A social media post correctly contextualizes the 30,000 approximate gun deaths each year in the United States.

Explanation: ‘There are 30,000 Gun Related Deaths Per Year by Firearms’

In August 2019, a Facebook post about the United States’ purported 30,000 gun deaths per year circulated, typically copied and pasted into individual posts which themselves were each shared a handful of times.One particular version coupled with a “mass shooters 2019” meme (a meme that is riddled with flaws, and which we debunked in early August 2019) was shared by one user in mid-August 2019. A version was also published to the blog of the agenda-driven Heartland Institute on August 26 2019, purportedly “written by Nancy Thorner.”Thorner clearly did not write the copypasta commentary for which she took credit, as a near-verbatim version was shared by Ted Nugent via Facebook in June 2017. In October 2017, the same text was shared to Reddit’s r/DebunkThis:Debunk This: Gun Control Doesn’t Matter Because It’s Not A Leading Killer of Americans from DebunkThisThat post’s title (“Debunk This: Gun Control Doesn’t Matter Because It’s Not A Leading Killer of Americans”) alluded to the general gist of the forwarded message — that through a series of calculations and statistics, the clear takeaway should be that guns do not warrant classification as the danger the media made them out to be. A search of Twitter revealed the text of the post was regularly shared as seemingly original content by individuals dating back to at least June 2017.Right off the bat, the post could be characterized as a “gish gallop.” Named for creationist Duane Gish and also described as “proof by verbosity,” RationalWiki defines a “gish gallop” as follows:“The Gish Gallop is the fallacious debate tactic of drowning your opponent in a flood of individually-weak arguments in order to prevent rebuttal of the whole argument collection without great effort. The Gish Gallop is a conveyor belt-fed version of the on the spot fallacy, as it’s unreasonable for anyone to have a well-composed answer immediately available to every argument present in the Gallop. The Gish Gallop is named after creationist Duane Gish, who often abused it … Gish Galloping is frequently employed (with particularly devastating results) in timed debates. The same is true for any time- or character-limited debate medium, including Twitter and newspaper editorials.“Examples of Gish Gallops are commonly found online, in crank “list” articles that claim to show “X hundred reasons for (or against) Y”. At the highest levels of verbosity, with dozens upon dozens or even hundreds of minor arguments interlocking, each individual “reason” is — upon closer inspection — likely to consist of a few sentences at best.”With that in mind, the “30,000 gun deaths in America” forward is certainly a mixture of statistics, assertions, and opinions, the latter of which often cannot be fact-checked. Its various claims were voluminous as befits a gish gallop, and many were cobbled together from long-circulating claims of many types. The Ted Nugent iteration began:There are 30,000 gun related deaths per year by firearms, and this number is not disputed. U.S. population 324,059,091 as of Wednesday, June 22, 2016. Do the math: 0.000000925% of the population dies from gun related actions each year. Statistically speaking, this is insignificant! What is never told, however, is a breakdown of those 30,000 deaths, to put them in perspective as compared to other causes of death:Even “this is not disputed” is an iffy start, because no evidence of whether the number cited is or is not disputed was included. In 2016, FiveThirtyEight averaged gun deaths across several years, estimating 33,000 approximate deaths by firearm each year in the United States — making the number reasonably accurate, but not exact. Other figures referenced in the forward appeared to come from the FiveThirtyEight piece on gun deaths linked above, presumably accurate as of 2016.In the next sentence, the forward urges readers to “do the math,” citing a population of 324,059,091 as of June 2016. (The United States population had climbed by four million in 2019, so we’ll use 2016 statistics wherever possible.) The post asserts that the 33,000 gun deaths — misstated as 30,000 — amounted to 0.000000925 percent of all Americans in any given year.Using the accurate figure of 33,000 gun deaths and the population provided of 324,059,091, the actual “math” works out to 0.01 percent — not “0.000000925 percent.” That section subsequently holds that the purportedly small number of gun deaths is “insignificant,” which is purely subjective opinion.A final note on that section is that readers might be duped into believing that the mortality rate from guns is less than one percent. However, mortality rate is not calculated by contrasting a cause of death with the entire population. It is actually “a measure of the number of deaths (in general, or due to a specific cause) in a particular population, scaled to the size of that population, per unit of time,” and “expressed in units of deaths per 1,000 individuals per year.”We are typically accustomed to understanding mortality percentages in the