'As if suffering could be graded': Initiative calls on full, immediate release of all hostages
The Israel-based 'Bo'u' medical initiative (Come Together) penned a letter on Monday addressing top officials of the country's Health Ministry, asking them not to prioritize certain hostages to be released earlier than others and that they do not agree to only a partial release of the remaining 50 hostages, but a full and immediate release for all, according to a report by KAN, Israel's public broadcaster.
Bo'u is "led by top professionals in the fields of physical and mental health in Israel, aimed at rescuing the hostages and preserving Israeli society," their website states.
The initiative was created in response to the conditions of the hostages still held by Hamas in the Gaza Strip. It's known for hosting many lectures to raise public awareness on the matter, which are done through their speakers via Zoom. As of Monday, they have held over 700 lectures, according to the initiative.
"Deciding on medical grounds who is 'worthy' of release and who will remain in captivity is not only professionally wrong but also intolerable from a conscientious point of view. It creates a reality of selection among hostages, as if suffering could be graded, entitlement to freedom measured, or the extent to which a person deserves to be rescued.
"This type of medical selection is familiar to us from the darkest period in the history of the Jewish people," the association continued. "The very use of medical parameters to decide who will remain in captivity and who will be saved echoes historical memories that have no place in a sovereign and moral Jewish state."
Israel's public broadcaster also quoted Dr. Einat Yehene, Head of Rehabilitation at the Hostage Families Forum's Health Division, who said that a partial release of hostages leads to jealousy in families whose loved ones still haven't been released and creates gaps between the families.

Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles


Boston Globe
2 hours ago
- Boston Globe
US measles cases reach 33-year high as outbreaks spread
The nation surpassed infections reported in 2019, reaching the largest number of cases since 1992, when officials recorded more than 2,100 infections, according to data published Friday from the Johns Hopkins University Center for Outbreak Response Innovation (CORI). 'It's devastating,' said Claire Hannan, executive director of the Association of Immunization Managers, a national organization of state and local immunization officials. 'We worked so hard to eliminate the threat of measles and to keep it at bay.' Authorities said at least 155 people have been hospitalized and three people have died of measles-related complications this year. The dead include two otherwise healthy children in Texas and a man in New Mexico, all of whom were unvaccinated. In contrast, only three measles deaths were reported between 2001 and 2024, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up About 92 percent of measles cases in 2025 were in people who were either unvaccinated or whose vaccination status was unknown, according to the CDC. Advertisement Data from the CDC does not yet reflect the record as it is updated weekly on Wednesdays, while the Johns Hopkins' site validates data every weekday. The largest outbreak has been in West Texas, where officials have recorded more than 750 cases since late January and believe the true toll is much higher. Data shows that outbreak has slowed, but that it has spread to surrounding states. Advertisement Unrelated clusters of cases emerged elsewhere, usually originating with an unvaccinated person who traveled abroad. Measles was officially eliminated from the United States in 2000 with high vaccination coverage and rapid outbreak response. Cases still popped up periodically. But in recent years, large outbreaks with 50 or more cases have become more frequent, especially in close-knit communities with low vaccination coverage. Public health experts say the country is on track to lose the elimination status if there is continuous spread of linked measles cases for more than 12 months. 'It's a harbinger of things to come,' said Eric Ball, a pediatrician who heads the California chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics. 'Once we see a resurgence of measles, we know that other diseases are going to come behind it.' Misinformation about the safety and effectiveness of the measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine fueled the 1,274 cases recorded in 2019, according to public health officials and researchers. The outbreaks that year were concentrated in ultra-Orthodox Jewish communities in New York, highlighting the risks in tight-knit communities where vaccine distrust takes hold. Confidence in public health measures, especially vaccines, has fallen since then, and is sharply divided along political lines. The national rate for MMR vaccination among kindergartners was slightly above 95 percent in 2019, the level of community protection scientists say is needed to prevent measles outbreaks. But that rate is now under 93 percent and falling, according to the CDC. Even in states with high vaccination coverage, pockets of unvaccinated people tend to cluster together. Measles is so contagious that a person without immunity exposed to the virus is highly likely to be infected and to spread it days before they develop symptoms. Advertisement A recent study showed that if US vaccination rates continue to decline, the nation could face millions of cases over the next 25 years. A poll conducted in March by the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and the de Beaumont Foundation found that 79 percent of adults say parents should be required to have children vaccinated against preventable diseases such as measles, mumps, and rubella to attend school. Support was stronger among Democrats, 90 percent, than among Republicans, 68 percent. Five years after the start of the coronavirus pandemic, less than half the public says it has at least some confidence in federal health agencies to carry out core public health responsibilities, according to a poll conducted in April by the health care think tank KFF. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a longtime antivaccine activist who ascended to be the top US health official, has offered mixed messages about measles and the vaccine to prevent it. He initially downplayed the seriousness of the Texas outbreak after the first child died, saying: 'We have measles outbreaks every year.' He accompanied his calls for vaccination with caveats, raising concerns about the shots that public health experts called unfounded. Nola Jean Ernest, a pediatrician in rural southeastern Alabama, said many of her patients trust others who share their political views more than her when it comes to vaccination. She now sees patients who vaccinated older children refuse to vaccinate their infants. 'I've had several conversations in the last few months where they will say, 'We still trust you, we just don't trust the vaccines,'' Ernest said recently. 'That really breaks my heart.' Advertisement In Texas, infections in late January spread quickly within Gaines County's Mennonite community, some of whom educate their children at home or at private schools without vaccine mandates. The county had among the lowest kindergarten MMR vaccination rates in Texas, about 82 percent, according to state immunization data. Public health officials said they faced challenges in controlling the outbreak because many people were not getting tested or vaccinated for measles. Antivaccine groups mobilized quickly on the ground. Many Mennonite families turned to a prominent antivaccine doctor who offered unproven alternative treatments. Kennedy praised that doctor and his methods in a visit to the region. Children's Health Defense, an antivaccine group founded by Kennedy, interviewed the parents of a 6-year-old girl who died of measles, blaming her death on medical error rather than vaccination status. The organization did not immediately return a request for comment. Eventually, 36 Texas counties reported measles cases. Young adults from El Paso who work in oil fields close to Gaines County were among those infected this spring. El Paso went from five cases to 53 in a month, said Hector Ocaranza, director of the city and county health authority. Ocaranza said his community was vulnerable because a growing number of young adults, listening to what they see and hear on social media, are not getting vaccinated. Lara Anton, a spokeswoman for the Texas Health Department, said last week that the reporting of new measles cases has slowed, crediting rising population immunity from infections and increased vaccination. But the outbreak is not over. Advertisement Transmission is continuing in Gaines County, as well as Lamar County, in northeast Texas bordering Oklahoma, according to health department data. In Chihuahua, Mexico, which borders Texas and New Mexico, a child who visited Texas in February started a large measles outbreak that now exceeds 2,400 cases and eight deaths as of last week, according to data from the Pan American Health Organization. Measles outbreaks require vast personnel, time, dollars, and messaging, public health experts say. The 2019 outbreak cost New York City $8.4 million with 550 staff involved in the response, according to a 2020 report in the New England Journal of Medicine. Funding for state and local public health agencies, including immunization programs, has been slashed after increasing during the pandemic. Public health workers have been laid off because of widespread budget cuts across the federal health agencies. Because of the decreased funding, Texas had to pull resources and staff from other parts of its health department to respond to the outbreak, David Sugerman, a senior CDC scientist, told a committee of agency vaccine advisers in April. In Dallas, which has had one measles case this year, health officials had to lay off 16 immunization staff because of federal cuts, said Philip Huang, director of the county's health and human services department. 'The fact that this is occurring at the same time that we are seeing more measles cases in Texas than we have seen in more than 30 years makes absolutely no sense,' Huang said. Related : Related :


Chicago Tribune
5 hours ago
- Chicago Tribune
Illinois-based American Academy of Pediatrics sues Robert F. Kennedy Jr. over vaccine changes
