Liberals Lose It After Cornel West Tells CNN That NATO Is To Blame For Ukraine Crisis

 Left-wing activist and academic firebrand Cornel West appeared on CNN prime time Thursday night, and gave show host Kaitlin Collins a dose of reality not typically heard on the network when the issue of the Ukraine war is broached. West recently announced as a Third-party 2024 presidential candidate (seeking the Green Party's nomination), so during the interview he was pressed on his foreign policy stance. 

"If Russia had missiles in Mexico and Canada, the United States government would probably blow them to smithereens because that’s how empires behave. We had the same challenge in Cuba in 1962. So what we end up with is a criminal invasion," West stated firmly in the interview segment.

West then lashed out at the 'establishment Left' and mainstream Liberals in general...

"And I know that some of my left-wing comrades, ‘Oh it’s an invasion,’ but a criminal invasion provoked by the expansion of NATO, which is an instrument of U.S. global power," he said. Collins then asked what practical steps he would take to resolve the Russia-Ukraine crisis:

Collins: "Practically speaking, what would you accept in Ukraine? Like what? I mean, Trump claims he could fix it. What would that look like for you?"

West: "Oh, what I would do, I would bring in the Chinese, the Turks, the African rulers. I would sit down with the Ukrainian leaders and say, we must stop this war, stop these war crimes, cluster bombs on a variety of different parties and make sure that we begin a diplomatic process for a just peace."

He described robust negotiations which would inevitably lead to territorial concessions, to get Russian troops to leave...

"And that just peace is going to have some serious concessions across the board. Russian troops have to leave. There’s going to be debates over the territory. There going to be some kind of concessions over the territory, but stop the killing. Why?" West then answered his rhetorical question: "Because the Ukrainian brothers and sisters are precious and they are bearing so much of the suffering with this proxy war between the American empire and the Russian Federation."

"So there’s responsibility and blame across the board. But the American empire does bear a significant responsibility here, even though it is not the sole or exclusive responsibility. And it’s in no way a pro-Putin [talking point," he emphasized. 

Perhaps entirely to be expected, the "outrage" and pile-one began as clips of the interview quickly went viral, with Mediaite declaring in a headline that the Ivy League professor was slammed by mainstream voices for being "No Different Than Trump, RFK Jr, Tucker Carlson". Pundits at Politico and elsewhere naturally rolled out the 'pro-Putin' and 'Kremlin agent' trope, but without addressing the arguments.

But journalist Glenn Greenwald pointed out that it's "Absolutely hilarious how angry and confused establishment liberals are than an actual, life-long, committed left-wing scholar would vehemently oppose the CIA/NATO proxy war in Ukraine."

"They barely exist in the US and are so rarely heard from that liberals can't comprehend it," Greenwald added while underscoring that West's breakdown of the situation is something mainstream media consumers are very rarely exposed to.

Anger and outrage!...

* * *

Remember when Christiane Amanpour began yelling at Wolf Blitzer about what you are allowed to say or not say concerning Ukraine over CNN airwaves?

Ed Snowden summarizes where things stand...

For another, albeit similarly fiercely independent angle...

https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/left-outraged-after-cornel-west-blames-nato-ukraine-crisis-cnn

DOJ Quietly Removes Child Sex Trafficking Information From Its Website

 by Lorenz Duchamps via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

The Department of Justice (DOJ) has quietly taken down a series of sections from its website related to both domestic and international child sex trafficking, including a portion that offers information about U.S. minors being “recruited and exploited” into the commercial sex industry.

According to an archived version of the website, the agency previously provided detailed information about “International Sex Trafficking of Minors,” “Domestic Sex Trafficking of Minors,” and “Child Victims of Prostitution.”

The updated version of the webpage completely erased all three sections, which were added during President Donald Trump’s tenure on May 28, 2020, to counsel Americans about tactics that are being used by pimps and human traffickers targetting vulnerable children and luring them into prostitution and other forms of sexual exploitation using psychological manipulation.

In the top section under “Child Sex Trafficking”—which is still in the updated version of the website—the DOJ also erased the following paragraph.

“After cultivating a relationship with the child and engendering a false sense of trust, the trafficker will begin engaging the child in prostitution, and use physical, emotional, and psychological abuse to keep the child trapped in a life of prostitution. It is common for traffickers to isolate victims by moving them far away from friends and family, altering their physical appearances, or continuously moving them to new locations. Victims are heavily conditioned to remain loyal to the trafficker and to distrust law enforcement.”

