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Category Archives: Health Care

What Big Tech Knows About Your Body

The Atlantic [free to read]: “..We leave digital traces about our health everywhere we go: by completing forms like BetterHelp’s. By requesting a prescription refill online. By clicking on a link. By asking a search engine about dosages or directions to a clinic or pain in chest dying???? By shopping, online or off. By participating in consumer genetic testing. By stepping on a smart scale or using a smart thermometer. By joining a Facebook group or a Discord server for people with a certain medical condition. By using internet-connected exercise equipment. By using an app or a service to count your steps or track your menstrual cycle or log your workouts. Even demographic and financial data unrelated to health can be aggregated and analyzed to reveal or infer sensitive information about people’s physical or mental-health conditions. All of this information is valuable to advertisers and to the tech companies that sell ad space and targeting to them. It’s valuable precisely because it’s intimate: More than perhaps anything else, our health guides our behavior. And the more these companies know, the easier they can influence us. Over the past year or so, reporting has found evidence of a Meta tracking tool collecting patient information from hospital websites, and apps from Drugs.com and WebMD sharing search terms such as herpes and depression, plus identifying information about users, with advertisers. (Meta has denied receiving and using data from the tool, and Drugs.com has said that it was not sharing data that qualified as “sensitive personal information.”) In 2021, the FTC settled with the period and ovulation app Flo, which has reported having more than 100 million users, after alleging that it had disclosed information about users’ reproductive health with third-party marketing and analytics services, even though its privacy policies explicitly said that it wouldn’t do so. (Flo, like BetterHelp, said that its agreement with the FTC wasn’t an admission of wrongdoing and that it didn’t share users’ names, addresses, or birthdays.)”

The Air Quality Life Index

“The Air Quality Life Index, or AQLI, converts air pollution concentrations into their impact on life expectancy. From this, the public and policymakers alike can determine the benefits of air pollution policies in perhaps the most important measure that exists: longer lives. Produced by the Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago (EPIC), the… Continue Reading

CDC punts on COVID 19 Public Health Data

CDC archives and ends the site Excess Deaths Associated with COVID-19 [why as the virus and deaths continue?] – and replaces it with this: “Welcome to CDC WONDER — Wide-ranging ONline Data for Epidemiologic Research — an easy-to-use, menu-driven system that makes the information resources of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) available… Continue Reading

Twitter Ranked Dead Last on Climate Misinformation Scorecard

Climate Action Against Disinformation (CAAD) Report: “Misinformation around climate change and disinformation fueled by the fossil fuel industry have stalled climate action for decades. Big Tech has become a complicit actor in climate denial’s resurgence—so much so that the International Governmental Panel on Climate Change publicly called out the problem in 2022. In addition, the… Continue Reading

Covid 19 Data Dispatch

Covid Dispatch: “Every Sunday, this publication explores the state of COVID-19 data in the U.S. Discover what major public health agencies are up to, which new resources are coming online, and what challenges data reporters are facing in tracking the pandemic. Plus, gain access to a growing body of COVID-19 data resources and connect with… Continue Reading

Exploring Congress’ Framework for The Future of AI

“U.S. Senator Bill Cassidy (R-LA), ranking member of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee, released a white paper – Exploring Congress’ Framework for The Future of AI – on artificial intelligence (AI) and the technology’s potential benefits and risks to society. Additionally, Cassidy requested feedback from stakeholders on the role of government… Continue Reading

A Big New Report on American Children Is Out. It’s Horrific.

Human Rights Watch: “How Do US States Measure Up on Child Rights? Challenging US States to Meet International Child Rights Standards for Child Marriage, Corporal Punishment, Child Labor, and Juvenile Justice. The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) is the most ratified international human rights treaty to date. Since its adoption in… Continue Reading

2 ways of knowing if there are PFAS in your drinking water

PopSci – “If forever chemicals made it into your water supply, a filtration system can help remove them. Ever since the US started churning out per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) in the 1940s, these long-lived toxic chemicals have been accumulating everywhere humans have trodden. Since then, these compounds have leached from industrial facilities and trash systems into our… Continue Reading

How Shoddy Data Becomes Sensational Research

Chronicle of Higher Education [read free]: “Over the past 20 years, a wave of improbable-sounding scientific research has come under the microscope. Are Asian Americans really prone to heart attacks on the fourth day of every month? Do power poses really increase testosterone? Do men really eat more pizza when women are around? Are people… Continue Reading

Find COVID‑19 Vaccines

Vaccines.gov: COVID-19 vaccination guidance has been updated. Learn more about COVID‑19 vaccine recommendations. Search for COVID‑19 vaccine options for children or adults to find a location near you. If you do not find a convenient location, check back later or contact your health care provider or local health department. Search for vaccine using your 5-digit… Continue Reading