The Government Finally Did Something About Robocalls

Anyone with a mobile phone knows the unpleasant sensation of answering a call from an unfamiliar number only to hear a pre-recorded marketing or scam pitch from a company you have no interest in patronizing. Around 33 million robocalls are made each day to Americans, according to the National Consumer Law Center (NCLC)—more than 50 billion a year.

This is more than just an annoyance; in 2022, around 68 million Americans lost over $29 billion to scam callers, according to NCLC. These calls also make people less likely to answer their phone or trust valid phone calls they do receive, making the nation’s significant telecommunications infrastructure less valuable. 

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One of the most frustrating things about these calls, says Margot Saunders, senior counsel at NCLC, is that they are largely illegal. Government regulations say that a telemarketing call is only legal to a cell phone or residential line if the recipient of the call has provided “prior express written consent” to that call. (This is similar to rules of the National Do Not Call Registry,  though consumers must opt in to that registry through the website of the Federal Trade Commission.) But often, the sellers and the telemarketers calling for them don’t have this consent.

The reason they’re getting away with continuing to make these calls is that the sellers, often big well-known companies, hire telemarketing firms to make the calls on their behalf. Often, these telemarketing firms buy consumer information—and, they argue, consent—from other companies, in a billion-dollar business called lead generation. Lead generators typically take one agreement from a consumer providing consent and sell that agreement to many different callers and sellers, who themselves resell it to many others. A consumer might have signed up to receive a call from one seller—say a car insurance quote—and then unwittingly clicked a box agreeing to be contacted by hundreds or thousands of companies loosely affiliated with the car insurance company. 

On Wednesday, Dec. 13, the government made it much harder for sellers to make calls to numbers obtained from the lead generation industry. In a 4-to-1 vote, the Federal Communications Commission approved regulations that explicitly say that telemarketing robocalls are allowed only if the actual seller, not just the telemarketing company, has gotten written consent from the specific consumer. 

“Today we put an end to this loophole,” FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel said, at the FCC meeting. “That means consumers get back the power to pick who they want to communicate with and when.”

The vote should help cut down on the number of robocalls made. Each illegal call, according to Congress, can lead to $500 in damages. “It will be much  more difficult for sellers to try and escape responsibility,” Saunders says. The Electronic Privacy Information Center projected that the vote would eliminate the “great majority” of unwanted telemarketing calls and texts. 

Of course, it could be a little while before anything changes. If companies continue to flaunt the rules, regulators may need consumers to turn them in and file lawsuits to hold those companies accountable. That’s not easy to do, says Saunders—you’d have to answer a robocall, find out who the seller is, and then file a lawsuit under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act. Many consumers may not have the time or the patience for that.

Still, the industry is preparing for a wave of new lawsuits under the Act. A defense attorney told Reuters that he expected to see lawsuit filings double or even triple going forward.

source https://time.com/6513036/robocalls-government-action/

From New York to Tokyo, Stock Markets Across the Globe Have Rallied in 2023

NEW YORK — It’s been a great year for stock markets around the world. Wall Street’s rally has been front and center, with the U.S. stock market the world’s largest and its clear leader in performance in recent years. The S&P 500 is on track to return more than 20% for the third time in the last five years, and its gangbusters performance has brought it back within 2% of its record set at the start of 2022. The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed at a record high Wednesday.

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Even in Japan, which has been home to some of the world’s most disappointing stocks for decades, the market marched upward to touch its highest level since shortly after its bubble burst in 1989.

Across developed and emerging economies, stocks have powered ahead in 2023 as inflation has regressed, even with wars raging in hotspots around the world. Globally, inflation is likely to ease to 6.9% this year from 8.7% in 2022, according to the International Monetary Fund.

The expectation is for inflation to cool even further next year. That has investors feeling better about the path of interest rates, which have shot higher around much of the world to get inflation under control. Such hopes have been more than enough to offset a slowdown in global economic growth, down to an estimated 3% this year from 3.5% last year, according to the IMF.

