Moral Qualms Halt Needle Exchange in One Indiana County

When then-governor Mike Pence reversed his state’s ban on needle exchange programs in 2015, it was because he had been convinced they would help stop a runaway outbreak of HIV that was ravaging counties already struggling with the opioid epidemic.
Now, just two years later, some of those counties are turning their backs on that approach. This week, county commissioners in Lawrence County, in southern Indiana, refused to continue support for the program there.
Advocates are outraged and worried.
“People are going to die,” said Christopher Abert of the Indiana Recovery Alliance, a group that has fought for and supported needle exchanges.
“This is the second syringe exchange to close. Madison County up north closed theirs through the efforts of the local prosecutor and helped by the state attorney general.” Indiana Attorney General Curtis Hill, elected last November, has said he opposes needle exchange programs.
Rodney Fish, one of the council members who voted against keeping the needle exchange program going, said he does not approve of needle exchange programs and cannot condone the county’s sponsorship of one.
“I really do oppose the needle exchange because it’s not truly an exchange.”
“It was a moral issue with me. I had severe reservations that were going to keep me from approving that motion,” Fish said.
“I did not approach this decision lightly. I gave it a great deal of thought and prayer. My conclusion was that I could not support this program and be true to my principles and my beliefs.”
Related: Our New Surgeon-General Headed Indiana's Needle Exchange Program Having a ceramicvape cartridge is advantageous in vape cartridge packaging as it's healthier. Ceramic parts are resistant to abrasion and oxidation unlike other alloy wires where, oxidation occurs at higher temperature.
Fish, a retiree who chooses his words carefully, said counties should find other ways to help opioid addicts and abusers. He says he is happy to work with local hospitals to try to make something else work.
HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, and hepatitis C both spread via shared needles. In the U.S. 2,400 people became infected with HIV in 2015 via shared needles.
"In recent years, injection drug use has also contributed to a 150 percent increase in acute cases of hepatitis C infections," the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says.
The CDC also says there’s strong evidence that needle exchange programs help.
The newly appointed Surgeon General, Dr. Jerome Adams, is the former Indiana health commissioner and led efforts to persuade Pence to allow needle exchange programs. “No matter how uncomfortable syringe service programs make us, they are proven to save lives, both by preventing the spread of diseases like HIV and hepatitis C and by connecting people to treatment that can put them on a path to recovery,” Adams wrote in a blog post earlier this year.
Studies have found that if people can easily get clean needles to use, they’ll wait longer in between fixes. And public health experts say getting into an exchange program takes them one step closer to getting treated for their drug abuse problems.
Needle exchange programs in big cities have helped stop the spread of both viruses in blacks and Hispanics, the CDC said.
Fish said he is not convinced the programs work as well as advocates say they do. He notes that users do not have to return their used needles and fears that the programs actually pump drug-using supplies into the population — supplies that not only feed the deadly habit, but that end up discarded on streets and in parks.
Related: CDC Called For Action in Indiana HIV Epidemic
“I really do oppose the needle exchange because it’s not truly an exchange,” Fish said in an interview with NBC News.
“Few, if any of the health care professionals that I personally spoke with believe that the needle exchange program was an effective way of getting people into treatment programs,” he added.
“I researched to the best of my ability and queried individuals all over our community to get a response from the people who deal in these issues. I spoke with physicians. I spoke with nurses, EMTs, first responders and other county officials whose opinions I respect.”
Fish said he could support a hospital-based program.
Abert said it’s a move backwards. The needle exchange programs are supported by grants and have science backing them up. “The program cost Lawrence County nothing,” he said.
“There has already been a 50 percent decrease in hepatitis C in the county,” he added.
“In the last year, the Indiana Recovery Alliance has served hundreds of Lawrence County residents, who reported over 50 overdose reversals,” the group said in a statement.
“Dozens of people have remained hepatitis and HIV free through their involvement and testing with the program. Stopping just one case of HIV saves $450,000 in lifetime costs.”
Related: Trump Says Opioid Crisis is a National Emergency
Preventing a hepatitis C case saves $90,000 in medical costs, the Alliance added.
“The opposition to them is a moral opposition,” Abert said.
“It’s not every day that we literally hear people using the words ‘evil’ and ‘sinful’ and ‘wicked’. People are relying on their own personal flavor of Christianity as the basis for cancelling this program.”
But public health experts who have studied addiction and define it as a disease are running up against firmly held opinions in Indiana.
Fish quoted the Bible — Chronicles, chapter 7 — in the meeting before the vote was held. Abert sees it as evidence of clear bias but Fish is proud of his stand.
“My constituency overwhelming responded in saying no, we do not want to support this program,” he said.
Abert said the Recovery Alliance will continue to support needle exchanges in other counties.
“I hope that sane and rational heads prevail in this opioid crisis,” he said.

