In Haiti, as many as 1,000 people have died and an estimated one million left homeless after the impoverished country was hit by four major storms and hurricanes in less than a month. We speak to the renowned physician Dr. Paul Farmer, co-founder of Partners in Health, a group that provides free medical care in Haiti. After visiting Gonaives over the weekend, Dr. Farmer wrote, “After 25 years spent working in Haiti and having grown up in Florida, I can honestly say that I have never seen anything as painful as what I just witnessed.” [includes rush transcript]

via Democracy Now!

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According to a new report by the Black AIDS Institute, if blacks in the United States constituted their own country, that nation would rank sixteenth in the world in the number of people living with HIV. Two percent of adult black Americans are infected with the virus, and only four countries outside Africa have a higher HIV prevalence.

Visit www.blackaids.org for  more info. Download the full report here.

Hear journalist Kai Wright discuss this report on Democracy Now! The brotha is holdin it down for real on this and subprime crime.

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In case you thought they weren’t experimenting on us anymore….

Lawmakers and the NAACP are calling for an investigation into reports that federally funded scientific experiments in 2000 spread sewage sludge on yards in poor, black neighborhoods to test if it could fight lead poisoning in children.

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Life expectancy for the nation as a whole has increased, but the affluent have made greater gains, researchers said. New government research has found “large and growing” disparities in life expectancy for richer and poorer Americans, paralleling the growth of income inequality in the last two decades.

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So this morning I hear this on Democracy Now!

Pro-choice activists are gathering around the country today to mark the National Day of Appreciation for Abortion Providers. In Albany, New York Governor Eliot Spitzer is addressing the Family Planning Advocates of New York State. Shortly after taking office last year, Spitzer introduced a bill that would declare abortion a fundamental right for women. The bill would also ensure abortion remains legal in New York should the Supreme Court overturn Roe v. Wade. [includes rush transcript]

And by the afternoon, this is the new headline…

NY governor linked to prostitution ring
NEW YORK - Gov. Eliot Spitzer, the crusading politician who built his career on rooting out corruption, apologized Monday after allegations surfaced that he paid thousands of dollars for a high-end call girl. He did not elaborate on the scandal, which drew calls for his resignation.

What’s really going on?!

“Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present” is the first and only comprehensive history of medical experimentation, abuse and neglect of African Americans. The book reveals the hidden underbelly of scientific research and the roots of the African American health deficit. It begins with the earliest encounters of blacks and the medical establishment during slavery, looks at how eugenics and social Darwinism was used to justify medical experiments conducted by the government and the military–and offers new details about the infamous Tuskegee Experiments that began in the 1930’s.

“Medical Apartheid” also examines less well-known abuses and looks at unethical practices and mistreatment of blacks that are still taking place in the medical establishment today.

listen to an interview with Harriet Washington with Democracy Now!

Also acknowledged was Edwidge Danticat who won in the autobiography category for “Brother, I’m Dying”.

Edwidge Danticat is an award-winning Haitian-born writer who now lives in Miami. In November 2004, Danticat’s 81-year-old uncle, Reverend Joseph Dantica, died in the custody of immigration officials. He had arrived from Haiti seeking political asyslum following threats on his life. Denied his medicines and accused of faking an illness, he died just days after his detention. Edwidge Danticat tells this devastating story in her latest book, “Brother, I’m Dying.”

listen to her interview here

It would certainly be a dream of Big Pharma and those who favor an authoritarian society if every would-be Tom Paine — or Crazy Horse, Tecumseh, Emma Goldman or Malcolm X — were diagnosed as a youngster with mental illness and quieted with a lifelong regimen of chill pills. The question is: Has this dream become reality?

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One can assume some doctors believe Blacks are more prone to abuse opioids, even though this flies in the face of the facts.

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