The Medicare Trustees had great news for American seniors on Friday: the program’s solvency has been extended for two full years past what the trustees predicted in 2012.

In their annual report, the trustees wrote that Medicare’s hospital insurance trust fund will be fully solvent through 2026. That’s over a decade longer than what the trustees projected back in 2009. In general, Medicare inflation has been lower than general economic growth over the last three years.

That means that the program has more funds to pay for seniors’ medical care, making extreme cost-cutting measures such as slashing benefits for prescription drugs or other services unnecessary. Congressional Republicans have regularly insisted on reducing the federal deficit by making seniors pay more for their medical care.

The upward projections are likely a consequence of several factors. First, the 10-year revision from 2009 is a direct result of Obamacare. The health law takes $700 billion of excessive and wasteful payments made to private providers that service the Medicare Advantage program and reallocates it to traditional Medicare. Conservatives have made the outlandish claim that this “robs Medicare,” when in fact it does the exact opposite, and Republicans have included the same savings in their own budgets.

Then there’s the fact that that health care cost growth has slowed dramatically in recent years. Studies on the exact reason for that slowdown are conflicted on the extent to which it will be permanent. Some experts believe that it is largely due to lower medical consumption because of the recession, and will return to traditionally higher pre-recession levels as the economy gets better.

Others disagree, crediting structural changes to the health care system encouraged by Obamacare. For instance, the health law incentivizes the creation of accountable care organizations (ACOs) in which doctors, nurses, hospitals, social workers, and pharmacists work together to improve seniors’ health and reducing excess Medicare spending.

That’s a more likely explanation, since Obamacare is already fostering these positive collaborations in health care. In fact, the slowdown in health care cost growth has already forced the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) to revise its long-term deficit projection down by more than $500 billion, since Medicare spending is the primary driver of U.S. debt.

Only time will tell if the changes really are permanent. But for now, it seems that Medicare is only getting stronger — and that’s a huge relief for sick American seniors.

Funding to study the causes and consequences of gun violence is so scarce that one researcher has been pushed into funding her research through online crowdsourcing. You can address a thank-you note to the National Rifle Association (NRA).

Bisakha Sen is an economist at Ohio State who’s previously studied the relationship between background check laws and homicide rates. She found that states with background check laws tended to also have fewer gun homicides and suicides, a conclusion supported by other investigations into rates of gun violence.

Sen wanted to follow up by conducting a similar correlation study examining links between other gun policies and indices of gun culture (rates of hunting and gun ownership) and rates of crime and violence. Unable to find any traditional sources of funding, she turned to Microryza, an online funding site similar to Kickstarter. Though the Professor estimated the study would cost $25,000 to complete, she’s only raised $12,230 by May 31st, the original deadline (it’s been extended by six weeks).

While Sen’s solution may be novel, her predicament is anything but. Shockingly few — less than twenty, by one count — academics in the United States focus their research agenda on gun violence. That’s because, in the mid-90s, the NRA helped push through legislation preventing the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) from funding any scientific research that “may be used to advocate or promote gun control.” President Obama, arguing that research on gun violence isn’t the same as advocating for gun control, has ordered the CDC to resume studying the public health effects of gun violence, but that can’t fully circumvent Congress’ gag order.

In practice, this edict has crippled research on gun violence. The federal government funds roughly 60 percent of all academic research, meaning that access to federal funding can strongly affect the research area individual scholars might be able to pursue. As a consequence, gun researchers are few and far between, meaning that we know far less about what sort of policies can best save lives than we might otherwise.

Sen’s research is not without its critics. Garen Wintemute, one of the country’s most respected gun violence scholars and no friend to the NRA, worries that Sen’s methodology can’t distinguish between causation and correlation with respect to variables like rates of gun ownership and weak gun laws. Nevertheless, the broader underlying problem that her fundraising strategy reveals — the NRA-supported and Congressionally-imposed restrictions on academic research — remains.

Friday marks the fourth anniversary of Dr. George Tiller’s murder. Specifically because of his work providing women with reproductive health care, the Kansas-area abortion doctor was shot and killed by an anti-choice activist in 2009. His killer is currently serving a life term in prison.

Dr. Tiller — who was one of the few medical professionals available to perform late-term abortion services for the women who desparately need them — has become one of the most prominent symbols of the anti-abortion harassment leveled against members of the reproductive rights community. After a period of heightened violence against abortion providers in the 1990s that left seven people dead, Tiller’s murder was the first for more than a decade. In the years since his death, abortion rights activists have invoked his name as a testament to the brave work that all abortion providers do, often even at the risk of their health and safety.

