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workersolidarity · 4 months

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[ 📹 More than 70 civilians were killed over the previous 24-hours resulting from the Israeli occupation's surprise offensive into central Gaza after weeks of fighting in Gaza's north and south forced hundreds of thousands of Palestinians into the central Gaza Strip. ]

🇮🇱⚔️🇵🇸 🚀🏘️💥🚑 🚨

ISRAELI OCCUPATION'S GENOCIDE IN GAZA DAY 243: NY TIMES ARTICLE SAYS ZIONIST REGIME LAUNCHED A DISINFORMATION CAMPAIGN IN US, OCCUPATION ARMY CREATES NEW UNIT TO KEEP PALESTINIANS IN OUTDOOR PRISON OF GAZA, OCCUPATION ARMY RAISES CONSCRIPTION CAPS, NEW ISRAELI GROUND OFFENSIVE TARGETS CENTRAL GAZA, MASS SLAUGHTER OF CIVILIANS CONTINUES

On 243rd day of the Israeli occupation's ongoing special genocide operation in the Gaza Strip, the Israeli occupation forces (IOF) committed a total of 4 new massacres of Palestinian families, resulting in the deaths of no less than 36 Palestinian civilians, mostly women and children, while another 115 others were wounded over the previous 24-hours.

It should be noted that as a result of the constant Israeli bombardment of Gaza's healthcare system, infrastructure, residential and commercial buildings, local paramedic and civil defense crews are unable to recover countless hundreds, even thousands, of victims who remain trapped under the rubble, or who's bodies remain strewn across the streets of Gaza.

This leaves the official death toll vastly undercounted as Gaza's healthcare officials are unable to accurately tally those killed and maimed in this genocide, which must be kept in mind when considering the scale of the mass murder.

"Israel organized and paid for an influence campaign last year targeting U.S. lawmakers and the American public with pro-Israel messaging, as it aimed to foster support for its actions in the war with Gaza, according to officials involved in the effort and documents related to the operation."

That's according to an investigation conducted by the New York Times revealing a covert disinformation campaign launched by the Israeli occupation to target US lawmakers and the American public.

According to the Times, the disinformation campaign was "commissioned by Israel’s Ministry of Diaspora Affairs, a government body that connects Jews around the world with the State of Israel."

The Times article stated that the Israeli occupation "allocated about $2 million to the operation and hired Stoic, a political marketing firm in Tel Aviv, to carry it out."

The campaign started back in October and "remains active on the [social media] platform X."

At its zenith, the campaign used "hundreds of fake accounts that posed as real Americans on X, Facebook and Instagram to post pro-Israel comments," with the majority of the accounts focused on "US lawmakers, particularly ones who are black and Democrats, such as Representative Hakeem Jeffries, the House minority leader from New York, and Senator Raphael Warnock of Georgia, with posts urging them to continue funding Israel's military."

"ChatGPT, the artificial intelligence-powered chatbot, was used to generate many of the posts. The campaign also created three fake English-language news sites featuring pro-Israel articles," the Times stated, later adding that "the secretive campaign signals the lengths Israel was willing to go to sway American opinion on the war in Gaza."

In other news for Wednesday, the Israeli occupation army has created a new unit, the "Lotar Cover," with the purpose of protecting Zionist settlements surrounding the Gaza Strip.

An Israeli army spokesperson said the "Awtf" unit will operate within the 143rd Division, with the express purpose of providing a rapid response to any potential threats to settlements coming out of the Gaza Strip.

The occupation army says the unit will consist of “reserve fighters who graduate from elite units who live in or around the [Gaza] cover settlements and who will be on alert to operate in the region. The soldiers will undergo a special training and qualification process, at the end of which, they will be qualified to deal with the challenges of the region.”

In the meantime, the Israeli occupation has made the decision to raise the number of reservists the occupation army is authorized to call-up for service.

According to reporting in the Hebrew media, the Israeli occupation army will now be authorized to call-up for service 350'000 citizens, up from 300'000, which the Israeli army claims has "nothing to do with tensions in northern Israel."

The occupation authorities claimed the reason for the shift "relates to the operation in southern Gaza's Rafah taking more personnel than initially planned."

Previously, as a result of the Israeli occupation's ongoing genocide campaign in Gaza, the Israeli occupation army called-up a total of 287'000 reservists.

However, many have already been released from duty for the time being. The draft marked the largest call-up of reservists in the occupation's nearly 80-year history.

Elsewhere in international news reports, the Slovenian Parliament has officially approved the government's decision to recognize the State of Palestine as an independent and sovereign state, on Wednesday.

Previously, on Thursday of last week, the Slovenian Prime Minister, Robert Golub, announced that his government would recognize the State of Palestine under its 1967 borders in accordance with international law and UN Security Council (UNSC) resolutions.

The Slovenian Prime Minister said the decision “sends a message of peace,” stressing that “the time has come for the entire world to unite its efforts towards a two-state solution that will bring peace to the Middle East.”

By recognizing the State of Palestine, Slovenia joins the ranks of several other countries to recently announce their recognition of Palestine as a state, including Spain, Ireland and Norway, all of whom announced their recognition last month, bringing the total number of countries to recognize Palestine to 148, out of a total of 193 member-states belonging to the United Nations.

In other news, after several weeks of Israeli assaults on the north and south of Gaza, pushing hundreds of thousands of Palestinians into the central areas, the Israeli occupation forces (IOF) announced a new campaign of terror targeting the residents of the central Gaza Strip.

The latest ground offensive is to be conducted by the 98th Division, and is expected to focus on neighborhoods east of the Bureij Refugee Camp, as well as the east of Deir al-Balah, where one of the last large, functional hospitals standing in Gaza, Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir al-Balah, remains in operation.

The 98th Division is the same military group that just recently withdrew from Jabalia in Gaza's north, committing horrific crimes against the Palestinian residents there, and also previously terrorized the citizens of Khan Yunis, south of Gaza.

The Zionist army says the operation was launched following intelligence that Resistance operatives and infrastructure, both above and below ground, were located in the area.

The operation has already seen occupation soldiers advancing into the east of the Bureij Camp, in addition to the east of Deir al-Balah on Tuesday, while simultaneously, a "large wave of airstrikes" were conducted targeting so-called "weapons depots, underground infrastructure, buildings used by terror groups, and other sites," according to the occupation military.

The Israeli occupation claims several Hamas operatives were killed in the operations, while an airstrike supposedly targeting a "Hamas compound," in the Bureij Camp, [a seeming impossibility when Hamas keeps its military infrastructure deep in underground tunnel networks] which was "based out of a United Nations School."

[This is typically how the occupation army admits to bombing civilian infrastructure such as schools, water facilities and displacement shelters.]

The Zionist military stated that several Hamas operatives were "gathered at UNRWA's Abu Alhilu School when the strike was carried out," further claiming that the strike was “carefully planned and carried out using precise munitions, while avoiding harm to uninvolved [civilians] as much as possible.”

Meanwhile, local Palestinian media reported that 72 Palestinian citizens were killed during Israeli operations in central Gaza over the previous 24-hours, while scores of others were wounded in the same period.

