Twenty five years after an amendment to the National Organ Transplant Act made it illegal for HIV-positive Americans to receive organ transplants from HIV-positive donors — or to even conduct research on such transplants — a bipartisan group of senators is hoping to reverse course.

Sens. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) and Tom Coburn (R-OK) introduced the HIV Organ Policy Equity (HOPE) Act in the Senate on Thursday to “establish a regular review process in which the Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary would evaluate the progress of medical research” into organ transplants between two HIV-positive people, with the eventual goal of eliminating the ban on such procedures entirely.

The amendment that led to the current ban was a consequence of the poor understanding of HIV/AIDS-related matters at the time. But as Coburn — who is a physician — said in a press release introducing the legislation, “Our scientific understanding of AIDS is much better than when this research ban was established. Those infected with HIV are now living much longer and, as a consequence, are suffering more kidney and liver failures. If research shows positive results, HIV positive patients will have an increased pool of donors.”

The number of HIV-positive patients successfully receiving liver, kidney, and heart transplants has been on the rise overall, as there is no formal law prohibiting HIV-positive patients from receiving organs from Americans who do not carry the virus. But the new push to end the ban on transplants between two HIV-positive individuals reflects the huge strides in HIV treatments and medical innovation over the last two decades, including the recent FDA approval of a once-a-day HIV treatment pill and vastly increased life expectancy for HIV-positive Americans.

Opening up avenues for organ transplants is especially critical given America’s unsustainable dearth of annually performed transplant operations, which leaves more than 70,000 Americans on transplant lists without the organs they need every year. “With so many lives at stake, it is time to end this outdated ban on research into organ donations between HIV-positive individuals,” Boxer said in the release. A concurrent bill has been introduced in the House of Representatives by Congresswoman Lois Capps (D-CA), a registered nurse.

As public health advocates and federal regulators increasingly turn their attention to dangerous energy drink products, one of the industry’s most popular brands — Monster — is relabeling itself as an energy “drink” instead of a “dietary supplement,” the Denver Post reports.

Dietary supplement manufacturers have greater leeway over what types of ingredients they can include in their products, but also face more stringent reporting requirements when it comes to possible adverse effects on consumers. While it is unclear whether or not the labeling change — and the corresponding changes in the regulations Monster is subject to — will lead the company to drop controversial caffeine-like ingredients like taurine from its drinks, the decision reflects lawmakers’ recent inquiries into energy product safety:

Generally speaking, companies have more leeway in the ingredients they can add to dietary supplements. With products considered to be food or drinks, companies can only use ingredients that are approved food additives or that are “generally recognized as safe,” said Elizabeth Campbell, a senior adviser at EAS Consulting Group, which specializes in FDA regulatory matters.

Among the issues lawmakers have raised over energy drinks is that they sometimes contain little-known ingredients, such as the taurine used in some Monster drinks. Campbell, who previously worked at the FDA for 35 years, said taurine is not approved for use in food and is not listed in the database of notifications for “generally recognized as safe” ingredients. Companies are responsible for submitting their own research to show an ingredient is “generally recognized as safe.”

A spokesman for Monster Beverage was not able to confirm the report in Beverage Digest or whether the Corona, Calif., company would remove any ingredients as a result of any possible labeling changes. [...]

Notably, companies that make dietary supplements are required to report incidents of adverse effects to the FDA while food makers are not. A spokeswoman for the FDA did not immediately know how many, if any, reports of adverse effects Monster had made to the agency.

The number of energy drink-related emergency room visits doubled to a staggering 20,000 between 2007 and 2011. Excess caffeine in easily-available beverages first came under the public spotlight when consumption of the alcoholic malt beverage and energy drink Four Loko started sending teenagers to the hospital, eventually leading the company to drop caffeine from its products.

The majority of parents want their teens’ doctors to be able to dispense birth control if they find out the adolescent has become sexually active — but, according to the results from a new study published in the Journal of Adolescent Health, parents’ comfort levels and the most effective methods of contraception are in direct conflict with each other. Just 18 percent of parents would be comfortable with their teen’s doctor giving them an intrauterine device (IUD), despite the fact that doctors actually recommend that long-lasting form of birth control as the first contraceptive that should be offered to young adults.