The new version shows at the bottom of the website that the DOJ updated it in mid-May, roughly three years after the Trump administration added additional information highlighting how child sex trafficking is a major issue in the United States.

During his time in office, Mr. Trump made fighting human trafficking a key goal of his administration and often spoke publicly about the issue. He signed an executive order in January 2020 aimed to eliminate human trafficking and online child exploitation in the United States, which required resources to be directed into areas that would result in the prosecution of offenders, assist victims, and expand prevention education programs about the issue.

Response

While it is unclear what could have led to the website’s revision, the vice president of an American think tank foundation called the move typical of Democrat-led administrations.

“For some reason, people on the Left get really uncomfortable and defensive talking about child sexual exploitation,” said Roger Severino, the Heritage Foundation’s Vice President of Domestic Policy, the Washington Examiner reported.

“Republican administrations direct more resources to child and human sex trafficking, and then Democratic administrations pull that back,” Mr. Severino continued. “They treat it almost as a distraction from some things they consider to be more important.”

Mr. Severino also said that the process to change information on the DOJ’s website is a strenuous effort, noting it “clearly had to go through several layers of review” prior to being modified.

In a statement on July 11, Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.) linked the DOJ’s move to a New York Times report suggesting the Department of Health and Human Services lost contact with thousands of unaccompanied alien children (UAC) who have been caught up in child smuggling and child labor operations.

“The DOJ specifically deleted a section that implicated the Biden Administration’s open-border policies in correlation to the sex trafficking of children,” Ms. Luna said. The deleted portion read, “One form of sex trafficking involved the cross-border transportation of children. In these situations, traffickers recruit and transfer children across international borders in order to sexually exploit them in another country.”

“DOJ’s blatant move to distance Joe Biden’s harmful policies from the global crime of sex trafficking should be no surprise to any of us who have seen the blatant sexualization and abuse of children this administration is comfortable with promoting,” she added.

https://www.zerohedge.com/political/doj-quietly-removes-child-sex-trafficking-information-its-website

CMS Proposes Nearly 3.4% Cut in Medicare Physician Fees for 2024

 The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) is proposing a nearly 3.4% cut

opens in a new tab or window to the "conversion factor" used to set the Medicare Physician Fee Schedule for 2024, and physician groups are none too happy about it.

"The proposed 2024 Medicare Physician Fee Schedule (PFS) raises significant concerns for medical groups related to its 3.4% reduction to the conversion factor, which further increases the gap between physician practice expenses and Medicare reimbursement rates," Anders Gilberg, MGA, senior vice president for government affairs at the Medical Group Management Association here, said Thursday afternoon in a statementopens in a new tab or window. (Disclosure: Gilberg is a member of the MedPage Today editorial board.) "Medicare already largely fails to cover the cost of furnishing care to beneficiaries, and the proposed cut to the 2024 conversion factor compounds the problem."

"While the ACR [American College of Rheumatology] appreciates CMS' continued recognition of the value of complex care provided by rheumatologists and other cognitive care specialists ... we are gravely concerned that the proposed rule's physician payment cuts contained in CMS' conversion factor would add to physicians' uncertainty about their continued ability to provide the highest quality of care to Medicare patients," ACR president Douglas White, MD, PhD, said in a statement

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The conversion factor is the multiplier that Medicare applies to relative value units (RVUs) to calculate reimbursement for a particular service or procedure under Medicare's fee-for-service system. The 2024 conversion factor of $32.74 includes both a 2.17% decrease required for budget neutrality reasons and a 1.25% increase that was included in last year's Consolidated Appropriations Act (CAA); the CAA also increased the 2023 conversion factor.

Those two percentages -- a 2.17% decrease partially offset by a 1.25% increase -- would normally be considered a 0.92% decrease in physician pay, but the percentages were calculated based on the original conversion factor for 2023 -- $33.06 -- which was then increased to $33.88 by the raise from the CAA; comparing that number to this year's $32.74 number results in the nearly 3.4% cut. (See p. 1191 of the proposed ruleopens in a new tab or window for more details.)

The American Medical Association (AMA) also panned the cut, with AMA president Jesse Ehrenfeld, MD, MPH, calling it "a critical reminder that patients and physicians desperately need Congress to develop a permanent solution that addresses the financial instability and threatens access to care."

"When adjusted for inflation, Medicare physician payment already has effectively declined 26% from 2001 to 2023 before additional inflation and these cuts are factored in," Ehrenfeld said in a statementopens in a new tab or window. "Physicians are one of the only providers without an automatic inflationary increase ... Physicians need relief from this unsustainable journey."