Witnesses said the Israeli occupation forces' ground operations targeted areas of the Al-Bureij and Al-Maghazi Camps, in addition to neighborhoods east of Deir al-Balah, while occupation bombing and artillery shelling targeted the Nuseirat Camp.

As ground operations targeted central Gaza, intense waves of bombing and shelling also targeted various other sectors of Gaza as well, including in the north and south of the enclave.

In one example, Zionist warplanes bombed a residential home belonging to the Hussein family in the vicinity of the Abu Rasas roundabout in the Bureij Camp, in the central Gaza Strip, killing one civilian and wounding a number of others.

Similarly, occupation fighter jets bombed a residential house belonging to the Kirdi family on Block-5 of the Bureij Camp. After the strike, the body of one civilian and several wounded were transported to Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir al-Balah.

Additionally, another occupation airstrike targeted a house belonging to the Al-Dawli family near the entrance to the Bureij Camp, resulting in the deaths of two Palestinians and wounding several others.

Another 5 civilians were wounded following an Israeli airstrike in the vicinity of a UNRWA clinic in the area and the Services Club nearby.

Zionist occupation forces also dropped several violent firebelts between the Bureij and the Al-Maghazi Camps, one of which targeted a residential building in the Al-Bataniyya neighborhood of the Al-Maghazi Camp, killing four Palestinian civilians.

In particular, the strikes killed Majd Darwish, his wife and his two children, and also wounded a number of others.

In another criminal atrocity, occupation aircraft bombed a civilian residence belonging to the Qatawi family in the Al-Maghazi Camp, in central Gaza, killing two civilians and wounding several others.

At the same time, another massacre occured when Zionist warplanes bombed a residential apartment in the Aslan Building, in the vicinity of the Qattoush roundabout in the Al-Maghazi Camp, resulting in the martyredom of 8 civilians and wounding a number of others.

Yet another occupation airstrike targeted and destroyed a four-story residential building belonging to the Al-Barr family near Salah al-Din, west of the Maghazi Camp.

The horrors went on when Israeli fighter jets bombed a residential house belonging to the Al-Louh family overnight, east of Deir al-Balah, in the central Gaza Strip, killing at least 5 civilians and wounding several others, while yet another airstrike targeted the Al-Masdar family home in the vicinity of the Al-Masdar Mosque, wounding several people.

Two more civilians were killed, and a number of others wounded, after Zionist artillery detatchments shelled a house in the Abu Al-Ajen area, southeast of Deir al-Balah.

According to local reports, the Israeli occupation army also arrested a number of Palestinians, including women, after the occupation forces surrounded a house belonging to the Abu Luz family, east of the Abu Al-Ajen neighborhood, southeast of Deir al-Balah, in the central Gaza Strip, with the kidnapped persons taken to an unknown location.

Local civil defense and paramedic personnel also reported recovering the bodies of dozens of martyrs and wounded from neighborhoods east of the central Gaza Strip following a night of intense and violent bombardment of the Al-Bureij and Al-Maghazi Camps, as well as the town of Al-Masdar and Deir al-Balah, with the many wounded transfered to Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir al-Balah.

Further airstrikes targeted neighborhoods east of Khan Yunis, south of Gaza, while occupation vehicles opened fire east of the town of Al-Qarara, coinciding with intense artillery shelling of the area.

Additionally, the European Gaza Hospital reported the arrival of two dead bodies of Palestinians following Israeli drone strikes east of Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip.

Meanwhile, north of Gaza, occupation warplanes bombed a residential home belonging to the Dalloul family in the Al-Zaytoun neighborhood, southeast of Gaza City, resulting in the wounding of at least 7 citizens, while occupation bombing also targeted the Tal al-Hawa and Sheikh Ajlin neighborhoods, coinciding with intense machine gun fire, in addition to occupation drones which opened fire near 20th Street, east of the Nuseirat Camp, in central Gaza.

In Rafah, south of Gaza, Zionist artillery forces fired several shells into residential areas east of Al-Qarara, northeast of Khan Yunis, in the south of Gaza.

Zionist air forces also bombed a gathering of civilians in the Al-Rimal neighborhood of Gaza City, resulting in the murder of four Palestinians.

As a result of the Israeli occupation's ongoing special genocide operation in the Gaza Strip, the infinitely rising death toll now exceeds 36'586 Palestinians killed, including upwards of 10'000 women and over 15'000 children, while another 83'074 others have been wounded since the start of the current round of Zionist aggression, beginning with the events of October 7th, 2023.

June 4th, 2024.

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@WorkerSolidarityNews

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lemonnsss · 6 months

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Moral of the Story Chapter 6

A/N: School is pain. ALSO- I changed MC’s(?) I’m universe name to make it more GN

Warnings: Trypanophobia

Chapters: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9

Taglist: @vicmc624 , @mostlymarvelgirl , @yvonneeeee, @beetlejuicesupremacy , @moonlightreader649 , @whattheduckisupkyle , @chrisevans-realwife, @nekoannie-chan , @mrsbarnes32557038 , @imyourbratzdoll , @weallhaveadestiny

Word Count: 1.2k

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you.” A bright blue light accompanied by the sound of the Iron Man suit’s beam powering up came as a shock, seemingly out of nowhere.

She brought her arms back up and turned around, shocked, obviously not expecting his appearance.

“You know, if you’re going to kill someone, then at least don’t call their boss to let them know their assistant’s awake. Amateur move, honestly. Although, I guess this would be your first time intentionally killing someone.” He moved his other hand languidly, illustrating his point.

Her hand moved down again, the needle almost grazing my skin, “You don’t understand. I don’t have a choice.” Unspilled tears broke her voice.

“Everyone has a choice, though the other option may not be so appealing.”

She started shaking her head from side to side and let the syringe drop against my skin, “You don’t know what it’s like to be so poor that you are used to the feeling of borderline starvation. To work two or more jobs so you don’t end up on the streets.” She couldn’t help but let the tears flow. That much was evident despite her face being turned away from me.

“So, your loyalty lies with money? How much did they pay you?”

“About forty thousand euros, enough to afford my son’s treatment.”

“What? Isn’t healthcare free in Europe?” he shifted his weight onto his other leg.

My heart was pounding in my chest so hard it felt like I couldn’t breathe. Despite that, I was breathing too much too fast. I did everything I could to stay focused and present as they spoke. I was trying to prevent myself from hyperventilating.

“... It is. He is very sick. The specialists are in America. They are his best chance.”

His features softened, still firm, yet now more sympathetic, “I can’t say I know what it’s like, financially I mean, but my mother died when I was seventeen. If I were alone in a foreign country when I discovered she wasn’t coming back. I don’t know what I would’ve done. Put the syringe away, and I’ll put double in your account. Does that sound okay?”

I couldn’t understand why Mr. Star-Tony, was doing this. Eighty-thousand euros? That’s what- fifty-six, fifty-seven thousand dollars? What could he gain from this? Is he doing this as an act of charity?

She looked at me, tears streaming down her face, staining her shirt, "They know where he is, or at least where to look. I can't put him in danger." She turned back to Tony, "I'm sorry."

The needle plunged through my skin unnoticeably initially, the sharpness of the needle to blame - then, not even a second after its insertion the entire area stung with a pinch.

