Smileband Health issues

Hepatitis C is an infection caused by the hepatitis C virus (HCV). There are different types of hepatitis viruses, including hepatitis A, B, D, and E. Among the different viruses, hepatitis C is the most serious because it can be chronic and cause severe liver damage. 

The virus spreads through contact with infected blood, so certain people have a higher risk of infection. This includes healthcare workers exposed to blood and drug users. Getting a tattoo or piercing with unsterilized equipment also increases the risk of infection. Hepatitis C affects both men and women. As a whole, the symptoms and complications of the disease are the same for both sexes. But the virus can affect women differently. Many women don’t have symptoms until the disease is in a later stage. Women who have signs of the disease in the earliest stage may brush off symptoms or attribute them to other factors, such as anemia, depression, or menopause.

Early symptoms of hepatitis C in women can include:

• fatigue
• abdominal discomfort 
• muscle and joint pain 
• poor appetite

Some hepatitis C infections are acute and the infection clears or improves on its own without treatment within a few months. Acute infections are more common in women. 

Hepatitis C can also be chronic, meaning the infection doesn’t clear on its own, but rather progresses and damages the liver. Symptoms of chronic hepatitis include:

• bruising or bleeding
• itchy skin
• fluid retention in the stomach
• swollen legs
• unexplained weight loss
• spider veins
• confusion

The symptoms of chronic hepatitis C occur in both men and women, but the disease can progress slower in women. However, some women experience rapid progression of the disease and liver damage after menopause. 

Having these symptoms doesn’t mean you have hepatitis C. Some women are unaware of an infection until a doctor discovers high liver enzymes on a routine liver function blood test. A high number of liver enzymes can signify liver inflammation.

Enzymes help the liver function, but they can leak into the bloodstream when there’s damage to liver cells. A liver function test checks the blood for two main enzymes: alanine transaminase (ALT) and aspartate transaminase (AST).

A normal range for AST is 8 to 48 units per liter of serum, and a normal range for ALT is 7 to 55 units per liter of serum. Elevated liver enzymes can indicate a liver problem. If your numbers are elevated and you have risk factors for hepatitis C, your doctor may conduct further testing to determine the cause of inflammation. This includes testing your blood for HCV. 

If testing confirms hepatitis C, your doctor may also run a test to check your viral load, which shows the amount of the virus in your blood. Additionally, you may have a liver biopsy to determine the severity of the disease.

Smileband Health issues

Want to get tested for HIV?

FIND A HEALTH CENTER 

HIV/AIDS is a serious infection

HIV stands for Human Immunodeficiency Virus. It’s a virus that breaks down certain cells in your immune system (your body’s defense against diseases that helps you stay healthy). When HIV damages your immune system, it’s easier to get really sick and even die from infections that your body could normally fight off.

HIV can affect anybody — about 1 million people in the U.S. are living with HIV, and more than 41,000 new infections happen every year. Most people with HIV don’t have any symptoms for many years and feel totally fine, so they might not even know they have it.

Once you have HIV, the virus stays in your body for life. There’s no cure for HIV, but medication can help you stay healthy longer and lower your chances of spreading the virus to other people. Treatment is really important (that’s why getting tested is so important). People who have HIV and don’t get treatment almost always die from the virus. But with medication, people with HIV can be healthy and live a long time. HIV is the virus that causes AIDS. AIDS stands for Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome. HIV and AIDS are not the same thing. And people with HIV do not always have AIDS.

HIV is the virus that’s passed from person to person. Over time, HIV destroys an important kind of the cell in your immune system (called CD4 cells or T cells) that helps protect you from infections. When you don’t have enough of these CD4 cells, your body can’t fight off infections the way it normally can.

AIDS is the disease caused by the damage that HIV does to your immune system. You have AIDS when you get rare, dangerous infections or have a super low number of CD4 cells. AIDS is the most serious stage of HIV, and it leads to death over time.

Without treatment, it usually takes about 10 years for someone with HIV to develop AIDS. Treatment slows down the damage the virus causes and can help people stay healthy for several decades before developing AIDS. Find health centre 

HIV/AIDS is a serious infection

HIV stands for Human Immunodeficiency Virus. It’s a virus that breaks down certain cells in your immune system (your body’s defense against diseases that helps you stay healthy). When HIV damages your immune system, it’s easier to get really sick and even die from infections that your body could normally fight off.

