Viewpoints: Using Federal Dollars To Buy Guns For Teacher Would Increase Danger; Lessons On Onset Of Life During Pregnancy

Los Angeles Times: Besty DeVos Might Let Schools Use Federal Grants To Buy Guns? That's Dangerously Foolish
So far this calendar year, the nation has seen 15 school shootings in which at least one person was killed. Overall, 32 people have died, including 10 people in May at Santa Fe High School near Houston, and 17 people in February at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., according to a running tally kept by Education Week. Every such act of violence is tragic, and the scope of the mass shootings has shocked the nation. Against the greater backdrop of American gun violence, however — 5,627 non-suicide firearm deaths last year and 9,395 so far this year, according to the Gun Violence Archive — the risk of gun-wielders attacking schools is low. Yet some states, driven by the National Rifle Assn. mentality that a fully armed America is a safer America (it’s not), have passed laws allowing teachers and staffs at schools to carry or have access to firearms. (8/23)

The Washington Post: Arming Teachers With Federal Education Money? Are They Even Thinking?
How many public school teachers in the United States end up digging into their own pockets to pay for pencils, notebooks and other classroom supplies? Ninety-four percent of them, according to a survey published in May by the Education Department. Now that same department has a solution: Under the leadership — and we use that term guardedly — of Secretary Betsy DeVos, the department is actually thinking — yes, we use that term guardedly as well — of letting states use federal funds to buy guns for educators. (8/23)

St. Louis Post Dispatch: Pro Whose Life?
Iowa recently passed a bill that will outlaw abortion after the sixth week of pregnancy, and there is concern that other states that have already moved to restrict reproductive rights, including Missouri, will attempt to emulate Iowa. This specific time was selected because it coincides with the ability to first detect a fetal heartbeat on ultrasound. The news made me remember a woman I had seen in consultation over a decade ago. She was in the 18th week of a pregnancy, which she already knew would tax the financial and personal resources of her family. An ultrasound scan had identified a brain malformation that was incompatible with a normal childhood. ...Their law flies in the face of half a century of medical ethics precedent. Since 1968, physicians — and all 50 states — have accepted that neurological function, not heartbeat, defines life. The specific neurological circuits that have been used to define life do not exist in a six-week embryo. (Steven Rothman, 8/22)

Bloomberg: Child Migrants Are Victims Of A Crime 
A crime was planned, then committed. Now, we’re waiting to learn if the U.S. criminal justice system has the capacity to punish the powerful perpetrators. That might sound like news about the Trump gang colluding with Russian agents or paying off a porn star in 2016. But due to the extraordinary nature of the Trump administration, those are not the only chains of events that could fit the description. It also describes the administration’s policy of separating children from their undocumented parents at the U.S. border with Mexico. (Francis Wilkinson, 8/23)

The Washington Post: The Child-Separation Crisis No One Sees
While America argued about whether the Trump administration was right to separate children at the border, a much larger child-separation crisis has gone almost entirely unremarked: in America’s foster-care system. And in this case, the problem is not that we’re taking too many children away from their parents. We’re not taking enough. (Naomi Schaefer Riley, 8/23)

The Hill: US Health-Care System Still Struggling To Address Impacts Of Mental Health On Overall Health
 In 1999, then-U.S. Surgeon General David Satcher issued a groundbreaking report that gave prominent attention to mental health and emotional well-being as cornerstones of health. Yet nearly 20 years later, our health-care system is still struggling to address the impact of mental health on overall health, particularly for those living in distressed communities. ...Science is increasingly revealing that the lifestyle choices we make today — and the lifestyle diseases so many Americans suffer from — are often driven by much earlier life events and childhood experiences. (David Woodlock, 8/23)

Stat: Professionalism Isn't Something Medical Students Absorb. It Must Be Taught 
Today more than ever, we need physicians who are committed to the principles of professionalism. The principles themselves are well-established: physicians must be altruistic, always putting their patients’ interests first and above their own; they must be committed to lifelong learning; they must be responsible for the quality of care that they and their colleagues deliver; and they must advocate for the well-being not only of their own patients but also the population at large. Yet medical educators haven’t always been methodical and diligent in teaching these tenets to the next generation of doctors. (David Rothman, 8/24)

The Hill: Opioid Master Settlement Agreement Must Fill More Than Potholes
Should the litigation against the opioid manufacturers result in a substantial financial settlement, the nation will have a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to truly make a difference in the lives of millions. Let’s not squander this important opportunity.With or without a Master Settlement, rather than continuing to rack up needless deaths and staggering costs, let’s start working now to implement proven solutions to end this crisis and improve the trajectory of how addiction is managed in this country. We cannot afford not to. (A. Thomas McLellan, 8/23)

Charlotte Observer: Wells Fargo’s Fight Against Medical Marijuana Could Go Up In Smoke
Kelly Alexander doesn’t bank at Wells Fargo. But if he did, he’d be yanking his account and moving to another bank after what Wells did to Nikki Fried in Florida. Rep. Alexander, a Mecklenburg Democrat, is perhaps the North Carolina legislature’s most outspoken proponent of legalizing medical marijuana. So he was outraged when Wells shut down Fried’s account because she advocates for medical marijuana and accepts campaign contributions from the industry as a candidate for Florida agriculture commissioner. (Taylor Batten, 8/22)

Lexington Herald: U.S. Prosecutors Fighting Kentucky Opioid Crisis
Our office has received additional resources to combat the drug threat facing our district. Earlier this month, the attorney general announced Operation Synthetic Opioid Surge. SOS is based on a successful initiative in Manatee County, Fla., where law enforcement aggressively prosecuted fentanyl-distribution cases, helping in the reduction of overdose death rates. Working in partnership with the Drug Enforcement Agency, the Lexington Police Department and the Fayette Commonwealth Attorney’s Office, we will aggressively prosecute cases involving the distribution of fentanyl and other synthetic opioids — because with these drugs, there is no such thing as a small case. (Robert M. Duncan Jr., 8/23)