This year’s glaring exception for global stock markets has been China. The recovery for the world’s second-largest economy has faltered, and worries are rising about cracks in its property market. Stocks in Hong Kong have taken a particularly hard hit.

This year’s big gains for global markets may carry a downside, though: Some possible future returns may have been pulled forward, limiting the upside from here.

Europe’s economy has been flirting with recession for a while, for example, and many economists expect it to remain under pressure in 2024 because of all the hikes to interest rates that have already been pushed through.

And while central banks around the world may be set to cut interest rates later in 2024, which would relieve pressure on the economy and financial system, rates are unlikely to return to the lows that followed the 2008 financial crisis, according to researchers at investment giant Vanguard. That new normal for rates could also hem in returns for stocks and make markets more volatile.

For the next decade, Vanguard says U.S. stocks could return an annualized 4.2% to 6.2%, well below their recent run. It’s forecasting stronger potential returns from stocks abroad, both in the emerging and developed worlds.

source https://time.com/6509776/stock-market-numbers-2023-international-us-success/

I Saw the Haunting Reality of Palestinian Child Prisoners

On the afternoon of Feb. 24, 2012, Israeli soldiers arrested me during the annual march to reopen Shuhada Street, in the occupied West Bank city of Hebron. The street was once home to a popular market frequented by Palestinians until the Israeli military sealed it off to us in 1994. Palestinians have been protesting to reopen the road, which we call Apartheid Street, every year since 2010.

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What happened after my arrest that day still haunts me. 

As thousands of us marched toward Shuhada, the Israeli military began firing teargas and rubber bullets. A few of us ran for cover and found ourselves face-to-face with Israeli soldiers. One of my friends was injured after being hit by a teargas cannister, and I started tending to him. But the soldiers began harassing us, and I told them: “We do not fear you. This is Palestine. You should step back.”

The soldiers pepper sprayed me and pinned me to the ground. They slammed my head against a humvee and threw me into the back of the vehicle. About five minutes later, as they drove through the old city of Hebron, the humvee suddenly stopped, Israeli soldiers rushed out, and a boy began screaming. He was handcuffed and thrown in. He had been walking to his sister’s house for lunch when they picked him up.

When we arrived at the Israeli military outpost in the Kiryat Shmona settlement the soldiers dragged us out of the humvee. The kid, who was 14, was terrified. He pleaded with them not to pepper spray him, having seen me not be able to open my eyes. They smacked him around and told him to shut up. They then shackled my feet and had me sit on a bench outside the interrogation room, walking the boy in for questioning first. The Israeli military interrogator told him: “I can make your family’s life hell. But I’ll let you go home. You just need to confirm that the guy with you led the protest and told you to throw the stones at us.” The boy started sobbing and said: “But I don’t know this guy. I just met him when you picked me up.” The interrogator kept pressing him, at one point raising a pistol to his face.

The charge brought against this poor kid was stone throwing, based on the “testimony” of Israeli soldiers. The soldiers also accused me of assaulting them, which could have resulted in me spending up to three years in prison. They put me in solitary confinement for two days in a holding cell in the settlement. They then moved me to a heavily crowded underground holding cell in the Maskobiya prison in East Jerusalem, to await a military court hearing. 

But as a well-known activist, American citizen, and recent Stanford graduate, my case gained international attention. I was also lucky, as videos of my arrest emerged, showing that I did not assault the soldiers and that their testimony was false. 

I was released on Feb. 29 but the child was not as fortunate. I would later learn from prisoner-rights organizations Defence for Children International and Addameer that he spent three months in prison after being advised by lawyers to admit to stone-throwing so he would get out of jail sooner. Waiting for a ruling from Israel’s military courts can take months or more.

This is far from an isolated incident. Between 500-700 children are arrested a year. Israel denies mistreating prisoners but the majority of detained children are beaten, as I was that day, according to research by Save the Children. With a 95% conviction rate, according to the nonprofit Military Court Watch, lawyers and kids know it’s better to “confess” even if they are innocent, as waiting for a ruling and being stuck in limbo in an Israeli jail is hell. 

The world has turned a blind eye to this for years. Again and again and again.

