(2020-06-20). [Comment] Framing health stories: Highlights 2020 photography competition open for submissions. thelancet.com The video and pictures of the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, MN, USA, as police officer Derek Chauvin knelt on Floyd's neck while he pleaded that he could not breathe, as well as photographs of subsequent anti-racism protests around the world, are some of the most powerful images this year. These pictures highlight the devastating impacts of structural racism and the deep inequities in our societies, and have given renewed urgency to the Black Lives Matter movement. This year has also brought moving and sometimes shocking photographs of health-care staff working in challenging conditions—too often…
(2020-06-20). [World Report] COVID-19 resurgence in Iran. thelancet.com Iran was one of the first countries to experience a COVID-19 epidemic, and began relaxing restrictions in April, but cases have since rebounded. Sharmila Devi reports.
(2020-06-20). [Editorial] Global governance for COVID-19 vaccines. thelancet.com The COVID-19 pandemic has uncovered serious gaps in the health-care systems of many nations. In particular, it exposes a fragmented global governance system that does not have the structures to coordinate the pooling and sharing of resources needed to combat pandemics. Since the early days of the pandemic, medical protectionism has emerged as nations scrambled for their own stocks of personal protective equipment and ventilators. COVID-19 vaccines could be the next example. Already there is a danger of a vaccine bidding war, with governments competing for a limited number of doses, well before a vaccine even reac…
(2020-06-20). [Comment] Men's health: COVID-19 pandemic highlights need for overdue policy action. thelancet.com The COVID-19 pandemic is shining a cruel light on the state of men's health globally. In 38 out of 43 countries for which provisional data were available, as of June 10, 2020, more men than women have died from COVID-19 despite a similar number of confirmed cases in each sex.1 In several countries, including the Netherlands, Dominican Republic, and Spain, about twice as many men as women have died from COVID-19.1 International Men's Health Week on June 15—21 is an opportune time to focus attention on this issue and the need for a new and systematic approach to improve the health of men generally.
(2020-06-20). [Comment] Wakley Prize Essay 2020: medicine and plain truths in a pandemic year. thelancet.com "Sorrow and Truth, sit you on either side of me, whilst I am relieved of this deadly burden…Lend me art, without any counterfeit shadowing, to paint and delineate to the life the whole story of this mortal and pestiferous battle."1 When London-based Renaissance author Thomas Dekker came to write his account of the 1603 plague outbreak, he renounced the "silver-tongued muses", feeling that only plain words and plain truth could do justice to the moment. Four centuries on, the COVID-19 pandemic demands a similar response.
(2020-06-20). [Perspectives] Seeing COVID-19 through José Saramago's Blindness. thelancet.com Some 6 months into the COVID-19 pandemic, the emotional devastation, socioeconomic impacts, and pressures on front-line health-care workers continue to shape our world. While words cannot always do justice to the extent of individual suffering from this disease, fiction can sometimes offer a way to process the present moment, and this feels particularly true of Portuguese writer José Saramago's Blindness (1995).
(2020-06-20). [Correspondence] Antipsychotics for schizophrenia and substance misuse. thelancet.com In their network meta-analysis of the efficacy and tolerability of 32 oral antipsychotics for the treatment of schizophrenia in adults, Maximillian Huhn and colleagues1 found some efficacy differences between antipsychotics. However, treatment studies in patients with schizophrenia have generally excluded those with past or current substance use disorders. A systematic review and meta-analysis showed that schizophrenia and substance use disorder comorbidity was highly prevalent among adults (41 ∑7%).
(2020-06-20). [Correspondence] Testing rimegepant for migraine—time to revise the trial design? thelancet.com We read with interest the results of the phase 3 trial by Robert Croop and colleagues1 on the use of rimegepant for treatment of acute migraine. We feel that this study, like other similarly designed trials, has major problems in its methods, which suggests caution should be taken when examining the results.
(2020-06-20). [Correspondence] Cancer and cardiovascular disease. thelancet.com Helen Strongman and colleagues1 concluded that "survivors of most site-specific cancers had increased medium-term to long-term risk for one or more cardiovascular diseases compared with that for the general population." The accompanying Comment2 argued that there should be further research into whether cancer should be included in cardiovascular risk prediction tools and refers to cardiovascular models such as Framingham3 and the Pooled Cohort Equations.4…
(2020-06-20). [World Report] Plain packaging ruling hailed as a victory for tobacco control. thelancet.com The decision of the World Trade Organization's appeals body is expected to spur more countries to implement similar stringent packaging laws. John Zarocostas reports from Geneva.
