child abuse
kkrisberg | June 6, 2014Researcher Christopher Wildeman has spent his whole career describing and quantifying the more unpleasant parts of people’s lives and his latest study on the surprising prevalence of childhood maltreatment is no exception. Still, there is a bit of a silver lining, he told me.
“This is the sort of issue that both the right and left shouldn’t have a hard time supporting,” said Wildeman, an assistant professor of sociology at Yale University. “It’s the sort of thing that once we become more aware of it, designing interventions that could diminish maltreatment rates is something anyone can get…
denialism | October 18, 2012
Every once in a while Everything is Terrible has a fun denialism-overlap as they show some ad for a terrible piece of quackery, or in this case a great cut of Ken Ham speaking nonsense to a group of very unfortunate children. This is child abuse. Not the creationism bit, but the embarrassingly-shoddy job he does presenting his evidence which seems to consist of poorly-drawn cartoons of men standing next to dinosaurs and an overhead projector.
oracknows | June 10, 2012A couple of weeks ago, I was horrified to learn of a new "biomed" treatment that has been apparently gaining popularity in autism circles. Actually, it's not just autism circles in which this treatment is being promoted. Before the "autism biomed" movement discovered it, this particular variety of "miracle cure" has been touted as a treatment for cancer, AIDS, hepatitis A,B and C, malaria, herpes, TB, and who knows what else. I'm referring to something called MMS, which stands for "miracle mineral solution." As I pointed out when I discovered its promotion for various maladies and then later…
denialism | March 15, 2012At Alternet there is a great article by Kristin Rawls on homeschooling and educational neglect. I think it makes an excellent argument that homeschooling needs either tighter regulation and oversight, or needs to be outright outlawed:
In recent weeks, homeschooling has received nationwide attention because of Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum's homeschooling family. Though Santorum paints a rosy picture of homeschooling in the United States, and calls attention to the "responsibility" all parents have to take their children's education into their own hands, he fails to…
sciencewoman | July 30, 2009If she lives in New Jersey, she might be. Because apparently, refusing a C-section (and then successfully vaginally delivering a healthy baby) and acting "combative" "erratic" and "noncompliant" during labor is considered child abuse and neglect and is grounds for the New Jersey Division of Youth and Family Services (NJ DYFS) to immediately take away your newborn child and permanently terminate your parental rights.
Sounds unbelievable, right? But I am so not making this up.
In the case of New Jersey Division of Youth and Family Services v. V.M. and B.G., In the Matter of J.M.G., new mother…
sciencewoman | June 18, 2009Have you ever bought an album and discovered a song so dark, so sad that it makes you physically uncomfortable to listen to it? What do you do then? Can you stand to hear it or do you skip the track in favor of something a little lighter?
For me, the songs that twist my stomach in knots are the ones with stories of domestic violence, child abuse, or rape. And when I find one of those songs, I force myself not to delete it from my playlists and I pay attention when my iTunes shuffle pops it up. The singers recorded those songs for a reason - to tell us that terrible things are happening…
edyong | February 22, 2009The trauma of child abuse can last a lifetime, leading to a higher risk of anxiety, depression and suicide further down the line. This link seems obvious, but a group of Canadian scientists have found that it has a genetic basis.
By studying the brains of suicide victims, Patrick McGowan from the Douglas Mental Health University Institute, found that child abuse modifies a gene called NR3C1 that affects a person's ability to deal with stress. The changes it wrought were "epigenetic", meaning that the gene's DNA sequence wasn't altered but it's structure was modified to make it less active.…