context of mortality rate. According to Centers for Disease Control (CDC) Wonder data, the actual mortality rate for any firearm-related deaths from 1999 through 2017 is 10.6 per 100,000 Americans. Consequently, the percentage as presented could constitute the logical fallacy of a “biased sample.”Moving on:• 65% of those deaths are by suicide which would never be prevented by gun laws • 15% are by law enforcement in the line of duty and justified • 17% are through criminal activity, gang and drug related or mentally ill persons —gun violence • 3% are accidental discharge deathsSo technically, “gun violence” is not 30,000 annually, but drops to 5,100.Next up the post claims that 65 percent of gun deaths are suicide, and “would never be prevented by gun laws.” No attempt is made to substantiate the claim. A 2017 study (“Handgun waiting periods reduce gun deaths“) published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences observed that waiting periods alone can reduce gun-related suicides by up to 11 percent — and waiting periods are just one gun control measure.An undated Johns Hopkins/Bloomberg American Health Initiative paper notes several ways in which gun control measures are known to affect rates of suicide:“Restricting access to lethal means, at least temporarily, during a time of crisis can prevent suicide. Even if one wishing to attempt suicide were to substitute a different method, he or she is far more likely to survive that attempt because firearms are the most lethal means available. And the vast majority of individuals who survive a suicide attempt do not go on to die from suicide in the future.”According to research on the availability of firearms and suicide, gun control measures do in fact lower rates of suicide, making that claim flatly false.The post also claims that another 15 percent of gun deaths are officer-involved shootings and thus “justified,” once again an opinion clearly not espoused by all — and certainly not a fact. It goes on to state that a further 17 percent are under the umbrella of “gun violence,” and three percent are accidental discharge-related deaths, or firearm accidents.From there, the original author, whomever that actually was, eliminates the purported 15 percent of officer-involved deaths, and three percent of accidental deaths (along with suicide) are automatically excluded from the number or rate of gun deaths, going on to redefine “gun deaths” as “deaths solely from gun violence.”Tracking the math in the upcoming section is simple, as the rate of “gun violence” is provided as 17 percent of all gun deaths, and the original erroneous figure of all gun deaths was provided as 30,000. Seventeen percent of 30,000 is 5,100 (approximately), and 17 percent of 33,000 is 5,610. But as gish gallops are prone to doing, the missive at that point unilaterally decides that the only gun deaths that truly count are what the writer defines as “gun violence,” and all other gun-related deaths do not “count” towards meaningful statistics.It appears many of the numbers are at least crudely based on the FiveThirtyEight post, and according to that item, approximately 12,000 of the 33,000 deaths cited annually are “homicides,” which would fall under the same umbrella as gun violence by all but the most creative accounting. We could not determine how the author identified that number as 17 percent, but homicides alone using those two numbers represented 36 percent of gun deaths in FiveThirtyEight’s data.From that point, the post goes into supposed city hotbeds for gun violence, claiming that a quarter of all gun crime occurs in just four cities:Still too many? Well, first, how are those deaths spanned across the nation? • 480 homicides (9.4%) were in Chicago • 344 homicides (6.7%) were in Baltimore • 333 homicides (6.5%) were in Detroit • 119 homicides (2.3%) were in Washington D.C. (a 54% increase over prior years)So basically, 25% of all gun crime happens in just 4 cities. All 4 of those cities have strict gun laws, so it is not the lack of law that is the root cause.This basically leaves 3,825 for the entire rest of the nation, or about 75 deaths per state. That is an average because some States have much higher rates than others. For example, California had 1,169 and Alabama had 1.Again, while the numbers look authoritative, no citations or frames of reference are included in the post or its iterations on blogs and Facebook, so hunting down possible sources for the claims is a needle-in-a-haystack proposition. But the base claim — that four cities (Chicago, Baltimore, Detroit, and Washington D.C.) have massive rates of gun crime and essentially skew the country’s curve — is both old and long debunked. We examined the claim in 2015 and rated it mostly false, as did PolitiFact in 2018.Even if those claims were accurate (they were not), they would constitute cherry picking, another fallacy. Typically, the origin meme holds that excluding those four cities from overall gun homicide rates drastically alters that rate, a claim repeatedly proven false:“The cities cited in the [four cities] meme accounted for 1,568 of 17,250, or 9.1 percent, of all homicides reported to the FBI in 2016, Tom Kovandzic, a