(2020-06-20). [Articles] Effects of a high-dose 24-h infusion of tranexamic acid on death and thromboembolic events in patients with acute gastrointestinal bleeding (HALT-IT): an international randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial. thelancet.com We found that tranexamic acid did not reduce death from gastrointestinal bleeding. On the basis of our results, tranexamic acid should not be used for the treatment of gastrointestinal bleeding outside the context of a randomised trial.
(2020-06-20). [Correspondence] Doing meaningful systematic reviews is no gravy train. thelancet.com Imagine all the scientific papers, it is not hard to do. But, imagine all these papers without any kind of syntheses or summing up: it would be returning to "intuition, unsystematic clinical experience, and pathophysiologic rationale as sufficient grounds for clinical decision making".1 No doubt, a systematic review is not the perfect solution and faces a lot of challenges, not least the ones highlighted by Richard Horton2 and Ian Roberts.3…
(2020-06-20). [Correspondence] Antipsychotics for schizophrenia and substance misuse — Authors' reply. thelancet.com Alain Dervaux raises concerns about the generalisability of our findings in patients with schizophrenia who also have comorbid substance abuse disorder. Indeed, in our analysis we excluded studies in which patients had specific characteristics, such as first episode patients, patients with predominantly negative symptoms, treatment-resistant patients, and patients with comorbid substance abuse disorder (as stated in our protocol registered at PROSPERO, CRD42014014919). The basis of this decision was to preserve transitivity.
(2020-06-20). [Comment] The Lancet Commission on dengue and other Aedes-transmitted viral diseases. thelancet.com The past 50 years have seen the emergence of epidemic arboviral diseases transmitted by the urban mosquito, Aedes aegypti. More than 120 countries are affected by frequent and cyclical dengue epidemics that result in an estimated annual 400 million infections and 100 million symptomatic cases.1 Chikungunya virus re-emerged in 2004 from east Africa and spread to Asia, the Pacific, the Americas, and Europe.2,3 Zika virus spread from sub-Saharan Africa through Asia and the Pacific to the Americas, where it caused a major outbreak associated with severe birth defects and neurological complications.
(2020-06-20). [Comment] Tranexamic acid for severe gastrointestinal bleeding. thelancet.com Severe gastrointestinal bleeding is frequent and associated with use of blood products and endoscopic and invasive procedures, including emergency surgery, which increases the risk of mortality.1 Interventions to stop bleeding include the use (often in an escalating manner) of proton-pump inhibitors, transfusion of blood products, therapeutic endoscopy, endovascular coiling, and open laparotomy.1,2 Tranexamic acid is also used in some patients in an attempt to inhibit blood clot breakdown by fibrinolysis that can occur in some cases.
(2020-06-20). [Correspondence] Testing rimegepant for migraine—time to revise the trial design? — Authors' reply. thelancet.com We thank Sara Gasparini and colleagues for their critique of our work.1 In stating that single-attack studies of acute treatments for migraine with no active comparator have major problems in their methods, however, they ignore their own recommendation that clinical studies should take regulatory requirements and the needs of clinical practice into account.2 Studies of single migraine attacks are the global standard for establishing the efficacy of acute treatments of migraine and the cornerstone of regulatory approval in the USA.
(2020-06-20). [Correspondence] Cancer and cardiovascular disease — Authors' reply. thelancet.com We thank Nasra Alam and colleagues and Jonathan Knisely and colleagues for their comments about our cohort study.1…
(2020-06-19). How Workers Can Win the Class War Being Waged Against Them. counterpunch.org 
Organized labor led no mass opposition to Trump's presidency or the December 2017 tax cut or the failed U.S. preparation for and management of COVID-19. Nor do we yet see a labor-led national protest against the worst mass firing since the 1930s Great Depression. All of these events, but especially the unemployment, mark an employers' class war against employees. The U.S. government directs it, but the employers as a class inspire and benefit the most from it.