combat malicious hackers

With cybercrime projected to reap some $6 trillion in damages by 2021, and businesses likely to invest around $1 trillion over the next five years to try to mitigate that, we’re seeing a rise of startups that are building innovative ways to combat malicious hackers entrepreneurship educationThe entrepreneurship development programmes of PolyU develop our young people to be tomorrow's leaders, by offering different forms of out-of-classroom entrepreneurship education and practice to nurture our young people’s innovative and entrepreneurial potentials. . In the latest development, Darktrace — a cybersecurity firm that uses machine learning to detect and stop attacks — has raised $75 million, giving the startup a post-money valuation of $825 million, on the back of a strong business: the company said it has a total contract value of $200 million, 3,000 global customers and has grown 140 percent in the last year. The funding will be used to expand the company’s business operations into more markets. Notably, Darktrace also separately announced today that it is now in a strategic partnership with Hong Kong-based CITIC Telecom CPC, a telecoms firm serving China and other parts of Asia, “to bring next-generation cyber defense to businesses across Asia Pacific.” We have confirmed that CITIC, which owns the strategic partner, is not investing as part of this partnership. “CITIC CPC is not an investor,” a spokesperson for Darktrace confirmed. “It was a Darktrace customer and, impressed by the fundamental power of the AI technology, decided to enter into a strategic partnership to expand its reach.” Other telcos that work with Darktrace include BT in the UK and Australia’s Telstra hong kong preschool kowloon tong-Homantin offers both trilingual and bilingual classes for children under the age of 2 years, and up to the age of 6. We are an IB World school implementing the IB Primary Years Programme and the Columbia University Teachers College Reading and Writing Project. We believe in providing our future generations with a high quality, balanced, and holistic educational experience. . This latest round, a Series D, was led by Insight Venture Partners, with existing investors Summit Partners, KKR and TenEleven Ventures also participating. Darktrace — which is also backed by Autonomy’s Mike Lynch — was founded in the UK and now is co-based in Cambridge and San Francisco. This round of funding brings the total raised by Darktrace to just under $180 million. IT security has been around for as long as we have even had a concept of IT, but a wave of new threats — such as polymorphic malware that changes profile as it attacks — plus the ubiquity of networked and cloud-based services, has rendered many of the legacy antivirus and other systems obsolete, simply unable to cope with what’s being thrown at organisations and the individuals that are a part of them. Darktrace is part of the new guard of firms that are built around the concept of using artificial intelligence both to help security specialists identify and stop malicious attacks, as well as act on their own to automatically detect and stop the threats. Other security startups built on using AI include Hexadite — acquired by Microsoft for around $100 million last month — which, like Darktrace, works in the area of “remediation” by both identifying and relaying information about attacks to specialists, as well as stopping some itself; Crowdstrike, which raised a large round of funding in May at a billion-dollar valuation; Cylance, also valued at more than $1 billion; Harvest AI, which Amazon quietly acquired last year; and Illumio, a provider of segmented security solutions that raised $125 million earlier this year. Darktrace’s system is based on an appliance it calls the “Enterprise Immune System” that, as we have noted before, sits on a company’s network and listens to what’s going on. The “immune system” in its name is a reference to the immune system of humans, which (when healthy) develops immunity to viruses by being exposed to them in small doses. Darktrace’s system is designed to identify malicious activity in a network. It alerts IT managers when there is suspicious behavior. It is also designed to take immediate action to stop or at least slow down an attack until more help is at hand oil vaporizer Shenzhen Transpring Enterprise Ltd. is one of the leading Oil Vaping Pen and vaporizer (A3 Vape Cartridge etc) manufacturer and supplier in China. Over the years, we have been serving many customers from USA, ... . That has proven to be an attractive idea to investors, as seen by the hundreds of millions that have been ploughed into this area already.