If I wasn’t shaking before I was shaking now. My whole body shook as the threat of my death was coming closer to fruition. Whoever ordered my death had succeeded.

The high-pitched hum that had previously filled the room dissipated with a high shriek and a beam of bright blue light. Her arm was blown off along with the plunger of the syringe. Her arm, the muscle structure, tendons, nerves, everything that had been attached to her not even a second ago was now incinerated, leaving nothing but the blood that was spurting across the bed.

She cried animalistically at the burnt-off nerve endings screamed out in pain, her blood spat out drenching the fabric of my hospital sheets and the floor beneath us.

The syringe was still in my arm. I expected the morphine to flow out of the needle; instead, my bloodshot up through the needle, mixing with the pain meds. I couldn’t move. Tony dashed over to me, ignoring the woman writing on the ground, and pulled what remained of the syringe before an air bubble found its way into my bloodstream.

A little blood came out of the insertion point but Tony pressed his armored hand around, stopping the overall, minor blood flow.

Finally, another nurse ran into the doorway looking into the room, he gasped slightly, face turning white, at the sight of his coworker on the ground, her blood surrounding her.

He ran over to her, grabbing gloves and a tourniquet along the way, “What happened here?”

“Your colleague tried to kill my assistant.”

His head jolted up, “What? Maria attacked you? I-I’m sorry. You must know she hasn’t been in a great mental state recently. She isn’t normally like this.”

“I’ll be requesting a transfer to a different hospital in the area, I’d also like to recommend telling your manager that I’ll be suing until they are transferred though I will not be leaving their room which I hope will be changed. Okay?”

After the nurse, whose name was Maria apparently, was taken out of the room to fix the end of what remained of her arm I was taken to a new room where I took a shower and returned to a new bed. The only people in the room were myself and Tony. Now felt like the best time to pop the question that had beset in my mind.

"Why did you do that?" He looked up from his phone, swiveling his head to the door I was standing beside.

"Do what? You'll have to be a bit more specific."

"I don't know. Maybe shooting a person's arm off?" He raised a brow, my sarcasm not lost on him.

"You're the first person who hasn't tried to jump my bones, who's been offended at the notion of it, in a few years. If you died, Pep would kill me. Simple as that." He shrugged his shoulders before leaning on one of the arms of the chair, “How did you transfer the gunshot wound from my body to yours? And why would someone pay to have you killed, or at least subdued? And are those questions related?”

I looked down at my feet, “I don’t know why someone would try to kill me. And I don’t know if it’s related, but I would assume yes.”

“Hm…” That was all the response I got.

It’s been about a year since I started working for Mr. Stark. Thankfully, the topic of how I healed him hasn’t come up again. His security team got buffed after the incident and I got a bonus plus the sign-on bonus plus my first month's salary - the total of which, after taxes, was more than my yearly pay from Xaviers. Things were calm.

When I came into work today the main door to Mr. Starks office was locked. It wasn’t unusual. He rarely came into work, so when he did it was typically earlier than I came in. I went to my office to finish up what I could for this week's paperwork.

A quiet ring came from the in-office phone, Mr. Stark’s line. I picked up the clunky handset- which probably hadn’t been replaced since the nineties- “Hello, Mr. Stark-”

“For the last time, it’s Tony. Stop it with the, ‘Mr. Stark’ nonsense.”

“Apologies, Tony. Is there anything I can do for you?”

“Yeah, do you mind coming into my office? There’s someone for you.”

“Of course, give me just a moment.”

I stood up and flattened the creases in my clothes before walking through the door that joined our offices. A man was wearing all black with an eyepatch standing in front of Tony’s desk.

“Hello, Mx… Eirsson?”

“Yeah, a bit of an odd last name, I know. Pardon but, what is this about?”

“My name is Director Nick Fury of S.H.I.E.L.D.”

#steve rogers x reader #captain america #mcu #mcu fanfiction #captain america x reader #fanfic #captain steve rogers #steve rodgers x reader #mcu x reader #nick fury #director fury #tony stark #iron man

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shannendoherty-fans · 2 months

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Shannen Doherty’s Untimely Death Sparks Important Conversations About Healthcare Access And Equity

By Janice Gassam Asare

Shannen Doherty, the actress best known for her roles in Beverly Hills, 90210 and Charmed has died after a long battle with cancer, at the age of 53. In a 2015 statement to People magazine, the actress revealed her breast cancer diagnosis, stating that she was “undergoing treatment” and that she was suing a firm and its former business manager for causing her to lose her health insurance due to a failure to pay the insurance premiums. According to reports, in a lawsuit Doherty shared that she hired a firm for tax, accounting, and investment services, among other things, and that part of their role was to make her health insurance premium payments to the Screen Actors Guild; Doherty claimed that their failure to make the premium payments in 2014 caused her health insurance to lapse until the re-enrollment period in 2015. When Doherty went in for a checkup in March of 2015, the cancer was discovered, at which time it had spread. In the lawsuit, Doherty indicated that if she had insurance, she would have been able to get the checkup sooner—the cancer would have been discovered, and she could have avoided chemotherapy and a mastectomy.

Under the IRS, actors are often classified as independent contractors, which comes with its own set of challenges. Although it is unclear what Doherty’s situation was, for many independent contractors, obtaining health insurance can be difficult. Trying to get health insurance as an independent contractor can be a costly and convoluted process. A 2020 Actors’ Equity Association survey indicated that “more than 80% of nonunion actors and stage managers in California have been misclassified as independent contractors.” A 2021 research study revealed that self-employment (which is what independent contractors are considered to be) was associated with a higher likelihood of being uninsured.

Doherty’s tragic situation invites a larger conversation about healthcare access and equity in the United States. According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, the Affordable Care Act (ACA), also known as “Obamacare,” was signed into law in 2010 and revolutionized healthcare access in two distinct ways: “creating health insurance marketplaces with federal financial assistance that reduces premiums and deductibles and by allowing states to expand Medicaid to adults with household incomes up to 138 percent of the federal poverty level.” The ACA helped reduce the number of uninsured Americans and expanded healthcare access to those most in need. It also helped close gaps in coverage for different populations, including those with pre-existing health conditions, lower-income individuals, part-time workers, and those from historically excluded and marginalized populations.

Despite strides made through the ACA, healthcare access and equity are still persistent issues, especially within marginalized communities. Research from the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF) examining 2010-2022 data indicated that in 2022, non-elderly American Indian and Alaska Natives (AIAN) and Hispanic people had the greatest uninsured rates (19.1% and 18% respectively). When compared with their white counterparts, Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islanders (NHOPI) and Black people also had higher uninsured rates at 12.7% and 10%, respectively. The Commonwealth Fund reported that between 2013 and 2021, “states that expanded Medicaid eligibility had higher rates of insurance coverage and health care access, with smaller disparities between racial/ethnic groups and larger improvements, than states that didn’t expand Medicaid.” It’s important to note that if a Republican president is elected, Project 2025, the far-right policy proposal document, seeks to upend Medicaid as we know it by introducing limits on the amount of time that a person can receive Medicaid.

