Pretty horrifying. This should be a major concern. "A Drug Addiction Risk Algorithm and Its Grim Toll on Chronic Pain Sufferers" buff.ly/3sdSwvS - excerpts below
Secret 'credit score' for controlled substances based on opaque, often biased algorithm
Algorithm not validated by peer-reviewed research
Use of partial, skewed data to inform algorithm
Racial biases likely reinforced by algorithm, leading to under-treatment of pain in black people
The more vulnerable the patient, with the more complex conditions, the more likely to be flagged as 'too risky' for pain treatment
Women experiencing childhood sex abuse being turned away from pain treatment
The article really is worth reading and is quite alarming
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On the failure of academics to concern themselves with the essential questions of human existence, meaning, value, instead tending to their “little farms” of specialisms. “Other teachers will emerge and will be followed.” — Wolfgang Köhler
And the counterpoint (in Köhler’s own voice), “When asked to choose between writing badly about the greatest questions and well about more modest topics we prefer the second alternative.”
Followers who consider themselves straight males - does this resonate with your experience growing up? 🤔
From Sexual Revolution by Laurie Penny. I don’t know how much ‘straight boy’ accurately describes my childhood self, but must confess that I, too, do not recall experiencing anything remotely like this (mostly, premarital sex meant going to hell; certainly not an entitlement)
And to the extent that sexual feelings or desires weren’t just repressed or associated with shame, I would say that connotations of gentleness, exploration, awe - almost unworthiness - and mutuality would have been the prevailing themes or attitudes I had toward sex
Okay, finally back at my computer so adding these refs now - someone asked whether there are post-colonial critiques of tendency to think of African child genital cutting as 'barbaric' while white Western/US child genital cutting is 'civilized/respectable' - yes. Some highlights:
Among many other excellent discussions of this issue, I recommend "Dualisms and female bodies in representations of African female circumcision: a feminist critique" by Wairimũ Ngaruiya Njambi journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/14… 1/
There is a lot of work on this; much of it is cited in this review article by Sara Johnsdotter and myself nature.com/articles/s4144… … I’ll add refs to individual papers by (eg) post colonial and African studies scholars below
Take this chapter by Birgitte Essén, perhaps the most senior gynecologist & medical expert who has extensive clinical experience working directly w. women affected by FGC. She notes that for over 50 years, the @WHO has published guidelines on FGC re: health consequences ... 6/
& other empirical claims concerning different types of FGC, but "without the usual concern" for high quality evidence, based on "uncritical" thinking re: causes & consequences, "skewed or insufficient data" & "misleading conclusions." This has v. bad real-world implications 7/
Focusing on a Danish case for which she served as an expert witness, Essén notes that trial doctors -- whose testimony led to conviction & more than a year of imprisonment of 2 parents of Somali origin, separating them from their children -- had *NO EXPERTISE* in FGC 8/
Heartbreaking: up to 40% of Filipino boys experience infection (drdf.org.ph/sites/default/…), and up to 70%, PTSD (sciencedirect.com/science/articl…), from their public circumcision rites each year. I wonder why @WHO doesn't view this as a human rights violation? One possibility is that ...
routine & religious male circumcision—common in U.S. & Jewish/Muslim families, respectively—is a tradition among many of the most influential “gatekeepers” of the global human rights agenda: “the practice is prevalent in their own social networks”(amazon.com/Lost-Causes-Ve…) ...
Per Carpenter: “Unlike other practices human rights professionals condemn but don't participate in, circ was widespread” among them. "Confronting it evoked defensiveness from those who had circumcised their own boys, loath to think of themselves as human rights abusers” ...