There was one group that applauded the agency, however. "CMS showed its commitment to supporting value-based care and growing participation in accountable care organizations (ACOs) in this proposed rule," Clif Gaus, ScD, president and CEO of the National Association of ACOs (NAACOS), which represents accountable care organizations, said in a statementopens in a new tab or window. "It addresses several issues that NAACOS has been advocating for, including improvements in quality reporting, more fair benchmarking policies, a smooth transition to a new risk adjustment model, keeping advanced payments for new ACOs who transition to risk, [and] helping ACOs who serve high-cost beneficiaries and others."

"NAACOS thanks CMS for its continued leadership on this issue and its willingness to address the barriers standing in the way of clinicians and health systems who want to provide higher quality, more cost-effective, coordinated care for patients," he said.

The fee schedule's effects, however, vary by specialty. In the 2024 fee schedule, the big loser is interventional radiology, whose fees are estimated to decrease by an estimated 4%. Other losers were nuclear medicine, vascular surgery, and diagnostic radiology, whose fees will decrease by 3%.

The American Society for Radiation Oncology (ASTRO) was not happy with an estimated 2% cut for radiation oncologists and radiation therapy centers. "ASTRO is disappointed that CMS once again undervalues the impact of radiation oncology and intends to cut reimbursement by an additional 2% in 2024 for this essential cornerstone of cancer care," Geraldine Jacobson, MD, MPH, chair of the ASTRO board of directors, said in a statementopens in a new tab or window.

"Medicare spends less on all radiation therapy services than it does on just three top cancer drugs, although radiation is utilized by twice as many beneficiaries," she added. "Despite this outsized value, CMS has cut radiation oncology physician fee schedule payments by over 20% in the last decade – more than nearly all other physician specialties.

On the other side of the ledger, the total allowed charges for family practice and endocrinology will increase by an estimated 3%. A number of other specialties will see an estimated 2% increase, including clinical social workers, clinical psychologists, general practitioners, rheumatologists, and nurse practitioners, according to CMS.

For its part, CMS touted several new services that would be covered under the fee schedule. "In alignment with the goal of the Biden-Harris Administration's Cancer Moonshot for everyone with cancer to have access to covered patient navigation services, CMS is proposing payment for Principal Illness Navigation services to help patients navigate cancer treatment and treatment for other serious illnesses," the agency said in a press releaseopens in a new tab or window. "These services are also designed to include care involving other peer support specialists, such as peer recovery coaches for individuals with substance use disorder."

The proposed rule also calls for coverage of some dental services for cancer patients. "Access to oral and dental health services that promote health and wellness allows people with Medicare to achieve the best health possible," the release continued. "In this proposed rule, CMS is ... proposing that payment can be made for certain dental services prior to and during several different cancer treatments, including, but not limited to, chemotherapy."

https://www.medpagetoday.com/practicemanagement/reimbursement/105477

'Threads May Not Replace Twitter in Medicine -- Yet'

 Despite a promising launch, Threads -- the social media app that hopes to unseat Twitter as a dominant space for online medical networking and communication -- may not be ready to win over the medical community.

Threads, a networking platform created by Meta, launched on July 6 and appears to mimic Twitter's short-form messaging style. It reportedly surpassed 100 million sign-ups in its first week, according to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg.

Among new users were medical professionals, some of whom are members of the Twitter community known as #MedTwitter

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HealthQuant, a company that tracks physician engagement on social media, shared data with MedPage Today that showed declines in posting and engagement from physicians on Twitter. Comparing June 14-July 13 periods this year and in 2022, the number of physicians posting on Twitter decreased by 13% (73,371 versus 63,957) and the number of physician posts decreased by 21% (3,420,696 versus 2,718,280), according to HealthQuant founder and CEO Greg Matthews.

"There are a lot of doctors who are on Twitter who also have established a spot on Threads," Matthews told MedPage Today."Many of them are the same doctors that have been really, extremely, active and influential on Twitter."

"If you're looking to do a thumbnail sketch, I think you could actually say that a bunch of the doctors that were actively spending their time on Twitter a year ago have been spending it on Threads this year," Matthews added.

But a closer look reveals a more complex story, Matthews said: a tighter snapshot showed physician Twitter use increased every day over the past 4 days, and July 13 saw more physician tweets than the day Threads launched.

Threads Comes Up Short

Anecdotes suggest Threads is not meeting physicians' expectations as a Twitter replacement, Matthews noted. Physicians have complained that the lack of a search function on Threads has made it hard to find colleagues.

