EXCLUSIVE Ava was a champion cheerleader with a dark secret. Then she entered the 'Florida shuffle'... and her mom's worst nightmare came true
Ava was about 22 when she first went to a rehab in 2015 for an addiction to painkillers and heroin that she had been battling for about a year. She was doing well, but the facility in Florida was too expensive for her to stay.
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Daily Mail
an hour ago
- Daily Mail
Men become infested with parasites after receiving infected organs across multiple states
Two New England men have been left riddled with parasitic worms after receiving a common organ transplant. The patients, 61 and 66, had each received one kidney each from the same donor, who was from the Caribbean. The first patient, who was not named, received the transplant from Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston and initially improved. But 10 weeks later, the man was re-admitted due to suffering from severe thirst and abdominal discomfort. A large purple rash, like a constellation of bruises, had also erupted across the skin of his stomach. The second patient, who was also unnamed, received their transplant at Albany Medical Center in New York and also improved at first. Eleven weeks later, however, he was also re-admitted with fatigue, worsening kidney function and a plummeting white blood cell count. Doctors were initially stumped as to what could be behind the complications, having ruled out Covid, the flu and bacterial infections — after a course of antibiotics did not improve their symptoms. However, samples from the first patient's abdomen, lungs and skin revealed a small ringworm called Strongyloides stercoralis. The second patient, meanwhile, was also found to have larvae from Strongyloides stercoralis in his stool. The bizarre cases were revealed in The New England Journal of Medicine last month, with doctors treating them as a cautionary tale for better regulation surrounding organ donation. Transplant organs, donors and recipients normally go through a battery of tests to minimize the risk of the organs being rejected by the body. Blood is tested for antibodies that might attack other tissues, while donors and recipients are both evaluated for infectious diseases like HIV and hepatitis. They are also usually tested for parasitic infections, but it's possible the donor was not evaluated for these. About 48,000 organ transplants take place in the US every year, of which kidney transplants are the most common — making up two-thirds of these procedures. The most common complication of the procedure is infection, which is common since recipients have to take medications that suppress their immune system. Doctors treating one of the man called the New England Donor Services and found the kidney donor had antibodies for Strongyloides, meaning the donor had encountered the parasite at some point. The recipients only had Strongyloides antibodies after their procedures and not before, meaning they likely got it from their organ donor. Strongyloides is a roundworm parasite that spreads by directly penetrating human skin that gets into contact with soil. Infections lead to stomach aches, diarrhea and rashes, but most patients don't know they're infected. The CDC doesn't consistently track US cases, though it's estimated Strongyloides hospitalizes thousands each year. The first patient was treated with ivermectin, a deworming drug touted for but largely unproven to treat conditions like Covid and cancer. The second patient received ivermectin and the similar drug albendazole. Both men have fully recovered.
Daily Mail
4 hours ago
- Daily Mail
BREAKING NEWS Urgent recall for life-saving device over dangerous defect
An entire line of defibrillators has been urgently recalled after issues with the devices' circuits caused some of them to fail. The federal government issued a notice for medical technology firm Stryker's HeartSine samaritan Public Access Defibrillator (PAD) on June 24. 'A manufacturing problem related to a circuit board component may impair the device's ability to function or cause failure,' it said. 'This failure could occur at any point when the device is holding a charge. This may be in preparation to deliver therapy, while delivering a shock, or after shock delivery. 'The device becomes inoperable after the failure occurs.' The notice said the defect was spotted during quality testing, not patient use. The source of the issue was the Pad-Pak, a single-use battery and electrode cartridge containing the battery to power the defibrillator and two electrode pads. Users should check their AED serial number to see if it is affected, noting the devices are part of a subset of HeartSine samaritan PAD Models 350P, 360P, 450P and 500P. The affected devices are part of a subset of serial numbers beginning with 21, 22, 23 or 24, and are then followed by the letter B, D, E, G or H. Stryker said users should continue monitoring their PAD device to ensure the status indicator is flashing green every five to 10 seconds. They should contact Stryker immediately if the status indicator is flashing red, or they can hear continuous beeping or the voice prompt 'Warning, Low Battery'. Alternatively, they should contact the company if no status indicator is displayed. For further information, Stryker can be reached on 02 9170 9131 or through email at
The Guardian
5 hours ago
- The Guardian
Planned Parenthood may not survive the Trump administration