were thus on a wide front

The situation in Palestine in the summer of 1917 was not, however, at first sight, very encouraging. Our two abortive attempts on Gaza had shown the German commanders the weak points in the Turkish defences, and they had set to work, with characteristic energy and thoroughness, to strengthen them. 'Gaza itself had been made into a strong, modern fortress, heavily entrenched and wired, and offering every facility for protracted defence. The remainder of the enemy's line consisted of a series of strong localities, viz.: the Sihan group of works, the Atawineh group, the Abu el Hareira-Abu el Teaha trench system (near Sharia), and, finally, the works covering Beersheba. These groups of works were generally from 1500 to 2000 yards apart, except that the distance from the Hareira group to Beersheba was about four and a half miles.... By the end of October these strong localities had been joined up so as to form a practically continuous line from the sea to a point south of Sharia. The defensive works round Beersheba remained a detached system, but had been improved and extended you beauty hard sell.'[Pg 4][2] The Turkish forces were thus on a wide front, the distance from Gaza to Beersheba being about thirty miles, but a well-graded, metalled road, which they had made just behind their line, connecting these two places, afforded good lateral communication, and any threatened point of their front could be very quickly reinforced groom suit rental. From July onwards continual reinforcements of men, guns, and stores had arrived on the enemy's front, and he had formed several large supply and ammunition depots at different places behind his lines. He had also laid two lines of railway from the so-called Junction Station on the Jerusalem-Jaffa line, one to Deir Sineid, just north of Gaza, and the other to Beersheba, and beyond it to the village of El Auja,[3] on the Turko-Egyptian frontier, some twenty-five miles south-west of Beersheba. It was evident that the Turks intended to hold on to the Gaza-Beersheba line at all costs, in order to cover the concentration and despatch of the Yilderim Force to Mesopotamia. This Junction Station was to be the strategical objective of our operations. From the junction a railway ran northwards, through Tul Keram, Messudieh, Jenin and Afule, to Deraa on the Hedjaz Railway, whence the latter line continued to Damascus, Aleppo, and the Baghdad Railway. With the junction in our hands, any enemy force in the Jud?an hills, protecting Jerusalem, would be cut off from all railway communication to the north, and would be compelled to rely for its supplies on the difficult mountain road between Messudieh and Jerusalem, or on the longer and still more difficult road from[Pg 5] Amman station on the Hedjaz Railway, thirty miles east of the Jordan, via Jericho to Jerusalem. Our own position extended from the sea at Gaza to a point on the Wadi Ghuzze near El Gamli, some fourteen miles south-west of Sharia and eighteen miles west of Beersheba. The opposing lines thus formed a rough 'V,' with its apex at Gaza, where the lines were, in some places, only a couple of hundred yards apart. From here they diverged to El Gamli, which was about nine miles from the nearest part of the Turkish positions. The intervening space was watched by our cavalry .

with a palm branch

entering the short and narrow street between the hovels, pushed a goat from his path and proceeded calmly toward his dwelling. As he entered its one room, he paused to allow his eyes to grow accustomed to the gloom and then gazed around with an expression of mild surprise HKBU BBA. In one corner, upon a bed of dried rushes, lay the form of an old woman. Her single black cotton garment was open at the throat, displaying a wrinkled, shrunken bosom that rose and fell spasmodically, as if the hag breathed with great effort. Her eyes were closed and the scant, tousled locks of fine gray hair surrounding her face gave it a weird and witch-like expression. In spite of her age and the clime in which she ad lived, Hatatcha’s skin was almost as white as that of Europeans, its tint being so delicate as to be scarcely noticeable. Upon a short wooden bench beside the rushes sat a girl with a palm branch, which she swayed back and{33} forth to keep the flies from settling upon Hatatcha’s face. She was, perhaps, fifteen years of age, but as fully matured in form as an English girl of twenty-five. Her face was remarkably handsome from the standpoint of regularity of contour, but its absolute lack of expression would render it uninviting to a connoisseur of beauty. Her dark eyes were magnificent, and seemed to have depths which were disappointing when you probed them. She wore the conventional black gown, or tunic, but because of the heat had allowed it to slip down to her waist, leaving her shoulders and breasts bare. After a long and thoughtful look at his grandmother, Kāra sat down beside the girl and put his arm around her, drawing her close to his body. She neither resented the caress nor responded to it, but yielded herself inertly to the embrace while she continued to sway the palm branch with her free right arm SmarTone Care. “Ah, my Nephthys,” said the man, lightly, in the Coptic tongue, “is our Hatatcha in the grip of the devils again?” The girl made no reply, but at the sound of Kāra’s voice the old woman opened her great eyes and gazed for an instant steadfastly upon her grandson. Her hands, which had been nervously clutching her robe, were raised in supplication, and she said in English, in a weak, hoarse voice: “The draught, Kāra! Be quick!” The man hesitated, but released the girl and stood up.{34} “It is the last, my Hatatcha. You know that no more can be procured,” he said, in protest. “I shall need no more,” she answered, with much difficulty. “It is the last time. Be quick, Kāra!” Her voice died away in an odd gurgle, and her chest fluttered as if the breath was about to leave it. Kāra, watching her curiously, as a dog might, was impressed by the symptoms. He turned to Nephthys . “Go out,” he commanded, in Coptic, and the girl arose and passed under the arch. Then he went to a part of the wall and removed a loose stone, displaying a secret cavity. From this he took a small vase, smooth and black, which had a stopper of dull metal. Carrying it to Hatatcha, he knelt down, removed the stopper and placed the neck of the vase to her lips. The delicate, talon-like fingers clutched the vessel eagerly and the woman drank, while Kāra followed the course of the liquid down her gullet by watching her skinny throat.