When peeling back the layers to examine these racial and ethnic differences in more detail, the Brookings Institute noted in 2020 that the refusal of several states to expand Medicaid could be one contributing factor. One 2017 research study found that some underrepresented racial groups were more likely to experience insurance loss than their white counterparts. The study indicated that for Black and Hispanic populations, specific trigger events were more likely, as well as “socioeconomic characteristics” that were linked to more insurance loss and slower insurance gain. The study also noted that in the U.S., health insurance access was associated with employment and and marriage and that Black and Hispanic populations were “disadvantaged in both areas.”

Equity in and access to healthcare is fundamental, but bias is omnipresent. Age bias, for example, is a pervasive issue in breast cancer treatment. Research also indicates that racial bias is a prevalent issue—because the current guidelines in breast cancer screenings are based on white populations, this can lead to a delayed diagnosis for women from non-white communities. Our health is one of our greatest assets and healthcare should be a basic human right, no matter what state or country you live in. As a society, we must ensure that healthcare is available, affordable and accessible to all citizens. After all, how can a country call itself great if so many of its citizens, especially those most marginalized and vulnerable, don’t have access to healthcare?

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kp777 · 2 months

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By Edward Carver

Common Dreams

July 25, 2024

"We have a duty to protect patients from greedy corporations that are prioritizing their bottom line over patient care," Rep. Pramila Jayapal said.

Sen. Ed Markey and Rep. Pramila Jayapal on Thursday introduced legislation that would tighten the rules on private equity firms in the healthcare industry.

The Health Over Wealth Act would increase the powers of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to monitor and block private equity deals in the healthcare industry. It would require private equity firms buying healthcare providers to set up escrow accounts large enough to fund five years of operations, and would require more transparency on debt, executive pay, and other financial data, while prohibiting the "stripping" of assets.

"Private equity firms and greedy corporate executives are using the healthcare system as a piggybank," Markey (D-Mass.), chair of the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Subcommittee on Primary Health and Retirement Security, said in a statement. "Putting profit over patients' results in substandard care, while health workers suffer, and communities are left to clean up the mess."

Jayapal (D-Wash.), chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, emphasized the toll that the private equity approach has on patients.

"Private equity firms buying up health care systems are simply bad news for patients, leading to worse health outcomes and higher bills," said Jayapal, who had previously introduced narrower legislation on private equity in healthcare. "We have a duty to protect patients from greedy corporations that are prioritizing their bottom line over patient care."

The bill's introduction came as the Senate HELP Committee on Thursday voted to launch an investigation into profit-first practices at Steward Health Care, a for-profit system formerly owned by a private equity firm and now in bankruptcy.

HELP voted to subpoena Steward CEO Ralph de la Torre, whom CBS News, which has conducted a series of investigations into the negative impact of private equity firms on community hospitals, described as "reclusive." De la Torre bought a 190-foot megayacht even as Steward's hospitals failed to pay their bills and keep supplies of life-saving equipment available, CBSreported.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), HELP's chair and a cosponsor of the Health Over Wealth Act, called out de la Torre on social media on Thursday.

"Private equity vultures are making a fortune by taking over hospitals and leaving them in shambles," he wrote. "It's time for the CEO of Steward Health Care to get off his yacht and explain to Congress how he got rich while bankrupting the hospitals he manages."

The other cosponsors of the new bill include only a handful of progressive senators and representatives, but concern about the role of private equity in healthcare goes beyond progressive circles. The HELP Committee, which includes 10 Republicans, voted 20-1 to launch the investigation into Steward. And a Bloomberg columnist on Thursday published an opinion piece entitled "Steward Health is a case study in executive greed" and subtitled: "Why is populism on the rise? The gutting of a community hospital system illustrates why so many Americans feel betrayed by big business."

The negative impact of private equity's role in the healthcare industry is significant. Researchers at Harvard Medical School found an "alarming increase in patient complications" at private equity-owned hospitals in a study published in December in JAMA, a leading medical journal.

The new bill, which Markey previewed at a field hearing in Massachusetts in April, may be a long-shot for passage, given corporate influence in Congress. Axios called it "more aspirational than legislative" at the time.

#health over wealth act #pramila jayapal #ed markey #bernie sanders #private equity #greedy corporations #steward health care #healthcare

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tradebrainsportalsblog · 12 days

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Opportunities and Risks for Stock Market Investors

Investing in the stock exchange is a very emotional business, some people find it thrilling yet scary at once. However one must consider the associated dangers to succeed at this risky venture. This article will show you all that can be derived from investing in stocks and what losses may follow. In light of these, we can improve our investment choices.

Worries over Investment in the Stock Market

The Potential for Exceptional Gains

One thing that draws investors to the share market is that they have a chance to earn huge amounts of money. Normally, statistically speaking, shares tend to surpass all other forms of investment such as bonds or saving accounts over time. If one picks good stocks, she/he stands to earn high returns if their prices rise in line with the development of companies being represented by those shares

Risk Reduction Through Variety

There’s a huge variety available when investing on shares; hence, diversification is possible. This means putting your money into different types of assets as well as sectors and industries in order to avoid being affected by risks related to only one asset class. Hence, diversification protects one against massive losses that follow underperformance by one sector alone which may cause havoc during market downturns such as when comparing technology sector performance with that of healthcare or consumer goods sectors respectively.

Dividends

Some stocks provide dividends, which are bascially payments from a company’s earnings made at regular intervals to the shareholders. Even if there is no significant growth in stock prices, dividends can still be dependable sources of income. This may be more advantageous if you are looking for an additional reliable income stream aside from possible capital gain.

Ownership and Influence

Whenever one buys stocks, he/she acquires partial ownership of that particular corporation. This type of ownership gives certain advantages such as having the right to vote on specific company decisions as well as accessing various reports on its finances and earnings. While your influence may be minimal when owning only a few shares; but it brings about some uniqueness in investing through stocks.

Liquidity

Typically, stocks rank high on the liquidity scale meaning they can be bought or sold with relative ease compared to other investments like real estate. Therefore, this liquidity allows for quick access of cash when needed or adjustments made on portfolios according to changing market circumstances.

Risks in Stock Market Investing

The Fluctuations In The Market

The most important risk that comes with stock market investing is fluctuating prices.

There are unpredictable changes in prices as well as rapid ones in stock markets which can cause stress because of potential losses. Economic events, political developments or investor sentiment shifts may also drive market-wide swings. It is important to be prepared for these ups and downs and avoid hasty decisions based on short term fluctuations.

Risks That Are Specific To The Company

Investing in individual stocks exposes you to how specific companies perform. For instance, if a company hits financial problems or faces regulatory issues its price may drop. In this case this company-specific risk could lead to huge losses when its performance worsens. Diversification can help to some extent in dealing with this risk though care must be taken while researching and picking firms.

Economic And Political Risks

The stock market can be adversely influenced by economic downturns and political instability for instance; during periods of recession, inflation or shifts in government policies there occurs depreciation in stock prices. However, these greater economic/political issues often lie outside of your control but keeping an eye on key indicators related to the economy as well as polities enables one to expect possible effects on their investments.

