Eideard

Catherine Cuffy and son Garrett at the Franklin Township site after demolition

Despite a judge’s order more than a year ago, the children who inhaled toxic mercury vapors in the infamous former Kiddie Kollege day care still have not been monitored for potential medical problems.

The story attracted national attention in July 2006, after New Jersey inspectors discovered babies and children playing inside a heavily contaminated Gloucester County building that had once been a thermometer factory.

Kiddie Kollege has become a frequently cited cautionary tale as laws have been adopted to keep other children from being subjected to toxins. But the 100 who were exposed over two years at the Franklin Township day care and nursery school have been nearly forgotten in a bitter court fight that is again gathering steam…

“I keep wondering how our kids got lost in the system,” said Catherine Cuffy, whose son, Garrett, attended Kiddie Kollege from age 18 months to 3.

“Other than demolish the building, they haven’t done anything for the children,” Cuffy said. “There was no follow-up to find out ‘did the mercury affect them, and how?”

When the state Department of Health tested the children’s urine in the weeks after the day care was closed, Garrett’s had an elevated level of the toxin. Subsequent tests showed the levels had dropped…

Years of litigation led to a stormy three-month trial and a Jan. 11, 2011, verdict by New Jersey Superior Court Judge James Rafferty. All of the defendants were negligent, he said, because they knew of the contamination before the day care obtained approvals to open.

Rafferty, who delayed his retirement to finish the case, ordered the defendants to contribute to a $1.5 million fund for neuropsychological tests until the children reached age 24. Relying upon expert medical testimony, the judge said there was a need for early detection and treatment if health problems emerged.

But the testing was never launched.

Some of the necessary funds are already in escrow. RTFA and you need a scorecard to figure out which combination of lawyers, politicians, property-owners sucks the most. No one seems to give a damn about kids.

It’s been a year since the testing was ordered to start and none of that seems to be as important as shuffling the stacks of money required to guarantee the tests – with lawyers taking a cut at every hearing.

Doctor Allan LeReau

Pediatricians fed up with parents who refuse to vaccinate their children out of concern it can cause autism or other problems increasingly are “firing” such families from their practices, raising questions about a doctor’s responsibility to these patients.

Medical associations don’t recommend such patient bans, but the practice appears to be growing, according to vaccine researchers…

In a study of Connecticut pediatricians published last year, some 30% of 133 doctors said they had asked a family to leave their practice for vaccine refusal, and a recent survey of 909 Midwestern pediatricians found that 21% reported discharging families for the same reason…

Most pediatricians consider preventing disease through vaccines a primary goal of their job. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and AAP issue an annual recommended vaccination schedule, but some parents ask if their child’s immunizations can be pushed back or skipped altogether, pediatricians say.

It’s hard to imagine an outbreak of smallpox today. But for centuries the deadly virus wiped out entire populations. WSJ’s Christina Tsuei reports on how the discovery of vaccines (with the help of cows) eradicated the disease and led to the prevention of many other diseases.

While rates for several key inoculations in young children rose between 2009 and 2010, according to the CDC, lower immunization rates have been blamed as a factor in U.S. outbreaks of whooping cough and measles in recent years.

Parents often voice concerns about autism or that their child’s immune system may be overwhelmed by too many vaccines at once…Numerous studies since have dispelled these concerns among scientists. Rather, scientists say, it is more likely that autism symptoms begin showing up around the same age children are vaccinated…

But, parents whose primary source of medical knowledge is Mr. Stupid and Greedy who’s selling the latest spooky cure-all tome aren’t about to listen to their doctor.

Read the rest of this entry »

Montage of other peoples’ webcam images

Feeds from thousands of Trendnet home security cameras have been breached, allowing any web user to access live footage without needing a password. Internet addresses which link to the video streams have been posted to a variety of popular messageboard sites.

Users have expressed concern after finding they could view children’s bedrooms among other locations.

Trendnet says it is in the process of releasing firmware updates to correct a coding error introduced in April 2010. It said it had emailed customers who had registered affected devices to alert them to the problem.