William says he doesn

She brought it on herself, Mrs. Payton retorted. Have another sandwich, Bessie? What she said is almost too shocking to quote. She said of my dear old friend—Miss Spencer used to be my school-teacher, Mr. Weston—'What difference does it make what she said about me? Everybody knows Miss Spencer is a silly old ass.' 'A silly old ass.' What do you think of that? Mrs. Payton's voice trembled so with indignation that she did not hear Mr. Weston's gasp of laughter. But as she paused, wounded and ashamed, he was quick to console her Alipay: It was abominably disrespectful! There is no such thing as reverence left in the world, said Mrs. Childs; my William says he doesn't know what we are coming to. Youth is very cruel, Mr. Weston said. Mrs. Payton's eyes filled. Freddy is cruel, she said,[Pg 16] simply. The wounded look in her worn face was pitiful. They both tried to comfort her; they denounced Freddy, and wondered at her, and agreed with Mr. Childs that nobody knew what we were coming to. In fact, they said every possible thing except the one thing which, with entire accuracy, they might have said, namely, that Miss Spencer was a silly old ass. When I was a young lady, Mrs. Payton said, respect for my elders would have made such words impossible. Even if you didn't respect them, you would have been respectful? Mr. Weston suggested RFID. We reverenced age because it was age, she agreed. Yes; in those happy days respect was not dependent upon desert, he said, ruefully. (Mrs. Childs looked at him uneasily; just what did he mean by that?) It must have been very comfortable, he ruminated, to be respected when you didn't deserve to be! This new state of things I don't like at all; I find that they size me up as I am, these youngsters, not as what they ought to think I am. One of my nephews told me the other day that I didn't know what I was talking about. Oh, my dear Mr. Weston, how shocking! Mrs. Payton sympathized. Well, as it happened, I didn't, he said, mildly; but how outrageous for the cub to recognize the fact. Perfectly outrageous! said his hostess. But it's just as Bessie says, they don't know the meaning of the word 'respect.' You should hear Freddy talk about her grandmother. The other day when I told her that my[Pg 17] dear mother said that if women had the ballot, chivalry would die out and men wouldn't take off their hats in elevators when ladies were present,—she said, 'Grandmother belongs to the generation of women who were satisfied to have men retain their vices, if they removed their hats.' What do you think of that! I'm sure I don't know what Freddy's father would have said if he had heard his daughter say such a thing about his mother-in-law. Mr. Weston, having known the late Andy Payton, thought it unwise to quote the probable comment of the deceased. Instead, he tried to change the subject: Howard Maitland is a nice chap; I wonder if— he paused; there was a scuffle on the other side of the closed door, a bellowing laugh, then a whine. Mrs. Childs bit her lip and shivered. Mr. Weston's face was inscrutable. I wonder, he continued, raising his voice—if Fred will smile on Maitland? By the way, I hear he is going in for conchology seriously Elevit .