Risk of Bad Investment Choices

In order to invest in the share market one has to engage themselves in research and make wise selections. If you do not understand, you can invest poorly and lose money. Thus, it is vital that you learn about market trends, stock fundamentals and investment techniques. Moreover, you may want to seek financial advisors or reliable sources to help guide your investment decisions.

Making Decisions Based on Emotion

One of the largest dangers of stock market investing is making decisions based on emotions. For example, when a stock price drops, fear and greed can make an individual sell stocks that they shouldn’t otherwise sell, or instead pursue rapidly appreciating stocks regardless of their fundamentals. Emotional investing results in buying high while selling low thus eroding your returns. A practical way to avoid emotional investing is by creating a sound investment plan and adhere to it.

Balancing Risks with Opportunities

Making money in the stock market requires a balance between the opportunities that are available and the dangers which are involved. Below are tips on how this balance can be achieved:

Educate Yourself: Knowledge is key when it comes to investing. Investing in other vehicles, such as stocks and other related areas, is worth your time. The more information you have on these areas the more informed decisions you will be making.

Set Clear Goals: Know your objectives and risk acceptance level. Is it for long-term gains, income, or for both. Knowing what you want going forward will make choosing instruments easier hence developing suitable plans which are in line with such objectives.

Diversify Your Portfolio: Never depend on one source. Conduct portfolio analysis. By varying the types of investments among many sectors, industries and asset classes, you minimize risk and maximize chances for favorable results. Invest in dividing paying stocks, bonus providing stocks and also blue chip companies in order to reduce the risk

Stay Informed: Track news on the market, economic progress, and performance by companies. A well -informed investor can then make informed decisions about investing and adjust accordingly.

Emotional Investing Must Be Avoided: Unless it is a part of your investment strategy, do not allow feelings to influence your choices. Regardless of price changes in shares, be disciplined and stick to the approach you have set.

Conclusion

While there are many opportunities in the stock market, there are also risks involved. Understanding these variables, along with having a measure of balance in your approach increases your chances of success as well as avoiding losses. Remember that patience, research and discipline are crucial to a successful investing journey. Stay informed, make wise choices while keeping in mind your long term objectives as you navigate the exciting world of stock market investing.

#investment #stock market #shares #finance #investing #stock market india #financial planning

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coochiequeens · 3 months

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Maybe now that the people with the money to buy babies are being scammed even IVF proponents will admit that there needs to be regulations in the Buy a Baby Business

Dominique Side, the owner of Surrogacy Escrow Account Management, poses in 2023 at Vegan Fashion Week in Los Angeles.

(Gilbert Flores / WWD via Getty Images)

By Matt Hamilton Staff Writer June 30, 2024

They scrimped, and they saved. Some asked family and friends to pitch in. Others took out loans for tens of thousands of dollars.

Their goal was twofold: To raise the small fortune necessary to pay for a surrogate mother. And to realize a dream previously impossible — having a child of their own.

Hundreds of people across California, the U.S. and around the globe put their money, sometimes $50,000 or more, into the hands of a Texas-based escrow company so the funds could be held in trust and doled out to a surrogate for healthcare costs, insurance and compensation.

But this month, expectant parents and their surrogates learned the money they had set aside at Houston-based Surrogacy Escrow Account Management, or SEAM, is inaccessible and likely gone.

“We want answers,” said Chris Kettmann of Fair Oaks, Calif., a suburb of Sacramento. “Is there recourse to get the money back? If not, what can we do?”

Chris Kettmann and his wife with their ultrasound in an undated photo. (Chris Kettmann)

Kettmann, 33, said he and his wife had about $45,000 in their escrow account, money owed to their surrogate mother, who is pregnant with their baby boy and due in October. “We don’t know enough to say what happened,” he said. “We just know there’s something crazy going on.”

Police in Houston have opened a wide-reaching investigation. Christina Garza, a spokeswoman for the FBI’s Houston field office, confirmed last week that the agency also is investigating SEAM. The FBI has developed a public portal for SEAM clients to report their account information and how much money they believe they are owed. Garza, however, cautioned that the inquiry was in its early stages and said, “We’re trying to compile as much information as possible.”

A married same-sex couple in Washington, D.C., says they are out $55,000. A Los Feliz couple said they demanded their $40,111 be returned and believe it is gone. Arielle Mitton, an L.A. native who recently moved to Bellingham, Wash., can recite the amount that she and her husband are missing down to the cent: $37,721.44.

“I assumed naively that an escrow account was a safe thing,” said Mitton, whose surrogate mother in Indiana is pregnant with their daughter and is due to deliver on Christmas Eve.

Mitton has joined hundreds of affected parents and surrogates in a private Facebook group that has become a forum for venting, grieving, exchanging information and trying to answer the overriding questions: What happened here? And where did all their money go?

Scrutiny has centered on the sole owner of SEAM, Dominique Side, who has told customers that she had once been a surrogate. The 44-year-old billed herself as an entrepreneur of multimillion dollar businesses in the Houston area, including a vegan grocery store, a nonprofit school, a vegan music studio, and the surrogacy escrow outfit. She walked the red carpet in L.A. for vegan fashion events and ran a concierge service for those seeking a more eco-friendly lifestyle.

“One common thread runs through all my businesses: each is based firmly on a foundation of compassion — for others, for myself and for the planet,” she told a Houston publication in 2022.

Side did not respond to calls or written questions. Emails to Side triggered an auto-response that doubled as a press statement. Citing the “active investigation by federal authorities,” Side wrote in the email, “Under the advice of counsel, I am not permitted to respond to any inquiries regarding the investigation.”

On Thursday, Side and SEAM were hit by a lawsuit from a merchant cash-advance lender, the third such lawsuit this year. Merchant cash advance lenders provide small businesses with quick infusions of money at high fees akin to interest rates of 50% to 100%.

A judge in Texas also froze all of the company’s accounts along with Side’s other businesses after a SEAM client, Marieke Slik, sued over her “vanished” $28,000.

Calling herself a “victim of a scam,” Slik alleged that Side and her company had lured her and others “into a fiduciary relationship in order to steal their escrow funds,” according to her lawsuit, which was filed in Texas. “The Defendants have left hundreds of surrogates throughout the country — who are pregnant with a child that does not belong to them — with no way to pay for necessary prenatal care.”

Sides’ actions, according to the lawsuit, “are nothing short of evil.”

Struggling parents

Many surrogacies often involve LGBTQ+ couples who want children, or older couples for whom childbearing is no longer a viable possibility.

For others, the road to surrogacy is one of heartbreak and tragedy.

The married woman in Los Feliz said she had had multiple miscarriages. She was recently pregnant but gave birth in the second trimester. The newborn died at Cedars-Sinai in his parents’ arms.

The couple turned to surrogacy after exhausting all other options. They selected a surrogate mother, completed the necessary contract — which often requires using an escrow firm — and put more than $40,000 into the account, a portion of the overall cost. But their embryo had yet to be transferred into the surrogate mother.

“Nothing is clear,” she said, explaining that she and her husband demanded their funds weeks ago. “Obviously that fell on deaf ears — we didn’t get our money back,” she said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because their extended family remains unaware of their attempt at using a surrogate.

“I’d love to carry this child,” she said, and “not spend any money on a surrogate. There’s a level of that, where you feel so terribly sad. You feel sad about the money, but you feel sad about the situation.”