Planned Parenthood, the massive, 108-year-old network of women's and reproductive health clinics that operates almost 600 health centers across the United States, may not survive the Trump administration. Long a hated symbol on the right, and unable to summon enthusiastic support from the left, the medical network has nevertheless remained a symbolic and material cornerstone of women's equality, serving millions of patients – many of them indigent or low-income – each year, and housing one of the biggest feminist and pro-choice lobbying and litigation shops in America, in addition to being one of the nation's largest healthcare providers. Since returning to power in January, the Trump administration has made repeated cuts targeting Planned Parenthood's clinics, excluding the group from the vast Title X family planning program, on the pretext of scurrilous claims that they have violated federal anti-discrimination law by adopting resolutions stressing their 'commitment to Black communities' and by providing medical treatment to undocumented immigrants. Now, the supreme court has struck another blow. Last week, the court ruled that patients cannot sue to challenge their states' exclusion of Planned Parenthood from their Medicaid programs. The ruling threatens to transform the Medicaid program, giving states leeway to ban Medicaid reimbursements to any practice that provides politically disfavored medicine – notably abortion, but potentially also including contraception, IVF, gender-affirming care, or HIV treatment. The court functionally nullifies a clause in the bill that established the Medicaid program, which gives patients the right to seek care from 'any qualified provider' of their choosing. Now, the choice of provider can be dramatically limited by the state on the basis of that provider's political beliefs. The ruling also dramatically weakens section 1983 of the Civil Rights Act of 1871, a landmark Reconstruction-era law that allows for citizens to sue states that deprive them of federally protected rights – raising the troubling prospect that the court will look askance at citizens' ability to enforce their constitutional rights against states that are disdainful of them. In the process, the court provided states with yet another way to choke off Planned Parenthood's funding, and to deprive their residents – particularly women – of the healthcare that they need to live safe, healthy and dignified lives. Many states – most – will now probably proceed to do so. The case, Medina v Planned Parenthood South Atlantic, concerns South Carolina's decision to exclude Planned Parenthood from its Medicaid program. State funding of abortions is not at issue: abortion is banned in South Carolina, and even before it was, the state did not provide Medicaid coverage for abortions out of its state funds. (Federal money is not used to pay for abortions, either: a budget rider known as the Hyde Amendment has prevented federal Medicaid funding from covering abortion care since 1977, in effect prohibiting low-income women from accessing the procedure under their government healthcare plans.) What is at issue, rather, is whether Planned Parenthood, which provides a wide array of services for a disproportionately low-income clientele, can be prohibited from receiving reimbursement for other services that they provide – like pap smears, prenatal care and STD testing. Planned Parenthood challenged their own exclusion by the law in tandem with a Medicaid patient who went to them seeking birth control; because she chose a provider that her state government had a disdain for, she was denied. The suit questioned whether the plaintiffs could sue to enforce the right of patients to choose their own providers. Writing for the court's six-justice majority of Republican-appointed judges, Neil Gorsuch found that they can't. In practice, this decision enables an aggressive expansion of the states' power to put the political preferences of Republican lawmakers between women and gender-nonconforming people and their doctors. Delivered the day after the third anniversary of Dobbs, the decision expands the court's attack on abortion rights by granting states broad latitude to exclude abortion providers from the government subsidy programs that structure much of American healthcare: in practice, this will make abortion provision even more prohibitively expensive and onerous for doctors and practices, and will shutter many clinics. The ruling also comes on the heels of Skrimetti, the court's ruling upholding bans on transition-related healthcare for minors, on the absurd claim that such laws are somehow not sex discrimination. Collectively, the cases illustrate a judicial agenda that is not just vehemently anti-choice, but aggressively gender prescriptive: willing to use the levers of medicine and its regulation to enforce a narrow and regressive vision of gender roles, from identity to sexuality to gestation. The decision comes at a moment when Donald Trump's domestic policy agenda, known humiliatingly as the 'big, beautiful bill,' is working its way through the Senate, which among other things is considering a provision to ban Planned Parenthood from all Medicaid reimbursements nationwide. The organization has said that as a result of the supreme court and Trump administration actions, nearly a third of their clinics – about 200 – may have to close; the group has already decided to close 20 clinics just this year. The result is a de facto ban not just on abortion, but on any healthcare provision by pro-choice providers for vast swaths of American women. One in three women in the US has received services from Planned Parenthood; more than half of American Black women have. When combined with the independent reproductive health clinics that will also be excluded from Medicaid due to their abortion politics, that number rises higher. These Medicaid-enrolled women have now been denied the right to choose a doctor for their most intimate care based on their own comfort and values: instead, they will be forced to choose one based on the whims and bigotries of elected Republicans. In her dissent for the court's three Democratic appointees, Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote that the decision will strip patients 'of a deeply personal freedom: 'the ability to decide who treats us at our most vulnerable''. Instead, those vulnerable patients will probably be pushed, in growing numbers, toward religiously affiliated groups that deceive rather than treat. While abortion-providing medical practices like Planned Parenthood are being pushed out of Medicaid, the program is giving more and more money to crisis pregnancy centers, the Christian fake clinics that lure in frightened women, lie to them about their health, do not provide comprehensive care, and often lack any doctors on staff. These fake clinics, which are lavishly funded and outnumber real reproductive health centers nationwide at a rate of three to one, are not a substitute for real healthcare. But they are a means of restricting women's freedom. For the court, that's good enough. Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist
