provinceorstate:connecticut

Connecticut legislators to consider minimum pay for Uber and Lyft drivers - Connecticut Post
▻https://www.ctpost.com/politics/article/Connecticut-legislators-to-consider-minimum-pay-13608071.php

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By Emilie Munson, February 11, 2019 - Prompted by growing numbers of frustrated Uber and Lyft drivers, lawmakers will hold a hearing on establishing minimum pay for app-based drivers.

After three separate legislative proposals regarding pay for drivers flooded the Labor and Public Employees Committee, the committee will raise the concept of driver earnings as a bill, said state Rep. Robyn Porter, D-New Haven, who chairs the committee, on Friday night.

A coalition of Uber and Lyft drivers from New Haven has been pressuring lawmakers to pass a pay standard, following New York City’s landmark minimum pay ordinance for app-based drivers approved in December. The legislation, which set an earnings floor of $17.22 an hour for the independent contractors, took effect on Feb. 1.

Connecticut drivers have no minimum pay guarantees.

Guillermo Estrella, who drives for Uber, worked about 60 hours per week last year and received $25,422.65 in gross pay. His pay stub doesn’t reflect how much Estrella paid for insurance, gas, oil changes and wear-and-tear on his car. Factor those expenses in, and the Branford resident said his yearly take-home earnings were about $18,000 last year.

Estrella and other New Haven drivers have suggested bill language to cap the portion of riders’ fares that Uber and Lyft can take at 25 percent, with the remaining 75 percent heading to drivers’ pockets. The idea has already received pushback from Uber, which said it was unrealistic given their current pay structure.

Connecticut legislators have suggested two other models for regulating driver pay. State Sen. Steve Cassano, D-Manchester, filed a bill to set a minimum pay rate per mile and per minute for drivers. His bill has not assigned numbers to those minimums yet.

“What (drivers) were making when Uber started and got its name, they are not making that anymore,” said Cassano. “The company is taking advantage of the success of the company. I understand that to a point, but it shouldn’t be at the expense of the drivers.”

State Rep. Peter Tercyak, D-New Britain, proposed legislation that says if drivers’ earnings do not amount to hourly minimum wage payments, Uber or Lyft should have to kick in the difference. Connecticut’s minimum wage is now $10.10, although Democrats are making a strong push this year to raise it.

As lawmakers consider these proposals, they will confront issues raised by the growing “gig economy”: a clash between companies seeking thousands of flexible, independent contractors and a workforce that wants the benefits and rights of traditional, paid employment.

Some Democrats at the Capitol support the changes that favor drivers.

“I thought it was important to make sure our labor laws are keeping up with the changes we are seeing in this emerging gig economy, that we have sufficient safeguards to make sure that drivers are not being exploited,” said Sen. Matt Lesser, D-Middletown.

But the proposals also raise broad, difficult questions like what protections does a large independent contractor workforce need? And how would constraining the business model of Uber and Lyft impact service availability around the state?

Sen. Craig Miner, a Republican of Litchfield who sits on the Labor committee, wondered why Uber and Lyft drivers should have guaranteed pay, when other independent contractors do not. How would this impact the tax benefits realized by independent contractors, he asked.

Uber and Lyft declined to provide data on how many drivers they have in the state, and the Connecticut Department of Motor Vehicles does not keep count. In Connecticut, 82 percent of Lyft drivers drive fewer than 20 hours per week, said Kaelan Richards, a Lyft spokesperson.

Last week, Hearst Connecticut Media spoke to 20 Uber and Lyft drivers in New Haven who are demanding lawmakers protect their pay. All drove full-time for Uber or Lyft or both.

An immigrant from Ecuador, Estrella, the Branford driver, struggles to pay for rent and groceries for his pregnant wife and seven-year-old son using his Uber wages.

“A cup of coffee at the local Starbucks cost $3 or $4,” said Estrella. “How can a trip can cost $3 when you have to drive to them five minutes away and drop them off after seven or eight minutes?”

In December, 50 Uber and Lyft drivers held a strike in New Haven demanding better pay. The New Haven drivers last week said they are planning more strikes soon.

“Why is Uber lowering the rates and why do we have to say yes to keep working?” asked Carlos Gomez, a Guilford Uber driver, last week.

The drivers believe Uber and Lyft are decreasing driver pay and taking a larger chunk of rider fares for company profits. Many New Haven drivers said pay per mile has been decreasing. They liked Sen. Cassano’s idea of setting minimum pay per mile and per minute.

“The payment by mile, it went down by 10 cents,” said Rosanna Olan, a driver from West Haven. “Before it was more than one dollar and now when you have a big truck SUV, working long distance especially is not worth it anymore.”

Uber and Lyft both declined to provide pay rates per mile and per minute for drivers. Drivers are not paid for time spent driving to pick up a passenger, nor for time spent idling waiting for a ride, although the companies’ model depends on having drivers ready to pick up passengers at any moment.

Lyft said nationally drivers earn an average of $18.83 an hour, but did not provide Connecticut specific earnings.

“Our goal has always been to empower drivers to get the most out of Lyft, and we look forward to continBy Emilie Munson Updated 4:49 pm EST, Monday, February 11, 2019uing to do so in Connecticut, and across the country," said Rich Power, public policy manager at Lyft.

Uber discouraged lawmakers from considering the drivers’ proposal of capping the transportation companies’ cut of rider fares. Uber spokesman Harry Hartfield said the idea wouldn’t work because Uber no longer uses the “commission model” — that stopped about two years ago.

“In order to make sure we can provide customers with an up-front price, driver fares are not tied to what the rider pays,” said Hartfield. “In fact, on many trips drivers actually make more money than the rider pays.”

What the rider is pays to Uber is an estimated price, calculated before the ride starts, Hartfield explained, while the driver receives from Uber a fare that is calculated based on actual drive time and distance. Changing the model could make it hard to give customers up-front pricing and “lead to reduced price transparency,” Hartfield said. New York’s changes raised rates for riders.

James Bhandary-Alexander, a New Haven Legal Assistance attorney who is working with the drivers, said Uber’s current pay model is “irrelevant to how drivers want to be paid for the work.”

“The reason that drivers care is it seems fundamentally unfair that the rider is willing to pay or has paid $100 for the ride and the driver has only gotten $30 or $40 of that,” he said.

Pursuing any of the three driver-pay proposals would bring Uber and Lyft lobbyists back to the Capitol, where they negotiated legislation spearheaded by Rep. Sean Scanlon, D-Guilford, from 2015 to 2017.

Scanlon said the companies eventually favored the bill passed in 2017, which, after some compromise, required drivers have insurance, limited “surge pricing,” mandated background checks for drivers, imposed a 25 cent tax collected by the state and stated passengers must be picked up and delivered anywhere without discrimination.

“One of my biggest regrets about that bill, which I think is really good for consumers in Connecticut, is that we didn’t do anything to try to help the driver,” said Scanlon, who briefly drove for Uber.
By Emilie Munson Updated 4:49 pm EST, Monday, February 11, 2019
emunson@hearstmediact.com; Twitter: @emiliemunson

#USA #Uber #Connecticut #Mindestlohn #Klassenkampf

Silicon Valley Came to Kansas Schools. That Started a Rebellion. - The New York Times
►https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/21/technology/silicon-valley-kansas-schools.html

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Silicon Valley had come to small-town Kansas schools — and it was not going well.

“I want to just take my Chromebook back and tell them I’m not doing it anymore,” said Kallee Forslund, 16, a 10th grader in Wellington.

Eight months earlier, public schools near Wichita had rolled out a web-based platform and curriculum from Summit Learning. The Silicon Valley-based program promotes an educational approach called “personalized learning,” which uses online tools to customize education. The platform that Summit provides was developed by Facebook engineers. It is funded by Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s chief executive, and his wife, Priscilla Chan, a pediatrician.

Many families in the Kansas towns, which have grappled with underfunded public schools and deteriorating test scores, initially embraced the change. Under Summit’s program, students spend much of the day on their laptops and go online for lesson plans and quizzes, which they complete at their own pace. Teachers assist students with the work, hold mentoring sessions and lead special projects. The system is free to schools. The laptops are typically bought separately.

Then, students started coming home with headaches and hand cramps. Some said they felt more anxious. One child asked to bring her dad’s hunting earmuffs to class to block out classmates because work was now done largely alone.

“We’re allowing the computers to teach and the kids all looked like zombies,” said Tyson Koenig, a factory supervisor in McPherson, who visited his son’s fourth-grade class. In October, he pulled the 10-year-old out of the school.

“Change rarely comes without some bumps in the road,” said Gordon Mohn, McPherson’s superintendent of schools. He added, “Students are becoming self-directed learners and are demonstrating greater ownership of their learning activities.”

John Buckendorf, Wellington High School’s principal, said the “vast majority of our parents are happy with the program.”

The resistance in Kansas is part of mounting nationwide opposition to Summit, which began trials of its system in public schools four years ago and is now in around 380 schools and used by 74,000 students. In Brooklyn, high school students walked out in November after their school started using Summit’s platform. In Indiana, Pa., after a survey by Indiana University of Pennsylvania found 70 percent of students wanted Summit dropped or made optional, the school board scaled it back and then voted this month to terminate it. And in Cheshire, Conn., the program was cut after protests in 2017.

“When there are frustrating situations, generally ki

ds get over them, parents get over them, and they all move on,” said Mary Burnham, who has two grandchildren in Cheshire’s school district and started a petition to end Summit’s use. “Nobody got over this.”