However, a spokesman told the BBC that “roughly 5%” of purchasers had registered their cameras and it had not yet issued a formal media release despite being aware of the problem for more than three weeks…

“As of this week we have identified 26 [vulnerable] models. Seven of the models – the firmware has been tested and released…

Mr Wood added that the California-based firm estimated that “fewer than one thousand units” might be open to this threat in the UK, but could not immediately provide an exact global tally beyond saying that it was “most likely less than 50,000″.

Probably fewer than 1,000 and certainly fewer than 50,000. Sounds like casualty projections from the next US invasion of a smallish foreign land.

RTFA for lots of details, anecdotal information. Have one of these critters in your home? Turn the sucker off till you get a firmware update – and some geek site you trust says the update works.

Zavala is the dude with the big hat

From humble beginnings in southwest Mexico, Gabino Zavala entered the priesthood and embarked on a remarkable journey that landed him squarely in the corner offices of the nation’s largest Roman Catholic archdiocese. An auxiliary bishop of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, he oversaw the church’s vast San Gabriel region, a diverse community considered vital to the future of the church. Then, from his pulpit, he became a forceful champion for social and economic justice.

…He is the father, church officials said, of two children, and has resigned his post.

Zavala’s fatherhood, a violation of canon laws of celibacy for priests, was the first controversy to rock the local church during the tenure of Archbishop Jose Gomez… Gomez responded with a blunt letter to his flock on Wednesday announcing the resignation…”He is the father of two minor teenage children, who live with their mother in another state,” the letter said. “Let us pray for all those impacted by this situation and for each other.”

That always helps, right?

The Vatican did not immediately name Zavala’s successor. Gomez declined to be interviewed, and the church declined to disclose further details. Asked whether Zavala was involved in the children’s lives, and why the information suddenly surfaced after so many years, archdiocese spokesman Tod M. Tamberg said: “Those are questions for Bishop Zavala to answer.”

Zavala, who is no longer in ministry but remains a priest and bishop, could not be reached for comment. The voice mail on his cellphone was full and no one answered the door of his home in the Hacienda Heights foothills…

Zavala’s resignation is likely to spark renewed debate over the ecclesiastical laws of celibacy. The earliest popes — St. Peter himself, under some interpretations — were married man and fathers. Later, in the fourth century, church officials concluded that men who were not celibate “shall be deprived of the honor of the clerical life…”

“It’s self-evident — celibacy does not work,” said Father Richard McBrien, a professor of theology at the University of Notre Dame. Younger priests influenced by conservative Vatican administrators in recent years “think celibacy is the crown jewel of the priesthood,” he said. “That’s nonsense.”

Anyone expecting reason, rational debate, policy changes happening in the Catholic Church as a result of this event, the problems it points out – shouldn’t hold their breath while waiting. The Church hasn’t made it past the 19th Century, yet.

Wim Deetman
Daylife/Getty Images used by permission

Thousands of children suffered sexual abuse in Dutch Catholic institutions, and church officials failed to adequately address the abuse or help the victims, according to a long-awaited investigation.

The report by an independent commission said Catholic officials failed to tackle the widespread abuse “to prevent scandals”. The suspected number of abuse victims who spent some of their youth in church institutions probably lies somewhere between 10,000 and 20,000, according to a summary of the report…

The commission said it received 1,800 complaints of abuse at Catholic schools, seminaries and orphanages and that the institutions suffered from “a failure of oversight”. It then conducted the broader survey of the general population for a more comprehensive analysis of the scale and nature of sexual abuse of minors.

The commission was set up last year under the leadership of former government minister Wim Deetman to investigate allegations of abuse dating from 1945…

The investigation followed allegations of repeated incidents of abuse at one cloister that quickly spread to claims from Catholic institutions across the country, echoing similar scandals around the world.

The commission identified about 800 priests, brothers, pastors or lay people working for the church who had been named in the complaints. About 105 of them were still alive, although it was not known if they remained in church positions, the report said. It identified them as “perpetrators” rather than “offenders”, meaning they had not been proven to have committed a crime.

The Dutch Catholic Church says it will agree to a system of compensation for victims of priests and church staff. No details, yet.

Anyone expect whatever is volunteered will be closer to real compensation than the amounts contained in first offers from other national branches of the Catholic Church?