‘Something really bad has happened’

For intended parents and surrogates, trouble emerged around late May, when surrogates did not receive their usual payments.

Arielle Mitton gives surrogate mother Tena Doan’s belly a kiss. Doan is carrying Mitton’s baby. (Arielle Mitton)

In early June, Tena Doan — a 42-year-old surrogate mother in Indiana — said she noticed her bank account balance was lower than expected and realized her monthly payment and allowance had not come through. Her surrogacy agency told her that banking issues at SEAM had delayed the arrival of the money.

“I said, ‘No problem, they’ll get it fixed,’” Doan recalled, figuring that banking issues happen. When she logged into SEAM’s portal, she saw that the money listed as due her was still there.

Then came a June 12 email from Side claiming that fraudulent charges had prompted Capitol One to freeze SEAM’s account.

“Some payments were able to go through before the accounts were frozen,” Side wrote in the email. She stated that new bank accounts were established and promised service would be restored.

Two days later, however, Side sent another email indicating that “all operations have been placed on hold” due to legal action.

Doan said that the email stopped her in her tracks.

“That’s when we were like, ‘Oh s—, this is not good. Something really bad has happened,’” Doan recalled. “From there, it’s been a whirlwind.”

Mitton — the mother of the child that Doan is carrying — was at home more than 2,000 miles west.

“The first few days, I barely slept, I was nauseous from all the emotional aspects and had vertigo,” Mitton remembered.

She contacted the FBI, Houston police, the Texas attorney general. Mitton even emailed the CEO of Capital One, questioning how the money could apparently vanish.

Tena Doan, left, and Arielle Mitton. (Arielle Mitton)

Both Doan and Mitton joined the Facebook group and realized they were part of a club they never wanted membership in: those affected by SEAM’s financial collapse.

An informal poll among members suggested that about $10 million was unaccounted for. Parents and surrogates from across the country and around the world have traded information in the Facebook group about current police investigations and become sleuths themselves.

They’ve pored over Side’s various businesses — the Vgn Bae Music Studio, and Nikki Green, a luxury vegan fashion line. They’ve also mined her social media accounts.

A recent post on Side’s Instagram page VgnBaeDom, which has since been deleted, recounted her birthday week in June: Side said she flew to L.A., enjoyed a vegan dinner at the upscale Culver City vegan restaurant Shojin, dined at Crossroads Kitchen and Craig’s — both frequent celebrity hotspots — enjoyed a “full day of spa and cabana” at the Four Seasons, before doing fittings at Celine, the luxury French fashion house.

“The week this was going down was also her birthday week,” said Mitton, who recalled thinking, “She’s probably spending our escrow money there.”

Signs of financial difficulty SEAM was first registered in Texas in 2014. Testimonials from 2017 onward show glowing reviews, and one parent told The Times he had used SEAM for their first child without issue.

Lawsuits from cash advance lenders filed against SEAM and Side in New York this year indicate mounting financial trouble in recent months.

So-called merchant cash-advance lenders send sums of money to distressed businesses, often with a rapid turnaround, and, in exchange, a business lets the lender withdraw a portion of future receipts directly from the business’ bank account to pay off the debt. Cash-advance lenders often insist they aren’t lenders and that cash advances against future revenue aren’t technically loans — but New York’s former attorney general had lambasted the industry for predatory debt-collection practices.

In January, Side received an unspecified sum from Pearl Delta Funding and agreed to pay back $69,500. But she defaulted the next month, prompting the lender to sue her in New York in March. (Pearl Delta’s attorney did not respond to an email seeking comment.)

On May 6, Side secured $650,000 from Dynasty Capital and agreed to pay $975,000, or 150% of the amount borrowed, according to court records.

Under the agreement, the lender was allowed to debit $12,500 per day from SEAM’s account until the full amount was paid back. On May 31, Dynasty Capital said in court papers, SEAM “breached the agreement” and either failed to put revenue into the business account or diverted it elsewhere, leaving Dynasty unable to recoup its money.

Dynasty Capital sued Side, SEAM and her various businesses on June 18. Dynasty’s lawyer declined to comment.

On May 29, Side obtained $100,000 from Arsenal Funding and agreed to allow Arsenal to deduct 1.25% of SEAM’s daily revenue from its business bank account until $149,000 was paid off.

Arsenal sued Side and SEAM last week after Side stopped making payments on June 21 and defaulted, according to the lawsuit filed in New York, which demands about $190,000 to cover the outstanding debt and fees.

To secure the loan from Arsenal, Side had to disclose her largest revenue sources. She listed three companies, all in Southern California: US Harvest Babies Surrogacy in the City of Industry; Mle & Mlang International Surrogacy in L.A.; and a Shady Grove Fertility office in Solana Beach.

But there is reason to doubt the accuracy of what Side told the lender. In a statement, Shady Grove said it had no financial relationship with Side or SEAM and did not refer patients to the company, explaining that “some patients may have independently engaged with SEAM.”

Further, the name that Side had listed as her contact has never been an employee of Shady Grove, according to a person familiar with the company’s operations. And the address she listed for Shady Grove is a small branch in the San Diego area that’s been open for only a few months; Shady Grove is headquartered in Maryland and has 49 locations nationwide.

Neither Harvest Babies or Mlan responded to requests for comment.

Side told Arsenal that she was the 100% owner of SEAM and projected an average monthly revenue of $2.78 million, according to a copy of the financial agreement that Arsenal included with its lawsuit.

Lori Hood, a Houston-based attorney who is representing Slik — the client who sued Side this month in Texas — said she was confounded by SEAM’s financial practices. She said the lawsuit from Dynasty Capital indicated that escrow money was used to secure the $650,000 cash payment.

“How do you put up escrow funds as collateral?” said Hood. “That’s my first indication that something’s desperately wrong. You don’t recognize escrow funds as revenue.”

Second, Hood said, SEAM’s tax records that she’s reviewed also showed revenue of “millions of dollars.”

“Did her company make millions of dollars, or is she putting into the tax returns that the escrow money was her revenue?” Hood asked.

To press their client’s lawsuit against SEAM, Hood and her law partner, Marianne Robak, petitioned a judge to freeze all of SEAM’s accounts at Capital One along with other accounts owned or controlled by Side.

“The evidence shows that SEAM’s escrow account with Capital One ... has no funds available,” notes the request for a restraining order to freeze all accounts. “SEAM is insolvent.”

In the filing, Hood also accused SEAM of diverting money into accounts in the name of Life Escrow LLC, a company registered last year to Side’s business partner, Anthony Hall, who is also a defendant in the suit filed by Slik.

Side’s “actions appear to be to avoid having to face the clients she defrauded. It appears she had absconded,” states the restraining order, which a Harris County, Texas, judge signed off on June 21.

Reached by phone on Thursday, Hall said he “had no connection with SEAM,” adding, “I wish I had answers.” Hall said he was a business partner of Side in the vegan music studio, Vgn Bae Studios, adding, “Everything was great until it wasn’t.”

Hall said he did not know if Side had an attorney and said that he was speaking only for himself.

“She’s not gonna respond,” he said of Side. “I’m defending myself. I don’t know what they have going on.”

