The strongest conclusion about Cruz’s views that one could draw from these examples is that he might support a ban on certain types of contraception (but not all) through his support for a personhood amendment. The other examples are even more limited and deal with what employers would be required to pay for, for instance, or whether a major birth control provider should continue to receive federal funding. The statement contains some element of truth but ignores critical facts that would give a different impression.


A viral photograph depicts soft serve "cannabis ice cream.

In mid-2020, a purported photograph of “cannabis ice cream” circulated on Facebook as a mildly engagement-baiting poll asking whether readers were for or against the putative dessert:Earlier iterations of the image featured the same text reading “cannabis ice cream,” but lacked the “yes or no” element encouraging users to interact with the post:Who wants to go for ice cream? #StayCrispy #Cannabis #IceCream pic.twitter.com/anWFuKUhxI— The Green Daily (@TheGreenDailyy) July 25, 2018‘Cannabis Ice Cream’ Images and PostsThe image was even older than that; nearly four years before “cannabis ice cream” was shared in the above tweet, a blogger included the photograph in a November 2014 post bearing the same title, and wrote:I have just returned from a city break in Amsterdam and I saw this sign in the window of a store in the centre of the city. So to sign-off my recent blogs on ice cream, I just thought I would share this most unusual ice cream flavour with readers. No, I didn’t get around to trying it myself (I promise you), but this is what it looks like if you are ever in the wonderful cosmopolitan Dutch city of Amsterdam.Although the author included. the image and said “this is what it looks like,” the post’s other image suggested otherwise:All six advertised flavors were depicted on the poster, and all were scooped hard ice cream, not soft serve. Each flavor was depicted in front of a cannabis leaf, and none were even faintly green in color — much less a vibrant green.The flavors and colors were as follows:No element of the advertisement indicated a strictly cannabis flavor was available, or alluded to the portion size seen in the viral image. Small white text in the lower right-hand corner read “Traditional Sicilian ice cream with an Amsterdam Twist.” Finally, the image in question did not originate with that blog post, and was first crawled by TinEye in October 2014:Unrelated mentions of cannabis ice cream typically also featured hard scooped ice cream, occasionally in of light green hue:Israeli ice cream chain pushes cannabis flavored scoops https://t.co/TIrGppbY3i pic.twitter.com/PzAMDM39I2— The Times of Israel (@TimesofIsrael) August 16, 2018In August 2015, the blog Curious About Cannabis/Cannabis Corner featured the image in a post titled “Cannabis Edibles: GREEN Ice Cream!” However, the post primarily described what was at the time the growing popularity of cannabis edibles, and discussed methods to make homemade ice cream infused with cannabis:Ice Cream infused/made with Cannabis is becoming quite popular. Ben Cohen (of Ben and Jerrys famously branded ice cream impresarios) declared on HuffPo Live that they’d support making a cannabis-infused version of their sweet treats available where marijuana is legal. SO, how probable is it that we’ll see Ben & Jerry’s “Reefer Rum” or “Cheeba Cherry” in the freezer case?With the sale of almost 5 million edibles in Colorado last year, according to Time, creating a food-based marijuana product seems like a no-brainer for Ben and Jerry’s… BUT, for now, it’s not happening  … Speaking with Brian Smith, co-owner of Ample Hills Creamery, a Brooklyn-based ice-cream shop, for some ideas about making a weed-infused ice cream at home. Smith says they’ve concocted a lot of flavors that involved steeping ingredients like Cap’n Crunch, pretzels, or tea leaves, which is exactly what you would do to make a weed-infused ice cream. According to The Stoner’s Cookbook, you should cook (decarboxylate) your weed first,, but the steeping process will give you a smoother texture and a stronger potency.A separate 2015 Italian blog post said of the image:Green like pistachio, it is an ice cream that has tasty cannabis seeds at its base, however free of THC, the famous active ingredient, mixed with milk and vanilla, and with the addition of a tasty caramel.A flavor that many have liked and that has already received hundreds of bookings from ice cream makers from all five continents, happy to rely on the experience of MEC3, the Italian company that invented and produces it.That claim did have some basis in truth — a product known as One Love Hemp Gelato by Italian company MEC3 went viral in March 2017. But as The Daily Meal noted, the product offered no psychoactive effects:As medical marijuana sweeps the nation, and more states and cities are legalizing greenery, one product, cannabidiol from Hemp Health Inc., gives you the benefits of medical marijuana without any of the psychoactive effects of the THC chemical. And now you can have these benefits in gelato form. Introducing Italian gelato and pastry products giant MEC3’s One Love hemp-flavored gelato. Cheekily named after Bob Marley, the ice cream product is completely legal in all 50 states because it does not contain any THC: just the hemp plant minus the munchies and paranoid thoughts. But the good news is that the ice cream does taste exactly like marijuana. Watch out, Ben & Jerry’s, these guys are ahead of the marijuana ice cream game.CNN Travel also reported on the product in March 2017, reiterating that MEC3’s One Love hemp-flavored gelato would not produce the high associated with cannabis edibles:Perleco, a gelato parlor in Alassio, recently launched the gelato — named Marley after reggae legend Bob. But while it sounds like a weed fiend’s dream, its makers say the frozen treat isn’t going to get anyone high.“Cannabis has a very intense flavor,” Aldo De Michelis, who created the flavor with son Mauro and wife Emanuela Baudana, tells CNN.CNN also featured an image of the flavor — which was neither green nor soft serve:Consistently, the image was mislabeled and presented as an accurate depiction of “cannabis ice cream,” often alongside blog posts or content about cannabis-flavored ice cream.Origin of the ‘Cannabis Ice Cream’ ImageAlthough image crawlers first tagged the photograph of two green soft-serve ice cream cones in October 2014, it was still older than that.The first iteration of the image we found was shared on April 13 2014, by Tumblr user lychei (archived). In the post, the user described it as “green t soft serve”:That Tumblr post linked to a since-deleted Instagram post from April 2014. We located an archived version of the post, which was originally shared in April 2014.Initial comments on the post complimented the image, and asked what flavor ice cream was depicted. One user asked if it was “weed ice cream,” and the user answered that it was “green tea!”Real ‘Cannabis Ice Cream’A handful of cannabis edible manufacturers do retail THC-infused ice creams, but the products are sparsely distributed (likely due to logistical difficulties) and they aren’t necessarily green, either.A company in the Netherlands, Dr. Greenlove, produced a Drumstick-like, cannabis-infused product:Cannabis Ice Cream 🌱💚 Dr. Greenlove Amsterdam #drgreenlove #cannabisicecream #cannabis #icecream #cannabisinfused #cannabisoil #cannabissativa #cannabisicecream #drgreenlove #hemp #heladodecannabis #gelatoallacannabis #gelato #cannabiseis #cannabisijs #heladodecañamo #cannabisinfusedicecream #cannabisoil #terps #cannabisterpenes #terpenes #cannabisnation #hempicecream #cannabisfood #cannabissativa #hempfood #gelatoallacanapa #cannabiscandy #hanfeis #hennepijs #amsterdamcannabis #hempoil #hempharvestA post shared by  Dr. Greenlove, Amsterdam (@dr.greenlove) on May 27, 2020 at 6:19am PDTInstagram users occasionally shared creative cannabis-infused frozen edibles:Introducing the #SweetTartResinBar 😍 Black, sweet & tart ice cream w/red sprinkles, a dark chocolate shell & a white & dark chocolate glittery cherry on the back. #imadethis #homemade #edibleglitter #blackicecream #sweettart #medicatedicecream #edibles #weedinfused #weedtreats #weedicecream #medibles #weed #cannabisicecream #cannabis #madewithlove #medicated  #glitterchocolate #gottreats #getthembeforetheyaregoneA post shared by  Fillip Wilson (@fluffleman) on Aug 10, 2020 at 9:13pm PDTAs did other small-batch purveyors, such as @janeandmarys:Weed Ice Cream #vegascannabiscommunity #smokeweedeveryday #cannabisicecream #710society #702dabbersA post shared by  Aim (@aimhigh710) on Sep 11, 2020 at 9:04am PDTDrumberries Ice Cream Social was sooooo fun!!! Thx @drumberries for having us! @djskoli and @terrenceart32 set the tone. The ice cream was a hit too! #HighlyDelicious  #summertimechi #chicagocannabis  #blackownedbusinessA post shared by  Jane & Mary's Ice Cream (@janeandmarys) on Aug 29, 2020 at 4:53pm PDTNevertheless, most content tagged #cannabisicecream featured CBD-infused edibles, lacking THC:MedCannabis fagylaltjaink CBD-t tartalmaznak, melynek rengeteg jótékony hatása lehet. További információkról a https://www.cannabisicecream.hu/miert-jo-a-cbd oldalunkon tájékozódhatsz! 😉  A fagyiszezon még javában tart! 😎 Ne maradj le róla 😍💚 #medcannabis #cannabisicecream #summer #summervibes #fagyi #icecream #zoldfagyi #budapest #obuda #kostoldmeg #greenicecream💚 #CBDA post shared by  MedCannabis Magyarország Kft. (@medcannabis_icecream) on Aug 11, 2020 at 12:04am PDTIT'S BACK!!! The decadent CBD Ice Cream from Heavenly Hash Creamery is back! Come and Get it! Cannabis Ice Cream! #HHC #heavenlyhashcreamery #cannabisicecream  #CBDIceCream  #VaporRoadTyrone #VaporRoadFloridaA post shared by  Heavenly Hash Creamery (@heavenlyhashcreamery) on Sep 16, 2020 at 2:11pm PDTTL;DRA popular engagement baiting poll featuring the same image of “cannabis ice cream,” a bright green soft-serve cone, circulated on Facebook and other sites. The image was inaccurately labeled, and shows soft-serve green tea ice cream. Although cannabis-infused ice cream edibles exist, those products appear to be not widely available in many American dispensaries.Comments


Facebook post Says former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan said that "if the workers are more insecure, that's very healthy for the society" because "they'll serve the masters gladly and passively.

National, Economy, Labor, Workers, Facebook posts,

Amid a stubbornly slow economic recovery, a reader recently forwarded us a social media post taking aim at former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan for using callous language about worker insecurity. The post features images of Greenspan and says: I am Alan And, I used to run the Federal Reserve. And, I actually said this: If the workers are more insecure, that's very healthy for the society, because if workers are insecure they won't ask for wages, they won't go on strike, they won't call for benefits; they'll serve the masters gladly and passively. And that's optimal for corporations. The reader wondered if the five-time chairman of the United States’ central bank actually said something so dismissive about America’s economically left-behind. So did we. As it turns out, Greenspan didn’t say it. Instead, it's academic Noam Chomsky's take on something Greenspan said. And Greenspan and Chomsky couldn’t be more different ideologically. As a young man, Greenspan was a member of the inner circle of Ayn Rand, the libertarian thinker and novelist. (Rand would eventually stand with Greenspan when he was sworn in as chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers in 1974.) Greenspan was nominated for the Fed chairmanship by three Republican presidents (Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush) as well as by Democrat Bill Clinton. Meanwhile, Chomsky is an influential academic linguist who’s at least as well known for his political views. They veer sharply left and are sometimes referred to as "anarcho-syndicalist," a philosophy he’s described as promoting "a very organized society, but organized from below by direct participation at every level, with as little control and domination as is feasible, maybe none." So how did this misattribution happen? It emerged from remarks Chomsky made to the Adjunct Faculty Association of the United Steelworkers on Feb. 4, 2014, reprinted in transcript form in the February-March issue of CounterPunch. Here are excerpts from a section of the transcript where Chomsky discusses the issue of universities hiring non-tenure-track faculty: "That’s part of the business model. It’s the same as hiring temps in industry or what they call ‘associates’ at Walmart -- employees that aren’t owed benefits. It’s a part of a corporate business model designed to reduce labor costs and to increase labor servility. When universities become corporatized ... they want to keep costs down and make sure that labor is docile and obedient. The way to do that is, essentially, temps. … "This idea is sometimes made quite overt. So when Alan Greenspan was testifying before Congress in 1997 on the marvels of the economy he was running, he said straight out that one of the bases for its economic success was imposing what he called ‘greater worker insecurity.’ If workers are more insecure, that’s very ‘healthy’ for the society, because if workers are insecure they won’t ask for wages, they won’t go on strike, they won’t call for benefits; they’ll serve the masters gladly and passively. And that’s optimal for corporations’ economic health. At the time, everyone regarded Greenspan’s comment as very reasonable, judging by the lack of reaction and the great acclaim he enjoyed." We looked at Greenspan’s Feb. 26, 1997, testimony before the Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee. Here’s a portion: "The performance of the U.S. economy over the past year has been quite favorable. … Continued low levels of inflation and inflation expectations have been a key support for healthy economic performance. … Atypical restraint on compensation increases has been evident for a few years now, and appears to be mainly the consequence of greater worker insecurity. The willingness of workers in recent years to trade off smaller increases in wages for greater job security seems to be reasonably well documented. The unanswered question is why this insecurity persisted even as the labor market, by all objective measures, tightened considerably." Greenspan, in his testimony, then suggests technological change and international competition as possible reasons for worker insecurity, before noting that "suppressed wage cost growth as a consequence of job insecurity can be carried only so far. At some point, the tradeoff of subdued wage growth for job security has to come to an end. In other words, the relatively modest wage gains we have experienced are a temporary rather than a lasting phenomenon because there is a limit to the value of additional job security people are willing to acquire in exchange for lesser increases in living standards." Chomsky’s take on the substance of what Greenspan said seems reasonably on target. However, Greenspan’s tone is far different than Chomsky’s. Greenspan’s words are explanatory and analytical, displaying none of the sarcasm that Chomsky, or the creator of the Facebook post, ascribes to them -- especially the part about workers serving their masters "gladly and passively." Reached by email, Chomsky confirmed that he and other economists have periodically pointed to Greenspan’s 1997 testimony, including a reference in his book, Failed States: The Abuse of Power and the Assault on Democracy. Chomsky added, "Don’t know anything about Facebook. I don’t use it." Our ruling The meme says Greenspan said that "if the workers are more insecure, that's very healthy for the society" because "they'll serve the masters gladly and passively." Those words actually come from a sarcastic critique of Greenspan’s words by Noam Chomsky, not from Greenspan himself. We rate the claim .