The Supreme Court said on Monday it would decide whether children conceived through in vitro fertilization after the death of their parent were entitled to survivor benefits under the Social Security law.

The justices agreed to hear an appeal by the Obama administration of a ruling by a U.S. appeals court for a woman who seeks benefits for her twins conceived by artificial insemination after her husband’s death.

At issue in the dispute are new reproductive technologies and the requirements to qualify for child survivor benefits under the Social Security Act.

In its appeal, administration lawyers said the Social Security Administration has received more than 100 applications for survivor benefits by posthumously conceived children, and the rate of such applications has increased significantly in recent years.

WTF does that have to do with whether these are real people with the same rights as other citizens?

The case involved Karen Capato, who had sued in federal court in New Jersey after her request for Social Security benefits for her twins had been denied…

The Social Security Administration has taken the position that eligibility for benefits depends partly on whether the applicable state law would allow a posthumously conceived child to inherit property in the absence of a will.

Leave it 18th Century ideology to pander to state laws which haven’t made it into the 21st Century, yet.

In the Capato case, the state law at issue bars children conceived posthumously from inheritance unless they are named in a will. Capato’s only beneficiaries named in his will were his wife, their son and two children from a previous marriage.

Capato’s attorneys opposed the government’s appeal and said the Philadelphia-based appeals court had correctly determined that a posthumously conceived child fell within the law’s definition of a child for the purpose of receiving Social Security survivor benefits.

So, these two children aren’t children according to New Jersey law. They don’t exist as legal entities. Will someone please take the legal buffoons supporting this sort of case law by the hand and ever-so-gently lead them into the real world. Please.

Better yet. Fire them from their bureaucratic ivory tower and force them to get an honest job.

Joe Cohen started work on malaria vaccine at GSK in 1987

Millions of small children’s lives could be saved by a new vaccine which has been shown to halve the risk of malaria in the first large-scale trials across seven African countries.

The long-awaited results of the largest-ever malaria vaccine study, involving 15,460 babies and small children, show that it could massively reduce the impact of the much-feared killer disease. Malaria takes nearly 800,000 lives every year – most of them small children under the age of five. It damages many more.

The vaccine has been in development for two decades – the brainchild of scientists at the UK drug company GlaxoSmithKline, which has promised to sell it at no more than a fraction over cost-price, with the excess being ploughed back into further tropical disease research…

GSK’s chief executive, Andrew Witty told the Guardian he was thrilled for the scientists who were thought by many of their peers to be attempting the impossible when they started work on a vaccine 25 years ago.

“When the team was first shown the data, quite a number of them broke down in tears,” he said. “It was the emotion of what they had achieved – the first vaccine against a parasitic form of infection. They were overwhelmed. It says something about the amount of heart that has gone into this project…”

Witty says he is exhorting everybody involved in the vaccine’s production to pare their costs to the bone. “We are absolutely dedicated to making it as low as possible,” he said.

Bravo.

Damned few corporations – especially in pharmaceuticals – are willing to work on solutions for low-profit markets, low-return investments. GSK and Mr. Witty deserve special credit for joining forces with WHO and the Gates Foundation.

The Roman Catholic Church reacted harshly [predictably]… to a bill proposed by Mexico City legislators that would require all couples to sign a prenuptial agreement specifying how to handle child custody and other issues in case of divorce — and estimating how long the marriage is expected to last.

Sponsors of the bill submitted this week in the city council say the proposal aims to cut down on the lengthy, nasty divorce proceedings choking the capital district’s courts, by making potential couples decide about monetary and custody issues by mutual agreement before they get married.

But the bill also says “the duration of the marriage will be bound by the terms that the couple negotiate in the familial agreement, which shall not be less than two years…”

“People can specify terms of 99 years, or ’til death do us part,’ if they think the marriage, or their lives, are going to last that long,” Carlos Torres said.

Catholic leaders don’t see it that way…

“This is a proposal made by people who do not understand the nature of marriage,” Valdemar said. “It is not a commercial contract; it is a contract between two people for a life project, and the creation of a family.”

“This denigrates the concept of the family … and makes it more like a pact between friends,” he said…

Equal friends at that. Interested in running their own lives as they see fit – instead of leaving everything in the hands of a sectarian rulebook from the 14th Century.