Pregnancies don’t wait

For Hood and hundreds of surrogate mothers and parents, questions mount.

“I won’t cast blame on any of the parents. They did everything they were supposed to do,” Hood said.

Time is short, however, for ongoing pregnancies and those couples who hope to have a surrogate receive an embryo soon.

Kettmann, from the Sacramento area, said their surrogate mother is 22 weeks pregnant. Of the $57,000 they put into SEAM, he said, $45,000 is missing. The rest had already been distributed to the surrogate.

“It’s a scramble,” he said. He and his wife had some money saved for additional expenses, which they’ve used to cover the June payment that never arrived from SEAM. He’s now fundraising from family and friends.

“We told her we’ll do everything we can to keep her up to date on payments,” he said, “but [we’re] asking her to be patient.”

Mitton and her surrogate mother, Doan, have started collecting donations through GoFundMe and plan to extend the payment terms two years, rather than having all the money sent to Doan shortly after delivery.

“I’m growing a healthy baby girl for them,” Doan said, “and that’s all that matters.”

#Dominique Side #Surrogacy Escrow Account Management #Buying babies is a big business #Fertility industry #Surrogacy exploits women #The Fertility industry can put people desperate for a baby in debt #How will surrogates be paid?#Vegan music studio?#Being in a same sex relationship is not infertility #Waiting too long is not infertility #Capital One #VgnBaeDom #merchant cash-advance lenders #They could have just put that money into starting an adoption process

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religion-is-a-mental-illness · 8 months

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By: Bernard Lane

Published: Jan 5, 2024

The World Health Organisation’s new guideline project for transgender health has ignored the intense international debate about youth gender medicine and overlooked key reformist experts, according to the prominent American gender clinician Dr Erica Anderson.

“[The WHO] seem to be oblivious to the issues with transgender healthcare, particularly as they are playing out in the developed world,” she told GCN, adding that the agency had failed to draw on the expertise of leading clinicians who come informed by systematic reviews of the evidence base.

Dr Anderson, a “gender-affirming” clinician and past president of the United States Professional Association for Transgender Health, said none of the 21 panel members chosen by the WHO to develop the new guideline seemed qualified to address the issue of social influence as a factor in the explosion of trans and non-binary identities.

“Social media and peer influence have had a huge impact upon the rise in minority sexual and gender identities,” she said.

“Previous research done on prior cohorts of youth cannot account for the rise in such identities. We may need a new biopsychosocial epidemiology in this social media era.”

The WHO’s panel is due to make crucial decisions about development of the guideline at meetings in Geneva on February 19-21.

One of the expert clinicians overlooked by the WHO, Finland’s Professor Riittakerttu Kaltiala, an early adopter of paediatric gender transition and now a reformist critic, said she was “really worried that the WHO—which should represent responsibility for the health of all people—appears to have committed itself to a fully political initiative promoting treatments based on no evidence.”

“The WHO initiative openly seeks to promote medical gender reassignment, not to find out what is [the quality of the] evidence base, in the best interests particularly of adolescents who, in increasing numbers, problematise their gender.

“Several countries have carried out their own systematic reviews after Finland did so in 2019-2020, and all have concluded that particularly the gender-identity based, body-modifying medical treatments on minors have not been researched appropriately, lack evidence of beneficial effects and have great potential to harm.”

Professor Kaltiala told GCN that the WHO “should seek to balance this overheated and over-politicised field of medicine, not go along with political initiatives. Medicine must be based on science, not on politics.”

On December 18, the WHO announced the guideline project and the final seven members of the panel. Public comment on issues such as conflicts of interest affecting panel members ends on January 8.

A near identical announcement of the WHO project—together with biographies of the first 14 panel members—was issued on June 28, also with a short period for public comment. Both announcements came during holidays in affected parts of the world.

Trans rights activists should “get ahead of the government agenda and the media story” by early intervention in policymaking, according to a notorious 2019 report spon.sored by queer lobby IGLYO, the Thomson Reuters media foundation and law firm Dentons.

The report also warns activists to limit “press coverage and exposure” because it seems that “public campaigning has been detrimental to progress, as much of the general public is not well informed about trans issues, and therefore misinterpretation can arise.”

“It has become a throwaway line in some media coverage of transgender care in the United States that even liberal European countries are restricting care for transgender children. But this is a misleading notion. No democracy in Europe has banned, let alone criminalised, care, as many states have done in the US. What has happened is that under increasing pressure from the right, politicians in some countries have begun to limit access to certain kinds of treatment for children…”—Journalist Lydia Polgreen, opinion column, The New York Times, 1 December 2023

“Polgreen is repeating [misinformation in The Times] about what’s motivating European health systems to restrict kids’ access to gender [prescriptions]. It’s not ‘pressure from the right,’ it’s [systematic] reviews of the evidence finding it too weak to justify high risks, e.g., to brain [development], sexual function, fertility.”—Journalist Jennifer Block (author of the BMJ investigation feature on the rise of youth gender dysphoria), tweet, 31 December 2023

Who’s pushing back?

The new WHO guideline is to cover “gender-affirming care, including hormones” and “health policies that support gender-inclusive care”, among other aims such as “legal recognition of self-determined gender identity [known as self-ID].”

The timing and activist language of the WHO announcement, together with the makeup of the panel membership, have mobilised organisations and individuals worried about the international spike in medicalised gender change that disproportionately affects teenage girls who present with atypical gender dysphoria.

A fast-growing petition calls on the WHO to cancel next month’s meetings in Geneva; deal with conflicts of interest and bias affecting the guideline development panel; consider hiring an independent methodologist; and include expert members alert to the potential harm of gender-affirming interventions, as well as detransitioners.

At the time of writing, the petition had more than 5,000 signatures, including many health professionals, as well as detransitioners and LGB groups critical of Queer Theory-driven trans activism. Also signed up is the LGBT Courage Coalition, which was founded by gender clinic whistleblower Jamie Reed and trans man Aaron Kimberly.

“The current panel is highly biased in favour of ‘gender-affirming’ approaches, with an absence of critical perspectives,” says the petition, which was reportedly organised by an informal coalition of those concerned about the safety of the gender-affirming model.

The petition says: “The majority of the [WHO] panel members have expressed strong views in favour of hormonal and surgical interventions for transition, dismissed known and potential risks associated with these interventions, and denigrated psychotherapeutic approaches as [unethical] ‘conversion therapy’.”

“The panel does not include any experts in child and adolescent development or any critics of the affirmation model. Detransitioners and desisters are also excluded. Given the panel’s composition, there is strong reason to believe that the guideline will be similarly biased.

“The final composition of the panel was only announced on December 18 but, according to the WHO, this group will evaluate the evidence and formulate recommendations across a range of topics including healthcare, clinician education, health policies, and laws by February 21.

“To call this a rushed procedure would be a dramatic understatement. Compare this to the process embarked upon by the Cass Review in the UK, for example—a multi-year effort to address the health care needs of just one patient demographic (under-18s) within a single country (England).”