The Illinois-based American Academy of Pediatrics and five other prominent medical groups are suing Robert F. Kennedy Jr., over changes made to COVID-19 vaccine recommendations for children and pregnant women. The lawsuit, filed Monday in U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts, alleges that a decision in May to remove COVID-19 vaccines from the federal list of recommended vaccines for healthy children and pregnant women was unlawful and 'endangering the lives of patients.' 'The Directive has put all (American Academy of Pediatrics) members (and, indeed, all other physicians in this country) in the untenable position of telling their patients that the country's top-ranking government health official's advice and recommendations are wrong and that we are right,' according to the lawsuit. 'This erodes trust, which is the foundation of a healthy physician-patient relationship and vital to the success of AAP members' medical practices.' Now, instead of recommending the vaccine for healthy children, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says healthy children may receive the vaccine after 'a decision process between the health care provider and the patient or parent/guardian.' The medical groups want the court to bar the federal government from enforcing and publicizing the new recommendations, and they want the court to declare the change unlawful and restore the previous recommendations. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, which is also named as a plaintiff in the lawsuit, did not immediately respond to a request for comment Monday afternoon. But in a video posted to X in May announcing the change, Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, director of the National Institutes of Health, said of the change, 'It's common sense, and it's good science.' In that same video, U.S. Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Dr. Marty Makary said, 'There's no evidence healthy kids need it today and most countries have stopped recommending it for children.' Bhattacharya, Makary, the FDA, the National Institutes of Health, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the head of the CDC are also named as defendants in the lawsuit. Other plaintiffs in the case include the American College of Physicians, the American Public Health Association, the Infectious Diseases Society of America, the Massachusetts Public Health Alliance, the Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine and an unnamed pregnant doctor. The medical groups allege in the lawsuit that the change was against the law partly because Kennedy bypassed the usual process for making changes to the list of recommended vaccines. Normally, a committee called the Advisory Committee for Immunization Practices (ACIP) makes recommendations to the CDC about vaccines. Kennedy has also faced criticism in recent weeks for firing all the members of ACIP and replacing them with others. 'This wasn't just sidelining science,' said Dr. Susan Kressly, president of the Itasca-based American Academy of Pediatrics, in a video posted to the group's website. 'It's an attack on the very foundation of how we protect families and children's health. And the consequences could be dangerous.' Since the change to the COVID-19 vaccine recommendations, pediatricians have had to spend more time talking with distressed parents about the effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccines, according to the lawsuit. The lawsuit describes one pediatrician's struggle, saying: 'The CDC's current emphasis on 'shared decision-making' for the Covid vaccine for children has put a chilling effect on her practice. Shared decision-making implies that the Covid vaccine is optional or suspect, making it harder to hold Covid vaccine clinics, limiting her practice's ability to order vaccines in bulk, and creating reimbursement challenges.' Because of the 'confusion and lack of evidence-based data' supporting the changes, the American Academy of Pediatrics has chosen not to endorse the CDC's current child and adolescent vaccination schedule and is instead endorsing the schedule as it stood before the changes, according to the lawsuit.


Elle
8 hours ago
- Elle
The 7 Best Expert-Approved Products for Keratosis Pilaris on Amazon's Prime Day Deals
Every item on this page was chosen by an ELLE editor. We may earn commission on some of the items you choose to buy. Perfectly harmless but infinitely annoying, keratosis pilaris, or KP, plagues many of our limbs and stomachs, dotting them with raised red spots that seem to never go away. The condition has been affectionately (or not so affectionately) nicknamed 'strawberry skin' and 'chicken skin' because it resembles the bumpy surface of a strawberry or plucked fowl. Many folks out there accept their fate and live with it, but there's hope yet for those of us who wish to take up the fight against KP. An army of products exist on Amazon that can help eliminate—or at least reduce—keratosis pilaris. If your strawberry skin has made you feel alone, it turns out that over 50 percent of the population share the same woe, says Dallas-based dermatologist Elizabeth Houshmand. 'It's a frustrating condition where keratin protein builds up around hair follicles and results in bumpy and rough patches of skin,' she explains. 'The reason for the buildup of keratin is unknown, but often occurs alongside other skin conditions such as dermatitis and eczema,' she adds. But two major steps can eradicate KP: 'Gentle exfoliation can be helpful, along with moisturizing the skin,' Houshmand says. The key word here is gentle. If you use an exfoliator that's too harsh or scrub at your skin too often, you can wreak havoc on your moisture barrier and worsen things. We tried a few KP-eliminating products ourselves, consulted a dermatologist, and scrolled through thousands of Amazon reviews to locate the nine best products for KP, including body scrubs, body exfoliators, and body creams. Keep reading, and you'll be that much closer to smoother, calmer, and more hydrated skin. Skincare TikTok is obsessed with this exfoliator for a reason. With glycolic and lactic acid, the scrub acts as both a physical and chemical exfoliator to make KP a thing