Doctors in India have been successful in treating coronavirus with a combination of drugs (Lopinavir, Retonovir, Oseltamivir along with Chlorphenamine) and are going to suggest the same medicine globally. India’s ministry of health has advised that the anti-HIV drugs, Lopinavir and Retonovir, are used in some groups of Covid-19 patients. But it is unclear how successful this treatment has been. The other two drugs from the claim are not mentioned in their guidance. Researchers at the Erasmus Medical Center claim to have found an antibody against coronavirus. Researchers in the Netherlands have released research, which has not yet been peer-reviewed, on an antibody against the new coronavirus. A 103 year-old Chinese grandmother has made a full recovery from Covid-19 after being treated for 6 days in Wuhan, China This has been widely reported in the media. Apple has reopened all 42 China stores. Correct. On 13 March 2020, Apple announced that it had reopened all 42 stores in mainland China after a closure of almost six weeks. Cleveland Clinic developed a Covid-19 test that gives results in hours, not days. The number of new cases in South Korea is declining. Italy is hit hard, experts say, only because they have the oldest population in Europe. Whilst it is true that an older population has contributed to a high number of deaths in Italy, it may not be the sole reason. Scientists in Israel are likely to announce the development of a coronavirus vaccine. Scientists in Israel and elsewhere are working on developing a vaccination to prevent the spread of the new coronavirus, but it won’t be ready for the public for over a year. Three Maryland coronavirus patients fully recovered and are able to return to everyday life. Correct. On 13 March 2020, Montgomery County, Maryland confirmed that three residents who previously had the virus no longer tested positive. A network of Canadian scientists are making excellent progress in Covid-19 research. At least one group of Canadian scientists has recently announced some progress in understanding Covid-19. A San Diego biotech company is developing a Covid-19 vaccine in collaboration with Duke University and National University of Singapore. Tulsa County's first positive Covid-19 case has recovered. This individual has had two negative tests, which is the indicator of recovery. Correct, this patient has recovered according to official Tulsa County sources. Two negative tests is one of three official indicators of recovery among people with Covid-19 (who showed symptoms). All seven patients who were getting treated for Covid-19 at Safdarjung hospital in New Delhi have recovered. There is a news story reporting that seven patients in this hospital in New Delhi had recovered. However, these were not the only Covid-19 patients in the city. Plasma from newly recovered patients from Covid -19 can treat others infected by Covid-19. This is being used as a treatment in some countries, but clinical trials have not yet proved that this is effective. Claim 1 of 15