Several years after Tiller’s murder and his killer’s conviction, violent anti-abortion harassment has hardly subsided. The handful of remaining late-term abortion doctors in the nation still face serious threats and intimidation, and are forced to tighten security as their health clinics with metal detectors and security cameras. The reproductive health clinics that don’t provide late-term services aren’t necessarily safe, either. Women attempting to enter health clinics — sometimes, even Planned Parenthood sites that don’t provide any type of abortion care — routinely have to face shame-based taunts, chants, and signs from anti-abortion protesters. Sometimes women are doused with holy water. Once, a woman whose baby died in utero had to walk past a group of protesters singing “Happy Birthday, dead baby” to enter the doctor’s office to have it removed.

Julie Burkhart, the women’s health activist who purchased Tiller’s old clinic building, is all too aware of the reality that abortion providers face. Over the past several months, as Burkhart has worked to re-open the clinic so that Wichita women will have access to nearby abortion services for the first time since Tiller’s death, she’s had an uphill battle. Her home has been picketed and she’s been referred to as a “killer” in anti-abortion pamphlets. Several of the contractors working on the building’s renovations were harassed. Increased security at the new clinic is Burkhart’s top priority, especially after radical anti-choice activists — including Tiller’s murderer himself — suggested she’s made herself into a shooting target by taking over Tiller’s property.

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Evidently, pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps isn’t enough to overcome a system that’s stacked against you.

A new study by researchers at the University of Georgia finds that young teenagers from poor communities who are good students, in good mental health, and well-adjusted socially end up with high levels of stress hormones, high blood pressure, and a higher body mass index by age 19. In turn, that compromises their immune systems and puts them at greater risk for developing conditions such as obesity, cancer, hypertension, stroke, and cardiovascular disease at a young age.

“Exposure to stress over time gets under the skin of children and adolescents, which makes them more vulnerable to disease later in life,” said lead researcher Gene Brody.

Poverty and social exclusion are already major risk factors for a host of medical problems, including mental health disorders, diabetes, obesity, and heart disease. But the new research suggests that the stress of escaping poverty’s shackles causes long-term damage to young Americans’ health.

“The children who are doing good at school, playing well with friends, have high self-esteem and don’t have behavior problems are often thought of as beating the odds or being resilient in the face of adversity. We hypothesized maybe at one level they are resilient, but looking at their biology and asking what is the cost, we find a physiologic toll to attaining behavior resilience,” said Brody.

Brody recommends that young Americans address this issue by getting preventative health screenings, noting that “it is very important for them to be monitored and have yearly checkups” to find out if they are at risk for a chronic disease.

Unfortunately, poor and isolated populations tend not to have access to quality health care. Poor communities have significantly lower numbers of hospitals that service them, and the financial burden of medical care prices many of the poor out of the system entirely.

One way that state officials can ease these disparities is by expanding Medicaid under Obamacare. The health law also mandates that preventative services be provided for free, and expands funding for community health centers in an effort to bridge the coverage gap between the rich and the poor.

But many Republican governors have been reticent to take part in the Medicaid expansion, meaning secluded and poor populations in their states won’t have the resources to manage chronic illnesses — even if they receive free screenings through a local clinic. Texas legislators voted to deny health coverage for 1.5 million low-income residents this past week, even though some low-income Texan families are so desperate for medical care that they’ve resorted to crossing the border into Mexico for services and sharing their insulin.

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Two global meat giants with shady food safety histories are planning to merge in hopes of becoming the most powerful meat producer in the world. Smithfield Foods, the largest pork producer in the U.S., has been bought by China’s Shuanghui International Holdings Limited for $4.7 billion. If deal is cleared by Smithfield shareholders and the U.S. government, the global meat industry, controlled by just a handful of companies, will become even less competitive than it already is.

With one giant conglomeration controlling most of the meat market, food safety standards may drop to even more abysmal depths. Neither Smithfield nor Shuanghui have shown much interest in reforming their production practices, even after sickening thousands. In 2011, a Shuanghui plant was caught feeding their pigs an illegal additive, clenbuterol, to speed muscle growth. Five people were charged with harsh criminal sentences and dozens of others were punished. A month after the discovery, nearly 300 people fell violently ill from eating clenbuterol-tainted pork.

Smithfield, meanwhile, routinely abuses animals, employees, food safety, and the environment. In 1997, two slaughterhouses owned by the company were found guilty of dumping waste in a major Virginia river. Smithfield was fined $12.6 million for nearly 7,000 violations of the Clean Water Act — but that didn’t stop them from cutting dangerous corners in other areas. Millions of gallons of waste from Smithfield factories is dumped in enormous lagoons that easily overflow and have contaminated rivers. In 2010, a Humane Society video exposed horrific conditions inside a Smithfield factory. The company pledged to reform their practices within ten years, but it has yet to be determined if Smithfield will keep the promise now that they have been sold to Shuanghui.