Silicon Valley has tried to remake American education in its own image for years, even as many in tech eschew gadgets and software at home and flood into tech-free schools. Summit has been part of the leading edge of the movement, but the rebellion raises questions about a heavy reliance on tech in public schools.

For years, education experts have debated the merits of self-directed, online learning versus traditional teacher-led classrooms. Proponents argue that programs like Summit provide children, especially those in underserved towns, access to high-quality curriculums and teachers. Skeptics worry about screen time and argue that students miss out on important interpersonal lessons.❞

When this school year started, children got laptops to use Summit software and curriculums. In class, they sat at the computers working through subjects from math to English to history. Teachers told students that their role was now to be a mentor .

Myriland French, 16, a student at Wellington’s high school, said she had developed eye strain and missed talking to teachers and students in class. “Everyone is more stressed now,” she said.

#Facebook #Education #Summit

#copyright_madness
Question à la communauté @seenthis
Je viens de me rendre compte qu’une dessinatrice utilise le même nom que moi. Son site est ici : ►https://themadmeg.com
avec cette formule « Copyright © 2019 Madmeg - All Rights Reserved. » et du coup ca me rend mal à l’aise. Voir mon nom sous ces dessins dégoulinants de rose ca me contrarie et je trouve que ces mièvreries sont assez déplacées de la part d’une madmeg (mais on s’en fiche). je me demande aussi si elle ne va touché mes éventuels droits d’autrice à ma place (ou l’inverse) puisqu’elle utilise un copyright @Madmeg pour une activité similaire à la mienne et que parfois dans des publications les éditeur·ices mettent un copyright @Madmeg aussi à mes images. Je sais pas trop quoi faire, si vous avez des conseils ou infos je suis preneuse.

Cartographie numérique : L’Atlas de #Woodbridge et la première carte des isothermes à l’échelle mondiale (1823) : quand la géographie scolaire était en avance sur la publication scientifique

▻http://cartonumerique.blogspot.com/2019/05/atlas-de-woodbrige-1823.html

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La commémoration des 250 ans de la naissance d’Alexandre de Humboldt (1769-1859) est l’occasion de (re)découvrir l’oeuvre du célèbre géographe allemand. Son expédition dans les Amériques – Vénézuela, Colombie, Équateur, Pérou, Cuba, Mexique et États-Unis - qu’il a réalisée entre 1799 et 1804 avec le biologiste français Aimé Bonpland, a contribué à en faire un géographe de terrain fondant son approche scientifique sur l’observation. De retour en Europe, il publie une oeuvre monumentale. Considéré comme le père de la géographie moderne, il montre les interactions des phénomènes humains avec les phénomènes géologiques, météorologiques, biologiques ou physiques.

En 1817, il publie « Des lignes isothermes et de la distribution de la chaleur sur le globe », Mémoires de Physique et de Chimie de la Société d’Arcueil (consulter l’ouvrage). Il faut cependant attendre 1838 pour qu’il élabore sa fameuse carte des isothermes à l’échelle mondiale (voir la carte sur la collection David Rumsey). Entre temps, un éducateur peu connu du Connecticut, William Woodbridge, qui a voyagé en Europe et a fréquenté Humboldt à Paris, publie en 1823 un Atlas scolaire qui contient une carte de répartition des isothermes qui est la plus ancienne carte connue à cette échelle. Retour sur une histoire originale à travers ce fil Twitter qui fait suite à un article publié par Gilles Fumey sur le blog Géographie en mouvement de Libération : Alexandre de Humbolt, le premier écologiste (8 mai 2019).

#cartographie #atlas #humboldt

The Terrifying Potential of the 5G Network | The New Yorker
▻https://www.newyorker.com/news/annals-of-communications/the-terrifying-potential-of-the-5g-network

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Two words explain the difference between our current wireless networks and 5G: speed and latency. 5G—if you believe the hype—is expected to be up to a hundred times faster. (A two-hour movie could be downloaded in less than four seconds.) That speed will reduce, and possibly eliminate, the delay—the latency—between instructing a computer to perform a command and its execution. This, again, if you believe the hype, will lead to a whole new Internet of Things, where everything from toasters to dog collars to dialysis pumps to running shoes will be connected. Remote robotic surgery will be routine, the military will develop hypersonic weapons, and autonomous vehicles will cruise safely along smart highways. The claims are extravagant, and the stakes are high. One estimate projects that 5G will pump twelve trillion dollars into the global economy by 2035, and add twenty-two million new jobs in the United States alone. This 5G world, we are told, will usher in a fourth industrial revolution.

A totally connected world will also be especially susceptible to cyberattacks. Even before the introduction of 5G networks, hackers have breached the control center of a municipal dam system, stopped an Internet-connected car as it travelled down an interstate, and sabotaged home appliances. Ransomware, malware, crypto-jacking, identity theft, and data breaches have become so common that more Americans are afraid of cybercrime than they are of becoming a victim of violent crime. Adding more devices to the online universe is destined to create more opportunities for disruption. “5G is not just for refrigerators,” Spalding said. “It’s farm implements, it’s airplanes, it’s all kinds of different things that can actually kill people or that allow someone to reach into the network and direct those things to do what they want them to do. It’s a completely different threat that we’ve never experienced before.”

Spalding’s solution, he told me, was to build the 5G network from scratch, incorporating cyber defenses into its design.

There are very good reasons to keep a company that appears to be beholden to a government with a documented history of industrial cyber espionage, international data theft, and domestic spying out of global digital networks. But banning Huawei hardware will not secure those networks. Even in the absence of Huawei equipment, systems still may rely on software developed in China, and software can be reprogrammed remotely by malicious actors. And every device connected to the fifth-generation Internet will likely remain susceptible to hacking. According to James Baker, the former F.B.I. general counsel who runs the national-security program at the R Street Institute, “There’s a concern that those devices that are connected to the 5G network are not going to be very secure from a cyber perspective. That presents a huge vulnerability for the system, because those devices can be turned into bots, for example, and you can have a massive botnet that can be used to attack different parts of the network.”

This past January, Tom Wheeler, who was the F.C.C. chairman during the Obama Administration, published an Op-Ed in the New York Times titled “If 5G Is So Important, Why Isn’t It Secure?” The Trump Administration had walked away from security efforts begun during Wheeler’s tenure at the F.C.C.; most notably, in recent negotiations over international standards, the U.S. eliminated a requirement that the technical specifications of 5G include cyber defense. “For the first time in history,” Wheeler wrote, “cybersecurity was being required as a forethought in the design of a new network standard—until the Trump F.C.C. repealed it.” The agency also rejected the notion that companies building and running American digital networks were responsible for overseeing their security. This might have been expected, but the current F.C.C. does not consider cybersecurity to be a part of its domain, either. “I certainly did when we were in office,” Wheeler told me. “But the Republicans who were on the commission at that point in time, and are still there, one being the chairman, opposed those activities as being overly regulatory.”

Opening up new spectrum is crucial to achieving the super-fast speeds promised by 5G. Most American carriers are planning to migrate their services to a higher part of the spectrum, where the bands are big and broad and allow for colossal rivers of data to flow through them. (Some carriers are also working with lower-spectrum frequencies, where the speeds will not be as fast but likely more reliable.) Until recently, these high-frequency bands, which are called millimetre waves, were not available for Internet transmission, but advances in antenna technology have made it possible, at least in theory. In practice, millimetre waves are finicky: they can only travel short distances—about a thousand feet—and are impeded by walls, foliage, human bodies, and, apparently, rain.

Deploying millions of wireless relays so close to one another and, therefore, to our bodies has elicited its own concerns. Two years ago, a hundred and eighty scientists and doctors from thirty-six countries appealed to the European Union for a moratorium on 5G adoption until the effects of the expected increase in low-level radiation were studied. In February, Senator Richard Blumenthal, a Democrat from Connecticut, took both the F.C.C. and F.D.A. to task for pushing ahead with 5G without assessing its health risks. “We’re kind of flying blind here,” he concluded. A system built on millions of cell relays, antennas, and sensors also offers previously unthinkable surveillance potential. Telecom companies already sell location data to marketers, and law enforcement has used similar data to track protesters. 5G will catalogue exactly where someone has come from, where they are going, and what they are doing. “To give one made-up example,” Steve Bellovin, a computer-science professor at Columbia University, told the Wall Street Journal, “might a pollution sensor detect cigarette smoke or vaping, while a Bluetooth receiver picks up the identities of nearby phones? Insurance companies might be interested.” Paired with facial recognition and artificial intelligence, the data streams and location capabilities of 5G will make anonymity a historical artifact.

To accommodate these limitations, 5G cellular relays will have to be installed inside buildings and on every city block, at least. Cell relays mounted on thirteen million utility poles, for example, will deliver 5G speeds to just over half of the American population, and cost around four hundred billion dollars to install. Rural communities will be out of luck—too many trees, too few people—despite the F.C.C.’s recently announced Rural Digital Opportunity Fund.