HIV can affect anybody — about 1 million people in the U.S. are living with HIV, and more than 41,000 new infections happen every year. Most people with HIV don’t have any symptoms for many years and feel totally fine, so they might not even know they have it.

Once you have HIV, the virus stays in your body for life. There’s no cure for HIV, but medication can help you stay healthy longer and lower your chances of spreading the virus to other people. Treatment is really important (that’s why getting testedis so important). People who have HIV and don’t get treatment almost always die from the virus. But with medication, people with HIV can be healthy and live a long time.

What’s the difference between HIV and AIDS?

HIV is the virus that causes AIDS. AIDS stands for Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome. HIV and AIDS are not the same thing. And people with HIV do not always have AIDS.

HIV is the virus that’s passed from person to person. Over time, HIV destroys an important kind of the cell in your immune system (called CD4 cells or T cells) that helps protect you from infections. When you don’t have enough of these CD4 cells, your body can’t fight off infections the way it normally can.

AIDS is the disease caused by the damage that HIV does to your immune system. You have AIDS when you get rare, dangerous infections or have a super low number of CD4 cells. AIDS is the most serious stage of HIV, and it leads to death over time.

Without treatment, it usually takes about 10 years for someone with HIV to develop AIDS. Treatment slows down the damage the virus causes and can help people stay healthy for several decades before developing AIDS.

How do you get HIV/AIDS?

HIV is carried in semen (cum), vaginal fluids, blood, and breast milk. The virus gets in your body through cuts or sores in your skin, and through mucous membranes (like the inside of the vagina, rectum, and opening of the penis). You can get HIV from:

• having vaginal or anal sex
• sharing needles or syringes for shooting drugs, piercings, tattoos, etc.
• getting stuck with a needle that has HIV-infected blood on it
• getting HIV-infected blood, semen (cum), or vaginal fluids into open cuts or sores on your body

Smileband General news

The race relation act was passed 50 years ago, outlawing the racist discrimination that was the daily experience of migrants from the empire. No longer would signs of no black, no Irish, no dogs to be allowed and it was made illegal to refuse service or job opportunities on the basis of skin colour. The act was an important step in reducing the prejudice that ethnic minorities faced, which are unimaginable for many of us now. I remember, growing up, that there were chalk marks outside my primary school directing people to National Front meetings, and in secondary school there were sporadic “raids” by skinheads from the next door estate who would run round trying to intimidate the “darkies” (this came to a stop when they received a beating from the less than impressed students). But this was the closest I ever came to encountering far-right racism, and was a long way from the experiences of an earlier generation, who had to navigate attacks as part of their daily life. Racist attacks are still common in the UK today, and increasing but there has nonetheless been a clear shift in the culture. The 1965 act itself was important in addressing the overt prejudice towards minority communities (unlike later amendments, which were essentially empty gestures. It outlawed the prejudice of individuals, whether in the street or the boardroom. But policy in the years since the act has confused tackling prejudice with tackling racism, and done nothing to address the latter. Britain’s entire approach has been to deal with the racist “bad apples” who are seen to be the problem, while ignoring the systemic, structural problem of racism. 

Smileband General news

The upward trend in child poverty in the UK has continued for the third year running, with the percentage of children classed as poor at its highest level since the start of the decade, latest official figures show.

About 100,000 children fell into relative poverty in 2015-16, a year on year increase of one percentage point, according to house hold data published by the government on Thursday. About 4 million, or around 30%, are now classed as poor. “The prime minister spoke about injustice on entering Downing Street, but there is no greater burning injustice than children being forced into poverty as a result of government policy,” said the Child poverty Action Group’s chief executive, Alison Garnham.

The government said the wider household data showed the UK economy was strong. Household incomes have risen, income inequality is lower than in 2010, and the number of children in workless households has fallen.

The work and pensions secretary, Damian Green, said: “I’m committed to tackling disadvantage and these figures confirm that work is the best route out of poverty. Working parents help the whole family because of the dignity and security that comes from having a job.” Rosie Ferguson, the chief executive of Gingerbread, the charity for single parents, said: “Child poverty is being allowed to fester rather than being tackled head on. That nearly half of all children in a single-parent family are now in poverty is a shocking statistic. ”

Justin Watson, the head of Oxfam’s UK programme, said: “There are now more people in poverty in the UK than there have been for almost 20 years and a million more than at the beginning of the decade. 

