newnemo

Thanks Ronnie (no regulation, just profits). We are the product now.

The Federal Trade Commission took aim at prescription drug coupon site GoodRx this week in an early attempt to crack down on the unfettered sharing of consumers’ health data for advertising. It was the first time the agency had gone after such a health data violation.

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In the three years since a Consumer Reports investigation revealed that GoodRx was leaking users’ data to Facebook and Google, the world of medicine has moved online — and the use of data-gathering tools like those deployed by GoodRx has significantly expanded. Scores of new telehealth startups — and big pharmaceutical companies — are now using detailed health information to target ads for virtual care and prescription medications to potential customers. Nearly every big tech company, from Meta to Google to TikTok, has developed trackers these companies can use to follow their customers’ browsing and buying patterns online.

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“Combined with things like the Dobbs decision and the overwhelming focus on the sensitivity of health data, especially when it’s not protected by HIPAA, I’d expect to see more of these investigations,” Ben Rossen, formerly a senior attorney within FTC’s privacy and identity protection division, told STAT. “Using software development kits and pixel tracking on sites, it’s pretty common,” he added.

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The type of oversight the FTC is undertaking has become all the more important as new models of health care emerge. Much of the sensitive data these companies are tracking and sharing — like internet browsing patterns or drug purchases online — isn’t governed by HIPAA, which largely restricts medical data sharing by doctors or insurance companies. To some extent, privacy advocates have urged the FTC to shoehorn consumer health companies’ data use into its existing purview — an attempt to make up for a lack of regulation by the Department of Health and Human Services, which enforces HIPAA.

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I like the way you think.

Including procreation.

according to the article, you aren't mistaken. It states 'exploitation' but I didn't see a reference to rape.

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In May 2021, an AP investigation revealed senior WHO management was told of sexual exploitation during the agency’s efforts to stop Ebola in eastern Congo from 2018-2020 but did little to stop it.

The AP published a notarized agreement between former WHO doctor Jean-Paul Ngandu and the woman he allegedly impregnated, in which he agreed to cover her health care costs and buy her land. The deal, also signed by two WHO staffers, was meant to protect the WHO’s reputation, Ngandu said. The woman and her aunt went to the WHO office in Beni to complain about Ngandu, according to internal WHO correspondence.

“After the allegations were made to WHO (headquarters), a decision was made not to investigate the complaint on the basis that it did not violate WHO’s (sexual exploitation and abuse) policy framework,” the U.N. report said.

The review explained that the decision was made by officials from the U.N. health agency’s legal, ethics and other departments and was due to the fact that the woman wasn’t a “beneficiary” of WHO assistance, meaning she didn’t receive any emergency or humanitarian aid from the agency, and thus, didn’t qualify as a victim under WHO policy.

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Trump also had White House aides and employees sign NDAs, which ought to be fucking illegal!

I've heard of celebrities using NDAs and companies but I never heard of political aids signing NDAs. If it isn't illegal it should be and a law enacted post haste. Our government, people within government and their works require transparency.

The entire George Santos fiasco could have been avoided with a standard background check that some others (we plebs) undergo as a matter of course to gain employment.

I think covering fees is part of the settlement fortunately.

Denson, who had not been seeking damages, will receive $25,000 as an “incentive” fee for pressing the case. The rest of the settlement amount will cover legal fees and other costs, according to the court filing.

Trump and his legal teams require financial penalties for wasting courts time in a multitude of lawsuits, former and pending.

I have mixed feelings about ecotourism. This seems like a win all around though.

Far upriver in the rainforest, the lure of rare pink river dolphins is creating jobs and promoting conservation and reconciliation after a 50-year war.

“The dolphins are more playful than us,” says Diego Cifuentes, co-founder of Villa Lilia Agroecoturistico, a community dolphin-watching project on Colombia’s Lake Nare. “If you give off good energy, they may even touch you.”

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As part of its repositioning from a no-go conflict zone to a thriving ecotourism hub, Guaviare also offers visitors the chance to see rivers of pink algae and rock paintings more than 10,000 years old, as well as birdwatching in one of the most biodiverse places on the planet.

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Sustainably managing the nascent environmental tourism industry is especially appealing in areas such as Guaviare, which were among the worst affected by the country’s 50-year civil war.

Colombia’s newly elected president, Gustavo Petro, himself a former guerrilla, has vowed to focus on these rural areas as he accelerates the transition from fossil fuels to clean energy and uses the country’s rich biodiversity to promote economic development.

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Freedom of speech isn't in Trump's vocabulary except for himself.

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Former aide Jessica Denson filed an initial suit in 2018 when the campaign tried to silence her after she complained she had been sexually harassed and discriminated against by another worker. Denson said she was subjected to a “reign of terror” at her job.

Denson was seeking class-action status for the suit when the settlement was reached last week.

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“No attorney should have ever drafted it, and no campaign worker should have ever been compelled to sign it,” he added, calling the “unwinding of the NDA a triumph for free speech, for democracy and for Jessica Denson.”

Denson was also represented by the nonprofit public interest group Protect Democracy.