UC San Francisco researchers posed the following question to parents: “If your teen’s doctor found out your daughter was having sex, is it acceptable or unacceptable to you for the doctor to provide birth control to your teen confidentially?” Participants were asked to rank their comfort level with each contraceptive method — including birth control pills, condoms, emergency contraception, a birth control patch, or an IUD — on a scale from 1 to 4. Oral birth control had the most support from parents at 59 percent, condoms came in second at 51 percent, and Plan B got 45 percent. But the IUD ranked dead last, winning just 18 percent of respondents’ approval.

That could be because parents worry about IUDs having a lasting impact on their daughters’ fertility, an issue with the contraceptive method in the 1970s that is no longer a problem today. Adults may have also bought into the misguided idea that long-lasting birth control somehow gives license to promiscuity, since it protects against pregnancy for an extended period of time. But medical experts are working to dispel the stigma surrounding IUDs — the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology already encourages doctors to offer teens long-lasting forms of contraception, since they’re the most effective way to prevent unintended pregnancies.

But even more generally, the results from the UC California study underline the fact that adults aren’t as comfortable with addressing teens’ sexual health as they need to be. “The lower than expected acceptability of condoms likely reflects parents’ overall low acceptability of contraception in general for their daughters,” the lead researcher of the study told the Atlantic. But considering the fact that U.S. teen birth rates remain much higher than the rates in other developed countries, it’s more important than ever that young adults across the country are able to access the reproductive resources they need.

And ultimately, the study speaks to larger societal issues surrounding sexuality, perhaps even unintentionally. The fact that researchers focused entirely on parents’ attitudes toward teenage girls, without addressing the fact that teenage boys also have a role in practicing safe sex and preventing pregnancy, reflects the fundamental gender-based imbalance in the way society approaches sex.

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) has decided to reject Obamacare’s optional Medicaid expansion, opting instead for an alternative — and risky — plan for providing low-income Americans with private health coverage that will prevent many of them from accessing the types of services that they can get under Medicaid.

As Politico reports, Walker’s plan “would take thousands of people currently on Wisconsin’s relatively generous Medicaid program — people who are above the federal poverty level — and move them into the Obamacare exchange instead, where they can get federally subsidized private insurance.” The plan would actually cut Wisconsin’s Medicaid program in the aggregate, shifting low-income Wisconsinites above the federal poverty level away from the public insurance program and into the state’s Obamacare-funded private insurance marketplace. It is also estimated to cut the state’s uninsurance rate in half, and Walker claims that the move is intended to “preserve an essential safety net for our neediest, while protecting our state’s taxpayers from uncertainty” over whether or not the federal government will follow through on its promise to fund the lion’s share of states’ Medicaid expansions.

While it’s an interesting proposal from a GOP governor who is not known for compromising with political opponents, it’s still a raw deal for low-income Americans, as it will restrict the number of specialty medical services that poor Wisconsinites have access to. That’s because Medicaid provides a range of benefits that lower-tier private health plans — which are the only kind that poor Americans will be able to afford under Walker’s plan — don’t cover. As Harold Pollack wrote for The Incidental Economist, “There is no genuine private-sector equivalent for many Medicaid services provided to disabled individuals with special needs.” Those services include specialized benefits such as home care and social worker visits to assist impoverished first-time moms — benefits that might not be necessary for well-positioned Americans who may opt for a lower-cost health plan, but make an enormous difference to low-income populations with unique needs.