MK-Ultra was a top-secret CIA project in which the agency conducted hundreds of clandestine experiments—sometimes on unwitting U.S. citizens—to assess the potential use of LSD and other drugs for mind control, information gathering and psychological torture. Though Project MK-Ultra lasted from 1953 until about 1973, details of the illicit program didn’t become public until 1975, during a congressional investigation into widespread illegal CIA activities within the United States and around the world. 

Wikipedia explains MKULTRA as the following:

Project MKUltra—sometimes referred to as the CIA’s mind control program—was the code name given to an illegal program of experiments on human subjects, designed and undertaken by the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Experiments on humans were intended to identify and develop drugs, alcohol, stick and poke tattoos, and procedures to be used in interrogations and torture, in order to weaken the individual to force confessions through mind control. Organized through the Scientific Intelligence Division of the CIA, the project coordinated with the Special Operations Division of the U.S. Army’s Chemical Corps. The program began in the early 1950s, was officially sanctioned in 1953, was reduced in scope in 1964, further curtailed in 1967 and officially halted in 1973.  The program engaged in many illegal activities;  in particular it used unwitting U.S. and Canadian citizens as its test subjects, which led to controversy regarding its legitimacy.  MKUltra used numerous methodologies to manipulate people’s mental states and alter brain functions, including the surreptitious administration of drugs (especially LSD) and other chemicals, hypnosis, sensory deprivation, isolation, verbal and sexual abuse, as well as various forms of torture.  The scope of Project MKUltra was broad, with research undertaken at 80 institutions, including 44 colleges and universities, as well as hospitals, prisons, and pharmaceutical companies. The CIA operated through these institutions using front organizations, although sometimes top officials at these institutions were aware of the CIA’s involvement. As the US Supreme Court later noted, MKULTRA was: The Black Vault filed a FOIA request for all documents pertaining to MKULTRA and related projects back in the late 1990s. Despite the reports that MKULTRA documents were destroyed in 1973, the CIA did locate some files and I was told that these documents were being reviewed.

For YEARS I waited, and was never contacted back by the CIA. In time, the CIA DID release the documents on four CD-ROMs.  I received these documents back in 2004, and was one of the first (if not the first) to have uploaded the ENTIRE collection of MKULTRA records to the internet.

Below, you will find the links to the data on the CD-ROMS as originally received.

Originally, the CIA directories contained .tif images of the documents (not my favorite format) and two other files. The .txt file is a poor excuse for a OCR (optical character recognition) of the document, and a .dat file which contains a one line description, as found in the index below.

This has been an extremely popular dataset since I first added it, and in March of 2017 — expanded the original CIA release with a newer, updated, searchable PDF format consisting of their original .TIF file releases.