Deploying millions of wireless relays so close to one another and, therefore, to our bodies has elicited its own concerns. Two years ago, a hundred and eighty scientists and doctors from thirty-six countries appealed to the European Union for a moratorium on 5G adoption until the effects of the expected increase in low-level radiation were studied. In February, Senator Richard Blumenthal, a Democrat from Connecticut, took both the F.C.C. and F.D.A. to task for pushing ahead with 5G without assessing its health risks. “We’re kind of flying blind here,” he concluded. A system built on millions of cell relays, antennas, and sensors also offers previously unthinkable surveillance potential. Telecom companies already sell location data to marketers, and law enforcement has used similar data to track protesters. 5G will catalogue exactly where someone has come from, where they are going, and what they are doing. “To give one made-up example,” Steve Bellovin, a computer-science professor at Columbia University, told the Wall Street Journal, “might a pollution sensor detect cigarette smoke or vaping, while a Bluetooth receiver picks up the identities of nearby phones? Insurance companies might be interested.” Paired with facial recognition and artificial intelligence, the data streams and location capabilities of 5G will make anonymity a historical artifact.

#Surveillance #Santé #5G #Cybersécurité

La famille Sackler, maître des opioïdes et amie des arts
▻https://www.lemonde.fr/economie/article/2019/04/25/les-sackler-

L’OxyContin, médicament hautement addictif, a fait la fortune de cette famille qui préfère parler de son mécénat plutôt que de sa responsabilité dans la crise sanitaire aux Etats-Unis.

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La cuillère a le fond calciné, et son manche est retourné pour lui donner plus de stabilité. Comme celles utilisées par les toxicomanes qui font fondre leur drogue. Sauf que l’ustensile pèse… près de 360 kg. Le 22 juin 2018, il bloquait l’entrée du siège de Purdue Pharma, à Stamford (Connecticut). La firme, propriété de la famille Sackler, produit l’OxyContin, puissant antidouleur fabriqué à partir de morphine de synthèse.

Ce médicament a fait la fortune des Sackler, dont la richesse est estimée par l’agence Bloomberg à 13 milliards de dollars (11,6 milliards d’euros). Hautement addictif, il est surtout accusé d’avoir fait tomber dans la drogue des milliers d’Américains et d’être responsable de la crise des opioïdes qui frappe les Etats-Unis.
L’OxyContin, commercialisé depuis 1995, aurait fait tomber dans la drogue des milliers d’Américains
Depuis un an, l’artiste Domenic Esposito, 49 ans, mène une guérilla contre la famille Sackler avec sa cuillère. Il l’a de nouveau exposée le 5 avril à Washington, devant l’Agence américaine du médicament (FDA), à qui il est reproché d’avoir autorisé l’OxyContin. M. Esposito se bat pour son frère Danny, de dix-huit ans son cadet, qui a sombré dans la drogue au milieu des années 2000, en commençant par l’OxyContin, avant de se tourner vers l’héroïne.

« Il a bousillé douze années de sa vie », confie Domenic Esposito, qui nous reçoit à Westwood, dans son atelier, en face de sa maison perdue dans les forêts du Massachusetts. Sa famille veut croire à une rémission, mais la désillusion n’est jamais loin. « Ma mère m’a souvent appelé en pleurant après avoir trouvé les résidus dans une cuillère, raconte-t-il. Cette cuillère est le symbole du combat macabre de ma famille. »

Epidémie

Ancien gestionnaire de capitaux reconverti dans l’art, M. Esposito a décidé de passer à l’action quand il s’est aperçu que son frère n’était pas un cas isolé.
Le déclic s’est produit lors des journées de charité du diocèse de Boston, pendant le Carême de 2016. Catholique et bon orateur, il vante l’action du diocèse en faveur des victimes de la drogue. Et évoque son frère. Une fois son discours achevé, une dizaine de personnes viennent partager leur expérience. A chaque fois, le même scénario : une blessure banale mais nécessitant un antidouleur, et une ordonnance d’OxyContin. S’amorce alors l’engrenage de l’addiction avec, souvent, un basculement vers l’héroïne. Il s’agit bien d’une épidémie, provoquée par Purdue et les Sackler.
Pourquoi ferrailler avec une œuvre d’art ? Parce que c’est là une des failles du clan. Si le nom de Purdue est peu connu, celui de la famille Sackler est, depuis un demi-siècle, synonyme de mécénat artistique. Au Metro­politan Museum (Met) et au Musée Guggenheim de New York, à la National Portrait Gallery de Londres ou au Louvre, à Paris, avec l’« aile ­Sackler des antiquités orientales », leur patronyme est omniprésent.

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Puisque les Sackler s’abritent derrière les arts, les artistes veulent les faire périr par eux, comme le montre l’initiative de M. Esposito et comme le revendique la photographe américaine Nan Goldin, devenue dépendante à l’OxyContin après une opération. « Pour qu’ils nous écoutent, nous allons cibler leur philanthropie. Ils ont lavé leur argent maculé de sang grâce aux halls des musées et des uni­versités », accuse Mme Goldin, qui a photographié son propre calvaire.

« Un blizzard d’ordonnances »

En mars 2018, au Met, cinquante militants se sont allongés, feignant d’être morts, dans l’aile financée par les Sackler. En février 2019, au Musée Guggenheim, des activistes ont jeté de fausses ordonnances d’OxyContin, cruel rappel adressé à Richard Sackler, 74 ans, fils d’un des fondateurs et ex-PDG de Purdue, qui avait prédit « un blizzard d’ordonnances qui enterrerait la concurrence ».
L’étau se resserre sur le front judiciaire, avec 1 600 plaintes déposées et des poursuites pénales engagées par les parquets de Boston et de New York

Cela paie. En mars, le Guggenheim a fait savoir qu’il n’accepterait plus de dons de la famille, ­ tandis que Mortimer Sackler, ancien membre actif du conseil d’administration (CA) de Purdue et cousin de Richard, a dû se retirer du CA. A Londres, la Tate Gallery a fait de même, et la National Portrait Gallery a décliné une promesse de don de 1 million de livres (1,15 million d’euros).
Parallèlement, l’étau se resserre sur le front judiciaire, avec 1 600 plaintes déposées et des poursuites pénales engagées par les parquets de Boston et de New York. Au point que la société pourrait déposer le bilan. Prolixes sur leurs activités philanthropiques et artistiques, les Sackler sont mutiques sur leur entreprise.

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L’histoire débute avec les trois frères Sackler, fils d’immigrants juifs de Galicie et de Pologne nés à Brooklyn. Tous trois médecins psychiatres, ils se lancent dans la pharmacie, en rachetant une petite entreprise de Greenwich Village, qui vend des produits comme la Betadine ou fait le marketing du Valium. Ils conquièrent des patients et, surtout, des médecins prescripteurs (en 1997, le patriarche, Arthur Sackler, a été distingué à titre posthume pour ses talents publicitaires).

« Méthodes agressives »

C’est cette recette qui, à partir de 1995, permet d’écouler l’OxyContin. A une époque où l’on cherche à apaiser les douleurs insupportables des malades du cancer, le produit apparaît comme une solution magique : il n’est pas addictif et soulage le patient pendant douze heures. Cela représente un formidable argument publicitaire, notamment parce qu’il se diffuse en continu.
Cependant, au lieu d’être réservé aux patients en soins palliatifs, il est distribué comme de l’aspirine, à coups d’intéressement (pour les vendeurs) et de séminaires dans des palaces de Floride (pour les médecins). Les dosages très élevés créent une accoutumance mortifère. Les précieuses pilules, qui ont des qualités ­similaires à celles de l’héroïne lorsqu’elles sont brûlées, attirent l’attention des narcotrafiquants qui organisent un commerce de ­ contrebande très lucratif, avec la complicité de médecins véreux.

Quand il apparaît que le produit est addictif, la firme choisit de ­blâmer les consommateurs. Dès 2003, l’Agence fédérale de ­contrôle des stupéfiants (DEA) l’accuse d’avoir, par ses « méthodes agressives », favorisé l’abus d’OxyContin et minimisé « les risques associés au médicament », raconte The New Yorker dans une enquête-fleuve publiée en octobre 2017 et intitulée « Un empire de douleur », qui estime à 35 milliards de dollars le chiffre d’affaires généré par le médicament.
En 2007, Purdue accepte de verser 600 millions de dollars d’amende pour avoir prétendu que son médicament était moins addictif que ceux de ses concurrents. Trois ans plus tard, la firme élabore une nouvelle version de son produit, qui ne peut pas être transformée comme l’héroïne.