Republican criticism of Obamacare may have been overtaken by other talking points -- from the influx of unaccompanied minors at the border to the Internal Revenue Service’s handling of tax-exempt organizations -- but it hasn’t disappeared entirely. On July 7, 2014, Republican National Committee chairman Reince Priebus sent the following tweet: "Thanks to #ObamaCare, average E.R. wait in California is 5 hours: http://gop.cm/6015YqKd And 'it’s only going to get worse.' " The tweet is based on, and links to, a July 4 report aired on the Fresno, Calif.-based TV station KMPH, a Fox affiliate. "If you have to go to an emergency room get ready to wait more than five hours," says the Web version of the KMPH report. "Right now, that is the average wait in the state of California. Health experts say you can blame Obamacare and Covered California for that long wait and they say it's only going to get worse. One of the promised benefits of the Affordable Care Act was to reduce the pressure on emergency rooms by expanding Medicaid and giving the poor better access to primary care. But instead, a survey by the American College of Emergency Physicians suggests something else. The organization says President Obama's health care reform actually has had a destructive effect on the nation's emergency rooms." (The version that aired is archived here.) But when we took a closer look, we found several problems -- including that the alleged 5-hour wait time was measured before the health care law took effect. What does 'average E.R. wait' mean? Actually, there isn’t just one definition. A study published in October 2013 by the California HealthCare Foundation offered three different measurements. The one Priebus references is "patient arrival to being admitted to hospital as inpatient." For California, this wait was five hours and 26 minutes -- longer than the national average of four hours and 34 minutes. But this is by far the longest of the three measures. The second longest is "patient arrival to emergency room departure for discharged patients" -- basically, the entire length of the visit for someone who isn’t actually admitted as an inpatient after being seen by the E.R. For Californians, this wait time was two hours and 49 minutes, once again a bit higher than the national average of two hours and 19 minutes. The third measurement is by far the shortest -- "patient arrival to being seen by health care professional." In California, this was 31 minutes, slightly more than the national average of 29 minutes. One might take away from Priebus’ tweet that someone going to a California E.R. can expect a wait of more than five hours just to get in to see a doctor or a nurse. In reality, they’re seeing a health professional in about a half an hour -- and if their injury or illness isn’t serious enough to keep them in the hospital overnight, then they’re on their way home in under three hours. For those patients, their entire visit is much shorter than the five hours Priebus indicates. Steven Birenbaum, a spokesman for the California HealthCare Foundation, said the wait time to see a health professional -- the shortest of the three measures -- is actually the most useful statistic in this context, because the longer figure "mainly reflects the inpatient service and how full the hospitals is." Julie Lloyd, a spokeswoman for the American College of Emergency Physicians, said there’s no "definitive answer" on which measurement is better. Her group focuses more on the wait time to admission or discharge, but she said hospitals market themselves based on wait time to see a doctor. The wait time to see a doctor is likely more familiar to ordinary Americans. Are long E.R. waits really due to Obamacare? At this point, any link between the Affordable Care Act and longer E.R. waiting times is speculative at best, because post-ACA data on wait times do not yet exist. The data from the California HealthCare Foundation is from 2012 -- in other words, long before provisions of the law began taking effect on Jan. 1, 2014. "It is too early to confirm that wait times are increasing under the ACA, due to the delay in data being released," Birenbaum said. Indeed, E.R. wait times "have been a serious problem for many years," said Lloyd of the emergency physicians’ group. "This is not anything new. It is often incorrectly blamed on nonurgent patients, who only comprise 7 percent to 8 percent of all E.R. patients." The real reasons for long wait times, Lloyd said, include "increasingly complex workups for patients, particularly older patients with multiple health problems, and the hospital practice of ‘boarding.’ ‘Boarding’ occurs when a patient admitted to the hospital from the E.R. is held in the E.R. while waiting for an inpatient bed. That ties up a bed and physicians’ attention, preventing them from getting to the next patients in line. Some patients are boarded for many, many hours." This doesn’t mean there’s no support at all for the notion that the ACA has complicated matters for emergency rooms. An online survey of 1,845 emergency physicians, conducted in April 2014 by the American College of Emergency Physicians, found evidence that caseloads had increased since the start of Obamacare -- though even here, the results were mixed. The TV report that Priebus linked to cited this recent survey. When asked whether the volume of emergency patients in their own E.R. had changed since Jan. 1, 2014, 9 percent said it had increased greatly and 37 percent said it had increased slightly. However, a larger percentage said it had remained the same (27 percent), decreased slightly (20 percent) or decreased greatly (3 percent). And while 86 percent of emergency physicians said they expected to see an increase in emergency visits over the next three years, it’s not clear that the ACA will be the dominant -- or even a significant -- reason for this. When asked what type of long-term impact the Affordable Care Act will have on access to emergency care, "positive" (34 percent) outweighed "negative" (29 percent), with another 29 percent saying it would have no impact. It’s also worth noting that the survey data -- the only post-ACA data we have -- speaks to patient volume in emergency rooms. It doesn’t speak to wait times, which was the focus of both the KMPH report and Priebus’ tweet. Kirsten Kukowski, a spokeswoman for the Republican National Committee, stood by the KMPH story the tweet cited. "If you have to go to an emergency room, get ready to wait more than five hours," she said. "Right now, that is the average wait in the state of California. Health experts say you can blame Obamacare and Covered California for that long wait and they say it's only going to get worse." KMPH did not return an inquiry for this article. But Birenbaum of the California HealthCare Foundation added a footnote: The San Joaquin Valley, where the TV segment was reported, "has one of the lowest rates of primary care physicians to population. It would make sense that patients often end up" in the E.R. Our ruling In a tweet, Priebus said, "Thanks to #ObamaCare, average E.R. wait in California is 5 hours." The statistic was based on data from 2012 -- two years before the provisions of the ACA could have had any impact. Meanwhile, the five-hour figure is just one of three measurements of E.R. wait times -- and not even necessarily the best one. If you count from the time of a patient's arrival to being seen by a health care professional, the wait time was 31 minutes in California. Even the strongest support for the claim is far from solid: A survey of emergency physicians found signs that E.R. traffic had increased since the ACA took effect in January, but the results were mixed, and this documents patient volume, not wait times. We rate the claim .