Physical disabilities, mental health issues, and a whole host of other socially and financially costly medical conditions disproportionately plague low-income Americans. To illustrate exactly how Walker’s alternative to expanding Medicaid will tangibly affect Wisconsin residents, consider a low-income pregnant woman who suffers from depression. Medicaid currently covers mental health services for “medically needy” pregnant women up until six months after they give birth — but states that expand Medicaid under Obamacare will be able to provide moms these mental services for long after that cutoff. Granted, private plans sold on Obamacare marketplaces must meet federal benchmarks and provide an array of “essential health benefits,” including mental services. But the rules governing the scope and quality of these services are much less stringent for private plans than they are for Medicaid. That’s pretty significant considering the fact that 82 percent of infants living in households with depressed mothers were enrolled in Medicaid or CHIP programs.

Read more

The Centers for Disease Control on Thursday released a first-of-its-kind study showing that the use of emergency contraception is rising in the United States, while its repeated use remains “extremely low.” This means that increasing numbers of women between the ages of 15 and 44 are able to control their own reproductive decisions, thus reducing the number of unintended pregnancies and the number of abortions.

But the news is bound to elicit outrage from the conservative right, who often try to draw a non-existent connection between emergency contraception — often called Plan B — and medication abortions. Here’s how to win the argument for emergency contraception:

1.THE SCIENCE: Plan B is not an abortion. Emergency contraception works in one of two ways. It can either stop an egg from being released, holding it in the ovaries so that it cannot become fertilized. Or, if an egg has already been released from the ovaries, the pill increases mucus in the uterine lining, which slows sperm and renders it unable to fertilize an egg. It does not flush out a fertilized egg, and thus cannot be considered an abortion by any definition. AsapSCIENCE put out an extremely helpful video explaining the science behind emergency contraception, and why it’s different than abortive medicine:

2. THE NUMBERS: Plan B reduces abortions. When conservatives who oppose abortion shut down at the mention of emergency contraception, they’re doing themselves a disservice. Access to Plan B is a proven method for reducing the abortion rate. In the year 2000, 51,000 abortions were prevented thanks to Plan B. And in other countries where emergency contraception has been readily available to women for years, the abortion rate goes down. In France, for example, the abortion rate is half of what it is in the U.S., largely thanks to the availability of non-prescription, over the counter, Plan B.

3. THE SUPPORT: Physicians want more Plan B. Doctors’ groups across the country have encouraged increasing access to emergency contraception. Groups including the American Public Health Association, the American Medical Association, the American College Of Obstetricians And Gynecologists, and the American Academy of Pediatrics all support over-the-counter access to Plan B. Unfortunately, such access is still limited. A girl under 17 cannot get the pill without a doctor’s note, despite no medically necessary reason to require her to get one. Physicians oppose this rule, and have spoken out in favor of changing it.

The latest conservative crusade against Plan B has revolved around insurance coverage of Plan B, with company CEOs (most notably the head of national craft store chain Hobby Lobby) arguing that they will not cover emergency contraception since it’s an “abortion-inducing drug.” But even as they continue to drag out this fight — taking it to the courts and trying to reverse the law — the facts aren’t in their favor.

On a typical Valentine’s Day, consumers buy more than 58 million pounds of chocolate. Since 70 percent of that chocolate is owned by two companies, Hershey and Mars, most of it was actually processed from genetically modified (GM) corn and soybeans.

In fact, an estimated 90 percent of processed food in grocery stores use GM corn and soybeans patented by agriculture giant Monsanto Company. That includes chocolates, which contain soy lecithin and high fructose corn syrup — a sweetener that’s been tied to the obesity epidemic.

Milk chocolate is also likely to contain milk from cows injected with Monsanto’s hormone rBGH, which was banned in the European Union, Japan, Australia, and Canada because of the risks associated with increased hormones in cows and humans. The hormone was approved in the US when a Monsanto employee, Margaret Miller, oversaw a report on rBGH’s safety, took a job at the FDA, and promptly approved her own report.

Though there is no conclusive evidence a box of GM chocolate will endanger your loved one’s health, the ubiquity of GM corn is still cause for concern. GMOs were marketed in the 1990s as a way to cut down on toxic pesticides, as the plants themselves were modified to repel pests and weeds. But a new crop of studies show these GM seeds are giving rise to evolved weeds and pests with beefed-up tolerance for pesticides. Farmers then have little choice but to apply heavier doses of even more toxic chemicals in an arms race with nature.