Just look at recent events. While the world celebrated the hostage deal and the return of Israeli and Palestinian loved ones to their families, Israel’s revolving door of arrests continued largely unnoticed. Almost as many Palestinians have been arrested as released, according to Palestinian prisoner associations. We know from recent reports from organizations like Military Court Watch as well as graphic videos showing Israeli soldiers beating, abusing, and tormenting children, that many will face what no child ever should. 

Living in the West Bank, and after years of monitoring child arrests as part of leading Palestinian human rights organization Al-Haq from 2012 to 2014, and now at global civic organization Avaaz, I see the systematic arrest of children as designed to achieve two goals. 

The first is what Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have described as pursuing an “intent to dominate” and “systematic oppression” to maintain the system of apartheid. Palestinian children in the West Bank are often snatched away in the dead of night, subjected to questioning in the absence of any parent or guardian, and languish in pretrial detention for agonizingly long periods. This brutal treatment is not just anecdotal but is reflected in chilling statistics: 72% of Palestinian children arrested in the West Bank endure prolonged custody until the conclusion of legal proceedings, a stark contrast to the 17.9% of Israeli children subjected to similar conditions, according to HRW.

The second goal is to indoctrinate these children with learned helplessness. The military experience suffocates a child’s sense of agency. They can miss a school year, end up being in classes one year younger than their friends, and often have unhealed trauma. 

These chilling facts, along with my arrest in 2012, are what inspired me to work with kids in areas with many arrests. I consulted with experts in children’s psychological health, lawyers, activists, and former prisoners to develop a curriculum for what children should do if detained. The training includes walking the children through what to expect, self-awareness and meditation tactics to calm their nerves, and legal knowledge, as well as providing community support for children who have gone through this experience. 

Yet this can only do so much. We need all violence against Palestinian children, including arbitrary detention, to end. The world has largely watched in horror as Israel’s bombardment of Gaza has left at least 18,000 people dead, over 7,000 of whom are children, according to Gaza’s health ministry.

The victimization of Palestinian children is profound enough that one Hebrew University law professor has coined a word for it: “Unchilding.” The international community must act to stop the suffering of children, whether they are under bombardment, siege, or in detention.

All children deserve dignity, protection, and a life free from fear. Palestinian children should be no exception.

source https://time.com/6366734/palestinian-child-detainees/

Teens Are Taking More Reliable Birth Control

The teen birth rate in the U.S. has been declining consistently for more than 30 years, despite the fact that the number of teenage girls having sex has not changed since at least 2002. A new report from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) suggests a key driver of this trend: a dramatic increase in teenage girls using long-lasting and reliable forms of contraception.

The percentage of girls ages 15 to 19 using long-acting reversible contraception, which includes intrauterine devices (IUDs) and contraceptive implants, reached a reported high of 19% from 2015-2019. That’s more than three times the rate at which they were used from 2011-2015. 

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Long-lasting birth control can be up to 20 times as effective as birth control pills and other hormonal contraceptive options like the NuvaRing over time, and they can offer years of protection. “Public health focuses on these because they’re easy to use,” says Joyce Amba, a social scientist at the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics and co-author of the report. “They don’t require a daily regimen like a pill and they’re very effective.” But for many teens, and even women, they can be the most difficult methods of birth control to access. Insurance coverage for teens looking to have an IUD or implant placed can be spotty, and the placement procedures mean that physician visits are more intensive than the consultations other methods require and more difficult to afford for teens without parental consent.

Read More: Why Everyone Is Having Bad Sex (Especially Young People)

Despite the barriers, the increasing popularity of these methods suggests that access to and knowledge about them are improving. One likely reason why is the growing public support for comprehensive sex education over time, which—despite being in danger in 2023—grew more common in schools throughout the 2010s. Overall, teens use more varied methods of contraception than they did when the CDC established its current survey methods in 2002, including emergency contraception, which went from being used by 8% of girls ages 15 to 19 in 2011-2015 to 22% of girls in 2015-2019. A similar increase occurred in the share of teens who reported using more than one contraceptive method, which reflects that teens may be more aware of their choices than they used to be.