The merger could also mean Smithfield’s factory farms will expand even more aggressively to keep up with new demand. Though Americans are stereotyped as ravenous meat-lovers, pork consumption in China dwarfs that in the U.S. by a staggering 41.6 million tons a year. China’s pork production has shot up dramatically in the past few decades and now comprises half the pork in the entire world:

On the other side of the globe, Americans are eating less pork — and less meat in general. The new, intensive demand from China will likely bolster and expand the factory farming operations that might have declined if Americans continue to trend away from industrial pork.

An estimated 3.1 million young Americans who would have lacked health coverage gained access to it thanks to an Obamacare provision that allows adults up to age 26 to remain on their parents’ health insurance. A new study published in the New England Journal of Medicine concludes that shift saved young people from paying — and hospitals from absorbing — $147 million in high medical bills for treating catastrophic conditions such as broken bones, poisonings, and traumatic brain injuries in 2011 alone.

Without the health law’s protections, uninsured young Americans would have been forced to foot the bill for these urgent care visits. “Some of those costs would have been born by individuals,” said Andrew Mulcahy, one of the study’s authors. “Some of those costs would have been ultimately been born by hospitals as uncompensated care.”

If those young people had been forced to rely on catastrophic emergency room care, they could have been at risk for financial ruin. The average ER trip costs 40 percent more than what most Americans spend on monthly rent, with the price of serious injury treatments ranging anywhere from $1,000 to $3,600 depending on the hospital. Just one serious medical condition can bankrupt Americans.

But the other option — forgoing care altogether — could be even worse, since that doesn’t help people get any better. Untreated medical issues can lead to lost productivity and could end up getting young adults fired from their jobs, or prevent them from finding one that offers health coverage. The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) estimates that serious injuries contribute to more than $465 billion in medical spending and lost productivity every year.

Obamacare has eliminated those scenarios for millions of young Americans by giving them access to health coverage. Marian Mulkey, an official with the non-partisan California HealthCare Foundation, heralded the study’s findings as a solid victory for consumers. “That’s exactly what the law intended,” said Mulkey.

There’s been a slew of good news for Obamacare recently. Insurers’ opening bids for Obamacare’s insurance marketplaces have been encouraging, and employers have been stepping up workplace wellness programs for their workers in response to federal incentives in the health law.

The Republican nominee for Massachusetts’ senate seat refuses to say whether he supports the Blunt Amendment — a measure that would allow employers to choose to deny their employees insurance coverage for contraception costs.

Gabriel Gomez has reportedly been asked several times by reporters whether he would vote for the amendment, and each time has avoided answering. At a press conference Thursday, he once again ducked: “I’m not sure how much more clear I can be,” he began. He then offered an answer that avoided the question of voting entirely. “Contraception should be available over the counter,” he said. “They should take the politics out of it. And they should take the pharmaceutical companies out of it.”

This echoes an op-ed by Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal (R) calling for over-the-counter contraception access. While this could help to de-politicize contraceptive care, it doesn’t help with the prohibitively high costs of some contraception that, despite Gomez’s claim to the contrary, can be arbitrarily enforced by pharmaceutical companies. It also avoids the issue of how to deal with intrauterine devices, or IUDs, which are the most effective form of birth control but require administration by a gynecologist.

Gomez, though trying to portray himself as a moderate, still holds conservative views on women’s reproductive issues as a whole. He opposes the use of public funds to pay for abortion — something that is already illegal, but which Republicans use as a launching point to advocate against funding Planned Parenthood’s preventative services. He has also advocated for giving religious organizations full exemption from covering contraception. Earlier this month, Gomez told a reporter at the Boston Globe, “Honestly, I haven’t read the Blunt Amendment.”

Beatriz, the 22-year-old El Salvadoran woman who needs an emergency abortion in order to survive, will now be allowed to end her pregnancy with a Caesarean section. On Thursday, El Salvador’s health minister approved the C-section procedure for the dying woman, whose health has increasingly worsened throughout her pregnancy.

“The medical team at the Maternity Hospital is ready to act immediately at the slightest sign of danger,” Health Minister Maria Isabel Rodriguez said on Thursday. “For me, what matters is to protect Beatriz’s life.”