Rumeurs de faillite

Mais The New Yorker note qu’il s’agissait aussi de contrer l’arrivée de médicaments génériques, l’OxyContin devant tomber dans le domaine public en 2013. Et que l’effet paradoxal de l’affaire a été d’amplifier le basculement des drogués vers l’héroïne. « C’est un terrible paradoxe de l’histoire de l’OxyContin : la formule originelle a créé une génération accro aux pilules. Et sa reformulation (…) a créé une génération accro à l’héroïne. »
L’Oklahoma, particulièrement touché, est parvenu fin mars à une transaction de 270 millions de dollars. Purdue préfère payer pour éviter un procès public et la publication de documents internes potentiellement désastreux. Des rumeurs de faillite courent, et certains Etats pourraient être tentés de conclure des transactions rapides plutôt que de ne rien obtenir.
Pour d’autres, l’argent ne suffit pas. Il faut poursuivre les vrais coupables, et en premier lieu les Sackler. Les trois frères fondateurs sont morts, mais la famille, qui a touché 4,3 milliards de dollars de dividendes entre 2008 et 2016, dirige de facto la compagnie. Celle-ci ne s’exprime que par des communiqués laconiques, se disant soucieuse de « contribuer à lutter contre cette crise de santé publique complexe ».

https://img.lemde.fr/2019/04/25/0/0/6600/4744/688/0/60/0/cb5c6ec_60s8_Ptgu14NJovJQe2nF6s0.jpg

Purdue répète qu’elle ne représente que 2 % des ventes d’opioïdes aux Etats-Unis, et ne peut être tenue, à elle seule, pour respon­sable de ladite crise. La procureure générale du Massachusetts, Maura Healey, ne s’en satisfait pas et a mis en examen huit membres de la famille impliqués dans l’entreprise. Elle s’appuie, entre autres, sur un courriel du patron de Purdue, Craig Landau, qui, selon la plainte, énonçait une évidence : « La famille dirigeait l’entreprise pharmaceutique mondiale Sackler et le conseil de surveillance jouait le rôle de PDG de facto. »

« Les Sackler méritent la peine capitale »

Les héritiers, qui estiment n’y être pour rien, se désolidarisent. C’est le cas des descendants du frère aîné et grand mécène Arthur, disparu en 1987 et dont les parts ont été récupérées non par ses enfants mais par ses frères. « Le rôle de Purdue [dans la crise des opioïdes] m’est odieux », a ainsi déclaré la fille d’Arthur, Elizabeth Sackler. Fondatrice d’un centre d’art féministe à Brooklyn, elle a aussi salué, dans le New York Times, « le courage de Nan Goldin ».
Ses détracteurs ne l’entendent pas ainsi : ils estiment que ce sont les méthodes de marketing adoptées à partir des années 1950 par Arthur qui ont fait merveille pour l’OxyContin – méthodes auxquelles Purdue n’a renoncé que… début 2018. « Leur nom est terni pour toujours (…). Aujourd’hui, il y a des gens qui estiment que les Sackler méritent la peine capitale. Ils sont responsables de milliers de morts », accuse Domenic Esposito.
Dans une manœuvre de sauve-qui-peut, les membres de la famille se retirent tous, depuis deux ans, du conseil d’administration de Purdue. Sans doute trop tard pour échapper aux poursuites de Mme Healey, à qui M. Esposito a offert sa cuillère militante.

First opioid settlement to fund ambitious addiction research center | Science | AAAS
▻https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/04/first-opioid-settlement-fund-ambitious-addiction-research-center

https://www.sciencemag.org/sites/default/files/styles/article_main_large/public/OSU_16x9.jpg?itok=LA1MVIPA

On 26 March, the state of Oklahoma agreed to drop its suit alleging deceptive marketing practices by Purdue in exchange for a National Center for Addiction Studies and Treatment at OSU’s medical complex in Tulsa. Purdue and the Sackler family, which owns the Stamford, Connecticut–based company, will provide a $177 million endowment for the national center, along with $20 million over 5 years for naloxone and other drugs to treat opioid addiction. The state is continuing its suit against several other companies, with opening arguments set for 28 May.

The windfall for the new entity, which aspires “to become the premier addiction research center in the nation,” rewards OSU’s ambition. In October 2017, it opened a modest Center for Wellness and Recovery within its medical school to train future addiction medicine physicians, study the underlying causes of addiction and pain, provide treatment to those suffering from opioid use disorder, and educate the public about the burgeoning epidemic, which claims 130 lives a day in the United States and in 2017 killed nearly 800 Oklahomans. The center now has a staff of eight and a $2.4 million budget.

Pas sûr que l’université qui va recevoir l’argent soit la plus adaptée, mais cela la remet en concurrence avec l’autre université d’Oklahoma.

#Opioides #Oklahoma #Recherche

Lawsuits Lay Bare Sackler Family’s Role in Opioid Crisis - The New York Times
▻https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/01/health/sacklers-oxycontin-lawsuits.html

https://static01.nyt.com/images/2019/03/30/science/00SACKLER-purdue/00SACKLER-purdue-facebookJumbo.jpg

The Sacklers had a new plan.

It was 2014, and the company the family had controlled for two generations, Purdue Pharma, had been hit with years of investigations and lawsuits over its marketing of the highly addictive opioid painkiller OxyContin, at one point pleading guilty to a federal felony and paying more than $600 million in criminal and civil penalties.

But as the country’s addiction crisis worsened, the Sacklers spied another business opportunity. They could increase their profits by selling treatments for the very problem their company had helped to create: addiction to opioids.

The filings cite numerous records, emails and other documents showing that members of the family continued to push aggressively to expand the market for OxyContin and other opioids for years after the company admitted in a 2007 plea deal that it had misrepresented the drug’s addictive qualities and potential for abuse.

In addition to New York and Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island and Utah have filed suit against members of the family. Last month, a coalition of more than 500 counties, cities and Native American tribes named the Sacklers in a case in the Southern District of New York, bringing the family into a bundle of 1,600 opioids cases being overseen by a federal court judge in Cleveland.

In 2009, two years after the federal guilty plea, Mortimer D.A. Sackler, a board member, demanded to know why the company wasn’t selling more opioids, email traffic cited by Massachusetts prosecutors showed.

In 2011, as states looked for ways to curb opioid prescriptions, family members peppered the sales staff with questions about how to expand the market for the drugs. Mortimer asked if they could sell a generic version of OxyContin in order to “capture more cost sensitive patients,” according to one email. Kathe, his half sister, suggested studying patients who had switched to OxyContin to see if they could find patterns that could help them win new customers, according to court filings in Massachusetts.

The lawsuits brought by the attorneys general of New York and Massachusetts, Letitia James and Maura Healey, named eight Sackler family members: Kathe, Mortimer, Richard, Jonathan and Ilene Sackler Lefcourt — children of either Mortimer or Raymond Sackler — along with Theresa Sackler, the elder Mortimer’s widow; Beverly Sackler, Raymond’s widow; and David Sackler, a grandson of Raymond.

Purdue’s business was fundamentally changed after the F.D.A. approved OxyContin in 1995. The company marketed the drug as a long-acting painkiller that was less addictive than shorter-acting rivals like Percocet and Vicodin, a strategy aimed at reducing the stigma attached to opioids among doctors.

While the Sacklers “have reduced Purdue’s operations and size, Rhodes continues to grow and sell opioids for the benefit of the Sackler families,” the New York suit contends.

By 2016, Rhodes, though little known to the public, had a greater share of the American prescription opioid market than Purdue, according to a Financial Times analysis. Together, the companies ranked seventh in terms of the market share of opioids.

Purdue temporarily abandoned plans to pursue Project Tango in 2014, but revived the idea two years later, this time pursuing a plan to sell naloxone, an overdose-reversing drug, according to the Massachusetts filing. A few months later, in December 2016, Richard, Jonathan and Mortimer Sackler discussed buying a company that used implantable drug pumps to treat opioid addiction.

In recent years, the Sacklers and their companies have been developing products for opioid and overdose treatment on various tracks. Last year, Richard Sackler was awarded a patent for a version of buprenorphine, a drug that blocks opioid receptors, administered by mouth in a thin film. In March, the F.D.A. fast tracked the company’s application for an injectable drug for emergency treatment of overdoses.

Fait très rare, cet article comporte de nombreuses photos des membres de la famille Sackler

#Opioides #Sackler #Procès

William Singer : Fotos trucadas y notas cambiadas : así funcionaba ‘La llave’ para entrar en las universidades de élite de EE UU | Sociedad | EL PAÍS
▻https://elpais.com/sociedad/2019/03/14/actualidad/1552520446_153124.html

Les riches savent tricher : procès aux USA d’une filière pour permettre aux nuls riches de passer avant les méritants, mais pauvres... Je simplifie...

Lo llamaban ‘La llave’. Servía para abrir una puerta en las universidades de élite de Estados Unidos, una puerta que solo algunos privilegiados sabían que existía. Mientras la clase media del país se agolpa para entrar por la puerta de delante y algunos casos especiales entran por la de atrás, un hombre llamado William Rick Singer aseguraba haber descubierto una “puerta lateral”. A veces, consistía en un soborno. Otras, había que organizar un engaño que pasaba por trucar fotos y notas. Él tenía la llave y, por supuesto, cobraba por usarla.

Singer se declaró culpable el martes ante un juez federal de Boston de varios cargos relacionados con una conspiración para manipular el sistema de admisión de las universidades más codiciadas del país a través de fraudes y sobornos, cobrar por ello y además camuflar esos pagos como donaciones a la beneficencia. Así ingresó en total unos 25 millones de dólares desde 2011 hasta 2019 de decenas de padres.

Llevaba desde el pasado septiembre colaborando con el FBI. El martes, la policía federal lanzó una operación en todo el país con 50 órdenes de detención, entre ellas las de 33 padres. Los últimos en entregarse han sido la actriz Lori Laughlin (Padres forzosos), este miércoles por la mañana en Los Ángeles, y Douglas Hodge, ex CEO de la empresa de inversión Pimco. Ese era el nivel de los clientes.

La trama se basaba en dos empresas. Primero, The Edge (la ventaja, en español) College and Career Network, una asesoría para preparar la entrada en la universidad con sede en Newport Beach, uno de los pueblos de costa más privilegiados de California, al sur de Los Ángeles. La otra era The Key (la llave, en español) Worlwide Foundation, una organización sin ánimo de lucro a través de la cual se canalizaban los pagos como si fueran donaciones altruistas. Las universidades implicadas son Georgetown (Washington DC), Stanford (Palo Alto), Universidad de California en Los Ángeles (UCLA), Universidad de San Diego, Universidad del Sur de California (Los Ángeles), Universidad de Texas en Austin, Wake Forest (Carolina del Norte) y Yale (Connecticut).

