catholic needle exchange

Their reasoning seems pretty nutty, but I will take it.
Albany, N.Y., diocese defends needle exchange; some Catholic scholars disagree
By Daniel Burke
In launching a needle-exchange program recently, the Catholic Diocese of Albany, N.Y., said the decision came down to choosing the lesser evil. Illegal drug use is bad, but the spread of deadly diseases is worse.
The medical evidence is clear, the diocese said when it began Project Safe Point in two Upstate New York locations through the local branch of Catholic Charities. Public health studies document that exchanging used syringes for new ones can reduce the spread of blood-borne diseases such as AIDS and even lead drug abusers to treatment and recovery. ....
 

Just amazing.

This show was just unbeliveable.

I love POS.

Love him.

Grieves and Dessa,

definitely check them out.

wow.

hep C & detachable needles

this is from a press-release and conference abstract. If these findings withstand repeat testing & peer-review, this is huge-
Certain Syringes More Likely To Spread Hepatitis C Virus Among Drug Users
•...This is believed to be the first study establishing the survival of HCV in contaminated syringes and the duration of potential infectiousness. HCV is transmitted through blood-to-blood contact. There is currently no vaccine against HCV, and treatments are problematic because of limited efficacy, high cost and side effects. Untreated, HCV can cause severe liver disease and even death. HCV infection from people sharing contaminated syringes is one of the most common and predictable consequences of injection drug use.

The Yale team simulated the most common scenarios of injection drug use in order to measure the longevity of the residual virus-blood mixture left in syringes after injection. After loading blood spiked with HCV into various syringes and depressing their plungers, researchers tested the residual blood for the presence of infective HCV immediately and after storage for up nine weeks.

They observed a prolonged survival of HCV infection at all storage temperatures, with viable amounts measured even at nine weeks in tuberculin syringes that have detachable needles. They observed far less viable HCV in insulin syringes with attached needles.

“This tells us that syringes with detachable needles are the most dangerous in terms of potential HCV infection, because they are far more likely to transmit a surviving virus,” said lead author Elijah Paintsil, M.D., assistant professor of pediatrics and pharmacology at Yale School of Medicine.•

race & the criminal justice system: NYPD follow-up & how the Census counts prisoners

Urban, Rural Areas Battle For Census Prison Populace
by David Sommerstein
An urban-versus-rural battle is brewing over the census because prison inmates are counted as residents of the prisons where they are locked up. That inflates the population of the mostly white, rural towns that have the prisons.
Higher population means more political representation — and often more money for schools, road crews and other services. Activists say the counting unfairly shifts political and economic power away from the poor city neighborhoods most inmates came from....


& follow-up to this post:
glad to see that the NYPD has improved not one bit under Bloomberg

links to the original reports from the Center for Constitutional Rights
CCR's Report on Racial Disparity in NYPD Stops-and-Frisks(pdf)
CCR's NYPD Data Used in Report (MS Excel spreadsheet)

glad to see that the NYPD has improved not one bit under Bloomberg

Jim Crow Policing
By Bob Herbert
....An overwhelming 84 percent of the stops in the first three-quarters of 2009 were of black or Hispanic New Yorkers. It is incredible how few of the stops yielded any law enforcement benefit. Contraband, which usually means drugs, was found in only 1.6 percent of the stops of black New Yorkers. For Hispanics, it was just 1.5 percent. For whites, who are stopped far less frequently, contraband was found 2.2 percent of the time.
The percentages of stops that yielded weapons were even smaller. Weapons were found on just 1.1 percent of the blacks stopped, 1.4 percent of the Hispanics, and 1.7 percent of the whites. Only about 6 percent of stops result in an arrest for any reason.
Rather than a legitimate crime-fighting tool, these stops are a despicable, racially oriented tool of harassment. And the police are using it at the increasingly enthusiastic direction of Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Police Commissioner Ray Kelly. ....