Over the past three months, Beatriz’s life has hung in the balance as her deeply conservative country has refused to compromise its stringent abortion ban. In El Salvador, having an abortion is illegal under all circumstances and can result in up to 30 years in prison. Even though Beatriz is carrying a nonviable fetus — it will not be able to survive outside the womb for more than a few hours because it’s missing its brain — her government has continued to deny her the life-saving abortion that would prevent her from dying along with her fetus. On Wednesday, El Salvador’s Supreme Court refused to grant Beatriz an exception to the country’s abortion ban, and there didn’t seem to be much hope left for the pregnant woman who has begged for the chance to live for her 14-month-old son.

However, since Beatriz is now 26 weeks along in her pregnancy, her case is no longer subject to El Salvador’s abortion laws. The reproductive rights advocates who have taken up her case say that at this point, the country’s health ministry can decide on the best option to safeguard Beatriz’s health.

That’s exactly what El Salvador’s health minister has decided to do. Essentially, Beatriz will be given a different means to achieve the same ends. Rodriguez will sidestep the abortion controversy by allowing Beatriz to undergo a C-section surgery — which her fetus will likely not survive — instead of undergoing a less-invasive abortion procedure. The Health Department hasn’t yet decided when Beatriz will have her surgery, but she is now “going through all the medical exams” in order to prepare for it.

Independently of Rodriguez’s announcement that Beatriz may have a C-section, the highest human rights courts in the Americas ordered El Salvador on Thursday to provide Beatriz with the life-saving health care she needs. The Inter-American Court of Human Rights has never before considered a case on abortion, but it stepped in this week to criticize El Salvador’s Supreme Court for its “cruel and callous” decision to deny Beatriz the right to terminate her doomed pregnancy. The Inter-American Court pointed out that forcing the ailing woman to continue carrying her fetus is “a potential death sentence for Beatriz.” The health minister’s decision ensures that El Salvador will be in compliance with the court’s order.

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More than 120 insurance plans want Americans to be able to buy their products on Obamacare’s new insurance marketplaces, one of the key provisions of the health law that will take full effect in 2014. The Obama administration is heralding that news as more proof that the Affordable Care Act is already doing its part to positively impact the health industry, since it will allow more people to choose between different insurance plans to find the one that’s the best fit for them.

Currently, several large insurers have a huge monopoly on the country’s individual insurance market. In most states, half of the entire market is covered by just one company — which doesn’t leave people with very many options when they need to buy health care. Obamacare hopes to change that. If more insurers are forced to compete with each other to provide plans that will be attractive to the American people, they will hopefully have to expand their benefits or lower their prices to remain viable.

And, according to a memo released on Thursday by the White House, administration officials estimate that Obamacare is on track to meet this goal. They’re optimistic about the number of insurers who have already signed up for the health law’s state-level marketplaces, especially since about a fourth of them are new competitors who weren’t offering any plans in those places before. Based on the administration’s estimations, about 90 percent of the Americans who enroll in the marketplaces in 2014 will be able to choose between five or more different insurance companies.

That’s a huge improvement over the current status quo. Of course, there’s no guarantee that the wide variety of insurance plans will compete with each other effectively and make their health care services cheaper for the Americans who need them. But, as the White House put it, “the early signs are promising.”

Setting up the insurance marketplaces is one of the last major Obamacare provisions to take effect — and as the administration works to prepare for that enrollment period to begin in 2014, critics on both sides of the aisle have decried their efforts to implement the health reform law as a “train wreck.” While overhauling the nation’s current health care system certainly hasn’t been without some bumps along the way, Obamacare has not exactly been disastrous so far. The health reform law has already provided better preventative care for millions of previously-insured Americans, forced some health insurers to lower their premiums, and begun to encourage a greater emphasis on primary care.

Wondering how much fat is in that burrito? Google wants to make it a little easier to find out.

The search giant announced that beginning Thursday, consumers will have easier access to “extensive nutrition information” for more than 1,000 common foods. The list includes basics such as meats and vegetables, and even not-so-basics like chow mein.

On one of its official blogs, Google posted some examples of what the detailed search results will look like once the feature is fully implemented:

The company also explained that, over time, it would be “adding more features, foods, and languages” to the service. The current iteration is voice command-compatible and even displays a drop down menu that includes foods similar to what a user searches for.

This isn’t the first time that Google has modified its core services in an effort to promote public health. Google searches related to suicide automatically bring up the national suicide hotline, and activists have been urging Google to implement a similar policy for searches about eating disorders.

Studies have shown that having more knowledge about foods’ nutritional content corresponds with lower obesity rates.

Health officials have repeatedly warned that the United States is facing “epidemic” levels of sexually transmitted infections. Ohio is no exception. Last year, in the state’s most populous county — Cuyahoga County, which includes the Greater Cleveland area — new cases of HIV infections soared to the highest level they’ve been in six years.