#usa #éducation

Exclusive: OxyContin Maker Purdue Pharma Exploring Bankruptcy - Sources | Investing News | US News
▻https://money.usnews.com/investing/news/articles/2019-03-04/exclusive-oxycontin-maker-purdue-pharma-exploring-bankruptcy-sources
▻https://www.usnews.com/dims4/USNEWS/a731fff/2147483647/thumbnail/970x647/quality/85/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fcom-usnews-beam-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2F36%2F18d09dd2aa95

By Mike Spector, Jessica DiNapoli and Nate Raymond

(Reuters) - OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma LP is exploring filing for bankruptcy to address potentially significant liabilities from roughly 2,000 lawsuits alleging the drugmaker contributed to the deadly opioid crisis sweeping the United States, people familiar with the matter said on Monday.

The potential move shows how Purdue and its wealthy owners, the Sackler family, are under pressure to respond to mounting litigation accusing the company of misleading doctors and patients about risks associated with prolonged use of its prescription opioids.

Purdue denies the allegations, arguing that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration-approved labels for its opioids carried warnings about the risk of abuse and misuse associated with the pain treatments.

Filing for Chapter 11 protection would halt the lawsuits and allow Purdue to negotiate legal claims with plaintiffs under the supervision of a U.S. bankruptcy judge, the sources said.

Shares of Endo International Plc and Insys Therapeutics Inc, two companies that like Purdue have been named in lawsuits related to the U.S. opioid epidemic, closed down 17 percent and more than 2 percent, respectively, on Monday.

More than 1,600 lawsuits accusing Purdue and other opioid manufacturers of using deceptive practices to push addictive drugs that led to fatal overdoses are consolidated in an Ohio federal court. Purdue has held discussions to resolve the litigation with plaintiffs’ lawyers, who have often compared the cases to widespread lawsuits against the tobacco industry that resulted in a $246 billion settlement in 1998.

“We will oppose any attempt to avoid our claims, and will continue to vigorously and aggressively pursue our claims against Purdue and the Sackler family,” Connecticut Attorney General William Tong said. Connecticut has a case against Purdue and the Sacklers.

BANKRUPTCY FILING NOT CERTAIN

A Purdue bankruptcy filing is not certain, the sources said. The Stamford, Connecticut-based company has not made any final decisions and could instead continue fighting the lawsuits, they said.

“As a privately-held company, it has been Purdue Pharma’s longstanding policy not to comment on our financial or legal strategy,” Purdue said in a statement.

“We are, however, committed to ensuring that our business remains strong and sustainable. We have ample liquidity and remain committed to meeting our obligations to the patients who benefit from our medicines, our suppliers and other business partners.”

Purdue faces a May trial in a case brought by Oklahoma’s attorney general that, like others, accuses the company of contributing to a wave of fatal overdoses by flooding the market with highly addictive opioids while falsely claiming the drugs were safe.

Last year, U.S. President Donald Trump also said he would like to sue drug companies over the nation’s opioid crisis.

Opioids, including prescription painkillers, heroin and fentanyl, were involved in 47,600 overdose deaths in 2017, a sixfold increase from 1999, according to the latest data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Purdue hired law firm Davis Polk & Wardwell LLP for restructuring advice, Reuters reported in August, fueling concerns among litigants, including Oklahoma Attorney General Mike Hunter, that the company might seek bankruptcy protection before the trial.

Companies facing widespread lawsuits sometimes seek bankruptcy protection to address liabilities in one court even when their financial condition is not dire. California utility PG&E Corp filed for bankruptcy earlier this year after deadly wildfires raised the prospect of large legal bills even though its stock remained worth billions of dollars.

DECEPTIVE MARKETING

Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey in June became the first attorney general to sue not just Purdue but Sackler family members. Records in her case, which Purdue has asked a judge to dismiss, accused Sackler family members of directing deceptive marketing of opioids for years while enriching themselves to the tune of $4.2 billion.

Some other states have since also sued the Sacklers. The Sacklers are currently discussing creating a nonprofit backed by family financial contributions to combat addiction and drug abuse, a person familiar with their deliberations said.

The drugmaker downplayed the possibility of a bankruptcy filing in a Feb. 22 court filing in the Oklahoma case. “Purdue is still here - ready, willing and eager to prove in this Court that the State’s claims are baseless,” the company said in court papers.

Sales of OxyContin and other opioids have fallen amid public concern about their addictive nature, and as restrictions on opioid prescribing have been enacted. OxyContin generated $1.74 billion in sales in 2017, down from $2.6 billion five years earlier, according to the most recent data compiled by Symphony Health Solutions.

Purdue Chief Executive Officer Craig Landau has cut hundreds of jobs, stopped marketing opioids to physicians and moved the company toward developing medications for sleep disorders and cancer since taking the helm in 2017.

In July, Purdue appointed a new board chairman, Steve Miller, a restructuring veteran who previously held leadership positions at troubled companies including auto-parts giant Delphi and the once-teetering insurer American International Group Inc.

Mortimer D.A. Sackler no longer sits on Purdue’s board, according to a filing the company made with the Connecticut secretary of state late Monday.

The Oklahoma case and other lawsuits seek damages from Purdue and other pharmaceutical companies accused of fueling the opioid crisis. In addition to lawsuits consolidated in an Ohio federal court, more than 300 cases are pending in state courts, and dozens of state attorneys general have sued manufacturers, including Purdue.

Settlement discussions have not yet resulted in a deal.

Purdue and three executives in 2007 pleaded guilty to federal charges related to the misbranding of OxyContin and agreed to pay a total of $634.5 million in penalties, according to court records.

(Reporting by Mike Spector and Jessica DiNapoli in New York and Nate Raymond in Boston; Editing by Bill Berkrot)

Copyright 2019 Thomson Reuters.

#Opioides #Sackler #Bankruptcy

Parution : Addiction sur ordonnance, La crise des antidouleurs, par Patrick Radden Keefe
►https://cfeditions.com/addiction

https://cfeditions.com/addiction/ressources/addiction-900.jpg

J’ai le plaisir de vous annoncer la parution de :

Addiction sur ordonnance
La crise des antidouleurs
par Patrick Radden Keefe

traduit de l’anglais (États-Unis) par Claire Richard
avec des contributions de :
Frédéric Autran, Cécile Brajeul et Hervé Le Crosnier

C&F éditions, 2019
16 €
ISBN 978-2-915825-90-9
►https://cfeditions.com/addiction

Ce premier livre de la collection interventions traite d’un sujet douloureux, la « crise des opioïdes » qui ronge les États-Unis de l’intérieur et qui s’étend dans le monde entier. 400000 décès par overdose dans la dernière décennie aux USA, dont 70000 l’an passé... pour une addiction qui a souvent débuté dans le cabinet d’un médecin ou un service d’hôpital ayant prescrit des antidouleurs sans prendre les précautions nécessaires pour éviter la dépendance aux opiacés.

Patrick Radden Keefe est remonté à la source en étudiant les stratégies marketing de la famille Sackler, et de sa petite entreprise de pharmacie du Connecticut, devenue une des plus riches du pays... au prix d’une crise de santé publique majeure.

L’article de Frédéric Autran montre la vie quotidienne des personnes dépendantes aux opiacés, et plus particulièrement aux opioïdes de synthèse vendus comme des médicaments.

Celui de Cécile Brajeul expose plus spécifiquement la situation en France.

Dans sa postface, Hervé Le Crosnier considère les trusts pharmaceutiques comme des acteurs de la « société de l’information », pour lesquels l’appât du gain et les mensonges marketing sont le moteur prioritaire. Il appelle à reconsidérer la dépendance des organismes publics (musées, universités...) aux financements privés et notamment au cynisme de la philanthropie.

On peut obtenir un extrait spécimen à :
▻https://cfeditions.com/addiction/ressources/addiction_SPECIMEN.pdf

Bonne lecture

#Addiction #Opioides #C&F_éditions #Sackler #Oxycontin

Judge to rule next week on disclosing claims about Purdue Pharma - STAT
▻https://www.statnews.com/2019/01/25/judge-to-rule-on-disclosing-allegations-against-purdue

https://www.statnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/AP_19015766558742-1024x576.jpg

BOSTON — A Massachusetts judge said Friday she would rule by early next week on a request from media organizations, including STAT and the Boston Globe, to make public redacted portions of a lawsuit brought by the Massachusetts attorney general’s office against Purdue Pharma, the maker of OxyContin and other opioid painkillers.

The Connecticut company’s aggressive and misleading marketing of OxyContin has been blamed by addiction experts for helping spawn the opioid addiction crisis. Outside the Boston courthouse Friday, families of people who became addicted to opioids after taking Purdue’s medications rallied, with some calling for criminal charges against the company.

“Every day that goes by where this document is substantially under seal is a day that the public does not have access to newsworthy and important information,” Jeffrey Pyle, a lawyer representing the media organizations, argued before Judge Janet Sanders in Suffolk County Superior Court.

Attorney General Maura Healey accused Purdue of misleading doctors and patients about the addiction and overdose risks of its medications in a lawsuit originally filed in June, which also named current and former Purdue executives and members of the Sackler family, which controls the privately held Purdue, as defendants.

An updated, 300-plus-page complaint from Healey’s office filed last week contained newly public portions that showed Purdue executives and the Sacklers demanding greater sales of their medications despite the risks and pressuring salespeople to push physicians to prescribe higher doses of their drugs for longer periods of time to more patients.