of the past. Key ingredients: Glycolic acid, lactic acid, pumice buffing beads Amazon rating: 4.4/5 stars An Amazon reviewer says: 'Honestly, I use this scrub all over my body, whether there's KP there or not. The product is genuinely one of the best body exfoliators I've ever used. I often get compliments on how soft my skin is, and my arms and legs are especially smooth to the touch when I'm consistent with the KP Bump Eraser. ' —Carol Lee, associate beauty e-commerce writer Lactic acid is on the gentler side in terms of chemical exfoliators, but it works hard in this formula to loosen dead skin cells and get rid of those pesky bumps associated with strawberry skin. The cream is so rich that you can use it as your moisturizer, or you can follow up with a body cream or lotion if you need more hydration. Just make sure to apply it to dry skin because if your skin is still a little wet or damp, the formula can be difficult to spread. Key ingredient: Lactic acid Amazon rating: 4.2/5 stars An ELLE editor says: 'The tube may be small, but I only needed a little to see results. Because my KP only exists on my upper arms, I applied a pea-sized amount to each arm after every shower and before applying my regular body moisturizer. Within just a few days, my arms felt smoother, and I saw that some of the more irritated spots had calmed down. I personally love how thick it is—even though the formula is exfoliating my skin, I don't feel like I'm stripping it of moisture.' —Carol Lee Who said you can't exfoliate and hydrate at the same time? This super-thick shea body butter does it all; 10 percent AHA wipes away any signs of KP, while squalane and shea butter keep the skin supple and glowing. Key ingredients: AHA, squalane, shea butter An Amazon reviewer says: 'Bought KP butter. It's super high quality. Thick, moisturizing, great for dry skin. My son has eczema on his hands and it cleared it up fast. I want several tubes around the house and in my purse for easy access. The smell on the KP butter one is different, but not at all unpleasant.' This lightweight lotion contains salicylic acid to unclog pores. Gentle enough for most skin types, it also contains soothing ingredients like chamomile and green tea to reduce redness and discomfort. Key ingredients: Salicylic acid, vitamin E, chamomile An Amazon reviewer says: 'I just tried this cream for the first time, and my arms are almost completely smooth after one use! My keratosis pilaris has been getting worse lately, but my usual exfoliation treatment wasn't helping as much as it used to. My arms are smooth for the first time in years and now I can stop wasting money on treatments that don't work. Very happy customer!!' Known for working wonders on ingrown hairs, this water-like liquid helps clogged follicles clear up in no time. A thin layer post-shower or hair removal is all you need. Key ingredients: Acetylsalicylic acid, glycerin Amazon rating: 4.5/5 stars An Amazon reviewer says: 'I have a sensitive skin and thick hair, and keratosis pilaris on top of that. My thighs and underarms used to look like a battlefield after shaving (I have to shave, since I'm trying at home IPL), that is, until I discovered this product. I've tried glycolic acid, medicinal ointments, fur oil, you name it. Nothing. Then I started using this product and it didn't seem to make a difference, but since I've decided to give 2 weeks to every product before discarding it, I've waited and I AM SO GLAD I DID. I use it 3x, instead of 2, on a clean dry skin. I has improved my condition so much! It does dry the skin, but people, there has to me something. Just moisturize heavily and you will be fine.' Exfoliation is key to keeping KP at bay, but don't skip moisturizer. After showering, use this rich cream that's packed with soothing urea to protect and gently reduce any clogged skin. Key ingredient: Urea An Amazon reviewer says: 'I have tried hundreds of body lotions and none ever compared to this one. I am 58-years-old and have used body lotions (upon my mother's advice) since I was 15 years old. When I was young, most lotions did fine. As I aged, fewer and fewer were helpful. After age 50, I started trying expensive luxury creams and dermatologist endorsed brands, but none were working more than 6 hours a day—even with the regular exfoliating I do. I have no idea why I decided to try Eucerin (with 10% urea); I am so glad I did. It makes my skin feel moisturized and bouncy over 24 hours. Scaly and crepey skin is gone. I don't know how many years this will help my aging skin, but I have never found any other lotion or cream that comes close.' This in-shower treatment has super-fine pieces of sodium palmate and magnesium oxide to gently treat ingrown hairs, keratosis pilaris, scarring, and acne. Plus, it smells like citrus to provide a pleasant sensorial experience. Key ingredients: Sodium palmate, magniusm oxide exfoliants An Amazon reviewer says: 'Body acne and scars and stuff has made it all disappear and is smoothing out my skin. brightening it up and healing it, too. Wish I had this my whole life! Buy it!' As a leading publisher of fashion, lifestyle, and beauty content, is committed to highlighting the best products in various categories by personally testing the latest and most innovative products, interviewing countless experts, and vetting customer-loved items. For this piece, editors spoke with skin experts to find the best products for treating KP or strawberry skin. The authors personally tested a number of these products and scoured reviews for the top-rated products on the market.