So, in order to effectively combat the growing public health crisis, which disproportionately impacts youth, high school students are stepping up to help educate their fellow teenagers about safe sex. Through a grant-funded program at Case Western Reserve University’s Infectious Disease Alliance, teens are being trained as “peer educators” so they can communicate directly with people their own age. As the Plain Dealer reports, the team of young people — who were selected from a pool of applicants from several Ohio high schools — received months of sexual health instruction from medical experts to help them design a public health plan that targets the zip codes with the highest rates of STD infection.

“In general, peer education is a tried and true approach,” Amanda Healan, a co-director of the Infectious Disease Alliance who has been working to raise funds for the program since 2009, explained. According to Healan, peer educators can effectively reach teens “before their sexual debut so they have information on how to have safe sex before they have sex.”

The high schoolers in the program offer weekly counseling at a health clinic located adjacent to a county high school. They provide the teens who visit the clinic with safe sex kits that include condoms, information about the Infectious Disease Alliance, hand sanitizer, and encouraging handwritten notes with messages like “Stay safe!” and “Thanks for coming.” The peer educators also travel to different high schools to conduct after-school programs and workshops with youth. They ask their peers to define safe sex in their own words, teach them that a sexual partner can’t give their consent if they’re drunk or high, and refute popular myths like the idea that women can’t get pregnant if they have sexual intercourse while standing up.

Often, that information is better received when it’s coming from a fellow teen instead of from a teacher or a parent. The sexual health advocacy group Advocates for Youth points out that including teens in sex ed programming helps ensure that the approach is relevant — and that the information actually sticks. “The value of peer educator programming is that it has far greater reach than adults could ever have,” Advocate for Youth’s senior program manager, Angel Brown, told the Plain Dealer. “Young people are engaging with other youth in settings that go beyond the clinics and the community settings.”

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Genetically modified wheat that was never approved for sale has inexplicably turned up in a field in Oregon. A farmer found the crop when it survived a dousing of Roundup weedkiller. When he took it to a lab to be tested, the wheat was revealed to be an illegal strain, genetically modified to resist pesticides by Monsanto, the biotech corporation that owns the patents to most of the staple crops in the country.

Monsanto tested the genetically modified (GM) wheat in 16 states from 1998 to 2005, but dropped the project because many countries refused to accept genetically altered strains. It is unclear if any of the wheat made it into grain shipments to other countries. Though there is no compelling evidence that GM wheat is dangerous, any contamination could mean American wheat exports will be rejected.

Monsanto was quick to emphasize that GM wheat is harmless and that the scope of the problem was “very limited.” But the seemingly innocuous patch of wheat could blow up into a much larger headache for the company soon.

While it is too early to determine the guilty parties, USDA investigators are looking into possible violations of the Plant Protection Act, which regulates GM crops as “plant pests.” If Monsanto is found liable for the Oregon wheat, the company could face up to $1 million in civil penalties and even criminal prosecution.

Because the wheat was growing randomly, like a weed, it seems likely that this was a case of accidental contamination, rather than a deliberate planting of the illegal crop. In the past, the USDA has shown little sympathy for farmers whose crops have been inadvertently contaminated by Monsanto. Last year, the agency dismissed complaints by conventional and organic farmers that GM seeds intermingle with their own strains, simply advising they buy insurance to recoup their financial losses. The USDA report refused to even acknowledge that these farmers are still exposed to costly lawsuits from the biotech giant, even if the patent infringement was accidental. The Oregon wheat investigation may prove once and for all that tougher regulation and actual penalties are needed to curb GM contamination.

Monsanto’s approved crops have already driven non-GM seeds near extinction — one study found that at least half of the organic seeds left in the U.S. are contaminated with genetically modified material. Wheat is one of the shrinking number of staple crops that has thus far been insulated from Monsanto’s influence.

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A new report claims that Obamacare will cause substantial rate hikes for individuals and small businesses. But its predictions are based off of selective information — and should be taken with several grains of salt.

Milliman, a health care consulting firm with deep ties to the insurance industry, administered the study in question. The report examines Obamacare’s potential effect on premiums in six states’ Obamacare marketplaces and concludes that five of them will experience increases as high as 60 percent, since the law requires participating plans to offer a base level of benefits that exceeds what many individual plans currently offer. New Jersey, which already has stricter standards for insurance plans, would see a significant reduction in premiums, according to the report.

But those top line numbers don’t take the law’s federal insurance subsidies into account. As Jim O’Connor, a top executive with Milliman, admitted during a panel discussion on the study Thursday, “Those [subsidies] could be substantial for some people. For those who are going to be getting federal subsidies, those subsidies can be quite significant if you’re really poor. [People making] under 250 percent of poverty are going to see, more than likely, a big reduction compared with coverage today.”

