Category: Academia

We Bring Good People To Court: Leading Physician Warns That Patients May Be Dying From Drug So General Electric Silences Him With a Libel Lawsuit

Dr. Henrik Thomsen is one of Europe’s leading radiologists who has been alarmed over patients who have contracted a rare and potentially fatal disease, nephrogenic systemic fibrosis (NSF). It turns out that the patients were reportedly given a drug to help images become more pronounced during magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans. It is Omniscan and manufactured by GE Healthcare, a subsidiary of General Electric. The response of GE was to sue Thomsen for libel and effectively stop him from speaking about the dangers. It is another example of how England’s defamation laws are out of control. Companies tend to sue in England, which tends to favor corporations (particularly given the English rule that imposes legal costs on the loser in such litigation).
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Guardian: Israel Admits To Harvesting Organs From Dead Palestinians

For months, the government of Israel has demanded the retraction of a story by a Swedish paper that said that Israeli doctors had harvested the organs from dead Palestinians without the consent of their families. The Israeli government canceled visits to Sweden and called the article anti-Semitic. Now, the Guardian is running a new story that says that the allegations are true.
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FLOG THE BLOG: Vote Now or the Orcs Will Inhabit the Blog

It has come to this. We are facing a 50 vote deficit with ten days left in the battle for the blogoshere. It is time to pull out the video that most captures the moment (as supplied by Mespo). You are not the first to face an overwhelming army with many assuming certain defeat.
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Student Sues Green Mountain College Over Co-Ed Bathrooms

Jennifer Weiler, 19, of Green Mountain College in Poultney, Vermont has filed a lawsuit contesting the use of co-ed bathrooms at the school. The lawsuit names the Department of Public Safety and notes such things as flimsy curtains as shower doors and men using toilets without closing the door.
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Hairy Tater Tot: Texas School Suspends Four-Year-Old Boy For Growing His Hair Long for Cancer Patients

Taylor Pugh, 4, (known as Tater Tot) is a bit too hairy for Floyd Elementary School’s principal. Taylor and his Dad are growing their hair to donate it for wigs for cancer patients. The suburban Dallas school district, however, insists that boys cannot have long hair and it has suspended him from classes since last month.

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Study: Airline Passengers May Be Exposed to Harmful Levels of Radiation From Storms

There is an interesting science story out this week that could raise legal issues as to risk of radiation for airline passengers. A new study at the Florida Institute of Technology, University of California, Santa Cruz and the University of Florida found that passengers could be exposed to a radiation dose equal to that from 400 chest X-rays if their airplane is near the start of a lightning discharge or related phenomena known as a terrestrial gamma ray flash.
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Flog the Blog: A Call to Arms for the Greatest Blogging Generation

By last count, we were roughly 25 votes out of first place in the ABA competition. Twenty-five votes stand between us and ever-lasting glory. Who among us can now claim that we have done enough when we are mocked from across the Internet?

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The Scourge of Intellect: English Schools Hold Back Talented Students To Fight “Elitism”

A recent study found that as much as three-fourths of the state schools were holding back the most talented and brightest students because they wanted to combat the scourge of “elitism.” These students were not being given more advanced work even though they were not being sufficiently challenged by grade-level material.

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One Hundred and Twenty Percent of People Can’t Be Wrong: Fox News Shows People Are Dubious About the Accuracy of Global Warming Science With a Poll of 120 Percent of People

We previously saw a Fox News pie chart that had a couple extra slices (here). Now, fair and balanced math adds up to 120 percent of voters indicating that they view the science on global warming to be rigged.
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