“We are looking for solutions to problems that are seen every day in family courts … in which there is emotional blackmail, or the children are used as pawns,” Torres said. “This would cut down of the torturous proceedings at the time of a divorce.”

The bill is meant to solve a big problem in the city of 8.9 million people, where divorce proceedings are so costly, painful and time consuming that many people just skip them and start a new family.

The Roman Catholic church has always opposed democracy and the freedom of individuals to order their own lives. The obvious decline of their power and profits speaks volumes of how that opposition has failed.

That the proposed legislation also allows for parents to agree beforehand on what religious education – if any – their children might endure is another challenge to the church’s political power. As it should.

Traditional playgrounds which teach children about risk and danger are being reintroduced after research found that they aid development.

Climbing frames, monkey bars, sand and water features have been replaced with sterile play areas in recent years amid overzealous health and safety fears.

Councils removed features such as paddling pools sand pits and fitted rubber mats in a bid to avoid costly litigation. But experts believe that the opportunity to assess potential danger and react to risk in the playground helps children make decisions in later life.

South Somerset district council has revised its play strategy and has granted approval for more traditional playgrounds which including stepping logs and wooden forts.

Adrian Moore, the council’s play and youth facilities officer, told the Sunday Times: “Playgrounds are the nursery slopes for real life. If we don’t help children differentiate between acceptable and unacceptable risk, we are failing them.

“Instead of eliminating it, let’s embrace it. In a playground, learning to judge speed, movement and distance stands you in good stead when you master other vital but dangerous skills, such as riding a bike or crossing the road.”

Ellen Sandseter, a professor of psychology at Queen Maud University in Norway, wrote in the journal Evolutionary Psychology: “Children must encounter risks and overcome playground fears, monkey bars and tall slides are great.

“They approach thrills and risks in a progressive manner. Let them encounter these challenges from an early age and they will master them through play over the years.”

Good grief. I don’t think the kids ever worry about danger.

Mommies and daddies are always ready to rush out in overprotective mode. The best thing they can do is ban parents from anywhere they can watch their children playing.

While the Bible Belt is known for its devotion to traditional values, Southerners don’t do so well on one key family value: They are more likely to get divorced than people living in the Northeast.

Southern men and women had higher rates of divorce in 2009 than their counterparts in other parts of the country: 10.2 per 1,000 for men and 11.1 per 1,000 for women, according to a new report from the U.S. Census Bureau released Thursday.

By comparison, men and women in the Northeast had the lowest rates of divorce, 7.2 and 7.5 per 1,000, which is also lower than the national divorce rate of 9.2 for men and 9.7 for women…

Youth and lack of education can lead to higher divorce rates, said D’Vera Cohn, a senior writer with the Pew Research Center..”There tend to be higher divorce rates in states where women marry young,” Cohn said. “Education also may play a role. In general, less educated women marry at younger ages than college-educated women, and less educated couples have higher divorce rates.”

Values about premarital sex associated with the Bible Belt and rural America may be encouraging people to marry early, at ages when they are likely to have less education and less income to support a long-lasting marriage, according to Naomi Cahn, law professor at The George Washington University Law School…”There’s a moral crisis in red states that’s produced by higher divorce rates and the disparity between parental values and behavior of young adults,” said Cahn. “There is enormous tension between moral values and actual practices…”

“The very fact that people feel less pressure to get married (in the Northeast) means they can be more selective about who they marry and take their time, ” Coontz said. “They don’t have to rush into it to please parents or avoid stigma of premarital sex…”

Meanwhile, divorce still pushes more women into poverty than men and affects their children, since children are still more likely to live with their mothers than their fathers, according to the same U.S. Census report.

Bible Belt and fundamentalist Christians have a built-in acceptance for hypocrisy. Lying about ethical standards – building rationales acceptable to your peers to justify just about anything is part of the whole equation of being “forgiven”. You can build your life on superstition and guesswork – and watch it fall apart – because you have someone waiting for you, next Sunday, who will tell you, “It’s OK. You gave it a try. God loves you anyway.”

Even if you don’t make your child support payments.