Furthermore, the report’s projections are based on a very shallow information pool. During a question and answer session with the panelists, one audience member asked O’Connor if Milliman had solicited information on 2014 premiums from every eligible insurer in the states it examined. “We didn’t look at every carrier in the state,” conceded O’Connor.

In fact, Milliman only received data from major insurers such as BlueCross BlueShield. These are the same types of insurers that have requested outlandish premium rate hikes despite decades of soaring profits.

Milliman’s earlier — and largely inaccurate — work in this very field illustrates the dangers of such a selective approach. Covered California, the agency tasked with maintaining California’s Obamacare marketplace, commissioned firm to do a similar study for 2014 Golden State insurance plans. Milliman’s report was dour, predicting rate increases of at least 50 percent over the current average.

But those projections were completely off the mark. Covered California recently released insurers’ opening bids for the marketplace — and the numbers are great news for consumers. Whereas Milliman predicted that average mid-level “Silver” plan would cost $450 a month, the third-lowest average Silver plan for a 40-year-old ended up being $299 per month. That’s a difference of over $1,800 per year. Milliman’s projected cost for Bronze-level plans were similarly off base.

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El Salvador’s Supreme Court has decided to deny a 22-year-old woman a lifesaving abortion, ruling against making a medical exception to the conservative nation’s stringent abortion ban. Without an abortion, the woman will likely die — along with her nonviable fetus, which is missing its brain.

Identified in the press only as “Beatriz,” the young Salvadoran woman suffers from a chronic health condition that worsens when she is pregnant, and her doctors have warned that she is at “high risk of death” if she continues to carry her fetus. Several ultrasounds have revealed that, even if Beatriz does survive to carry the fetus to full term, it has virtually no chance of survival because it has no brain.

Beatriz has been fighting for an abortion for the past three months, and several international human rights organizations have taken up her case. But it’s been an uphill battle in her deeply Catholic nation, where abortion is illegal under absolutely all circumstances and punishable by up to 30 years in prison. After El Salvador’s attorney general refused to grant Beatriz and her doctors an exception to the harsh law, the pregnant woman turned to the Supreme Court.

And on Wednesday, the highest court in the country denied Beatriz permission to access the medical care that would save her life. El Salvador’s Supreme Court took several weeks to deliberate Beatriz’s case in consultation with the Institute of Legal Medicine, which advises the court on medical issues. The Institute determined that Beatriz’s health “was not yet in absolute danger.”

There are no options left. “We cannot appeal the case because this was the last step, the Supreme Court,” Victor Hugo Mata, the lawyer representing Beatriz, told CBS News.

Beatriz has been hospitalized for the last several months, separated from her husband and 14-month-old son. And even though the country’s Institute of Legal Medicine claims that Beatriz isn’t in critical condition yet, a group of her doctors have warned that her health is deteriorating daily. Earlier this month, Beatriz recorded a personal appeal to her president to intervene and save her life. “President Mauricio Funes Cartagena, help me please,” she begged. “This baby inside me cannot survive. I am ill. I want to live… I want to live for my son.” That help has not come for Beatriz.

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A group of sexual violence prevention activists at Dartmouth is alleging that the college is cracking down on them more seriously than it has on the perpetrators of serious crimes on campus, perhaps because of pressure from Dartmouth’s alumni and administrators.

Last month, students at Dartmouth College staged a public protest to highlight the administration’s failure to address sexual assault, racism, and homophobia on campus. After the participants in the protest received rape and death threats from other students in an online forum, the college suggested the protesters’ public disruption was an equally serious offense as the threats leveled against them — and threatened to discipline them for it.

Now, that threat is materializing. Several protesters received letters this week from the college’s Judicial Affairs Office informing them that they must schedule a disciplinary hearing to address alleged violations of the student code of conduct. According to a letter obtained by ThinkProgress, the students who staged the protest are being charged with failing to follow directions, since they entered a building on campus that was already at its maximum capacity.

“At least two thirds of the protesters have now received disciplinary letters, and it seems random — some people who were featured prominently in the protest didn’t, and others did,” one of the student protesters, Karenina Rojas, told ThinkProgress in an interview. Rojas is among the students who is facing disciplinary action.

Rojas doesn’t know if college administrators are actively pursuing disciplinary action against the individuals who made the violent threats against the protesters, since Dartmouth’s judicial affairs office has declined to comment on ongoing cases against students. Rojas pointed out that Dartmouth may be having trouble identifying the students who made anonymous comments in the online forum, which is an independent website that the school has no control over. “It’s easier for the school to target the protesters who are public,” the Dartmouth senior noted. “When you take a stand, you’re putting yourself out there for repercussions.”