The data in the new report only go up to 2019, and Amba says that it’s still too early to know how trends may have continued or changed beyond that year—including how they may have been affected by the political battles over contraceptive access that have begun since the Supreme Court overturned the federal right to abortion in 2022. According to separate smaller surveys and information shared by clinics including Planned Parenthood, the Supreme Court’s decision led to a significant increase in teens and women of all ages seeking long-lasting contraceptive methods. “The data in the future will be very interesting,” Amba says. 

source https://time.com/6468975/teens-long-acting-contraceptives/

WeightWatchers Is Now Prescribing Weight Loss Drugs

WeightWatchers has been through a lot of changes recently. In 2018 the popular weight loss program changed its name to WW with an updated mission: “Wellness That Works.” For the first time, that mission includes medications.

Last spring, the company acquired Sequence, a digital health company, which allowed members to get prescriptions for weight loss drugs. Now the 60-year old company is launching WeightWatchers Clinic, which will give them access to telehealth weight loss management and doctors who can prescribe weight loss medications like semaglutide (Wegovy) and tirzepatide (Zepbound).

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It’s a significant shift for a company that has long focused on behavior-based strategies: making changes in diet and exercise, utilizing a “points” system for tallying the caloric and nutritional value of different foods, and relying on a community of support through coaches and other members that meet regularly to keep dieters motivated.

“We are no longer a consumer retail brand; we are a digital health company,” says WeightWatchers CEO Sima Sistani. “We are trying to lead the conversation around obesity and get people thinking about not just lifestyle interventions, but also clinical solutions like medications.”

“If we get it right, it could be the end of diet culture,” Sistani says, “and diet can go back to literally meaning habitual nourishment.”

WeightWatchers won’t be generating revenue from prescribing weight loss medications, but it will charge members an additional $99 a month on top of the monthly fee to access the clinic that givens them access to the drugs. The company is also beefing up the programs it offers on its app and is launching a program specifically for people taking these medications.

“Some people see it as a left turn,” says Gary Foster, chief scientific officer at WeightWatchers. “But we’re evolving as the science evolves.”

Foster says the program is needed since the medications introduce a completely different set of challenges for people taking them. Most people trying to lose weight focus on managing the constant food cues that surround them, as well as learning about portion control and how to quell emotional triggers for eating. But because the new drugs drastically reduce appetite, people taking them have the opposite problem: remembering to eat, and specifically making sure they consume enough protein to maintain muscle mass.

WeightWatchers’ evolving stance on weight loss drugs

Jean Nidtech founded WeightWatchers in 1963 when she realized that having a group of friends who were trying to lose weight together would provide critical psychological support and motivation. The support-group-style meetings, in which members shared their challenges and successes and received encouragement throughout their journey, remain a mainstay of the program.

Even when various weight loss drugs became available over the years, WeightWatchers has never included them in its program. “There wasn’t much consumer interest in those medications, since they were associated with 7%, 8%, and 9% weight loss,” says Foster.

The program focused instead on more scientifically supported strategies, such as addressing sleep and stress and teaching cognitive behavioral skills such as recognizing eating triggers and findings ways to manage cravings.

But then a new generation of drugs called GLP-1 agonists came along, achieving mainstream popularity over the past few years. What makes these drugs different is how effectively they suppress hunger signals and control the activity of the stomach and digestive system. Semaglutide (sold under the brand names Ozempic and Wegovy) is part of this group, while tirzepatide (brand names: Mounjaro and Zepbound) targets both GLP-1 and another hormone, GIP. Both are more effective than any previous weight loss drugs. Studies show that people taking semaglutide can lose around 15% of their body weight, and people taking tirzepatide can lose more than 20%.

With strong scientific studies supporting how well they worked, Foster says adding them to WeightWatcher’s options just made sense. “We are combining the best of biology with the best of behavior change,” he says. “It’s a false dichotomy to say it’s either behavior or medications. Medications will drive weight loss, but behavior change has never been more important because no medication will teach you how to eat healthier, make sure you’re getting enough protein, and ensure you have enough muscle mass through strength training.”

Inside WeightWatchers’ new GLP-1 program

The new GLP-1 support program, which will be included in the company’s $23 monthly membership, is for people who want to address the physical and psychological changes that come with taking these drugs.

Donna Deutsch, a longtime WeightWatchers member, decided she wanted to try one of the newly approved drugs for weight loss earlier this year. Most were approved for treating diabetes at the time, but could be prescribed off label to help with weight loss. She didn’t feel comfortable asking her primary care physician about them—thinking “I would be automatically denied if I asked her about these drugs,” she says—so she turned to the telehealth company, Sequence, after seeing a commercial about its services. After a virtual consultation in which the doctor discussed her weight and medical history, the physician prescribed tirzepatide (Mounjaro).

Deutsch understood that the prescription was off label, and because she does not have diabetes, she had to pay for the injections out of pocket.

Still, she says it was worth it. She quickly started losing weight because she no longer felt hungry. “The food noise disappeared: the noise coming from my kitchen, telling me to come back and eat chocolate or ice cream,” she says. She’s been taking Mounjaro for nearly a year and no longer snacks throughout the day. Within a few months, she had lost 30 to 35 pounds.

Around that time, Deutsch was invited to participate in a pilot program WeightWatchers was launching for members who were taking one of the newer weight loss medications—what is now the GLP-1 program. Deutsch joined, eager to better understand how her body was responding to the medication, and wanting to sustain the early success she was having. The supportive community she had previously found in WeightWatchers, along with resources like recipes and access to a dietitian, were a huge help. “It became a lot easier,” she says, to grocery shop and know what to cook to meet the specific nutritional needs she has while taking the medication, such as getting enough protein and drinking plenty of water.

Her current diet is much different from the one she used to adhere to when doing WeightWatchers before Mounjaro. That’s because her dietary needs are, too. “I’m learning about different sources of protein and combinations of foods I can incorporate into my daily diet,” she says. “I was not a big egg-eater, but now I do a lot of egg salads and deviled eggs, and I always have hard boiled eggs in the refrigerator. And my big craving now is for blueberries.”

WeightWatchers’ new clinic

Members can now get the drugs directly from the WeightWatchers telehealth clinic: a reworked version of Sequence’s telehealth services. Those who are interested in prescriptions for Wegovy, Zepbound, or other weight loss medications can take an intake survey and then discuss with a health care provider whether they qualify for one of the new drugs according to criteria set by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration: namely, that they have a BMI over 30 or a BMI of 27 or above plus at least one obesity-related condition, such as high blood pressure or elevated cholesterol. Members can upload parts of their electronic health records to help providers determine if they could benefit from taking a weight loss drug, and if so, which one. Members also must upload pictures of themselves, with identification, to validate their weight and identity to ensure that they are getting the appropriate drug.

Clinic users will also benefit from another perk: WeightWatchers will help them obtain any pre-authorization clearance required by their insurers if the drug is covered by their plan or by their employer. Playing an active role in advocating for reimbursement is important, says WeightWatchers CEO Sistani. “If employers and insurers start covering these drugs, that will be an opportunity to really shift global health outcomes,” she says.

Because Wegovy and Zepbound can cause thyroid issues and digestion problems, members receiving these drugs through the clinic will also get monthly check ins with their clinic health care provider to monitor their weight loss and any side effects. Dr. Spencer Nadolsky, medical director at WeightWatchers, says half of the doctors staffing the clinic are board certified in obesity medicine, and all of them need to complete a training program to ensure they are up to date on using the newer weight loss medications.

Not everyone who wants the new drugs will necessarily be right for them, or, even if they qualify, be able to get access to them. That’s especially true of Wegovy, which is in short supply after its manufacturer, Novo Nordisk, decided to limit starter doses to ensure that anyone who starts taking the drug can continue to get it. That’s why some members using the clinic can also get older weight loss drugs at no cost if their clinic doctors believes these medications can help until supply increases.