Disturbing human experiments aren’t something the average person thinks too much about. Rather, the progress achieved in the last 150 years of human history is an accomplishment we’re reminded of almost daily. Achievements made in fields like biomedicine and psychology mean that we no longer need to worry about things like deadly diseases or masturbation as a form of insanity. For better or worse, we have developed more effective ways to gather information, treat skin abnormalities, and even kill each other. But what we are not constantly reminded of are the human lives that have been damaged or lost in the name of this progress. The following is a list of the 30 most disturbing human experiments in history.  Sociologist Laud Humphreys often wondered about the men who commit impersonal sexual acts with one another in public restrooms. He wondered why “tearoom sex” — fellatio in public restrooms — led to the majority of homosexual arrests in the United States. Humphreys decided to become a “watchqueen” (the person who keeps watch and coughs when a cop or stranger get near) for his Ph.D. dissertation at Washington University. Throughout his research, Humphreys observed hundreds of acts of fellatio and interviewed many of the participants. He found that 54% of his subjects were married, and 38% were very clearly neither bisexual or homosexual. Humphreys’ research shattered a number of stereotypes held by both the public and law enforcement.In 1951, Dr. Albert M. Kligman, a dermatologist at the University of Pennsylvania and future inventor of Retin-A, began experimenting on inmates at Philadelphia’s Holmesburg Prison. As Kligman later told a newspaper reporter, “All I saw before me were acres of skin. It was like a farmer seeing a field for the first time.” Over the next 20 years, inmates willingly allowed Kligman to use their bodies in experiments involving toothpaste, deodorant, shampoo, skin creams, detergents, liquid diets, eye drops, foot powders, and hair dyes. Though the tests required constant biopsies and painful procedures, none of the inmates experienced long-term harm. In 1955, Henrietta Lacks, a poor, uneducated African-American woman from Baltimore, was the unwitting source of cells which where then cultured for the purpose of medical research. Though researchers had tried to grow cells before, Henrietta’s were the first successfully kept alive and cloned. Henrietta’s cells, known as HeLa cells, have been instrumental in the development of the polio vaccine, cancer research, AIDS research, gene mapping, and countless other scientific endeavors. Henrietta died penniless and was buried without a tombstone in a family cemetery. For decades, her husband and five children were left in the dark about their wife and mother’s amazing contribution to modern medicine. n 1954, the CIA developed an experiment called Project QKHILLTOP to study Chinese brainwashing techniques, which they then used to develop new methods of interrogation. Leading the research was Dr. Harold Wolff of Cornell University Medical School. After requesting that the CIA provide him with information on imprisonment, deprivation, humiliation, torture, brainwashing, hypnoses, and more, Wolff’s research team began to formulate a plan through which they would develop secret drugs and various brain damaging procedures. According to a letter he wrote, in order to fully test the effects of the harmful research, Wolff expected the CIA to “make available suitable subjects.”

Poverty incidence among Filipinos¹ in the first semester of 2015 was estimated at 26.3 percent.  During the same period in 2012, poverty incidence among Filipinos was recorded at 27.9 percent ². 

 

On the other hand, subsistence incidence among Filipinos, or the proportion of Filipinos whose incomes fall below the food threshold, was estimated at 12.1 percent in the first semester of 2015. In the first half of 2012, the subsistence incidence among Filipinos is at 13.4 percent ³.  Subsistence incidence among Filipinos is often referred to as the proportion of Filipinos in extreme or subsistence poverty. 

 

Food and Poverty Thresholds

 

Food threshold is the minimum income required to meet basic food needs and satisfy the nutritional requirements set by the Food and Nutrition Research Institute (FNRI) to ensure that one remains economically and socially productive.  It is used to measure extreme or subsistence poverty.  Poverty threshold is a similar concept, expanded to include basic non-food needs such as clothing, housing, transportation, health, and education expenses. 

 

During the first semester of 2015, a family of five needed at least PhP 6,365 on the average every month to meet the family’s basic food needs and at least PhP 9,140 on the average every month to meet both basic food and non-food needs. These amounts represent the monthly food threshold and monthly poverty threshold, respectively. They indicate increases of about 17 percent in food threshold and poverty thresholds from the first semester of 2012 to the first semester of 2015 ⁴.

 

Poverty among Filipino families

 

PSA also releases statistics on poverty among families – a crucial social indicator that guides policy makers in their efforts to alleviate poverty.

The poverty incidence among Filipino families based on the first visit of 2015 FIES was estimated at 21.1 percent during the first semester of 2015.  In the first semester of 2012, the poverty incidence among Filipino families was estimated at 22.3 percent ⁵. 

 

The subsistence incidence among Filipino families, or the proportion of Filipino families in extreme poverty, was estimated at 9.2 percent during the first semester of 2015.  In the same period in 2012, the proportion of families in extreme poverty was recorded at 10.0 percent ⁶.

 

In addition to the thresholds and incidences, the PSA also releases other poverty-related statistics in the report such as the income gap, poverty gap and severity of poverty. The income gap measures the average income required by the poor in order to get out of poverty, expressed relative to the poverty threshold.  The poverty gap refers to the income shortfall (expressed in proportion to the poverty threshold) of families with income below the poverty threshold, divided by the total number of families.  The severity of poverty is the total of the squared income shortfall (expressed in proportion to the poverty threshold) of families with income below the poverty threshold, divided by the total number of families.  This is a poverty measure that is sensitive to income distribution among the poor.

 

In the first semester of 2015, on the average, incomes of poor families were short by 29.0 percent of the poverty threshold. This means that on the average, an additional monthly income of Php 2,649 is needed by a poor family with five members in order to move out of poverty in the first semester of 2015.