But Rojas explained that the administration hasn’t taken this type of disciplinary action against other on-campus protests that have focused on issues other than the university’s sexual assault and diversity policies. “I was a member of Occupy Dartmouth, and we occupied the student center for months… We definitely failed to comply with directions, and we were never disciplined like this,” Rojas said. The same goes for another student group, United Students Against Sweatshops, that has disrupted several high-level events on campus like board of trustee meetings.

The fact that Dartmouth is choosing to crack down on protesters now seems arbitrary, the Dartmouth senior told ThinkProgress. But it may have to do with external pressure. Earlier this month, Dartmouth College’s campus newspaper reported that college administrators discussed the anti-rape protest during an Alumni Council meeting, and some alumni asked whether the students who “disrupted” campus would be punished. At that meeting, one alumni was quoted as saying that “Dartmouth’s community is very strong despite the recent disruptions that have gone on that upset the community,” and the protesters’ citation of a Department of Justice statistic that 95 percent of sexual assaults on campus go unreported “sounds like a preposterous number.”

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Reps. Mike Fitzpatrick (R-PA) and Joe Heck (R-NV), who voted to repeal Obamacare 37 times, have introduced legislation to preserve some of its most popular features. Their bill, H.R. 2165, would uphold most of Obamacare’s consumer protections — without paying for them.

H.R. 2165 would simultaneously preserve “individual and group market reforms to protect health insurance consumers” while repealing most aspects of the health reform law. Specifically, the bill would include Obamacare protections such as precluding insurers from denying Americans’ coverage due to a pre-existing medical condition, and allow children to stay on their parents’ health coverage until age 26. It would also adopt conservative-endorsed health reform policies such as medical malpractice reform and allowing Americans to buy insurance across state lines.

Fitzpatrick hasn’t always had kind words for Obamacare. In a 2012 fundraising email, Fitzpatrick slammed the health law as something that leads to “rationing and job-crushing restraints.” However, he acknowledged that Obamacare has positive aspects, such as its provisions protecting Americans with pre-existing conditions from insurance discrimination. Those policies eventually made their way into H.R. 2165.

“This bill gives us a practical way to keep the popular parts of the Affordable Care Act while Congress finds a solution to fix the unpopular parts that have many Americans deeply concerned,” said Fitzpatrick of his proposal.

But Fitzpatrick’s and Heck’s proposal would ruin much — if not all — of the U.S. health care industry. In order to preserve the current system of private health insurance while barring insurance companies from unsavory practices such as denying claims based on pre-existing conditions, every American must buy into the insurance risk pool. Otherwise, sick Americans would only purchase coverage when convenient while forgoing it while they are healthy, creating a vicious cycle that would drive health insurance premiums through the roof and eventually destroy the insurance industry. In turn, hospitals wouldn’t receive compensation for their services, thus bankrupting care providers, too.

H.R. 2165 would also eliminate the various taxes that fund Obamacare, meaning that poor Americans wouldn’t be able to access an expanded Medicaid pool. Obamacare’s optional Medicaid expansion is expected to provide basic health coverage to over 21 million low-income Americans by 2022.

This isn’t the first time that Republicans have admitted support for popular Obamacare provisions. Top GOP leadership, including House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH), has pushed for an extension of temporary Affordable Care Act provisions that provide insurance to Americans with pre-existing conditions — even criticizing President Obama for a lack of funding for such programs. But the reality is that Republicans are obstructing such funding to begin with through their knee-jerk opposition to the health law.

The Director-General of the World Health Organization (WHO) on Tuesday called a new respiratory virus that has cropped up around the globe a “threat to the entire world,” urging the international community to take swift action against it.

Dr. Margaret Chan, head of the international body since 2006, addressed the closing of the 66th session of the World Health Assembly with words of warning about what has been recently dubbed the “Middle East respiratory symptom coronavirus,” or MERS-CoV, calling it her greatest concern. “We understand too little about this virus when viewed against the magnitude of its potential threat,” Chan said of the disease.

Comparisons have been made between MERS-CoV and the SARS virus that threatened to become a pandemic in the early 2003. Both are members of the coronavirus family, a group of pathogens that ranges from the common cold to the life-threatening symptoms displayed during the SARS outbreak. During the 2003 epidemic, 775 patients died from infection, out of a total 8273 known cases. So far, MERS-CoV has killed 22 of the 44 known patients to contract the virus, including a French patient just yesterday.