criminologist at the University of Texas, Dallas, calculated for us. And without those cities, the homicide rate (per capita) would only decline by 7.73 percent, or from 5.34 to 4.93.”Its subsequent claim that the exclusion of those four cities “leaves 3,825 for the entire rest of the nation, or about 75 deaths per state” is based on prior false conclusions, and thus irrelevant to the overall credibility of the post as a whole. The post then states — correctly — that California has the strictest gun laws, before launching into a lengthy, barely intelligible rant about other causes of death, former United States President Barack Obama, and cheeseburgers.Incidentally, states with stricter gun laws maintain higher rates of gun-related homicide when they share borders with states that have looser restrictions. Another aside is that in 2017, the most recent year for which gun statistics were available, 39,773 Americans died from gun-related injuries in the United States. Basing any of these calculations on that number versus the original inaccurate 30,000 figure would greatly alter the percentages involved in breakdowns.No portion of the following segment of the circulating post constitutes a piece of checkable data, nor does it seem to make sense as an editorial opinion:Now, who has the strictest gun laws by far? California, of course, but understand, so it is not guns causing this. It is a crime rate spawned by the number of criminal persons residing in those cities and states. So if all cities and states are not created equally, then there must be something other than the tool causing the gun deaths.Are 5,100 deaths per year horrific? How about in comparison to other deaths? All death is sad and especially so when it is in the commission of a crime but that is the nature of crime. Robbery, death, rape, assault all is done by criminals and thinking that criminals will obey laws is ludicrous. That’s why they are criminals.But what about other deaths each year? • 40,000+ die from a drug overdose–THERE IS NO EXCUSE FOR THAT! • 36,000 people die per year from the flu, far exceeding the criminal gun deaths • 34,000 people die per year in traffic fatalities(exceeding gun deaths even if you include suicide)Now it gets good: • 200,000+ people die each year (and growing) from preventable medical errors. You are safer in Chicago than when you are in a hospital!• 710,000 people die per year from heart disease. It’s time to stop the double cheeseburgers! So what is the point? If Obama and the anti-gun movement focused their attention on heart disease, even a 10% decrease in cardiac deaths would save twice the number of lives annually of all gun-related deaths (including suicide, law enforcement, etc.). A 10% reduction in medical errors would be 66% of the total gun deaths or 4 times the number of criminal homicides……Simple, easily preventable 10% reductions!So you have to ask yourself, in the grand scheme of things, why the focus on guns? It’s pretty simple. : Taking away guns gives control to governments.The founders of this nation knew that regardless of the form of government, those in power may become corrupt and seek to rule as the British did by trying to disarm the populace of the colonies. It is not difficult to understand that a disarmed populace is a controlled populace.Thus, the second amendment was proudly and boldly included in the U.S. Constitution. It must be preserved at all costs.So the next time someone tries to tell you that gun control is about saving lives, look at these facts and remember these words from Noah Webster: “Before a standing army can rule, the people must be disarmed, as they are in almost every kingdom in Europe. The supreme power in America cannot enforce unjust laws by the sword, because the whole body of the people are armed and constitute a force superior to any band of regular troops that can be, on any pretense, raised in the United States. A military force at the command of Congress can execute no laws, but such as the people perceive to be just and constitutional; for they will possess the power.”Remember, when it comes to “gun control,” the important word is “control,” not “gun.”The claims presented in this long-circulating “30,000 gun related deaths per year by firearms, and this number is not disputed” forward are a mixture of cherry picked or misrepresented statistics, extensive opinion, distortions, and a sprinkling of numbers that occasionally bear a passing resemblance to evidence-based factual reality. A 2016 article by FiveThirtyEight approximated 33,000 (not 30,000) gun deaths per year, 12,000 (not 5,100) of which were homicides — roughly 36 percent. The author of the post repeatedly passes on their opinions of what excludes portions of the data while presenting no citations or basis to do so, and frequently misrepresents or falsifies numbers to make a point. It concludes with a largely incoherent rant about “a crime rate spawned by the number of criminal persons residing in those cities and states” and an entreaty that “all death is sad,” assertions which provide little support to the “math” espoused in the commentary’s opening paragraph.On multiple counts, the entire claim is false.


