FINRA Investor Education Foundation: – “A significant part of financial capability is the ability to make ends meet through adequate savings. Having resources for immediate medical needs is also an important component. In the U.S., 18% of individuals reported that over the past year, their household spent more than their income (not including the purchase… Continue Reading
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Category Archives: Medicine
America’s doctors warn Google, Twitter, and Facebook: Anti-vaxxers are weaponizing tech platforms
Business Insider: The American Medical Association (AMA) is worried that anti-vaxxers are weaponizing the world’s biggest social media platforms, including Facebook, Google, and Twitter. Parents often use these platforms to spread misinformation about vaccine dangers that aren’t real. Doctors say the content is having a dangerous impact on the number of vaccinated people in America,… Continue Reading
Specialists from seven countries call for moratorium on gene editing
Nature [no fee or paywall]: Adopt a moratorium on heritable genome editing, Eric Lander, Françoise Baylis, Feng Zhang, Emmanuelle Charpentier, Paul Berg and specialists from seven countries call for an international governance framework. “We call for a global moratorium on all clinical uses of human germline editing — that is, changing heritable DNA (in sperm,… Continue Reading
Bloomberg Healthiest Country Index, 2019
“Iceland, Japan, Switzerland round out top five; U.S. is 35th – Health index looks at life expectancy, environmental factors…The index grades nations based on variables including life expectancy while imposing penalties on risks such as tobacco use and obesity. It also takes into consideration environmental factors including access to clean water and sanitation. Spain has… Continue Reading
GINA, Big Data, and the Future of Employee Privacy
GINA, Big Data, and the Future of Employee Privacy Bradley A. Areheart & Jessica L. Roberts. Yale Law Journal, Vol. 128 2018-2019, Number 3, January 2019 544-871. “Threats to privacy abound in modern society, but individuals currently enjoy little meaningful legal protection for their privacy interests. We argue that the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act (GINA)… Continue Reading
You Give Apps Sensitive Personal Information. Then They Tell Facebook.
Wall Street Journal testing reveals how the social-media giant collects a wide range of private data from developers; ‘This is a big mess’ [paywall] “Millions of smartphone users confess their most intimate secrets to apps, including when they want to work on their belly fat or the price of the house they checked out last… Continue Reading
Are Requirements to Deposit Data in Research Repositories Compatible With the GDPR?
Berkman Klein Center: “To reproduce study findings and facilitate new discoveries, many funding bodies, publishers, and professional communities are encouraging—and increasingly requiring—investigators to deposit their data, including individual-level health information, in research repositories. However, this requirement may conflict with the core privacy principles of European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which establishes legally binding rules for… Continue Reading
The Web of Legal Protections for Participants in Genomic Research
Wolf, Leslie E. and Fuse Brown, Erin C. and Kerr, Ryan and Razick, Genevieve and Tanner, Gregory and Duvall, Brett and Jones, Sakinah and Brackney, Jack and Posada, Tatiana, The Web of Legal Protections for Participants in Genomic Research (February 4, 2019). Health Matrix: Journal of Law-Medicine, vol. 29, 2019; Georgia State University College of… Continue Reading
Privacy and security risks with genetic tests like 23andMe, Ancestry
Business Insider – After you spit into a tube for a DNA test like 23andMe, experts say you shouldn’t assume your data will stay private forever “It may be getting easier to link your private and anonymized DNA data to your identity. That means the genetic data you share with a testing company — which… Continue Reading
Why Wikipedia’s Medical Content Is Superior
Slate: “…Like most encyclopedias, Wikipedia typically functions as a launch pad that provides a general overview of a topic and points to further or original sources. But at least one new study suggests that Wikipedia is superior to other medical sources in at least one key respect: short-term knowledge acquisition. That is, when it comes… Continue Reading
Shutdown Hits Industries Nationwide
WSJ.com [paywall]: “The partial government shutdown is affecting a wide range of business and financial concerns nationwide. From a report: Shuttered government offices are stalling the approval of new loans, initial public offerings, the processing of tax documents, and the approval of new products such as prescription drugs, among other effects. While some programs are… Continue Reading
Study – U.S. Health Care Spending Highest Among Developed Countries
Johns Hopkins: “The United States, on a per capita basis, spends much more on health care than other developed countries; the chief reason is not greater health care utilization, but higher prices, according to a study from a team led by a Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health researcher. The paper appears in the January… Continue Reading