The GM corn and soy takeover has also helped Monsanto run hundreds of farmers out of business. Monsanto has won more than $23 million by suing small farmers accused of violating Monsanto’s patent by saving seeds for the next harvest. Monsanto dedicates formidable resources — 75 staffers and $10 million a year — to the sole purpose of investigating and prosecuting these farmers. The vast majority of these lawsuits end in settlements, and Monsanto has won every case that does go to trial. But for the first time, the Supreme Court may intervene in this vicious cycle when they take up the case of a soybean farmer sued by Monsanto next week.

The processed chocolate industry, meanwhile, has worked hard to obscure the true cost of their products. Hershey, Nestle, and Mars were among the companies that campaigned to defeat a GM-labeling initiative in California last year. Together, opponents of Proposition 37 spent $46 million against GM labeling, with Hershey, Nestle, and Mars alone dropping nearly $400,000 in one month. Despite the initiative’s defeat, labeling has the support of 91 percent of Americans and it is already a requirement in Europe.

So chocolate lovers don’t despair, Grist has a guide for buying more ethical chocolate.

The United States’ persistently high rates of sexually transmitted infections are incurring billions of dollars in medical costs, according to new data released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention just in time for Valentines Day. The new report details what one of the CDC researchers describes as “an ongoing, severe, STI epidemic” in this country.

The U.S. has the highest rate of STDs of any nation in the industrialized world, with roughly 110 million total incidents of infection in 2008. Treating all of those infections cost the country about $16 billion, the CDC estimated. And the the ongoing issue is hitting young adults the hardest: Americans between the ages of 15 and 24 years old account for just 25 percent of the nation’s sexually active population, but as much as half of all sexually transmitted infections.

Health officials explain that, although the high cost of STDs is entirely preventable, Americans aren’t taking enough steps to safeguard their sexual health — particularly in regards to the HPV vaccine, which too few adolescents are receiving:

“STIs take a big health and economic toll on men and women in the United States, especially our youth,” CDC epidemiologist Catherine Lindsey Satterwhite, who led the study of incidence and prevalence, told NBC News. [...]

The story could have been different, insisted Matthew Golden, the director of Public Health Seattle and King County HIV/STD Program and a professor of medicine at the University of Washington Center for AIDS and STD. The good news, he said, is that rates for most viral and bacterial infections, including HIV, have stabilized or even dropped.

The “epidemic” Satterwhite speaks of, he said, is driven almost entirely by two bugs: HPV, and chlamydia. Chlamydia, a bacterial infection, is easily curable if it’s diagnosed. And there’s a very effective vaccine for the most dangerous forms of HPV that can trigger cervical, oral, anal, and penile cancers, and cause genital warts.

But, Golden argued, “we have snatched defeat from the jaws of victory” by not pursuing effective strategies, such as school-based universal access to the HPV vaccine.

Satterwhite’s study estimated that HPV is by far the most common STD in the United States, with 14.1 million new HPV infections in 2008 as well as 79.1 million ongoing infections that were already prevalent that year. Yet previous CDC reports have found that unacceptably low numbers of Americans are getting vaccinated for HPV, as just about 35 percent of girls between 13 and 17 have received their recommended HPV shots in 2011 — a sobering statistic that contributes to the fact that HPV-related cancers have been on the rise over the last several years.

Right-wing hysteria surrounding the HPV vaccine has misconstrued it as somehow related to sexual promiscuity. In reality, it’s simply a preventative measure to protect Americans’ sexual health, and federal officials recommend it should be administered to girls and boys starting at the age of 11.

But conservative fearmongering around issues related to sexuality — which has contributed to a shame-based culture that pushes ineffective abstinence-only education on youth, rather than fully educating them about their bodies — has directly impacted the current public health epidemic. “How could we possibly have done this to ourselves?” Golden asked. “We have a solution; we have to make it happen.”