We're not engaged in nation-building" in Afghanistan.

Explanation: Joe Biden says U.S. 'is not engaged in nation-building' in Afghanistan

National, Foreign Policy, Military, This Week - ABC News, Joe Biden,

During a July 18, 2010, interview on ABC's This Week, Vice President Joe Biden made a clear characterization of U.S. policy in Afghanistan. "If you notice, what we have is a counter-insurgency plan along the spine of the country, where the population is," Biden said. "It's not a nationwide counter-insurgency plan. We're not engaged in nation-building, which the original discussion was about. We have ... a date where we're going to go look and see whether it's working. And we have a timetable in which to transition." The part that caught our eye was the notion that the United States is "not engaged in nation-building." We thought it would be worth seeing whether that's a fair characterization of what the U.S. is doing. Our initial challenge was to define what "nation-building" actually means. One concise definition offered in America's Role in Nation-Building: From Germany to Iraq, a 2003 study by the RAND Corp, is "to use military force to underpin a process of democratization. Substitute "stablilization" or "reconstruction" for "democratization" -- as many recent commentators have done -- and that serves as our definition. We should start by noting that the term isn't exactly in favor these days. In recent years, "nation-building" has variously taken hits from the right, for seeming to place battle-hardened troops in softer roles of promoting civic society, and from the left, for fear of an open-ended military commitment. "Labeling it as such would help discredit such interventions," said Ivan Eland, a senior fellow at the Independent Institute, a libertarian think tank, and author of an upcoming book on counterinsurgency warfare. True to form, the Obama Administration avoids the term "nation-building" as if it were allergic to the concept. We were unable to find any instance in which a White House official used the term to describe what was actually happening on the ground in Afghanistan. Just about the only time the term is used is when the administration seeks to explain what the U.S. is not doing. In a Dec. 1, 2009, speech at the U.S. Military Academy intended to outline the administration's policy in Afghanistan and Pakistan, Obama said that "there are those who oppose identifying a time frame for our transition to Afghan responsibility. Indeed, some call for a more dramatic and open-ended escalation of our war effort -- one that would commit us to a nation-building project of up to a decade. I reject this course because it sets goals that are beyond what can be achieved at a reasonable cost and what we need to achieve to secure our interests. Furthermore, the absence of a time frame for transition would deny us any sense of urgency in working with the Afghan government. It must be clear that Afghans will have to take responsibility for their security, and that America has no interest in fighting an endless war in Afghanistan." Two days later, in Congressional testimony, Defense Secretary Robert Gates sounded the same note. "This approach is not open-ended 'nation building,'" Gates said. "It is neither necessary nor feasible to create a modern, centralized, Western-style Afghan nation-state -- the likes of which has never been seen in that country. Nor does it entail pacifying every village and conducting textbook counterinsurgency from one end of Afghanistan to the other. It is, instead, a narrower focus tied more tightly to our core goal of disrupting, dismantling and eventually defeating al-Qaida by building the capacity of the Afghans -- capacity that will be measured by observable progress on clear objectives, and not simply by the passage of time." The administration is essentially arguing that it is not undertaking "nation-building," first, because the goal of strengthening civil society in Afghanistan is secondary to the narrower goal of taking on al-Qaida, and second, because the U.S. role in the mission is not one that will keep personnel on the ground indefinitely. Marvin Weinbaum, a former Afghanistan specialist at the State Department and now a scholar at the Middle East Institute, said the U.S. will have an interest in supporting Afghanistan's development long after the troops leave. But since the context of Biden's comment was a discussion of military policy, we'll keep our analysis narrowly focused on military-led nation-building. Meanwhile, Michael O'Hanlon, a senior fellow at the centrist-to-liberal Brookings Institution, said that "nation-building" is not only a loaded term, "it's also a vague term." Some