Deutsch is currently taking the highest dose of Mounjaro and hopes to eventually move to maintenance treatment, which could mean tapering down the dose or even stopping the injections. “I’m hoping I will continue to be successful in keeping weight off once I’m off Mounjaro,” she says. “But if not, I know I still have WeightWatchers, and I can still go back to following the system that made WeightWatchers so successful. I know I won’t be alone.”

source https://time.com/6464785/weightwatchers-prescribing-weight-loss-drugs/

The National Remorse That Follows Wartime Actions Against Civilians

Around the world, civilians are under siege, victims of wars they never sought and cannot flee. From Israel and Gaza to Yemen and the Congo, and from Somalia to Ukraine and beyond, innocent men and women have been bombed, raped, displaced, and starved with routine barbarity. These cases spotlight how, in the heat of war, when hatred of the enemy runs high, sympathy for civilians is all too scarce. Once attacked, each side understandably imbibes a combustible cocktail of fear, fury, and grief, which numbs them to the other’s pain.

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But history shows that later, when wars end and distance brings perspective, countries can end up confronting an uncomfortable reality. Often, such violent tactics were acts of misplaced revenge—ones that provoke serious regret.

The U.S. experienced this after World War II. During the war, the U.S. interned Japanese Americans who had nothing to do with Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor, and it imposed a harsh occupation on Germany, exacerbating the suffering of average Germans, two-thirds of whom never voted for the Nazis. Both were punitive policies that the U.S. came to regret. These actions, and others like them, should be a caution to countries in conflict today. They are reminders that mistreatment of civilians is not simply unethical, it undermines a lasting peace.

The attack on Pearl Harbor stunned the U.S. It left Americans furious, frightened, and thirsting for revenge. Immediately, a handful of Army and War Department officials began pushing for the relocation of Japanese Americans, who they argued posed a threat to military installations on the West Coast. These officials falsely claimed that residents were signaling to enemy ships, raising fears of another attack.

Read More: How Eleanor Roosevelt Worked to Stop Her Husband Approving Japanese Internment Camps During World War II

The push for internment came despite the government’s own surveys of West Coast residents showing that a meager 14% favored forcing Japanese Americans out of their homes and into internment camps. The figure was a bit higher in southern California at roughly one-third, but it never came close to a majority until after President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued an executive order mandating internment.

Additionally, the government possessed ample evidence showing that Japanese Americans posed no threat. Intelligence reports documented that the overwhelming majority of Japanese Americans were loyal to the U.S. Roosevelt even sent a personal investigator to survey Japanese Americans, and he reported back that they had far more to fear from the wrath of white Americans than the other way around.

But in the climate of fear permeating the U.S. after Pearl Harbor, the government officials pushing internment won Roosevelt over. In March 1942, he signed the order to relocate 110,000 Japanese Americans into internment camps. Most of them languished there until the war’s end nearly four years later.

One of internment’s more prominent supporters was California’s Attorney General Earl Warren, who later became governor and then, most famously, Supreme Court Chief Justice. Toward the end of his life, Warren expressed profound regret. “It was wrong to react so impulsively… even though we felt we had a good motive in the security of our state.” Warren came to understand that “fear, get-tough military psychology, propaganda, and racial antagonism” had combined to produce a reckless decision.

He was not alone in reaching this conclusion. Upon signing the Civil Liberties Act of 1988, President Ronald Reagan declared it time “to right a grave wrong.” The law offered survivors restitution of $25,000 as a token of the harm they incurred.

Internment was not an anomaly. The psychology that Warren explained extended to other decisions with similarly devastating results. Three years later, as D-Day neared, the Roosevelt Administration had a crucial decision to make: what would U.S. occupation policy for Germany look like?

Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau Jr. insisted that the U.S. should strip the country of all heavy machinery, so that it could never again produce the weapons of war. He wanted to leave Germans to live off the land by whatever they could grow. Most others in the administration opposed this idea, knowing that Morgenthau’s plan would lead to mass starvation. But the treasury secretary dug in, and, as a personal friend of the President, he held outsized influence over the policymaking process.