(2020-06-19). How Workers Can Win the Class War Being Waged Upon Them. zcomm.org We need to recognize the class war that is underway and commit to fighting it…
(2020-06-19). Polls: Four Weeks of Protest Have Radically Altered American Views on Police. mintpressnews.com American voters now support sweeping changes to policing; 83 percent want a ban on racial profiling, 92 percent want police to be required to wear body cameras and White Americans' concern over police violence has increased by 50 percent since 2019.
(2020-06-19). Speight of Black Men Found Hanged Sparks Fears of Wave of Racist Terror. mintpressnews.com 
As the nation grapples with long-simmering racial tensions reignited by the murder of George Floyd, a series of suspicious hanging deaths of black men is sparking fears of a new wave of anti-black terror.
(2020-06-19). Ten-Point agenda for the Global South after COVID-19. mronline.org 
In 1974, the United Nations General Assembly passed a New International Economic Order (NIEO), which was driven by the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM).
(2020-06-19). From the Covid-19 Battle Can Come Unstoppable Citizen Power to Propel "Full Medicare for All" Through Congress. counterpunch.org Frontline healthcare, transit, and grocery clerk workers are too busy risking their lives helping and saving people exposed to the deadly Covid-19 pandemic to see themselves emerging as the force that can overcome decades of commercial obstruction to full Medicare for All. These heroic, courageous, and selfless people are getting the job done, often without
(2020-06-19). Climate Crisis: Keystone XL Supreme, Cap and Trade Takes Hit and California Geoengineering. therealnews.com 
The Trump administration tries to push Keystone XL to the US Supreme Court, California's appellate court rules on cap and trade, and California's governor backs away—but not really—from solar radiation geoengineering.
(2020-06-19). High Court says California can stay a sanctuary state. peoplesworld.org 
WASHINGTON—By a 7-2 vote, but without a written decision being issued, the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled California can stay a sanctuary state for undocumented people — a position the state's union movement strongly pushed to passage several years ago. Technically, the justices rejected the anti-Hispanic anti-migrant GOP Trump regime's demand the justices hear the …
(2020-06-19). Latino groups, AFL-CIO hail Supreme Court's pro-DACA decision. peoplesworld.org 
WASHINGTON—Immigrant rights groups, the AFL-CIO and other human rights organizations hailed the U.S. Supreme Court's June 18 decision which effectively leaves in place the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program and blocks President Donald Trump's long campaign to end DACA and toss its 700,000 recipients — the Dreamers — out of the country. …
(2020-06-19). 'Black Lives Matter' Is International. popularresistance.org Corte Madera, California – The police murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis on May 25th was the spark that ignited the tinder of accrued injustice throughout the US and globally. This injustice has deep antecedents in the US and indeed in much of what is now called the Global South. There is a shared history of colonial conquest of the Indigenous and the abominable institution of the enslavement of African peoples. | What happened has its roots in systemic oppression that has resonated internationally. Just as the police suffocated George Floyd, US unilateral coercive measures against Venezuela, Cuba, Nicaragua,…
(2020-06-20). [Comment] Offline: A novel solution to live with coronavirus. thelancet.com "Could you spare half an hour for me to get your advice on a potential safe and effective (and rapid) way out of the UK's current situation?" The text message was from a professor of medicine and epidemiology at an English university. I called him. He had an extraordinary proposal. Given where the country is now, he said, we needed more radical ideas about not only how to save lives but also how to save the economy. The country is collapsing. This coronavirus will be with us for some time. We can't live in lockdown forever.