foreign-policy experts say the administration has some justification for distinguishing between current U.S. policy and "nation-building." While we did not receive any clarification from the Vice President's office, O'Hanlon said that "in Afghanistan, our goals are relatively limited to ensuring some semblance of security and stability. In that sense, the vice president is right" that the mission in Afghanistan is more limited than full nation-building would be, O'Hanlon said. Lawrence Korb -- a former Defense Department official under President Ronald Reagan who now serves as a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, a liberal group with close ties to the Obama Administration -- added that the time element is important too. A strict interpretation of the term "nation-building" would suggest that the U.S. would "literally stay until everything was secure and a functioning government was in place." But the administration is saying that the Afghans "have 18 months to shape up," Korb said. That 18 months would end in July 2011, according to current plans. That said, both O'Hanlon and Korb agreed that there is significant substantive overlap between what goes on under the traditional definition of "nation-building" and what the U.S. is doing in Afghanistan. "There certainly are major elements of what one might call 'state-building' going on, starting with creation of a strong army and police," O'Hanlon said. Indeed, key policy documents outline a variety of duties that would seem to fit well within our definition of nation-building. The administration's National Security Strategy document released in May 2010 says that the U.S. "will continue to work with our partners, the United Nations, and the Afghan Government to improve accountable and effective governance. As we work to advance our strategic partnership with the Afghan Government, we are focusing assistance on supporting the president of Afghanistan and those ministries, governors, and local leaders who combat corruption and deliver for the people. Our efforts will be based upon performance, and we will measure progress. We will also target our assistance to areas that can make an immediate and enduring impact in the lives of the Afghan people, such as agriculture, while supporting the human rights of all of Afghanistan’s people--women and men. This will support our long-term commitment to a relationship between our two countries that supports a strong, stable, and prosperous Afghanistan." If this sounds a lot like nation-building, so does a portion of the Army's Counterinsurgency Field Manual, which was authored by Gen. David Petraeus in 2006. While the document was written during the Bush Administration, it still holds significant sway, especially given that Petraeus is now the top commander in Afghanistan. One portion of the manual says that "particularly after security has been achieved, dollars and ballots will have more important effects than bombs and bullets. This is a time when 'money is ammunition.' Depending on the state of the insurgency, therefore, Soldiers and Marines should prepare to execute many non-military missions to support (counterinsurgency) efforts." It even goes so far as to use the now-taboo words: "Everyone has a role in nation-building, not just Department of State and civil affairs personnel." Another portion of the manual says that "success in (counterinsurgency) operations requires small-unit leaders agile enough to transition among many types of missions and able to adapt to change. They must be able to shift through a number of activities from nation-building to combat and back again in days, or even hours." Such overlap suggests that for the current administration, the difference between its policy in Afghanistan and nation-building is, to a certain extent, one of nomenclature. Doug Bandow, a senior fellow with the libertarian Cato Institute, said, "Of course they are engaged in nation-building, and of course they are denying it." Eland added, "They are simply doing it and using a different name." So let's recap. When Biden says that "we're not engaged in nation-building" in Afghanistan, he's correct that the administration doesn't use that word, and that the U.S. commitment is narrower and more time-limited than a nation-building effort might be. However, many of the things the U.S. is seeking to do in Afghanistan would fall under a reasonable definition of what used to be known as nation-building. So while we acknowledge the limits of U.S. military intentions in Afghanistan, we don't think it's right to let the vice president simply deny the existence of the types of activities formerly identified with "nation building" by disavowing the phrase.