"If you're a member of the global nephrology community on Twitter, it's actually really easy to find those people because you can do meaningful contextual searches. You can't do that on Threads," Matthews said. "That is a pretty significant disadvantage."

Meta representatives say they are working on features to allow search functions in the future, he added.

Megan Ranney, MD, MPH, a emergency physician and dean of the Yale School of Public Health, agrees that Threads needs to do more.

"Threads is lovely, intuitive, and (thank goodness) primarily text-based," Ranney wrote in an email to MedPage Today. "It does however feel like an 'MVP' (minimum viable product) -- the algorithms are not fully baked, the timelines leave something to be desired, and lack of a web-based application makes it tough to share the kinds of multi-post-threads that I loved to create on Twitter."

Threads will need to quickly find ways to connect and engage community members if it hopes to replace Twitter as the de facto online forum for medical professionals, Ranney added. Still, she emphasized, there's an urgent need to find a Twitter replacement.

"The volume of trolls and hatred is ever-growing, and the engagement is decreasing," Ranney said. "I'm really hoping that Threads has staying power, because I had come to rely on Twitter for its contribution to up-to-date medical and public health dialogue. The absence of a similar space would be sad for our health care and public health community."

Adding New Challenges

Finding a new home for the #MedTwitter community could lead to other challenges, said Katelyn Jetelina, PhD, who runs the "Your Local Epidemiologist" newsletter on Substack that became popular during the pandemic.

"It's hard to build a community that truly influences healthcare policy or changes individual behaviors from scratch," Jetelina told MedPage Today. "And it's going to take time for us to really start fresh to find networks [and] build coalitions."

The slow rebuild means that Threads will likely be complementary to her presence on other platforms, Jetelina noted, but she is concerned that online public health conversations may become fractured.

"I have a really big concern about Threads -- that it's going to be deepening echo chambers, that certain people will go to Threads, and certain people remain on Twitter," Jetelina said.

"I personally think it's a time when we need to close these echo chambers rather than infiltrate them," she added. "And the scientific community can't just continue talking to the scientific community. We need to react, reach out, and be responsive."

Adding another social media account will be challenging for busy healthcare professionals, Jetelina observed. Her largest following is on Facebook, where she sees the most impact from her engagement, but she also has accounts on Twitter and Instagram with large followings as well. Adding Threads might be too much to ask, she noted.

Matthews noted that Twitter has a clear advantage of keeping the online conversation within the medical community easy to find and participate in, which will be a hurdle for another social media platform. Still, he recommends that doctors and other health professionals create an account on Threads with a handle that matches their Twitter account, in case more people switch.

Matthews also hopes that Threads or another platform will focus on the needs of the medical community directly, noting that a medical professional verification feature might be one way to gain success.

"I think the platform that does actually provide a way to credibly and objectively separate the wheat from the chaff in a public setting is going to do really, really well with doctors," he said.

https://www.medpagetoday.com/special-reports/exclusives/105497

Cel-Sci: Positive Meeting With FDA Over Multikine’s Approval for Head & Neck Cancer

CEL-SCI Corporation (NYSE American: CVM) today announced it has concluded a productive meeting with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) regarding the path forward for bringing Multikine* (Leukocyte Interleukin, Injection) immunotherapy to market for the treatment of newly diagnosed locally advanced squamous cell carcinoma of the head and neck (SCCHN). During the recent meeting, the FDA acknowledged the longstanding need for improved treatments for head and neck cancer.

CEL-SCI believes the agency was collaborative and positive. Preliminary feedback from the FDA included that the selection criteria developed by CEL-SCI could be used to determine which patients should receive Multikine. Based on the feedback received at this recent meeting, CEL-SCI is preparing additional information about its development plan for the next meeting with the agency.

CEL-SCI is expecting scientific advice meetings with the European Medicines Agency (EMA) and the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) in the UK in the fall of 2023. These are priority markets for CEL-SCI, as Europe has more than twice the number of head and neck cancer cases diagnosed each year as compared to the U.S.

https://www.biospace.com/article/releases/cel-sci-concludes-positive-meeting-with-u-s-fda-concerning-multikine-s-approval-for-head-and-amp-neck-cancer/

Lilly to Acquire Versanis to Improve Patient Outcomes in Cardiometabolic Diseases

  Eli Lilly and Company (NYSE: LLY) and Versanis Bio today announced a definitive agreement for Lilly to acquire Versanis, a private clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company focused on the development of new medicines for the treatment of cardiometabolic diseases.