(2020-06-19). Headlines for June 19, 2020. democracynow.org Supreme Court Blocks Trump from Ending DACA in Victory for Immigrants, Global COVID Death Toll Tops 450,000 as Cases Keep Growing in 77 Nations, Navajo Nation Reinstates Lockdown Due to New COVID Surge, "Trump Death Clock" Heads to Tulsa for Trump Speech, Juneteenth: Longshore Union Shuts Down West Coast Ports; Trump Claims He Made Holiday "Very Famous", Atlanta Officers Involved in Killing of Rayshard Brooks Turn Themselves In, Probe Launched over Use of Military Surveillance Planes to Monitor Protesters, High-Ranking Black State Dept. Official Resigns to Protest Trump's Actions, Klobuchar Removes Herself from V…
(2020-06-19). How DREAMers Defeated Trump: Supreme Court DACA Win Shows "Sustained Pressure of Activism" Works. democracynow.org 
In a 5-4 decision led by Chief Justice John Roberts, the Supreme Court on Thursday blocked President Trump's attempt to end Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA. The federal program created by President Obama in 2012 protects from deportation about 700,000 immigrants who arrived in the U.S. as children. Luis Cortes, one of the lawyers who defended DACA at the Supreme Court, says the key to the victory was being able to share the stories of DACA recipients. "What moved Chief Justice Roberts in our case was the stories," says Cortes, who is a DACA recipient himself. We also speak with Erika Andiola, advo…
(2020-06-19). Barbaric U.S. Sanctions on Syria Are Futile Extension of Failed Regime-Change War. strategic-culture.org A total blockade of war-torn Syria is the desired effect of sweeping new sanctions imposed this week by the United States. The purpose is to prevent the Arab nation from achieving reconstruction and international normalization after suffering nearly a decade of war. | Washington's objective is to make regime change in Damascus inevitable by making social conditions in the country as unbearable for the population as it possibly can. | With cruel Orwellian irony, the American sanctions implemented this week bear the words "Syria Civilian Protection Act". | The U.S. legislation was passed by both parties in the Cong…
(2020-06-19). Roaming Charges: Nothing But Rednecks for 400 Years, If You Check. counterpunch.org 
Most of my heroes don't appear on no stamps Sample a look back, you look and find Nothing but rednecks for four hundred years, if you check — Public Enemy + Almost every violent act committed by police in the US is already illegal. Making these acts more illegal won't change police behavior. Making these
(2020-06-19). 99 Years Later, Wounds of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre Have "Never Been Remedied" democracynow.org 
President Trump's first campaign rally since the start of the pandemic takes place Saturday in Tulsa, Oklahoma, despite a spike of COVID-19 cases there. Trump rescheduled the rally to Saturday after facing backlash for saying it would happen on Juneteenth — a celebration of African Americans' liberation from slavery — amid a nationwide uprising against racism and police brutality. Tulsa is also the site of one of the deadliest massacres in U.S. history, when a white mob in 1921 killed as many as 300 people in a thriving African American business district known as "Black Wall Street." For more on this…
(2020-06-19). Juneteenth: A Celebration of Black Liberation & Day to Remember "Horrific System That Was Slavery" democracynow.org 
June 19 is Juneteenth, celebrating the day in 1865 when the last enslaved Black people in the United States learned they had been freed from bondage. As momentum grows to enshrine it as a national holiday, we speak with author and historian Gerald Horne, who says that while the story of Juneteenth is "much more complicated and much more complex than is traditionally presented," increased recognition of the day "provides an opportunity to have a thorough remembrance of this horrific system that was slavery."
(2020-06-19). Yemen: Saudi Airstrike Kills Four Children as UN Removes Kingdom From List of Child Killers. mintpressnews.com 
Adrianne Lapar, director of Watchlist on Children and Armed Conflict said the decision "sends the message that powerful actors can get away with killing children."
(2020-06-19). Video: Idlib Al-Qaeda Promotes Its 'Successes' in Fight Against Syrian Army. globalresearch.ca The Syrian Army and the National Defense Forces are amassing their troops and equipment near the town of Ayn Issa in northern Raqqah. This town, located near the crossroad of the M4 highway and the Sanliurfa-Raqqah road, has been the …
(2020-06-19). The Caesar Act: The Latest Western Attack on Syria Didn't Drop From a Plane. mintpressnews.com 
As Syria struggles to recover from over a decade of US-imposed conflict, it faces a new deadly threat in the form of sweeping sanctions under the Caesar Act.