An alligator captured in the Chicago River in June 2008 was the first such creature ever found in that body of water.

Explanation: Apparently alligators have yet to get their fill of news headlines. A 4-5-foot alligator was discovered living in Humboldt Park Lagoon on Chicago’s West Side in July 2019.

Critter Country, alligators, Not Necessarily The News, nucleation

A recent news article about the Internet rumors swirling around a particular presidential candidate included a statement by the writer that he was “waiting to learn that [the candidate] put the first alligator in the New York City sewer,” an acknowledgement that a tale about the looming threat of deadly alligators silently lurking just beneath city streets has come to be recognized as a quintessential urban legend Although no hordes of alligators (mutant or otherwise) dwell within the bowels of the New York City sewer system, reports of saurians found in municipal waterways have been common newspaper fodder for over a century. Some of these accounts have been more fiction than fact, but a surprising number of abandoned, escaped, or otherwise misplaced gators — everything from infants to full-grown adults — really have been found in urban waters far from their native habitats over the years. So, I wasn’t taken aback by June 2008 news reports announcing the discovery and capture of an alligator in the Chicago River:  A 45-pound gator was captured along a stretch of the river in Chicago’s industrial South Side that was once one of the dirtiest waterways in the world but now has been restored and is full of fish, something that could have attracted the reptile. Officials think the American alligator, one of the strongest and most aggressive breeds, could have been a transplant or even a dumped pet. It was captured by volunteers from the Chicago Herpetological Society and will be sent to its native area of the U.S. southeast. What caught my eye, however, was the claim that this was the first such saurian ever pulled from that river. A UPI account opened with the following paragraph:  Animal control officials say the first alligator ever found in the Chicago River will be shipped to a wildlife sanctuary in the southeastern United States. And the Chicago Tribune reported:  Terrible things have emerged over the years from Bubbly Creek, a spot in the Chicago River that was once a churning sewer for the city’s slaughterhouses. But until Friday, nobody had seen what Bill Cox and his co-workers saw — something with a devilish underbite, sinister eyes and a cold-blooded appetite. An honest-to-goodness alligator in the Chicago River. Given the prevalence of urban alligator reports over the last century, I wondered if this was truly the first one sited at the Chicago River, or whether it was merely being reported as such because nobody recalled any earlier incident. Sure enough, a search through newspaper archives not only turned up a similar account from 1902, but one that had been published in the pages of the Chicago [Daily] Tribune itself (transcribed below):   “Look out for alligators” is the warning which fond parents soon may be giving their small boys when they go swimming in the Chicago river. An alligator two and one-half feet in length was captured in the river at the Twelfth street bridge yesterday, after Policeman Daniel McCarthy had fired four shots at it from his revolver and James Burke, a bridge iron worker, had fallen into the river in his endeavors to capture the animal. Shortly after noon Burke and McCarthy were crossing the river to get shelter in a small shanty at the east side of the stream. “What’s the matter with me?” almost shouted Burke. “What are you talking about?” began McCarthy at the same time, seeing the alligator swimming about in the river. “I’ve got them, too.” The two men watched the animal swimming about for a moment, and both agreed that it must be the “real thing.” McCarthy drew his revolver and tried four times to hit the little beast, but missed. Then Burke made a noose with a piece of heavy twine, and leaned far out over the water. As Burke tried to slip the noose over the alligator’s head he slipped and fell head foremost into the river. After some trouble he managed to climb out of the water, and, nothing daunted, he renewed his efforts to capture the alligator. A few minutes later Burke succeeded in lifting the animal out of the water and took it to the little shanty near by. Later it was placed in a barrel of water.