There are reports of suicides   and even murders resulting from the Doomsday prediction of Family   Radio’s Bible Teacher Harold Camping that judgment day would come on May   21, 2011 and that the true believers in Jesus Christ would be raptured   to heaven.

Explanation: Deadly Aftermath of Harold Camping's May 21, 2011 Judgement Day Prediction

Harold Camping is a   self-taught Bible teacher who was one of the founders of Family Radio, a   collection of radio stations and affiliates based in Oakland,   California. Camping hosted a live Monday through Friday talk show on the   network during which he spread his teachings and took phone calls   answering Bible questions. Camping first attracted attention outside of   his followers when he wrote a book titled 1994? in which he predicted   that the end of the world would probably take place between September 15   and 17 of that year. When it didn’t he said that he’d gotten his   calculations wrong. Camping bases his views on his own brand of Biblical numerology. He’s an   engineer by training and likes playing with numbers. His calculations   are a little hard to follow and some are based on assumptions of the   dates of events like the creation or the world or Noah’s flood. He became a fresh subject of news headlines in 2011 when he began to   intensely promote his conviction that on May 21, 2011, there would be   catastrophic earthquakes and other natural phenomena harkening the   beginning of severe judgment on the world. He also predicted that those   who were “true believers” in Jesus Christ would be taken from the earth   and go to heaven on that date. Associated with that he said that after a   period of judgement the world would come to an end on October 2 1, 2011. Camping was alone in his assertions. No other church, denomination, or   major pastor or Bible teacher supported his theory and most condemned   it. During the months leading up to May 21, Camping spread the word about   judgement day through his radio broadcast, which is heard both in the   United States and several foreign countries, and there were reports that   Family Radio spent millions of dollars buying advertising time and   funding a caravan of motor homes that went from city to city to warn   people about the pending event. The predicted date came and went without anything happening. Harold   Camping went into seclusion for a few days then emerged to say that he   would explain everything in a special radio broadcast on his network. In   that program, Camping announced that he was at first bewildered when   nothing seemed to happen but that he then realized that judgment day did   indeed come on May 21, but it was spiritual not physical and that was   why nobody noticed it. In June, 2011, Camping was hospitalized because   of a stroke and later transferred to a nursing home. Family Radio   announced an end to his program and substituted it with another. Over the following weeks, however, information started emerging about   some of the fallout of his prediction. Nobody knows how many people took   him seriously, but some stories came to light that caused great concern   about the impact of his failed prediction. A few days after the May 21, a Florida man who was visiting family in   California jumped into a reservoir in Contra Loma regional Park in   Antioch saying he had to “get to God.” Family members said the 25-year   old man became erratic and “started talking about God more profoundly…”   After watching a video about UFO’s he started quoting Bible verses from   the book of Ezekiel and insisted that he had to go to the park. One of   the detectives in the case said the man “…told his family that he now   understood the Bible and that God was going to come see him.” He dived   into the reservoir. His brother and his wife jumped in to save him and   brought him ashore, but he jumped back into the lack and drowned. Investigators said that the coverage of Camping’s prediction was to   blame. In Palmdale, California, authorities say that a woman who wanted to   protect her children from the “tribulation” slit the throats of her two   daughters before cutting her own throat. This happened in March of 2011. The injuries were not fatal, however, and all survived. The daughters   were 11 and 14. In Michigan, a group of teenagers who say they were celebrating the   failed prediction of the May 21 rapture decided to mark the occasion by   jumping from a bridge. A 17-year old who did not know how to swim was   swept away by the current and drowned. News reports from Taiwan told of an elderly man who jumped out of a   building on May 5 saying he had heard that doomsday was nearing. News reports in June told of a Malawian man who pleaded guilty to   “circulating false documents” about the judgment day prediction. He was   identified as a 39-year old bicycle repairman who had been spreading the   world about May 21. Police charged him with “circulating false documents   that threatened the peace and security of citizens.” He was given a   six-month suspended sentence. There were also news reports from Vietnam that an ethnic group in the   northern reaches of the country, the tribal Hmong people, were among   those who took the prophecy to heart. They had heard it through   missionary radio. The news reports said there were “thousands” of people   gathering on a hillside to await their trip to heaven. In July, 2011,   James Jacob Prasch of Moriel Ministries traveled to Vietnam and met with   Hmong leaders. He reported that more than 7,000 Hmongs did gather on a   mountain with hopes that they were going to be delivered from their   suffering at the hands of the Communist government. Prosch was told that   at one point police and military police opened gunfire on the crowd and   that many were killed and buried in mass graves on the site. He also   said that two pastors were beheaded and that many thousands are missing   and either among the dead, among the imprisoned, or scattered in the   local jungle. updated 07/16/11   Comments


The state of Florida has seen "double-digit drops" in alcohol use among teens.