#Opioides #Procès

Children’s & Teens’ Suicides Related to the School Calendar

We get very upset by school shootings, as well we should. Every such instance is a national tragedy. We should be ashamed of ourselves for not doing something about gun control, as essentially every other developed nation has. But as serious as this tragedy is, it is dwarfed by another school-related tragedy–suicide.

Suicide is the third leading cause of death for school-aged children over 10 years old, and the second leading cause (behind accidents and ahead of homicides) for those over 15 (here). The evidence is now overwhelming that our coercive system of schooling plays a large role in these deaths and in the mental anguish so many young people experience below the threshold of suicide.

Four years ago I posted data (here)—from a mental health facility in Connecticut—showing the relationship between pediatric emergency mental health visits and the school year over a three-year period (2011-2013). Those data revealed that the average monthly number of emergency mental health intakes for school-aged children declined from 185 in May (the last full month of school), to 102 in June (the month in which school lets out), and then down to 74 and 66, respectively, in July and August (the full months of freedom from school). In September the rate started its climb back up again. Overall, the rate of such visits during the school months was slightly more than twice what it was in July and August. When I wrote that article, I did not know of any other studies assessing mental health breakdowns as a function of the school calendar. Since that time, more research has emerged.
Psychiatric Breakdowns and Suicide Attempts as a Function of the School Year

Collin Lueck and his colleagues (2015) examined the rate of psychiatric visits for danger to self or others at a large pediatric emergency mental health department in Los Angeles on a week-by-week basis for the years 2009-2012. They found that the rate of such visits in weeks when school was in session was 118% greater than in weeks when school wasn’t in session. In other words, the rate of emergency psychiatric visits was more than twice as high during school weeks as it was during non-school weeks. It’s interesting to note that the sharp decline in such emergencies occurred not just during summer vacation, but also during school vacation weeks over the rest of the year.

The researchers also found a continuous increase in the rate of psychiatric emergencies during school weeks, but not during vacation weeks, over the 4-year period of the study. This result is consistent with the hypothesis that the increase in suicidal ideation and attempts over time is the result of the increased stressfulness of school over this time period and not attributable to some factor independent of schooling. In another, more recent study, Gregory Plemmons and his colleagues (2018), found that the rate of hospitalization of school-aged children for suicidal ideation and attempts increased dramatically—by nearly 300%—over the seven years of their study, from 2008 to 2015, and each year the rate of such hospitalizations was significantly higher in the school months than in the summer.
Actual Suicides as a Function of the School Year

On the basis of the data I’ve described so far, someone could argue that the school-year increase in emergency psychiatric admissions is a result of attentive behavior on the part of school personnel, who referred children for admissions and thereby, perhaps, saved children’s lives. According to that view, parents are less perceptive of children’s problems than are teachers. There are no data suggesting that this is true, however, and there are very strong reasons to believe it is not. If this hypothesis were true, then the rate of actual suicides—as opposed to suicide ideation or attempts—should be lower when school is in session than when it is not. But, in fact, the actual suicide data parallel the data for suicide ideation and attempts.

Benjamin Hansen and Matthew Lang (2011) used data collected from state agencies to analyze suicides for teenagers across the US between 1980 and 2004. This is an older study, with data largely from a time when school was at least somewhat less stressful than it is today and the total teen suicide rate was lower than today. Yet, they found a much higher rate of suicides during the school year than during the summer vacation months. They also—unlike any of the other studies I’ve found—analyzed the data separately for boys and girls. For boys, the suicide rate was, on average, 95% higher during the school months than during summer vacation; for girls, it was only 33% higher. This finding is consistent with the general observation that boys have a more difficult time adjusting to the constraints of school than do girls. Stated differently, when girls commit suicide, school is apparently less likely to be a cause than is the case for boys.

Hansen and Lang also found that the school-year increase in teen suicide rate held only for those of school age. For 18-year-olds, most of whom would be finished with high school, the increase was barely present, and for 19- and 20-year-olds it had vanished. Other research shows that suicides and suicide attempts for adults vary only slightly by season and are somewhat higher, not lower, in the summer than in the fall and winter (Miller et al, 2012; Cambria et al, 2016)—a trend that is opposite to the finding for school-aged children and teens.
Just the Tip of the Iceberg

Actual suicides and emergency mental health admissions are just the tip of the iceberg of the distress that school produces in young people. I have summarized some of the other indicators of that stress elsewhere (here and here). One finding that bears repeating comes from a large survey conducted a few years ago by the American Psychological Association, which revealed that teenagers are the most stressed, anxious people in America; that 83% of them cite school as a cause of their stress; and that, during the school year, 27% of them reported experiencing “extreme stress” compared to 13% reporting that during the summer.

School is clearly bad for children’s mental health. The tragedy is that we continue to make school ever more stressful, even though research shows that none of this is necessary. Young people learn far more, far better, with much less stress (and at less public expense) when they are allowed to learn in their own natural ways, as I have pointed out in many of my previous posts and in my book, Free to Learn.

▻https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/freedom-learn/201805/children-s-teens-suicides-related-the-school-calendar

#jeunes #calendrier_scolaire #école #suicides #suicide #éducation #santé_mentale #USA #Etats-Unis

Bonne année, par Aretha Franklin :

Auld Lang Syne est une chanson écossaise plus connue des francophones sous le nom de Ce n’est qu’un au revoir. Aux Etats-Unis, elle est souvent reprise pour la nouvelle année. Comme le dit l’adage, Aretha Franklin pourrait chanter le bottin et en faire un chef d’oeuvre d’émotion. La preuve :

Le 31 décembre 1975 au Waldorf Astoria, à New-York :
▻https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zNDGPj8uj3w

Le 23 décembre 1986, à la télé américaine, avec Billy Preston :
▻https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rI3Evr_TWHE

Et le 1er janvier 2016, à Uncasville, dans le Connecticut :
▻https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1zpk_ivkxNg

Autres versions de « Auld Lang Syne »
Jon Batiste (2018) :
▻https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1HiBKSOeqvg

Harris and His Christmas Avengers (2014) :
▻https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vvPPhcWSO-g

BB King (2000) :
▻https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IeB1YLvwQPI

The Black on White Affair (1970) :
▻https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LkvjLkWly_g

#Aretha_Franklin #Musique #Soul

All the president’s men: what to make of Trump’s bizarre new painting | Hannah Jane Parkinson | Opinion | The Guardian
▻https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/oct/15/president-trump-new-painting-white-house-republican

https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/b65950a10354ae7bf76edc1ff14f278d0a2586c8/0_0_1800_1185/master/1800.jpg?width=1020&quality=85&auto=format&fit=max&s=9cad7931c5fcb59eae10ed424276e2bc

They say a picture is worth a thousand words, unless it’s a shredded Banksy, obviously, which is worth around £1m. But how to put a value on the majestic artwork Donald Trump was revealed to have gracing the wall outside the Oval Office, as eagle-eyed viewers of 60 Minutes spotted?

So far, we know of two other “artworks” that Trump has: that Photoshopped picture of his inauguration crowd (dude, let it go), and the electoral college map. It is no wonder Trump wanted to spruce the place up in his own way, given that he referred to the White House as “a dump”. I still cackle at this, given its sheer, disparaging rudeness – like how when Location, Location, Location’s Phil shows a couple around a three-bedroom semi with a north-facing garden, Kirstie mugs to the camera and draws an imaginary knife across her throat.

#on_est_en_2018 #allégorie #images #propagande #représentation

The Architecture of Food Systems

Spotlighting the #Hudson_Valley Design Lab and Good Shepherd Institute in a conversation with Caitlin Taylor of MASS Design Group.

Few people recognize the interconnectedness of architecture, social justice, and local food systems; Caitlin Taylor is dedicated to changing that. Between roles as an architect with nonprofit firm MASS Design Group, an adjunct professor of architecture at Columbia University, and a founding member of Four Root Farm in rural Connecticut, she is living her dream of uniting food systems and architecture in her life and work.

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No Shots Fired
In coercive control, men use guns to threaten, manipulate, and traumatize their intimate partners, without ever pulling a trigger.
▻https://www.thetrace.org/2018/09/no-shots-fired

https://www.thetrace.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/COS100118WELFEATURE004_small-e1536702943652-2000x0-c-default.jpg

Abusive partners don’t need a gun to govern their victims, but a gun makes a ruthless tool of intimidation. A husband might keep one on the mantel in the living room, where he and his wife watch TV. A boyfriend might polish his weapon during arguments. While asking his partner where she’s been, a guy might casually remove his coat to reveal a pistol clipped to his belt. “This [phenomenon] is almost exclusively male on female,” says Susan B. Sorenson, PhD, executive director of the Ortner Center on Violence and Abuse in Relationships at the University of Pennsylvania. “When you have a gun, you can control someone without touching them, without even speaking a word.”

Indeed, a lethal weapon allows an abuser to easily establish a “regime of domination,” as Stark calls it — and in a country with an estimated 270 million firearms, countless women are at risk. One 2016 study found that some 4.5 million women have been coerced or bullied with a gun by an intimate partner. In a separate (as yet unpublished) survey, Tami Sullivan, PhD, the director of Family-Violence Research at Yale, found that 33 percent of women in the Greater New Haven, Connecticut, area who were victims of abuse had also been menaced with a firearm. “And that doesn’t count the implied stuff, like when he cleans the gun in front of them,” says Sullivan.