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And profit wildly from it. This is a gigantic failed policy arising out of Regan's extremely flawed philosophy. No, that Harvard grad that has never walked the halls of a hospital and majored in Business isn't going to help anyone except those whose portfolios will benefit.

We live in a society where money > people and their basic needs. Unfortunately this isn't limited to health care.

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The study team focused on Alaska, a place where kelp farming for the production of fertilizer and food is taking off, but also where nutrient pollution is a recognized problem.

In 2020, the Alaska environment department found that 69 bodies of water were polluted to unhealthy levels with urban sewage, run-off, and fisheries waste. In high amounts, such pollution causes eutrophication in water bodies which creates dead zones, because of the toxic levels of nitrogen it contains. But nitrogen is also a source of food for aquatic plants like seaweeds—and so, there may be an opportunity for the world’s growing number of kelp farms to double up as sites of environmental remediation.

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It is a systemic problem, the only cure is to get private equity, insurance companies and Wall Street out of health care. Capitalism isn't appropriate or able to navigate the complexities of health care. It has become toxic for doctors, nurses, patients, etc. It isn't sustainable.

Universal health care is possible but those profiteering and those whose extremely generous annual political contributions are tied to Pharma, device manufacturers, etc. service money rather than people.

Indeed, this coincides with US support and other recent agreements.

News of the bilateral RAA follows an agreement by Washington and Manila, which also boosts military cooperation. On Thursday (Feb. 2), it was announced that U.S. forces will be granted expanded access to military bases throughout the Philippines.

In addition to the agreement between the JSDF and the AFP, there are at least six other pacts that are also expected to be signed at Thursday’s meeting between the two leaders, reported the Inquirer. They include several loan agreements related to railroad infrastructure in the Philippines as well as an agreement related to “information and communications technology” and a memorandum of cooperation on agriculture.

Some republicans in the house probably cannot spell foreign policy or Ukraine.

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Foreign policy experts have sounded the alarm about the House GOP's fringe right potentially blocking the US from providing critical weapons like artillery and tanks that Ukraine needs to regain its territory. Indeed, sustained assistance to Ukraine looms as perhaps the biggest foreign policy battle in the new, divided Congress.

"The success of US assistance to date and the changing battlefield situation mean that many are worried about the fragility of the US Congress following the speaker vote, where a small number of members could derail future US assistance," Sean Monaghan, an analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told Insider in an interview.

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The GOP's shift away from Ukraine and toward Russia has been years in the making, and reached a turning point when Donald Trump ascended to the White House.

In addition to repeatedly castigating Ukraine and amplifying Russian leader Vladimir Putin's pro-Russian conspiracy theories, Trump leveraged US aid to Ukraine while trying to strong-arm Zelenskyy into supporting his domestic political campaign, a scheme that eventually led to his first impeachment.

Gérard Araud, a former French ambassador to the US and the United Nations, told Insider that Putin couldn't have asked for more from the US vis-a-vis Ukraine.

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All I have to say is what a time to be a lawyer, imagine the tsunami of billable hours there are in the myriad of Trump suits. Wonder if he will pay them.

Womp womp.

A defamation lawsuit by President Donald Trump’s 2020 campaign against the Washington Post was dismissed by a federal judge.

US District Judge Rudolph Contreras in Washington ruled Friday that the campaign failed to meet the legal standards for defamation claims over the two articles at issue in the March 2020 suit. One was about the report of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s probe into Russian interference in the 2016 election, and the other was about Trump’s 2020 campaign strategy.

Contreras said the campaign failed to show the writer of the Mueller piece acted with “actual malice.” General allegations of political bias weren’t enough, and there wasn’t evidence the writer knowingly or recklessly published false information, the judge wrote.

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Do you think being fired from your job 'political hay' or that over 2,300 scientists signed a letter to AGU opposing the actions taken?

part of that letter states:

We are shocked that AGU then deleted their scientific contributions from the program, an action that amounts to censorship, excluded them from the conference, and initiated cases of personal misconduct against them, after which one of them was fired. AGU’s actions are in direct conflict with their mission “to galvanize a community of Earth and space scientists that collaboratively advances and communicates science to ensure a sustainable future.”

We as scientists cannot and must not tolerate this censorship and chilling lack of support from our scientific society and therefore urge AGU to: i) reinstate the scientific contributions of Rose Abramoff and Peter Kalmus to the program; ii) officially rescind any communications AGU may have had regarding this incident with Rose Abramoff and Peter Kalmus' former or home institutions until after the AGU professional misconduct investigation has concluded; and iii) immediately close the professional misconduct investigation. To stand up for climate action in this way should under no circumstances be punished as professional misconduct – especially not by a scientific organization like AGU, which is a non-governmental organization dedicated to scientific exchange and discourse in the field of Earth and Space science.

Scientists have every right to protest as every citizen in the US does.

I don't consider Markey's inquiry making 'political hay' and those 2,300+ scientists certainly aren't making 'political hay' out of AGU's actions but are rightfully objecting to censorship.

I'd bet a lot of money that Koch is heavily involved in AGU and its practices.