Video: ‘One of the people on that [WHO] panel has said we should be stopping all children’s puberty, we should give all children puberty blockers, so that they can make a decision, when they are old enough, what [gender] they want to be’—Helen Joyce of the group Sex Matters; from the 4:06 time mark

youtube

No panacea

A 2023 study by Professor Kaltiala and colleagues using a Finnish healthcare register to follow up patients after gender reassignment delivered results contradicting the familiar claim that the mental health problems of troubled young people will resolve after medical transition.

“The number of people contacting specialised [gender clinics] has increased vastly since the 1990s… and their mean age has become steadily younger,” say the authors of the paper in the journal European Psychiatry.

“Along with this, their needs for psychiatric treatment have increased. Both before and after contacting [the clinic], they present with many more common psychiatric needs than do their matched population controls, even when medical [gender reassignment] interventions are carried out.

“Among people seeking [gender reassignment], psychiatric needs have to be carefully assessed and addressed… This vastly increased pursuit of [gender reassignment] with increases in psychiatric comorbidities warrants cautious assessment of the timeliness of medical [gender reassignment] and of other [non-gender] treatment needs that may be more urgent.”

The WHO’s statement says its “new guideline will provide evidence and implementation guidance on health sector interventions aimed at increasing access and utilisation of quality and respectful health services by trans and gender diverse people [Emphasis added].”

Asked about criticism of the guideline project, a WHO spokesman said “this is a notice phase for the Guideline Development Group [or panel] process, so WHO can solicit feedback”.

“All views will be weighed on the composition of the GDG as part of the guideline development process,” he said.

He said WHO guidelines were “always based on balancing of available evidence, human rights principles, consideration of harms and benefits and inputs of end users and beneficiaries.”

He told GCN that the WHO’s trans health guideline would be “focused on adults only”. He did not reply when asked for documentary proof of this; the WHO announcements simply refer to “people”.

“It is probable that the few cases currently before the courts in the United States, Australia and elsewhere, will be the beginning of a torrent of malpractice suits against doctors and surgeons given the massive increase in children and adolescents attending gender clinics. The WHO guideline therefore must address comprehensively the issues that medical practitioners should consider, and the precautions they should take, to avoid a conclusion by a court that the doctor has engaged in malpractice.”—Queensland University Emeritus Professor of Law Patrick Parkinson, submission to the WHO guideline project, January 2024

Conflicts aplenty

In its statement of concern about the WHO project, the Society for Evidence-based Gender Medicine (SEGM) says: “Since adolescents and young adults are the largest and fastest-growing group of transgender-identified individuals, it is likely that the WHO guidelines will apply to this vulnerable group as a target population.”

SEGM says the language of the WHO announcement “does not appear to be neutral.”

“It states the goal of ‘increasing access and utilisation’ of, presumably, gender-affirmative interventions by ‘trans and gender diverse people,’ and declares the goal of legal recognition of ‘self-determined gender identity’,” SEGM says.

“This suggests that the decision to promote gender transition in the respective societal arenas (medical, policy, legal) has already been made before the group has even met to review and interpret the evidence—a step that must both precede and inform the guideline recommendations.”

SEGM says that “even a cursory review” of the guideline panel membership reveals multiple conflicts of interest, including authorship of past papers that would have to be assessed by the panel; membership or past leadership roles in gender-affirming lobby the World Professional Association for Transgender Health; intellectual bias towards gender affirmation; and a record of strong opinions on issues relevant to the guideline and its evidence base.

As an example, SEGM cites a claim by an Australian member of the panel, Teddy Cook, who is a trans man and former vice-president of the Australian Professional Association for Trans Health (AusPATH). He is also director of LGBTQ+ Community Health for ACON, the former gay rights lobby responsible for the TransHub website.

In 2021, Mr Cook wrote: “The actual side effects of gender-affirming medical care, for those who can access it, include a significantly improved quality of life, significantly better health and wellbeing outcomes, a dramatic decrease in distress, depression and anxiety and a substantial increase of gender euphoria and trans joy... We are not at risk of harm by affirming our gender.”

This is a mere opinion unsupported by the evidence, according to SEGM. (GCN sought comment from ACON and Mr Cook.)

AusPATH has been critical of the Cass review for “questioning an affirmative approach to gender-affirming care”. The AusPATH board says it does “not support ‘exploratory therapy’ which is often used as a euphemism for conversion therapy.”

“[Given the long waiting list, we] prioritise young people who are in the youth forensic system, young people in out-of-home care and young people who are from Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities”—Australian psychiatrist Dr Tram Nguyen, co-head of the Royal Children’s Hospital gender-affirming clinic, media interview, The Age, 30 December 2023

Blots on the escutcheon

Gender-affirming clinician Dr Anderson said she was worried about the WHO making “a new unforced error regarding transgender healthcare” and cited the agency’s “tarnished reputation” after the Covid pandemic and recent scrutiny of its record in the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip.

“Unlike with Covid and HIV/Aids, we have no virus nor well-documented aetiology [for gender dysphoria],” she told GCN.

“The tools of epidemiology and virology will not yield immediate answers on how to address growing controversies with gender-questioning youth.

“Blistering hot disputes over self-ID [gender] have spilled over into major institutions like schools, prisons, sports, and the healthcare delivery system.”

Dr Anderson said it was the WHO that had “set this in motion [by] moving trans identification, as ‘gender incongruence’, out of psychiatry over to sexual health [in the agency’s diagnostic manual the International Classification of Diseases, ICD-11].”

“While this step is a laudable improvement in depathologising trans identities, the hard work of applying such a change across society and its institutions remains to be done.

“I’m deeply sceptical that, without taking time to think, the WHO can do what needs to be done, let alone win support across the world.

“I try to help gender-questioning people every day. I’ve been concerned about the disputes and controversies for years. Now I’m worried that the WHO will make a mess of it.”

“In working with minors, the affirmative approach that I’ve always used involves a lot of mental health therapy, assessment, exploration to really individualise the treatment to the specific young person, to involve the parents in the process, to look through a developmental lens, to really understand all the other complex factors, and the medical [option] was a part of it, if and when it was appropriate for that individual child, but in my experience over the years, it wasn’t always the main focus.”—Dr Laura Edwards-Leeper, who was the founding psychologist at the Boston Children’s Hospital gender clinic, The Umbrella Hour podcast interview, December 2023

Missed opportunity

Dr Anderson noted the absence from the WHO guideline project of leading reformists of youth gender care such as the United Kingdom’s Dr Hilary Cass, Finland’s Professor Kaltiala and Sweden’s Professor Mikael Landén; each being guided by systematic reviews of the (weak and uncertain) evidence base.

To this list Dr Anderson added America’s Dr Edwards-Leeper, Dr Scott Leibowitz and herself as clinicians “at the forefront of youth gender issues” but overlooked by the WHO.

In The Washington Post in 2021, Drs Edwards-Leeper and Anderson, both clinical psychologists who use the gender-affirming approach, expressed concern about a surge in cases of rushed medicalisation of troubled minors without careful exploration of their non-gender problems.

That same year, Dr Anderson talked to journalist Abigail Shrier, author of the book Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters, about her concern that today’s teenage female patients might need a different therapeutic response than the classic male patients with onset of gender dysphoria in early childhood.

This is what institutional ideological capture looks like.

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