In the end, he and his opponents reached a compromise which, though not quite as extreme, still left Germany in ruins. U.S. occupation forces were forbidden from helping Germany rebuild its economy, which, as predicted, resulted in widespread privation. 

As the harshness of U.S. policy unfolded, many American leaders found the suffering of children too sickening to bear. General Lucius Clay, who oversaw the American occupation zone, flouted orders and instructed his soldiers to give some of their own food to starving civilians. In his memoirs, he reflected: “My exultation in victory was diminished as I witnessed this degradation of man. I decided then and there never to forget that we were responsible for the government of human beings.”

Will Clayton, the Undersecretary of State for Economic Affairs, had been part of the compromise that produced the bitter occupation plan. In 1947, he traveled to postwar Europe to see the devastation for himself and quickly changed his mind. “Millions of people in the cities are slowly starving,” he told Secretary of State George Marshall. Especially as the Cold War ramped up, he feared the suffering would lead to revolution. 

Clayton urged a complete reversal of course and drafted what eventually became the Marshall Plan. Punishing civilians did not work. Revenge, he realized, had been in vain.

Read More: Blinken Calls For Protection of Civilians as Israel Prepares For Assault on Gaza

America’s internment and occupation policies targeted the wrong people — civilians who had little to do with the decision to wage war. They were devastating cases of misplaced revenge. Within a year or two after the war had ended, Americans began to see that allowing their former foes to suffer did no one any good.

After learning about the extent of German hunger, 60% of those surveyed by the Gallup organization in 1947 favored food aid. As one Chicago minister put it: “We have a moral and humanitarian obligation to feed our former enemies and, besides, if we permit chaos to continue in Germany there’s no telling where it might lead.” Most Americans understood that inflicting suffering on civilians was not merely cruel, it could easily backfire, undermining hopes of a long-term peace.

Will Russians one day similarly reflect on their country’s bombing of Ukrainian civilians with any measure of regret? Will Saudis and Houthis come to see their actions against average Yemenis as needlessly cruel? In time, might Israelis ask whether their country could have avoided cutting off electricity, fuel, water, and medicine to ordinary Gazans, or whether such an extensive bombing campaign was truly necessary? Conversely, at some point, could those Palestinians who supported Hamas recoil at the savagery of the group’s attacks? Will they ever recognize that vicious, monstrous assaults against civilians are not only unjustifiable, but also undermine the goals and lasting peace they seek?

It took America two years after World War II to reverse course in occupied Germany. It took four decades for the nation to make amends to Japanese Americans. Let’s hope that current combatants will not take as long to feel regret. If they could learn from America’s fruitless harming of civilians during and after WWII, then perhaps even the bitterest of foes could curb their attacks against civilians, refuse to wage war in ways that brutalize the innocent, and soberly sense the pain of their shared suffering. Until they can, hopes for a stable peace seem dim.

Zachary Shore is professor of history at the Naval Postgraduate School, senior fellow at UC Berkeley’s Institute of European Studies, and a national security visiting fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution. He is the author of This Is Not Who We Are: America’s Struggle Between Vengeance and Virtue (Cambridge University Press, 2023). The views expressed are those of the author alone and do not represent those of the Naval Postgraduate School, the Department of Defense, or the U.S. Government. Made by History takes readers beyond the headlines with articles written and edited by professional historians. Learn more about Made by History at TIME here.

source https://time.com/6342004/wartime-targeting-civilians-history/

After Recalls and Infections, Experts Say Safer Eyedrops Will Require New FDA Powers

WASHINGTON — When you buy eyedrops at a U.S. store, you might assume you’re getting a product made in a clean, well-maintained factory that’s passed muster with health regulators.

But repeated recalls involving over-the-counter drops are drawing new attention to just how little U.S. officials know about the conditions at some manufacturing plants on the other side of the world—and the limited tools they have to intervene when there’s a problem.

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The Food and Drug Administration is asking Congress for new powers, including the ability to mandate drug recalls and require eyedrop makers to undergo inspections before shipping products to the U.S. But experts say those capabilities will do little without more staff and resources for foreign inspections, which were a challenge even before the COVID-19 pandemic forced regulators to skip thousands of visits.

