Dupixent from Sanofi and Regeneron Pharmaceuticals is expected to gain approval for COPD, which would significantly increase its sales
https://seekingalpha.com/news/4085383-sanofi-regeneron-dupixent-set-large-gains-likely-copd-approval
Sunday, March 31, 2024
In Easter Ruling, Judge Orders Release Of 'Border Riot' Migrants Who Overwhelmed National Guard
A group of migrants involved in a riot at the southern US border have been ordered to be released by an El Paso magistrate judge.
The swarm of migrants overwhelmed Texas National Guard soldiers who were trying to organize them into groups to be taken into custody by Customs and Border Protection (CBP). At one point, a migrant attempted to grab a soldier's firearm, one National Guard source told the NY Post.
Following the riot, authorities confiscated knives and shanks from some of the migrants.
"These people were willing to assault military," said the Post's source. "They were willing to assault law enforcement. They have complete disregard for our laws."
In an Easter Sunday decision, presiding Magistrate Judge Humberto Acosta ordered the rioters released after accusing the El Paso DA's Office of being unprepared to proceed with detention hearings for each defendant, so they should be released, the El Paso Times reports.
"It is the ruling of the court is that all the rioting participation cases will be released on their own recognizance," Acosta ordered, noting that they will only remain jailed if there's a federal immigration hold blocking their release.
The arrests were made by the Texas Department of Public Safety in connection with a March 21 stampede of asylum-seeking migrants — mostly men from Venezuela — who torn down razor wire along the Rio Grande and rushed the border fence at Border Safety Initiative Marker No. 36 in the Riverside area of El Paso's Lower Valley.
Some migrants face charges of assault of a public servant for knocking down National Guard troops before order was regained. The migrants had sought to surrender themselves to U.S. Border Patrol in bids for asylum.
It was unclear if Acosta's decision applied only to the "riot participation" charge, or the assault and criminal mischief charges related to the border incident.
It is unknown how many migrants were booked on the charge of "riot participation," a Class B misdemeanor - though Acosta referred to "hundreds of arrestees," who he says are entitled to individual detention hearings within 48 hours.
The DA's office requested a continuance to have the hearings at a later date, however Acosta rejected the request.
"So if the DA’s office is telling me that they are not ready to go, what we’re going to do is we’re going to release all these individuals on their own recognizance," Acosta said at the hearing.
Meanwhile on Sunday, two other migrants - including a Colombian man, had separate hearings on criminal mischief charges for allegedly cutting border fencing. After being jailed with a $2,000 bond each, Magistrate Judge Antonio Aun also released them on personal recognizance bonds, however both men have immigration holds.
Last week, Texas sent 700 National Guard soldiers to El Paso, including 200 with the Texas Tactical Border Force, to reinforce the border.
As the El Paso Times notes further, 'Operation Lone Star video shows troops boarding a transport plane and on the border with riot shields moving migrants back so crews could replace rolls of damaged razor wire along the banks of the Rio Grande.'
House office promoting diversity shuttered
The House Office of Diversity and Inclusion (ODI) was disbanded this week as part of a government spending bill passed earlier this month, the office’s president, Sesha Joi Moon, told CNN. It’s the latest blow to the DEI movement, which has come under mounting criticism from Republicans over the past several years.
“The elimination of the House Office of Diversity and Inclusion is a tremendous loss, not only for the U.S. House of Representatives, but for the advancement of equity and opportunity in America overall,” Rep. Joyce Beatty (D-Ohio) said in a statement to The Hill.
Beatty, the first-ever chair of the Financial Services Committee’s Subcommittee on Diversity and Inclusion, has been a strong proponent of DEI practices as limitations on the programs have spread throughout the country.
Janet Stovall, Global Head of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion at NeuroLeadership Institute, said focus on these programs picked up in 2020 following the murder of George Floyd, an event that led to wider discussions involving representation in the workforce, among other issues.
But the effort to promote DEI programs also sparked backlash, especially from the right, members of whom argue that they push a divisive left-wing agenda under the guise of advocating for inclusion.
Rep. Alex Mooney (R-W.Va.) last year introduced a bill to abolish ODI, saying it promoted “cultural Marxism” in the workplace.
“These offices start with the premise that white people are inheritably racist and oppressive,” he said at the time. “The House of Representatives does not need bureaucrats promoting this divisive ideology.”
High-profile Republicans across the country have similarly criticized DEI programs, turning it into a political weapon for the second straight election cycle in a row.
The dissolution of the office comes as Republican lawmakers in more than 30 states have introduced or passed more than 100 bills this legislative session to either restrict or regulate DEI initiatives, according to an NBC News analysis.
Last May, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) signed a bill into law banning the state’s public colleges and universities from spending money on DEI programs.