Versanis' lead asset is bimagrumab, a monoclonal antibody that binds activin type II A and B receptors to block activin and myostatin signaling. Bimagrumab is currently being assessed in the BELIEVE Phase 2b study alone and in combination with semaglutide in adults who are overweight or obese. Combining incretins with bimagrumab has the potential to further reduce fat mass while preserving muscle mass and may lead to better outcomes for people living with obesity and obesity-related complications.

"Lilly is committed to investigating potential new medicines to fight cardiometabolic diseases, including obesity, a chronic disease that affects over 100 million Americans," said Ruth Gimeno, Ph.D., group vice president, diabetes, obesity and cardiometabolic research at Lilly. "By unifying the knowledge and expertise in incretin biology at Lilly with the deep understanding of activin biology at Versanis, we aim to harness the potential benefits of such combinations for patients."

Mark Pruzanski, M.D., Versanis chairman and CEO, added: "It has been a privilege for our team to advance bimagrumab to address one of the greatest health crises of our time. As a global leader developing life-changing medicines, Lilly is ideally positioned to realize the potential of bimagrumab in combination with its incretin therapies to benefit people living with cardiometabolic diseases."

Under the terms of the agreement, Versanis shareholders could receive up to $1.925 billion in cash, inclusive of an upfront payment and subsequent payments upon achievement of certain development and sales milestones. The transaction is subject to customary closing conditions. Lilly will determine the accounting treatment of this transaction as a business combination or an asset acquisition, including any related acquired in-process research and development charges, according to Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) upon closing. This transaction will thereafter be reflected in Lilly's financial results and financial guidance.

For Lilly, Kirkland & Ellis LLP is acting as legal counsel. For Versanis, Goodwin Procter LLP is acting as legal counsel, Cooley LLP is advising as to patent matters, and J.P. Morgan and Company is acting as financial advisor.

https://www.biospace.com/article/releases/lilly-to-acquire-versanis-to-improve-patient-outcomes-in-cardiometabolic-diseases/

SciSparc Starts Autism Therapy Trial

 SciSparc Ltd. (Nasdaq: SPRC) ("Company" or "SciSparc"), a specialty clinical-stage pharmaceutical company focusing on the development of therapies to treat disorders of the central nervous system, today announced it has been granted an approval from the Israeli Medical Cannabis Agency ("IMCA") at the Israeli Ministry of Health to conduct its clinical trial for SCI-210 in children suffering from autism spectrum disorder ("ASD"). SCI-210 is a proprietary combination of cannabidiol (“CBD”) and CannAmide™.

With this approval, the Company has secured all necessary approvals to commence the clinical trial in Israel, including approvals from the Soroka University Medical Center Ethics Committee and Israeli Ministry of Health.

The Company's goal is to sell SCI-210 first in Israel and then in various regions of the world subject to obtaining appropriate regulatory approvals.

"The initiation of this clinical trial represents a significant step forward for our proprietary SCI-210 as we work to develop a novel treatment for children and adolescents with ASD. Given there are very few safe and effective treatments for reducing ASD symptoms, we believe that SCI-210 potentially introduces a safe and effective solution to this condition, which represents a clear unmet medical need,” said SciSparc’s Chief Executive Officer, Oz Adler. “We hope the outcome of the trial  will enable the Company to procced with commercialization process for SCI-210 in Israel."

“Medical cannabis is an important field in the medical aspects," said Yuval Landsheft, Director of the IMCA at the Israeli Ministry of Health. “The IMCA was established when it was clear that professionalism is required in this field. We are in the world of pharma, and as such, we encourage companies to conduct well designed and controlled clinical trials in order to be able to approve indications and to keep Israel as a global leader in the medical cannabis,” Magister Landsheft continued.

The trial will investigate the effect and safety of SciSparc’s drug candidate SCI-210, in comparison to CBD monotherapy in treating ASD. The study's objectives are to evaluate the safety, tolerability and efficacy of SCI-210 in children with ASD in a randomized, double-blind, placebo controlled with cross-over study. The design of the study includes a 20-week, randomized double-blind placebo-controlled with cross-over clinical trial of 60 children. The trial has three primary efficacy end points: the Aberrant Behavior Checklist-Community (ABC-C) parent questionnaire; the Clinical Global Impressions-Improvement (CGI-I) performed by a clinician; and the effective therapeutic dose.

The trial was designed in consultation with the National Autism Research Center, the leading research center for autism in Israel.

https://www.biospace.com/article/releases/scisparc-to-commence-its-clinical-trial-with-sci-210-in-children-with-autism-spectrum-disorder/