Amid the COVID-19 outbreak, “Minnesota now has the highest unemployment rate in U.S. history.”

Explanation: There is no official unemployment rate that backs the claim in the Facebook post. Minnesota’s reported unemployment rate, which was for March 2020, was near a record low when this Facebook post was published. Time lags in reporting official data mean that reported unemployment rates don’t reflect recent claims for unemployment insurance. There are indications that Minnesota’s unemployment rate could climb toward the Depression-era national record of nearly 25%.

Jobs, Facebook Fact-checks, Coronavirus, Facebook posts,

Minnesota ranks near the middle of the states on the number of confirmed coronavirus cases per capita. So is it possible that the pandemic has left it with the highest-ever unemployment rate in the country? "Well, we did it!" a Facebook post declares. "Minnesota now has the highest unemployment rate in U.S. history. Yesterday we surpassed the peak of the Great Depression." The post was flagged as part of Facebook’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Facebook.) It was updated a few times in subsequent days with different numbers, but was taken down after we started work on this fact check. The post is ambiguous about whether it refers to a record high for Minnesota or for all states throughout U.S. history. The post alluded to the national unemployment rate of roughly 25% during the Great Depression as a benchmark, but state records are not available for that period. And there is no officially reported unemployment data for Minnesota to back up the claim. As of May 6, the date of the Facebook post, Minnesota’s most recently reported unemployment rate was for March. At that time, its jobless rate was among the lowest in the country, at 2.9%. Minnesota has since reported data for April, which reflect more pandemic-related shutdowns and show unemployment jumping to 8.1% — still second-lowest in the country behind Connecticut’s 7.9%; Nevada was highest, at 28.2%. The national rate was 14.1%. There are indications that Minnesota’s jobless rates could head much closer to that Depression-era mark, though at this point, that is speculative. The time lag in reporting unemployment rates means that the officially reported data don’t fully reflect the trends in the number of people filing unemployment insurance claims week to week. So even as Minnesota was reporting strong jobs numbers, signs of a much greater unemployment problem were already appearing. On April 16, the Minneapolis Star Tribune reported on data suggesting that close to one in five Minnesota workers was unemployed or had lost work in the previous six weeks. On May 6, Minneapolis TV station Fox 9 reported that Minnesota had received 624,873 unemployment filings, amounting to 20% of the state's workforce, since mid-March. Mixing measures, that news report said the percentage rivaled unemployment rates during the Great Depression, when rates pushed towards 25%. The Facebook post attacks Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, a member of the state’s Democratic Farmer-Labor Party, as being the "first governor to force 25% of our workforce out of jobs." The post also refers to federal figures. But at that point, Minnesota’s reported rate was nowhere near that high. "Once we have the data, it may well turn out to be true that on May 6, Minnesota — and indeed the nation as a whole — may have had the highest unemployment rate in history, including the Great Depression," University of Minnesota economist V.V. Chari told PolitiFact. "My own guess is that we do have the highest unemployment rate in history now, but until we have the data, it is only an educated guess. Too early to say it quite as definitively as the poster puts it." In 1933, during the Great Depression, the national unemployment rate reached 24.9%, although that’s an annual rate, and a different measure from what is used now by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Chari and Brian Hannon, an economist at the bureau, said there are no official state figures during the Depression period. A Facebook post claimed that amid the COVID-19 outbreak, "Minnesota now has the highest unemployment rate in U.S. history." There is no official unemployment rate to back the claim. At the time of the post, on May 6, the most recently available data were for March and showed Minnesota’s unemployment rate at only 2.9%. Later data for April showed Minnesota still with one of the nation’s lowest jobless rates. However, during that lag, it was reported that roughly 20% of Minnesota residents, based on unemployment insurance filings, were unemployed or had lost work. The statement contains an element of truth.