“If you look at the way this has actually been implemented across the country, DEI is better viewed as standing for discrimination, exclusion and indoctrination,” DeSantis said at the time.
And, after the Supreme Court’s 2023 decision to overturn affirmative action, 13 Republican attorneys general sent a letter to Fortune 100 corporations warning them to refrain from using racial preferences in hiring and promotion decisions.
Meanwhile, in December, Utah Gov. Spencer Cox (R) garnered scrutiny when he said that the signing of diversity statements as part of the hiring process were “bordering on evil” and that his state would no longer have “diversity statements that you have to sign to get hired.”
Cox later said his comments were taken out of context by the media and stressed that he supported diversity.
https://thehill.com/homenews/race-politics/4564129-dei-advocates-sound-alarm-house-office-diversity/
China's SAIC aims to slash jobs at GM, VW ventures and EV unit, sources say
China's SAIC Motor aims to cut thousands of jobs this year at its joint ventures with General Motors and Volkswagen and at an electric-car unit, two people with knowledge of the matter told Reuters.
The state-owned automaker hopes to cut 30% of employees at SAIC-GM, 10% at SAIC Volkswagen and more than half at its Rising Auto EV subsidiary, the people said.
Large-scale workforce reductions are rare at state-owned Chinese firms and come amid a cut-throat automotive price war as the nation's economy falters. The cutbacks also reflect the explosion of electric vehicles in China, a sector where SAIC and its foreign partners have rapidly lost market share to Tesla and privately owned Chinese automakers led by BYD.
The staff reductions won't happen all at once in mass layoffs but are targeted for 2024, the sources said. A large portion will come through implementing stricter performance standards and offering payouts to lower-rated employees who resign, they said.
A SAIC spokesperson said Reuters' "speculation" about staff downsizing is "not true" and that the company would not set targets for worker dismissals. SAIC did not respond to questions about efforts to get low-performers to resign or other staff-reduction strategies.
The company added that it had recruited 2,000 employees in the first two months of 2024 who will focus on software and new-energy vehicles.
A GM spokesperson in China said it would be "inaccurate" to say SAIC-GM is "reducing its workforce by 30%" but declined to elaborate. A VW China Group spokesperson said it did not plan “layoffs” and that it was “incorrect” to say SAIC-VW plans to cut 10% of its workforce.
The VW spokesperson declined to comment on whether the company had changed its employee performance reviews but called them a “long-term mechanism” and said SAIC-VW provides counseling and resources aiming to ensure “every employee can be qualified for their job requirements.” FALLING SALES SAIC has been China’s biggest automaker for nearly two decades but saw its sales fall by 16% during the first two months of 2024 from a year earlier, according to an SAIC filing. It employed 207,000 people at its parent company and major subsidiaries at the end of 2023, according to SAIC’s annual report.
Needham sees orthopedics market slowing; favors Enovis, Paragon 28
Needham says it expects growth in the orthopedic device market to slow later this year, but sees Enovis (ENOV) and Paragon 28 (FNA) as above average performers.
Minnesota Law School Drops Exclusion Of Whites And Males From Diversity Scholarship
There is a curious resolution of a civil right complaint against University of Minnesota Law School over a diversity fellowship sponsored by the law firm of Jones Day. Despite being created by a law firm and administered by a law school, the fellowship violated federal law in excluding white and male applicants. The law school finally threw in the towel, but there remains an uncertainty over whether the school is engaging in a subterfuge by opening up the scholarship while retaining its original purpose.
The Jones Day Diversity Fellowship launched in December 2022 to extend full tuition for three years at the law school. The scholarship also allows the recipient to work as a summer associate at Jones Day, one of the most sought-after firms for summer employment. The firm website maintains that “We aggressively pursue hiring, retaining, and developing lawyers from historically underrepresented groups and backgrounds.”
Various conservative sites have slammed the diversity fellowship, which was the subject of a civil rights complaint by Adam Kissel.
The September 2023 complaint to the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) is now closed following a settlement to drop any “preference based on race or sex.”
The question is what difference the settlement will make in actual awards.
Law schools have been accused of “gaming the system” on admissions criteria for years to circumvent federal law and governing cases on the use of race or gender. Those concerns only increased after the Supreme Court categorically rejected the use of race in admissions in Students for Fair Admissions Inc. v. President & Fellows of Harvard College and Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. University of North Carolina.
Critics are still unclear on how Jones Day and Minnesota Law School will achieve its diversity goals without applying such a preference, even if the applications are not limiting on the basis of race.
The university maintains that it will not impose threshold exclusions of whites and males but will select applicants “based on their commitment to enhancing diversity and inclusion” and “whose life experiences bring unique, extraordinary, or other fresh perspective to campus, including first generation college graduate and students from socioeconomically challenged backgrounds.'”