(2020-06-19). Masks, gloves — the ocean is filling up with COVID trash. peoplesworld.org 
Are oil companies the true heroes of the COVID-19 pandemic? That's sure what they'd like you to think. In a recent flurry of "corporate reputation advertising" highlighted by Emily Atkin in the newsletter HEATED, oil and gas companies, plus the American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers (AFPM) — an industry group that counts Chevron, Exxon, Citgo, and many others …
(2020-06-19). The Political Economy of Covid-19. counterpunch.org 
Governments around the world are attempting to prop up a failing capitalist system by — surprise! — throwing money at wealthy individuals and corporations, especially in the financial industry. In other words, in this time of unprecedented crisis and economic difficulty, it's business as usual. We were here not much more than a decade ago,
(2020-06-19). Lesser of Two Evils: Chomsky vs. Greenwald . . . and the Ignored Factor. counterpunch.org 
Noam Chomsky believes that it is so imperative that Trump be defeated that he will vote for Biden, while Glenn Greenwald challenges the political strategy of the lesser-of-two-evils dictum. It is difficult to imagine anyone more intellectually commanding than Chomsky, but Greenwald is no inferior. Chomsky and Greenwald are unbroken, rational warriors who apply contrasting
(2020-06-19). Was It Only "Fear Itself?": FDR and Today. dissidentvoice.org 
Police and National Guard Attacking Protestors Outside the White House in 2020 (Erin Schaff, New York Times) "Movement" politics is how the people flex their power, while electoral politics under the corporate duopoly is the domain of the moneyed classes. — Glen Ford, Black Agenda Report While it's myth that after the stock market crash …
(2020-06-19). Living the Panther Dream — An Interview with Black Panther Party Veteran Member Aaron Dixon. counterpunch.org 
On May 25, 2020, George Floyd, a Black man, was murdered by Derek Chauvin, a white Policeman in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Captured on camera and viewed by millions, Floyd's brutalization inspired an uprising in multiple cities across the United States and the world. In Seattle, WA, protesters in an area termed "Capitol Hill Occupied Protest," (CHOP),
(2020-06-19). Tipping the Nuclear Dominos. counterpunch.org 
If the Trump administration follows through on its threat to re-start nuclear tests, it will complete the unraveling of more than 50 years of arms control agreements, taking the world back to the days when school children practiced "duck and cover," and people built backyard bomb shelters.
(2020-06-19). The Israeli Defense Forces is a Misnomer. counterpunch.org 
Unless one defines defense as attacking others with overwhelming force, the Israeli Defense Forces have never been a defensive force. As scholar and author Haim Beshreeth-Zabner makes clear in his just published history An Army Like No Other, the IDF was designed to be an offensive armed force intended to take and keep territory. In
(2020-06-19). Unsimple Twists of Fate in an Election Year, a Pandemic Year, and Year Four of Donald Trump. counterpunch.org 
What we expect comes to pass far more often than what we do not, though it can sometimes seem otherwise because an improbable turn of events is remarkable in ways that an expected outcome is not. Sudden transformations of longstanding states of affairs are especially remarkable, even when — indeed, especially when — they make
(2020-06-19). Twin Histories: Segregation and Police Violence in Minneapolis. counterpunch.org 
George Floyd's murder tape gives sight, if you look closely, of a world little-named in pieces on his killing. Sustained police savagery marks this world, one city bureaucrats worked, long ago, to segregate, and more recently to keep that way. It is Minneapolis. And knowing its linked police and housing histories is crucial to making sense of today's protests. These histories show a city saturated in violence—state-sanctioned violence.
(2020-06-19). Antifa movement: Anti-establishment rebels. mronline.org 
A day after Donald Trump's election victory, Hispanic students at Royal Oak High School in Michigan were harassed by their classmates who started chanting, "Build the wall!" Once installed in office, the White House occupant announced the immigration ban on Muslims and a few hours later, someone set fire to the local Islamic Center in …
(2020-06-19). San Antonio activists seek justice, demand reopening of police killings. liberationnews.org 
Like in other places around the country, thousands are in the streets in San Antonio demanding justice for victims of national significance like George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, but also for local victims of police terror.
(2020-06-19). The 1921 Tulsa massacre: U.S. 'ethnic cleansing'. workers.org 
Since Trump announced that his first campaign rally would be in Tulsa, Okla., on June 19, there has been renewed interest in the 1921 racist Tulsa massacre that targeted "Black Wall Street." The rally has since been rescheduled for June 20. Decades later, Tulsa has continued its white supremacist legacy . . . |
(2020-06-19). Editorial/Celebrating Juneteenth during an uprising. workers.org 
On Juneteenth, commemorated on June 19, African Americans mark the anniversary of the day in 1865 when union troops arrived in Galveston Island to inform the enslaved people in Texas that the heinous system of slavery had ended. The delayed announcement forced an estimated 250,000 African descendants to languish under . . . |