“We do not know where the virus hides in nature,” Chen went on to say to the convened members. “We do not know how people are getting infected. Until we answer these question, we are empty-handed when it comes to prevention.” What is known at this point is that the virus appears to have originated in Saudi Arabia, since then spreading to citizens in the United Kingdom and France who had recently visited the Middle East.

The virus seems to have spread between two patients who shared a hospital room in France, prompting WHO officials to warn that it is likely that prolonged human contact can spur human-to-human transmission of the disease. The public health community typically defines “close contact” as spending a prolonged period of time in the same small, enclosed space with a person who is already infected. Fortunately, that means MERS-CoV appears to be less contagious than the SARS virus.

However, Chan warned against taking the virus lightly with so little known. “The novel coronavirus is not a problem that any single affected country can keep to itself or manage all by itself,” Chan said, referring to MERS-CoV by its original title. “The novel coronavirus is a threat to the entire world. As the Chair of committee A succinctly stated: this virus is something that can kill us.” Chan called upon the delegates to the Assembly to “bring together the assets of the entire world” to address the virus.

To facilitate that, the WHO announced joint missions between Saudi Arabia and Tunisia to “gather all the facts needed to conduct a proper risk assessment.” Saudi Arabia has also separately invited scientists from the United States and Canada to research the strain further to help answer some of the many questions still remaining about how the disease functions.

Last week, a 9-year-old girl asked McDonald’s CEO Don Thompson why his company continues to market junk food to kids. Thompson assured her that McDonald’s doesn’t sell junk food, pointing out that the chain also offers some healthy options like salads. But that may not be true for long.

At an investor conference on Wednesday, Thompson noted that the chain is struggling to convince customers to choose its “healthier” options, like Bacon Ranch and Southwest Chicken salads. Altogether, salads make up only 2 to 3 percent of McDonald’s sales in the United States. “I don’t see salads as being a major growth driver in the near future,” Thompson admitted.

The fast food chain is considering scaling back its advertising focused on salads. Thompson suggested that McDonald’s advertising strategy should instead be focused traditional meat products, like hamburgers and chicken sandwiches. As Bloomberg News reports, Thompson pointed to “other ways” to sell fruits and veggies, like pointing to the tomatoes, cucumber slices, and shredded lettuce in the new McWraps.

McDonald’s introduced its McWrap specifically in an attempt to appeal to young customers who are looking for more nutritious options. The new wraps play on public perceptions of healthy food, but they’re not actually that much better than McDonald’s other fare. The Crispy Chicken & Bacon McWrap, for example, actually contains more calories than Quarter Pounder with bacon and cheese.

McDonald’s has already dropped Fruit & Walnut salads from its menu, and it’s also considered getting rid of the Caesar salad. More salad products may get the axe if sales don’t improve. On the other hand, Thompson noted that McDonald’s Dollar Menu is still extremely successful, generating 13 to 14 percent of its total sales. That’s perhaps part of a larger trend in which access to healthy food is divided along socioeconomic lines. Poorer Americans often live in areas where they aren’t close to grocery stories with high-quality food, and can’t afford the transportation to get there — and fast food restaurants have traditionally exacerbated that dynamic by marketing their cheap, unhealthy food in low-income areas.

Over 2 million U.S. children are at risk for mental health problems related to a loved one being deployed for active duty warfare in the past decade. But these kids’ access to mental health services remains scarce, underscoring a major hole in the American medical system.

According to a new report by the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), of the 60 percent of active duty military personnel who are married, 44 percent have children — most of whom are born at a younger age than civilian American families. Pediatricians are concerned that these children are exposed to stressful environments at a greater rate than others. That’s partly due to their separation from family members during wartime — but much of it also concerns the mental health problems experienced by their military family members.

In the five years after the commencement of the Iraq war in 2003, the number of U.S. military suicides ballooned by 80 percent, reaching a record high in January 2013. AAP’s report finds that over 30 percent of returning soldiers from the Afghanistan and Iraq wars have encountered serious mental health problems such as post-traumatic stress disorder and depression.

While that may not be surprising for soldiers exposed to harmful environments, what’s less obvious is the effect that such disorders can have on children — especially the relatively young children of current active duty military and veterans. A recent study published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal found that suicide can be “contagious” among teenagers — and the younger the child, the more prominent the effect. According to the AAP’s findings, “one in four children of active-duty service members experience symptoms of depression, one in two report trouble sleeping, and about one in three children of active-duty military personnel experience excessive worrying.”

Unfortunately, accessing adequate care is difficult for military families. The AAP study finds that over 50 percent of military children receive their mental health care outside of the military health system — and the American private mental health system is decidedly broken.

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