“The FDA is not getting its job done in terms of drug quality assurance inspections abroad,” said David Ridley of Duke University and co-author of a recent paper tracking the downturn in inspections. “Very few foreign drugmakers have been inspected in the past four years.”

In 2022, FDA foreign inspections were down 79% from 2019, according to agency records collected by Ridley’s group. Inspections increased this year but are still far below pre-pandemic levels.

FDA spokesman Jeremy Kahn said: “The FDA works to inspect as many facilities possible, but ultimately industry is responsible for the quality of their products.”

An October recall of two dozen eyedrop brands came after FDA staff found cracked floors, barefoot workers and other unsanitary conditions at a Mumbai plant that supplied products to CVS, Walmart and other major retailers. It was the first time FDA staff had visited the site.

That inspection was prompted by an earlier recall of tainted eyedrops from a different Indian plant that’s been linked to four deaths and more than a dozen cases of vision loss. That plant had also never been previously inspected.

“These are very rare instances, but what we’ve seen is that these products can cause real harm,” said Dr. Timothy Janetos, an ophthalmologist at Northwestern University. “Something needs to change.”

Experts point to three possible changes:

Earlier inspections

Prescription medicines are highly regulated. Before a drugmaker can sell one in the U.S., it must undergo FDA review to establish its safety and effectiveness. As part of the process, the FDA typically inspects the factory where the drug will be made.

But eyedrops and other over-the-counter products don’t undergo preliminary review or inspections. Instead, they are governed by a different system called a monograph, essentially a generic recipe for all medicines in a particular class. So long as drugmakers attest that they are using the standard recipe, they can launch a product within days of filing with the FDA.

“It’s nothing more than electronic paperwork,” said Dr. Sandra Brown of the Dry Eye Foundation, a nonprofit advocating for increased regulation. “There’s no requirement for the facility to be inspected prior to shipping for sale.”

The FDA says it has flexibility to adjust its review process “to ensure safety.”

But the agency is asking Congress for the power to require manufacturers of eyedrops and other sterile products to give at least six months notice before shipping products from a new factory. That would give inspectors time to visit facilities that aren’t on their radar.

The proposal could face pushback from some over-the-counter drugmakers, who aren’t accustomed to preapproval inspections.

But Brown says the unique risks of tainted eyedrops require a different approach from pills and tablets.

“Anything you swallow is going to meet up with your stomach acid, which is going to kill most bacteria,” Brown said. “It’s much more dangerous to put a product in your eye.”

Requiring recalls

The FDA warned consumers in late October not to use the eyedrops sold at CVS, Rite-Aid and other stores. But the products weren’t officially recalled until Nov. 15, almost three weeks later.

That’s because Indian manufacturer, Kilitch Healthcare, initially declined to cooperate. The FDA can force recalls of food, medical devices and many other products, but it lacks the same authority for drugs and instead must ask companies to voluntarily take action.

The FDA recently asked Congress for mandatory recall authority over drugs.

Funding foreign inspectors

Since the 1990s, drug manufacturing has increasingly moved to India, China and other lower-cost countries.

The Government Accountability Office has raised concerns for years about the FDA’s oversight of the global supply chain, flagging it as a “high-risk” issue for more than a decade.

The FDA said in a statement it uses “all available tools” to ensure Americans get “high quality, safe and effective” medications.

The agency generally prioritizes factories that have never been inspected or haven’t been inspected in the last five years. It halted most routine, in-person foreign inspections in March 2020 and did not resume them until 2022. The agency didn’t conduct any inspections in India during the first year of COVID-19.

FDA leaders have long said it’s challenging to recruit and keep overseas inspectors.

Experts say Congress can and should address that.

“Federal hiring is inherently slow and pay is often not competitive,” said Ridley, the Duke researcher. ”Congress needs to try and help FDA solve that problem and then hold them responsible for staffing inspections.”

source https://time.com/6442732/safer-eyedrops-fda/