While experts recognize coercive control as a legitimate form of domestic abuse, the threat itself can be hard to describe to friends and family, let alone the police. There are no bruises or bullet wounds, and after constant manipulation, a victim may wonder if she’s seeing danger that’s not really there. Or she may become too terrified to act at all.

Enquête. OxyContin, un antidouleur addictif à la conquête du monde | Courrier international
►https://www.courrierinternational.com/article/enquete-oxycontin-un-antidouleur-addictif-la-conquete-du-mond

https://www.courrierinternational.com/sites/ci_master/files/styles/image_940/public/illustrations/thumbnails/falco-1.jpg?itok=oHvbr_P0

Alors que l’usage d’opioïdes antalgiques fait des ravages aux États-Unis, les fabricants de ces médicaments vantent leurs mérites dans le monde entier pour élargir leurs marchés. En minorant les risques de dépendance et les conséquences pour la santé des patients, à l’image de Purdue, producteur de l’OxyContin, sur lequel a enquêté le Los Angeles Times.

Face à l’épidémie d’addiction aux opioïdes analgésiques qui a déjà causé 200 000 morts dans le pays, l’establishment médical américain commence à prendre ses distances avec les antalgiques. Les plus hauts responsables de la santé incitent les généralistes à ne plus les prescrire en cas de douleur chronique, expliquant que rien ne prouve leur efficacité sur le long terme et que de nombreux indices montrent qu’ils mettent en danger les patients. 

Les prescriptions d’OxyContin ont baissé d’environ 40 % depuis 2010, ce qui se traduit par plusieurs milliards de manque à gagner pour son fabricant, basé dans le Connecticut, Purdue Pharma. 

La famille Sackler, propriétaire du laboratoire, a donc décidé d’adopter une nouvelle stratégie : faire adopter l’oxycodone, l’analgésique qui a déclenché la crise des opioïdes aux États-Unis, dans les cabinets médicaux du reste du monde.

Pour mener à bien cette expansion mondiale, ces entreprises, regroupées sous le nom collectif de Mundipharma, utilisent quelques-unes des méthodes controversées de marketing qui ont fait de l’OxyContin un best-seller pharmaceutique aux États-Unis. Au Brésil, en Chine et ailleurs, les sociétés mettent en place des séminaires de formation dans lesquels on encourage les médecins à surmonter leur “opiophobie” et à prescrire des antalgiques. Elles sponsorisent des campagnes de sensibilisation qui poussent les gens à solliciter un traitement médical de leurs douleurs chroniques. Elles vont même jusqu’à proposer des ristournes aux patients afin de rendre plus abordables les opioïdes sur ordonnance.

L’ancien commissaire de l’agence des produits alimentaires et des médicaments [Food and Drug Administration] David A. Kessler a estimé que l’aveuglement face aux dangers des antalgiques constitue l’une des plus grosses erreurs de la médecine moderne. Évoquant l’entrée de Mundipharma sur les marchés étrangers, il a déclaré que la démarche était “exactement la même que celle des grands fabricants de cigarettes. Alors que les États-Unis prennent des mesures pour limiter les ventes sur leur territoire, l’entreprise se développe à l’international.”

#Opioides #Mundipharma

CppCast Episode 166: CppCon Poster Program and Interface Design with Bob Steagall
▻http://isocpp.org/feeder/?FeederAction=clicked&feed=All+Posts&seed=http%3A%2F%2Fisocpp.org%2Fblog%2F2

Episode 166 of CppCast the only podcast for C++ developers by C++ developers. In this episode Rob and Jason are joined by Bob Steagall to discuss his history with C++, the CppCon poster program and his upcoming talks.

CppCast Episode 166: CppCon Poster Program and Interface Design with Bob Steagall by Rob Irving and Jason Turner

About the interviewee:

Bob is a Principal Engineer with GliaCell Technologies. He’s been working almost exclusively in C++ since discovering the second edition of The C++ Programming Language in a college bookstore in 1992. The majority of his career was spent in medical imaging, where he led teams building applications for functional MRI and CT-based cardiac visualization. After a brief detour through the worlds of DNS and analytics, he’s (...)

#News,Video&_On-Demand,

Culture des armes aux États-Unis
►https://www.monde-diplomatique.fr/2013/02/BREVILLE/48758

Le 14 décembre 2012, dans une école élémentaire de Newtown (Connecticut), un homme équipé d’un fusil d’assaut abat vingt-six personnes, dont vingt …

https://www.monde-diplomatique.fr/IMG/arton48758.jpg

Le GOP devient trumpiste
▻http://www.dedefensa.org/article/le-gop-devient-trumpiste

Le GOP devient trumpiste

Il y a eu quatre primaires pour la désignation des candidats républicains (GOP) pour les élections mid-term, dans les États du Minnesota, du Wisconsin, du Vermont et du Connecticut. Pour la première fois une grande tendance est apparue : pour être désignés par les électeurs du parti, il faut être “trumpiste”, c’est-à-dire radicalisé dans le sens du président (populiste, isolationniste, conservateur-sociétal, etc.). ZeroHedge.comécrit ce 15 août 2018 : « Même le Washington Post admet que “Trump a triomphé lors des primaires” ».

C’était une des grandes inconnues de ces deux dernières années : l’évolution de l’attitude générale du GOP, qui s’était opposé au candidat Trump, vis-à-vis du président Trump. Il semble qu’on puisse avancer que le GOP a évolué vers le soutien du président en place. (...)

Purdue Pharma Cuts Rest of Its Sales Force in Opioids Pullback - Bloomberg
▻https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-06-20/purdue-pharma-cuts-rest-of-its-sales-force-in-opioids-pullback

https://assets.bwbx.io/images/users/iqjWHBFdfxIU/i4ZBXIWwtRhI/v0/1200x883.jpg

Oxycontin-maker Purdue Pharma LP cut the remainder of its sales force this week, the latest move by the company to distance itself from opioids as it faces accusations that it contributed to the nation’s addiction crisis.

The Stamford, Connecticut-based drugmaker said it will retain about 550 employees after chopping around 350 positions, including about 250 employees focused on promoting the treatment for opioid-induced constipation, Symproic. That product launched last year in partnership with Japan-based Shionogi & Co. The other employees worked in the company’s headquarters.

#Opioides #Purdue_Pharma #Sackler

Enquête. OxyContin, un antidouleur addictif à la conquête du monde | Courrier international
►https://www.courrierinternational.com/article/enquete-oxycontin-un-antidouleur-addictif-la-conquete-du-mond

https://www.courrierinternational.com/sites/ci_master/files/styles/image_940/public/illustrations/thumbnails/falco-1.jpg?itok=oHvbr_P0

Face à l’épidémie d’addiction aux opioïdes analgésiques qui a déjà causé 200 000 morts dans le pays, l’establishment médical américain commence à prendre ses distances avec les antalgiques. Les plus hauts responsables de la santé incitent les généralistes à ne plus les prescrire en cas de douleur chronique, expliquant que rien ne prouve leur efficacité sur le long terme et que de nombreux indices montrent qu’ils mettent en danger les patients.

Les prescriptions d’OxyContin ont baissé d’environ 40 % depuis 2010, ce qui se traduit par plusieurs milliards de manque à gagner pour son fabricant, basé dans le Connecticut, Purdue Pharma.

La famille Sackler, propriétaire du laboratoire, a donc décidé d’adopter une nouvelle stratégie : faire adopter l’oxycodone, l’analgésique qui a déclenché la crise des opioïdes aux États-Unis, dans les cabinets médicaux du reste du monde.
Best-seller pharmaceutique

Un réseau d’entreprises internationales détenues par la famille est en train de s’implanter en Amérique latine, en Asie, au Moyen-Orient, en Afrique et dans d’autres régions, et d’encourager le recours généralisé aux antalgiques dans des endroits très mal outillés pour faire face aux ravages de l’abus d’opioïdes et de la dépendance qu’ils induisent.

Pour mener à bien cette expansion mondiale, ces entreprises, regroupées sous le nom collectif de Mundipharma, utilisent quelques-unes des méthodes controversées de marketing qui ont fait de l’OxyContin un best-seller pharmaceutique aux États-Unis. Au Brésil, en Chine et ailleurs, les sociétés mettent en place des séminaires de formation dans lesquels on encourage les médecins à surmonter leur “opiophobie” et à prescrire des antalgiques. Elles sponsorisent des campagnes de sensibilisation qui poussent les gens à solliciter un traitement médical de leurs douleurs chroniques. Elles vont même jusqu’à proposer des ristournes aux patients afin de rendre plus abordables les opioïdes sur ordonnance.
Les leçons de l’expérience américaine

Le directeur américain de la santé publique [surgeon general], Vivek H. Murthy, a déclaré qu’il conseillerait à ses homologues étrangers d’être “très prudents” avec les médicaments opiacés, et de tirer les leçons des “erreurs” américaines. “Je voudrais les exhorter à envisager avec une extrême prudence la commercialisation de ces médicaments”, a-t-il déclaré dans une interview.

Aujourd’hui, avec le recul, nous nous rendons compte que pour nombre d’entre eux les bénéfices ne compensaient pas les risques.”