Alcohol, Children, Florida, Susan Pitman,

As the Legislature considers changing rules for Florida’s burgeoning craft beer industry, one advocacy group is saying it’s important to maintain the state’s downward trend in teen alcohol abuse. During debate at the Senate commerce and tourism committee about whether to let breweries sell 64-ounce growlers, Susan Pitman, a board member for a collection of drug abuse prevention groups called the Florida Coalition Alliance, urged lawmakers to consider limiting pour sizes in beer-tasting rooms. Pitman said that preventing alcohol abuse demands regulation of these tasting rooms. "While the country as a whole has seen a decline in youth drinking, the state of Florida is a leader, with double-digit drops in 30-day teen alcohol use," she said. Pitman’s arguments may have had some impact; sponsor Sen. Jack Latvala, R-Clearwater, agreed to revisit his bill. But in the meantime, we wondered: Has the declining drinking rate of Florida’s minors really dropped as much as Pitman said? (We considered checking whether Florida’s decline made it a "leader" among states, but we backed off after we learned that the state and national numbers -- which also are on the decline -- aren’t precisely comparable.) Pitman, who also serves as executive director of Jacksonville-based Drug Free Duval, told PolitiFact Florida that she got her talking point from the Florida Youth Substance Abuse Survey. That’s an annual questionnaire given to middle and high school students in order to collect data about risky behaviors, such as smoking and drug use. The survey is coordinated by the state departments of Children and Families, Education, Health, Juvenile Justice and the Governor's Office of Drug Control. The 2014 report is drawn from answers from almost 70,000 Florida students from all 67 counties. There are several questions measuring alcohol use, including binge drinking and whether kids have ever tried alcohol. But in the category Pitman cites -- the percentage of children who had used alcohol during the past 30 days -- the data show a distinct decrease over the last decade. Grade 2004 2014 Decline, 2004-2014 Middle schoolers 20.3 percent 10.1 percent 10.2 points High schoolers 42.0 percent 28.4 percent 13.6 points That’s a double-digit drop for both categories, providing strong evidence for Pitman’s claim. The only caveat is that there’s a different data set that leads to slightly different results. Every two years, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention undertakes a survey for the Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System. It’s conducted every odd-numbered year during the spring semester for grades 9-12 and for middle schoolers. The 2013 data was culled from more than 13,000 forms filled out in schools across the United States. The CDC survey doesn’t offer 30-day alcohol data for middle schoolers, but it does for high schoolers. For Florida, the survey found that between 2003 and 2013, alcohol use by high schoolers during the previous 30 days dropped from 42.7 percent to 34.8 percent. That’s a decline of a little under 8 percentage points -- a bit shy of a double-digit drop. Our ruling Pitman said Florida has seen "double-digit drops" in alcohol use among teens. A survey conducted by the state does show double-digit drops for both middle- and high-schoolers over the last decade, though the decline for high schoolers in a survey by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found a decline of about 8 percentage points. The statement is accurate but needs additional information.


Officials probe respiratory illness at Quincy veterans’ home.

Explanation: State officials are investigating several cases of communicable respiratory illness at the same state-run veterans’ home in Quincy where there have been multiple outbreaks of Legionnaires Disease over the years.

Quincy, Health, General News, Legionnaires disease, Illinois, Disease outbreaks, Veterans, Public health

The (Quincy) Herald-Whig reports the departments of Veterans’ Affairs and Public Health on Friday confirmed nine cases of communicable respiratory illness and three possible illnesses. State and local public health officials are trying to find the source. State officials say Legionella bacteria isn’t suspected as the cause. It was previously blamed for several Legionnaires’ disease outbreaks at the home from 2015 to 2018. Over a dozen people died and numerous others were sickened. State officials say residents showed symptoms of respiratory illness between July 24 and Aug. 10. ___ Information from: The Quincy Herald-Whig, http://www.whig.com


Sylentis announces the results of tivanisiran for dry eye syndrome

Explanation: This news release focuses on a study of a new drug, tivanisiran, to treat dry eyes that was presented at a recent medical conference. It mentions the completion of both phase I and phase 2 trials and the start of a phase 3 trial, but it neglects to provide any of the details of the research. There is nothing offered about costs, the benefits or the harms of using the drug. It refers to the terms of “dry eye disease” or “dry eyes syndrome” repeatedly even though these are not recognized medical conditions. When it comes to health and medical news, journalists and other members of the public deserve useful information that can be used to evaluate a new treatment. The research summarized here is in far too early a stage to warrant distributing a news release.