This is a recurring complaint for Minnesota. It came under fire last May when the Office of Undergraduate Students created a paid internship program application to only non-White applicants.
The question going forward is whether there is a viable basis to challenge the program on an “as applied” theory. If whites males continue to be excluded, the challengers could return to allege that nothing changed beyond the language.
When Medicalization Goes Too Far
Within the first 5 minutes of comedian Kevin James' comedy special Irregardless, he recounts a conversation he had with his doctor during a routine appointment. It went something like this:
Doctor: Everything looks really good. I do want to let you know though, you are prediabetic.
James: [Chuckles] Who isn't?
James: Do I have diabetes?
Doctor: No.
James: But I could get diabetes?
Doctor: Yes.
[There's a brief pause as James thinks about this.]
James: Do you have diabetes?
Doctor: No.
James: But could you get diabetes?
Doctor: I guess so.
James: Let me tell you something, you're prediabetic.
In this bit, James suggests that medicalization has gone too far, and I tend to agree with him. However, medicalization isn't inherently bad; it's simply the process by which human conditions that weren't previously considered to be pathological come to be defined as medical conditions and treated as such. Examples include halitosis, obesity, infertility, impotence, menopause, alcoholism, and grief.
As it turns out, the boundaries between health and disease are a little blurry. Therefore, sociologists developed the concept of medicalization in the 1970s. They wanted to study how something people once considered to be a normal part of life came to be viewed as a medical condition warranting medical intervention. Researchers Wieteke van Dijk, PhD, et al. explain, "Society's norms and values develop at a continual pace, influencing all of us in our perception of health, [and] what constitutes a medical problem." However, where to draw the line between what's considered normal and what's a medical problem is often rife with controversy.
For instance, when is a fasting glucose level considered "elevated"? If a patient has a fasting glucose level of 105 mg/dL, do they have prediabetes? According to the World Health Organization (WHO), the answer is "no," but clinicians following the American Diabetes Association (ADA) criteria would likely say "yes." That's because diagnostic criteria differ. The ADA "defines prediabetes as a fasting glucose of 100–125 mg/dL and/or an A1C of 5.7% to 6.4%." The WHO, on the other hand, "defines prediabetes using a narrower fasting glucose range of 110–125 mg/dL" and does not use A1C.
The difference between these two organizations' diagnostic criteria matters because it drastically affects how many people are told they have prediabetes. According to a research paper published in 2020, the prevalence of prediabetes based on ADA criteria was roughly double the prevalence of prediabetes based on WHO criteria. More specifically, "Out of 8844 individuals, prediabetes was identified in 3492 individuals [...] according to ADA and 1382 individuals [...] according to WHO criteria."
If I was Kevin James and my healthcare provider told me I had prediabetes, my next question would be, "What are the chances that prediabetes will progress to diabetes?" According to the CDC, "Without taking action, many people with prediabetes could develop type 2 diabetes within 5 years." However, this ominous warning doesn't actually answer the question. How many is "many"? For far too long, these kinds of ambiguous, ominous claims were pretty much all we had to go on.
Fortunately, further research has helped elucidate the lifetime risk of developing type 2 diabetes for adults who have been diagnosed with prediabetes. Moreover, it indicates that the prediabetes threshold matters greatly when it comes to identifying those at high risk of type 2 diabetes. For 45-year-olds with ADA-defined prediabetes, the 10-year risk of diabetes was 14.2% for women and 9.2% for men. For 45-year-olds with WHO-defined prediabetes, the 10-year risk of diabetes was 23.2% for women and 24.6% for men.
This study suggests that the ADA prediabetes diagnostic criteria cast far too wide a net. Millions of Americans are told they are at risk for diabetes when in fact, the vast majority of them will never develop diabetes. Unfortunately, this kind of overdiagnosis and perceived fear-mongering can erode people's trust in the healthcare system.
Kevin James expands on this from the patient perspective. He says, "What's with the pre-? That's how this world operates. Pre-. Fear. You might. Almost. You don't know. [...] Everything's fear." Some may argue that a little dose of fear might motivate people to make healthier lifestyle choices. However, as clinicians, we should not resort to such tactics. Rather, it's our duty to provide patients with the most accurate information possible.
In the U.S., the threshold for what constitutes a medical condition and therefore necessitates medical treatment has been continuously lowered. Identifying this trend and simultaneously recognizing that other developed countries are resisting it are the first steps towards reevaluating our current practices.
Shannon Casey, PA-C, is a physician assistant and former assistant teaching professor in the Department of Family Medicine at the University of Washington. She writes at The Medical Atlas.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)