L’ancien commissaire de l’agence des produits alimentaires et des médicaments [Food and Drug Administration] David A. Kessler a estimé que l’aveuglement face aux dangers des antalgiques constitue l’une des plus grosses erreurs de la médecine moderne. Évoquant l’entrée de Mundipharma sur les marchés étrangers, il a déclaré que la démarche était “exactement la même que celle des grands fabricants de cigarettes. Alors que les États-Unis prennent des mesures pour limiter les ventes sur leur territoire, l’entreprise se développe à l’international.”
Un marketing agressif

Des représentants de Mundipharma et certains de ses matériels promotionnels s’emploient à minorer les risques d’addiction des patients aux opioïdes. Ces affirmations rappellent la première campagne de commercialisation de l’OxyContin aux États-Unis à la fin des années 1990, dans laquelle Purdue avait trompé les médecins au sujet de la nature addictive du médicament.

En 2007, Purdue et trois hauts responsables de l’entreprise ont plaidé coupable face aux accusations fédérales de publicité mensongère sur leurs médicaments. Ils ont été condamnés à une amende de 635 millions de dollars. L’agence fédérale de lutte contre la drogue [Drug Enforcement Administration] a estimé en 2003 que le marketing “agressif, excessif et inapproprié” de l’entreprise avait “aggravé de manière très importante” l’usage abusif et le trafic illégal de l’OxyContin.

Purdue était une petite firme pharmaceutique new-yorkaise lorsque les frères Mortimer et Raymond Sackler, tous deux

[...]
Harriet RyanLisa Girion et Scott Glover

#Mundipharma #Sackler #Opioides

Pre-Crime Policing Is Closer Than You Think, and It’s Freaking People Out
▻https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/7xmmvy/why-does-hartford-have-so-many-cameras-precrime

Pre-Crime Policing Is Closer Than You Think, and It’s Freaking People Out Hartford is embracing a sophisticated surveillance apparatus that some civil liberties advocates and residents fear marks an ominous trend. The city of Hartford, Connecticut, isn’t all that large—it boasts a population of around 124,000—and is comprised mostly of people of color. If you ask Camille Giraldo Kritzman, a community organizer with the immigration advocacy group CT Students for a Dream, that’s why it’s (...)

#algorithme #CCTV #drone #criminalité #surveillance #vidéo-surveillance #biométrie #facial #ACLU (...)

##criminalité ##MinorityReport

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The #Opioid Timebomb: The #Sackler family and how their painkiller fortune helps bankroll London arts | London Evening Standard
▻https://www.standard.co.uk/news/health/the-opioid-timebomb-the-sackler-family-and-how-their-painkiller-fortune-

We sent all 33 non-profits the same key questions including: will they rename their public space (as some organisations have done when issues arose regarding former benefactors)? And will they accept future Sackler philanthropy?

About half the respondents, including the Royal Opera House and the National Gallery, where Dame Theresa Sackler is respectively an honorary director and a patron, declined to answer either question.

Of the rest, none said it planned to erase the Sackler name from its public space. The organisations’ positions were more guarded on future donations.

Only the V&A, Oxford University, the Royal Court Theatre and the National Maritime Museum said outright that they were open to future Sackler grants.

The V&A said: “The Sackler family continue to be a valuable donor to the V&A and we are grateful for their ongoing support.”

Millions for London: Where Sackler money has gone
MUSEUMS AND GALLERIES

Serpentine Galleries

Grants received/pledged: £5,500,000
Used to fund (among other things): Serpentine Sackler Gallery
Will you accept future Sackler grants? Won’t say

Tate

Grants received/pledged: £4,650,000
Used to fund (among other things): Sackler Gallery, Sackler Escalators, Sackler Octagon
Will you accept future Sackler grants? Won’t say

Dulwich Picture Gallery

Grants received/pledged: £3,491,000
Used to fund (among other things): Sackler Centre for Arts Education
Will you accept future Sackler grants? Won’t say

V&A Museum

Grants received/pledged: £2,500,000
Used to fund (among other things): Sackler Courtyard
Will you accept future Sackler grants? Yes

The Design Museum

Grants received/pledged: £1,500,000
Used to fund (among other things): Sackler Library and Archive
Will you accept future Sackler grants? No reply

Natural History Museum

Grants received/pledged: £1,255,000
Used to fund (among other things): Sackler Biodiversity Imaging Laboratory
Will you accept future Sackler grants? Subject to vetting that typically takes into account “reputational risk” and “all relevant new information about the donor in the public domain”

National Gallery

Grants received/pledged: £1,050,000
Used to fund (among other things): Sackler Room (Room 34)
Will you accept future Sackler grants? Won’t say

National Portrait Gallery

Grants received/pledged: £1,000,000
Used to fund (among other things): Pledged grant still being vetted
Will you accept future Sackler grants? Being vetted. Subject to vetting that typically takes into account “reputational risk” and “all relevant new information about the donor in the public domain”

The Garden Museum

Grants received/pledged: £850,000
Used to fund (among other things): Sackler Garden
Will you accept future Sackler grants? No reply

National Maritime Museum

Grants received/pledged: £230,000
Used to fund (among other things): Sackler Research Fellowships
Will you accept future Sackler grants? Yes

Museum of London

Grants received/pledged: Refused to disclose grants received
Used to fund (among other things): Sackler Hall
Will you accept future Sackler grants? Subject to vetting that typically takes into account “reputational risk” and “all relevant new information about the donor in the public domain”

Royal Academy of Arts

Grants received/pledged: Refused to disclose grants received
Used to fund (among other things): Sackler Wing, Sackler Sculpture Gallery
Will you accept future Sackler grants? Subject to vetting that typically takes into account “reputational risk” and “all relevant new information about the donor in the public domain”

THE PERFORMING ARTS

Old Vic

Grants received/pledged: £2,817,000
Used to fund (among other things): Productions and projects
Will you accept future Sackler grants? Won’t say

Royal Opera House

Grants received/pledged: £2,500,000
Used to fund (among other things): Won’t say
Will you accept future Sackler grants? Won’t say

National Theatre

Grants received/pledged: £2,000,000
Used to fund (among other things): Sackler Pavilion
Will you accept future Sackler grants? Won’t say

Shakespeare’s Globe

Grants received/pledged: £1,660,000
Used to fund (among other things): Sackler Studios
Will you accept future Sackler grants? Won’t say

Royal Court Theatre

Grants received/pledged: £360,000
Used to fund (among other things): Sackler Trust Trainee Scheme
Will you accept future Sackler grants? Yes

UNIVERSITIES/RESEARCH

University of Oxford

Grants received/pledged: £11,000,000
Used to fund (among other things): Bodleian Sackler Library, Keeper of Antiquities
Will you accept future Sackler grants? Yes

University of Sussex

Grants received/pledged: £8,400,000
Used to fund (among other things): Sackler Centre for Consciousness Science
Will you accept future Sackler grants? Won’t say

King’s College, London

Grants received/pledged: £6,950,000
Used to fund (among other things): Sackler Institute for Translational Neurodevelopment
Will you accept future Sackler grants? Subject to vetting that typically takes into account “reputational risk” and “all relevant new information about the donor in the public domain”

The Francis Crick Institute

Grants received/pledged: £5,000,000
Used to fund (among other things): One-off funds raised via CRUK to help build the Crick
Will you accept future Sackler grants? N/A

UCL

Grants received/pledged: £2,654,000
Used to fund (among other things): Sackler Institute for Musculo-Skeletal Research
Will you accept future Sackler grants? Subject to vetting that typically takes into account “reputational risk” and “all relevant new information about the donor in the public domain”

Royal College of Art

Grants received/pledged: £2,500,000
Used to fund (among other things): Sackler Building
Will you accept future Sackler grants? Subject to vetting that typically takes into account “reputational risk” and “all relevant new information about the donor in the public domain”

The Courtauld Institute of Art

Grants received/pledged: £1,170,000
Used to fund (among other things): Sackler Research Fellowship, Sackler Lecture Series
Will you accept future Sackler grants? Won’t say

Royal Ballet School

Grants received/pledged: £1,000,000
Used to fund (among other things): Won’t say
Will you accept future Sackler grants? Won’t say

Imperial College London

Grants received/pledged: £618,000
Used to fund (among other things): Knee research
Will you accept future Sackler grants? Subject to vetting that typically takes into account “reputational risk” and “all relevant new information about the donor in the public domain”

Old Royal Naval College

Grants received/pledged: £500,000
Used to fund (among other things): Sackler Gallery
Will you accept future Sackler grants? Won’t say

OTHER

Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew

Grants received/pledged: £3,100,000
Used to fund (among other things): Sackler Crossing footbridge
Will you accept future Sackler grants? Subject to vetting that typically takes into account “reputational risk” and “all relevant new information about the donor in the public domain”

Moorfields Eye Hospital

Grants received/pledged: £3,000,000
Used to fund (among other things): New eye centre (pledged only)
Will you accept future Sackler grants? Won’t say

The London Library

Grants received/pledged: £1,000,000
Used to fund (among other things): The Sackler Study
Will you accept future Sackler grants? Won’t say

The Prince’s Trust

Grants received/pledged: £775,000
Used to fund (among other things): Programmes for disadvantaged youth
Will you accept future Sackler grants? Subject to vetting that typically takes into account “reputational risk” and “all relevant new information about the donor in the public domain”

Westminster Abbey

Grants received/pledged: £500,000
Used to fund (among other things): Restoration of Henry VII Chapel
Will you accept future Sackler grants? Won’t say

Royal Hospital for Neurodisability

Grants received/pledged: £350,000
Used to fund (among other things): Won’t say
Will you accept future Sackler grants? No reply

cc @hlc