There is no discussion of the potential cost of this new medication, tivanisiran. We do know, however, that current other treatments for dry eyes can be expensive. Cyclosporine A drops, for example, may run as high as $400 a month. There is no indication that tivanisiran might be more affordable to patients, or if insurers might cover the cost of this news drug. There is no effort made in this release to provide any numbers that would put the benefits of using tivanisiran in context. It does quote a scientist working on the treatment endorsing the drug: According to Ana Isabel Jiménez, Director of R&D at Sylentis, “we trust in our technology, innovative in this field, and we hope that tivanisiran will soon become a real alternative for the treatment of millions of people that suffer dry eye disease around the world.” Likewise, there is no mention of potential harms that use of tivanisiran might cause to patients. Since one of the earlier studies was a safety trial it would have been appropriate to include those results in the release. There is no evidence included in the release, despite the headline that says the drugmaker “announces the results of tivanisiran for dry eye syndrome.” The release only notes that the drug completed both phase I and phase 2 trials, (for safety and optimum dosage) and that a phase 3 trial is starting. The release doesn’t point readers to any of the earlier trials. It should be noted that these results were reported at a medical conference and have not been peer-reviewed or published in a medical journal. This release crosses the line into disease mongering with its repeat references to “dry eye disease” and “dry eye syndrome” which are not recognized medical conditions. Dry eyes can be caused by numerous things, ranging from side effects of medications to normal aging. PharmaMar, the parent company of he drugmaker, is listed as the study funder on the EurkekAlert! website which hosts the news release. We encourage news releases to include sponsors and conflict of interest information in the body of the news release so that information follows when the release is picked up verbatim by news aggregators. The release mentions alternatives to tivanisiran: “Dry eye can be treated with cyclosporin drops or autologous serum, but there is as yet no specific product for chronic treatment of the ocular pain related to dry eye syndrome; oral analgesics or anaesthetics are used in general. However, the main treatment consists of artificial tears, in the form of drops, gel or creams. Preservative-free eye drops have generally been found to offer the best long-term response.” The American Optometric Association publishes a patient pamphlet that provides additional management options. A scientist working for the drugmaker says she hopes “that tivanisiran will soon become a real alternative.” Savvy readers will note that the drug is still in development and that the drug is not yet ready for patient use outside of a research setting. This treatment, at least for dry eye, is novel since it is using a different approach to dealing with dry eyes than currently available medications use. But it’s important to keep in mind that the treatment is still preliminary and must be studied in larger trials before being submitted for FDA approval. The unjustifiable use of the terms “dry eye disease” and “dry eye syndrome” have already been addressed under the Disease Mongering criteria.


US regulators clear path for genetically modified salmon.

Explanation: U.S. regulators on Friday gave the green light to salmon genetically modified to grow about twice as fast as normal, but the company behind it may face legal challenges before the fish can be sold domestically.

Genetics, Health, Fish, Salmon, North America, Technology, Science, U.S. News

The Food and Drug Administration said it lifted an alert that had prevented AquaBounty from importing its salmon eggs to its Indiana facility, where they would be grown before being sold as food. The agency noted the salmon has already undergone safety reviews, and that it lifted its alert because the fish would be subject to a new regulation that will require companies to disclose when a food is bioengineered. The move comes despite a pending lawsuit filed by a coalition of consumer, environmental and fishing groups that challenged the FDA’s approval of the fish. “We think a remedy in our case would stop sale of the fish before they’re allowed to be sold,” said George Kimbrell, legal director for the Center for Food Safety, one of the groups suing the FDA. AquaBounty was founded in 1991, and it has been working through years of safety reviews and regulatory hurdles to sell its fish in the United States. In 2015, its salmon became the first genetically modified animal approved by the FDA for human consumption. But the agency subsequently issued an alert that stopped the Maynard, Massachusetts-based company from importing its fish eggs until disclosure guidelines for genetically modified foods were resolved. Called AquAdvantage, the fish is Atlantic salmon modified with DNA from other fish species to grow faster, which the company says will help feed growing demand for animal protein while reducing costs. AquaBounty CEO Sylvia Wulf said the company expects to get a final certification for its Albany, Indiana, growing facility in the coming weeks. Salmon eggs could then be sent from the company’s research and development facility in Canada, and would be harvested after about 18 months when they reach 10 pounds, she said. Wulf said it’s been difficult to engage companies in sales discussions because AquaBounty didn’t know when it could start growing the fish in the United States. She said the salmon already has been sold in limited quantities in Canada, where it doesn’t have to be labeled as genetically modified. Wulf said she doesn’t expect the pending lawsuit to affect the company’s U.S. plans. The genetically modified salmon are raised in tanks and bred to be female and sterile, measures designed to address any fears that they might get into the environment and breed with wild fish. But Kimbrell, of the Center for Food Safety, said the company’s own tests have shown it’s not 100 percent certain the fish would be sterile, and that concerns about it getting in the environment would grow if the company’s operations were to expand. He also noted the disclosure regulation uses the term “bioengineered,” even though most people are more familiar with the term genetically modified. And he pointed out that companies can provide disclosure through codes that have to be scanned. Implementation of that regulation starts in 2020, though people may start seeing disclosures on packages sooner. Compliance becomes mandatory in 2022. The genetic modification for AquaBounty’s fish is different from gene-editing technology, which lets scientists snip out specific genes to bring about traits without introducing foreign DNA. Companies are also working to develop a variety of gene-edited crops and animals . ____ Follow Candice Choi at www.twitter.com/candicechoi ___ 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.