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Tidbits - October 2, 2014

Portside
Reader Comments - Ten Points Towards a Two-State Solution; Students Walk Out Suburban Denver Schools; Indiana Autoworkers and Two-Tier Contracts; Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism; War on Drugs Damages Black Social Mobility; Freelancer Economy; Transformative Utopias and Human Rights; Climate Change Rally; Banned Books; Texas Schoolbooks; ISIS, Iraq and Syria; Freedom University Georgia; Immigrants; Cuba Training World's Doctors

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The Worst Paying Fastest-Growing Job in America

Claire Zillman Fortune
Historical discrimination, demographics, and public funding have left home care workers at the very bottom of the American work hierarchy. The wages these workers earn are painfully low: the median salary for a personal care aide is $19,910 annually, or $9.57 an hour; a home health aide earns $20,820 or $10.01 per hour. On the Bureau of Labor Statistic's list of 30 fastest-growing jobs, personal and home care aides are the worst paid.

How Health and Housing Relate to Crime in Chicago

Whet Moser Chicago Magazine
Low birth weight, childhood lead poisoning, pre-term births, and infant mortality rate all go hand in hand with the crime rate—but there are significant differences in how neighboring communities are affected.

Leave ‘Organic’ Out of It

Mark Bittman New York Times
Very few people can avoid struggling daily with the avalanche of bad food and the culture and propaganda surrounding it. Near-hysteria or simple answers lead to unachievable situations and nonsolutions. More effective would be shifting the food culture, the relevant business models and public policies - a gradual and concerted movement toward making production and consumption simply "better." That is what the good food movement should be about.

Drilling for Certainty: The Latest in Fracking Health Studies

Naveena Sadasivam Pro Publica
“The public health sector has been absent from this debate,” said Nadia Steinzor, a researcher on the Oil and Gas Accountability Project at the environmental nonprofit, Earthworks. The science is far from settled. However, waiting for additional science to clarify those uncertainties before adopting more serious safeguards is misguided and dangerous. As a result, a number of researchers and local activists have been pushing for more aggressive oversight immediately.

HIV Gene Therapy Using GM Cells Hailed a Success After Trial

Ian Sample The Guardian
A radical new gene therapy for HIV using genetically modified cells mimics a rare but natural mutation that makes about 1% of the population resistant to the most common strains of HIV. Scientists were cautious not to draw strong conclusions from the small scale trial, which was designed to assess the safety of the therapy, but the early signs have raised their hopes.

Re-Examining the FDA Antibiotics Decision: Banning Growth Promoters Won’t Be Enough

Maryn McKenna Wired Science/Superbug
If the FDA’s intention to remove growth promoters is going to be meaningful. Simply reducing antibiotic use (if that does indeed happen) isn’t adequate; by itself, it may even be a threat to welfare. Changing the livestock practices that made antibiotic use necessary will improve animal and human health both.

Status and Stress

Moises Velasquez-Manoff New York Times
There’s a direct relationship among health, well-being and one’s place in the greater scheme. Based on studies by the British epidemiologist Michael Marmot, “the higher you are in the social hierarchy the better your health.”
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