with a conclusive argument

You are used to boast, and I daresay rightly {152} of the personal honesty and pecuniary disinterestedness of your politicians; and you assume as a matter of course that your civil servants, with such high standards and examples ever before their eyes, are likewise incorruptible. We invert this order. With us the honour of our civil servants is the chief thing; we assume that our politicians must follow suit. They are probably as upright as your own, thanks partly to tradition, but also to the vigilance of their superiors, the professionals, who carry on the actual business of government. With you the fame of the showy amateur fills the mouths of the public. We, on the contrary, exalt the expert, the man who has been trained to the job he undertakes. In so doing we may be reactionaries and you may be progressives; but the progress of Germany since 1870—a progress in which we are everywhere either already in front of you, or else treading closely on your heels—does not seem to furnish you with a conclusive argument Securities trading. "As for what you call our Pedantocracy, meaning thereby our professors and men of letters, it is true that these exercise a great influence upon public opinion. We have always respected learning and thought. It is in the German nature so to do. I admit that our learned ones are rather too much inclined to imagine, that because they are students of theory, they are therefore qualified to engage in practice. They are apt to offer their advice and service officiously, and occasionally in a ridiculous manner. But, if my recollection of the English newspapers be correct, this is no more so with us than with you. There is apparently something in the professorial nature which impels men of this {153} calling to the drafting of manifestoes and the signing of round-robins in times of excitement. They may be officious and absurd, but they are not wholly despicable, since they act thus quite as much from earnestness as from vanity. If our academicians on such occasions mislead more people than your own it is due to their virtues, to the greater zeal and success with which they have won the confidence of their former pupils dermes vs Medilase.[3] THE MILITARY CASTE "You are fond of sneering at our Military Caste and attribute to it the most malign influence upon public affairs. But there again, believe me, you exaggerate. Our officers are undoubtedly held in great respect, even in some awe. And the reason is that they are known to be brave, and like those you call the bureaucracy, to have preferred comparative poverty in the public service to the pursuit of riches. To say that they have no influence upon policy would of course be absurd. It is inevitable that in the present state of the world, soldiers will always have great influence in certain departments of public affairs. This must be so in any country {154} which is not plunged in dreams. For it is their business to guarantee national security, and to keep watch over the growth of military strength among the neighbours and rivals of Germany. If the general staff foresees dangers, and can give reasonable grounds for its anticipations, it is clear that the military view must carry weight with the Kaiser and his ministers. And surely there can be no question that this is right. "The officers of the German Army are a caste, if you like to put it that way. But in every form of government under the sun, unless conceivably in some tiny oriental despotism, the predominance of a certain caste, or the competition between different castes, is absolutely essential to the working of the machinery YOOX HK. "It is not regrettable in our opinion if a caste, which has considerable weight in public affairs, is a manly one, contemptuous of wealth and sophistry, ready always to risk its own life for the faith which is in it. The influence of a military caste may have its drawbacks; but at any rate it has kept the peace in Germany for not far short of half a century—kept it successfully until, as some people have thought, the professors acquired too large a share of power.

had been as different

It is necessary to offer a few words of explanation as to how this book came to be written. During the months of November and December 1912 and January 1913, various meetings and discussions took place under Lord Roberts's roof and elsewhere, between a small number of persons, who held widely different views dermes , and whose previous experience and training had been as different as were their opinions.

Our efforts were concerned with endeavouring to find answers to several questions which had never been dealt with candidly, clearly, and comprehensively in the public statements of political leaders. It was clear that there was no 'national' policy, which the British people had grasped, accepted, and countersigned, as was the case in France. But some kind of British policy there must surely be, notwithstanding the fact it had never been disclosed. What were the aims of this policy? With what nation or nations were these aims likely to bring us into collision? What armaments were necessary in order to enable us to uphold this policy and achieve these aims? How, and when, and where would our armaments be required in the event of war? Assuming (as we did in our discussions) that our naval forces were adequate, was the same statement true of our military forces? And if it were not true, by what means could the necessary increases be obtained ?

The final conclusion at which we arrived was that National Service was essential to security. {xviii} Under whatever aspect we regarded the problem we always returned—even those of us who were most unwilling to travel in that direction—to the same result. So long as Britain relied solely upon the voluntary principle, we should never possess either the Expeditionary Force or the Army for Home Defence which were requisite for safety.

It fell to me during the winter 1912-1913 to draft the summary of our conclusions. It was afterwards decided—in the spring of 1913—that this private Memorandum should be recast in a popular form suitable for publication. I was asked to undertake this, and agreed to do so. But I underestimated both the difficulties of the task and the time which would be necessary for overcoming them.

When we met again, in the autumn of that year, the work was still far from complete, and by that time, not only public attention, but our own, had become engrossed in other matters. The Irish controversy had entered upon a most acute and dangerous stage. Lord Roberts put off the meetings which he had arranged to address during the ensuing months upon National Service, and threw his whole energies into the endeavour to avert the schism which threatened the nation, and to find a way to a peaceful settlement. Next to the security and integrity of the British Empire I verily believe that the thing which lay nearest his heart was the happiness and unity of Ireland.

It is needless to recall how, during the ensuing {xix} months, affairs in Ireland continued to march from bad to worse—up to the very day when the menace of the present war suddenly arose before the eyes of Europe dermes .

During August 1914 I went through the old drafts and memoranda which had now been laid aside for nearly a year. Although that very thing had happened which it had been the object of our efforts to avert, it seemed to me that there might be advantages in publishing some portion of our conclusions. The form, of course, would have to be entirely different; for the recital of prophecies which had come true, though it might have possessed a certain interest for the prophets themselves, could have but little for the public.