Women's Healthcare Needs Help - Also Updates on Pancreatic Cancer and ALS
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ALS Update
A new brain-computer interface (BCI) developed at UC Davis Health translates brain signals into speech with up to 97% accuracy — the most accurate system of its kind.
The researchers implanted sensors in the brain of a man with severely impaired speech due to amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). The man was able to communicate his intended speech within minutes of activating the system.
A study about this work was just published in the New England Journal of Medicine.
ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig's disease, affects the nerve cells that control movement throughout the body. The disease leads to a gradual loss of the ability to stand, walk and use one’s hands. It can also cause a person to lose control of the muscles used to speak, leading to a loss of understandable speech.
The new technology is being developed to restore communication for people who can’t speak due to paralysis or neurological conditions like ALS. It can interpret brain signals when the user tries to speak and turns them into text that is ‘spoken’ aloud by the computer. (University of California Davis)
Just way cool.
Pancreatic Cancer Update
Scientists at UC San Francisco have discovered a way to get rid of pancreatic cancer in mice by putting them on a high fat, or ketogenic, diet and giving them cancer therapy.
The cancer therapy blocks fat metabolism, which is the cancer’s only source of fuel for as long as the mice remain on the ketogenic diet, and the tumors stop growing.
The team made the discovery, which appears August 14 in Nature, while they were trying to figure out how the body manages to subsist on fat while fasting.
They first uncovered how a protein known as eukaryotic translation initiation factor (eIF4E) changes the body’s metabolism to switch to fat consumption during fasting. The same switch also occurs, thanks to eIF4E, when an animal is on a ketogenic diet.
They found that a new cancer drug called eFT508, currently in clinical trials, blocks eIF4E and the ketogenic pathway, preventing the body from metabolizing fat. When the scientists combined the drug with a ketogenic diet in an animal model of pancreatic cancer, the cancer cells starved.
This is firm evidence of one way in which diet might be used alongside pre-existing cancer therapies to precisely eliminate a cancer. (University of California San Francisco)
Watch this space.
Women’s Health in the US
If I’m covering a topic like this you know the answer is there must be room to improve - a lot of room. A new report was released this week by the Commonwealth Fund on the state of US women’s health.
Recently released federal data once again shows United States with, by far, the highest rate of maternal deaths of any high-income nation, despite a decline since the COVID-19 pandemic.1 Racial disparities are also extreme: Black women in the U.S. are nearly three times more likely to die from pregnancy-related complications than white women are. But maternal deaths and complications may be an indicator of the nation’s wider failures with respect to women’s health and health care.
While the U.S. spends more on health care than other countries do, surveys regularly find that Americans avoid seeking care because of costs at the highest rates, even as the U.S. continues to lead in the prevalence of chronic disease.2 At the same time, limited access to primary care and inadequate coordination of health services are likely factors in the nation’s poor performance when it comes to the prevention, diagnosis, and management of diseases.3
Mortality: As of 2022, women in the U.S. had the lowest life expectancy of 80 years compared to women in other high-income countries, it is 87 years in Japan and 86 in France. As of 2021, women in the U.S. had the highest rate of avoidable deaths (270 per 100,000) - the chart is below.
All countries in the Commonwealth Fund analysis, except the U.S., guarantee government-provided health care coverage to all their residents. In addition to this public coverage, women in other countries also have the option to purchase additional, private coverage. In France, nearly all women have private coverage on top of their public plan.
In the U.S., 14 percent of women ages 19–64 in 2023 reported being uninsured, including over a quarter of Hispanic women. Although substantial progress has been made since the enactment of the Affordable Care Act in 2010, many women under age 65 remain ineligible for public overage or cannot access affordable private coverage.
Affordability of care: Women in the U.S. have among the highest rates, and in some cases the highest rate, of skipping or delaying needed care because of the cost and having medical bill problems. On average it is 50%.
This is a disgraceful situation. Everyone deserves to be able to go to the doctor when they need to and not go broke. Everyone deserves to be able to have preventive screenings and healthcare to make sure problems are caught early and treated.
Our healthcare system is failing - just look at how many women die needlessly 270/100,000 yearly that don’t have to because they lacked preventive care. We need everyone to have affordable health insurance. BTW the 900 or so health insurance companies in the US are’t able to do it because their overhead rate is 20+%. A Universal Single Payer Health Insurance Trust will save (per the Congressional Budget Office) $400 billion EVERY YEAR. Read it. https://www.cbo.gov/publication/56898
It is time to act.
ACTION
Let’s put this under the noses of the people who can do something. Our members of Congress and our Senators.
Let them know that 270/100,000 women die needlessly because they lack sufficient healthcare and that Universal Healthcare like HR 3421 will fix it. You can reach them here, https://www.usa.gov/elected-officials.
Or use RESISTBOT via [Apple Messages / WHATSAPP / MESSENGER] or just text SIGN PYBGEW to 50409 to send this message.
“I am your constituent and I want you and your legislative staff to know about a Commonwealth Fund report that was just released that compares the health of women in the US to women in our peer industrialized nations. Here is a link to the report, https://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/issue-briefs/2024/aug/health-care-women-how-us-compares-internationally.
Because women have insufficient health care (14% uninsured up to age 65) they die earlier than in our peer countries 80 years vs 87 years in Japan, 86 years in France), and the the number of women whose deaths is preventable is 270/100,000. That’s 260% MORE THAN IN FRANCE.
You have an obligation to look out for your constituents - that is why we sent you there. I want you to actively support a national single payer insurance trust, like HR 3421, that will insure all of us for far less than we pay now. The independent Congressional Budget Office puts the savings at over $400 billion EVERY YEAR. Here is their report, https://www.cbo.gov/publication/56898. Do it.”
Find My Elected Officials
Contact State and Federal Representatives - phone and email
Healthcare Advocacy (Us) Website
Our Newsletter resources including reproductive healthcare - Healthcare Advocacy Reading List
Important Healthcare Resources
League of Women Voters Healthcare Reform Toolkit
Organizations to Contact
National Nurses United Medicare4All
Physicians for a National Health Program
One Payer States
Healthcare Now
Reproductive Health
NARAL - Pro Choice America
Charley. chatbot abortion resource - make sure to use a secure incognito browser if you live in a state that has banned abortion
Planned Parenthood
Miscarriage and Abortion Hotline has references about where to procure abortion medications. They also assist women in the process of self managed abortion or miscarriage by phone or text and will respond in an hour. Details and hours of operation at their website.
United State of Women Reproductive health page (bottom of the page) has important resources such as medical support, access to Telehealth, prescriptions by mail, and legal support references.
Practice careful communications - The Digital Defense Fund has a number of tips to keep texts, calls, and internet use private. Here is their site.
If you need financial help with an abortion try abortionfunds.org
Claims Denials and Appeals & What to Do
Appeal a Healthcare Decision
Appeal/Negotiate a Hospital Bill
Disinformation Management
Cybersecurity Infrastructure Security Agency
Save Democracy
Chop Wood, Carry Water by Jessica Cravens
RESISTBOT
Link to the RESISTBOT site to learn more
Link to Chop Wood, Carry Water RESISTBOT write up
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