Racism in kidney transplants
The Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network (OPTN) and the United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS) are implementing new policies to make skin color a crucial factor in who receives life-saving kidney transplants. The shift is perhaps the most dangerous victory for wokeness in health care to date.
In the name of “equity,” UNOS and OPTN purport to be expanding black patients’ access to kidney transplants. They essentially claim that the longstanding system for such transplants is racist, pointing to how black patients make up 30 percent of the dialysis population and transplant wait list but receive a smaller fraction of kidney transplants.
Activists assert that this disparity reflects bias on the part of treating physicians, particularly when referring black patients for early kidney care. But a study from the Veteran’s Administration found that more referrals for expert care did not improve outcomes or prevent progression of advanced kidney disease to the need for kidney replacement therapy.
If racism doesn’t explain the discrepancy, what does? The list of reasons is extensive, reflecting disheartening, stubborn problems that physicians and policymakers have long tried to address. One is the advanced age and complex medical conditions of many black patients with diabetes-related kidney failure; many of these patients are also relatively satisfied with dialysis treatments and unwilling to undergo extensive evaluation for transplant suitability. Others include insufficient health literacy, concern about the surgical procedures associated with transplantation, and lack of a support system for post-operative patients—an especially important factor in transplant suitability. Black families are also less likely to supply kidney donors from relatives.
UNOS and OPTN ignore these facts to advance a race-based agenda. They are forcing transplant centers to rework the waitlist for cadaveric kidneys in such a way that favors black patients. The rationale is that the longstanding formula used to estimate kidney function, which was race-conscious and required a second calculation for black patients, was racist.
Yet this second calculation was necessary to produce an accurate value for kidney function in black patients. Without it, the measure would be highly inaccurate, dramatically underestimating kidney function. (Research shows that people of African-American descent tend to have higher levels of muscle mass compared with other population groups, which can affect the levels of creatinine, a waste product produced by muscles, in their blood. Creatinine is used as a marker to estimate kidney function in GFR equations, including the MDRD equation; however, African Americans may have higher creatinine levels even if their kidney function is normal.)
Validated in multiple studies involving hundreds of patients, the old approach was long criticized yet never shown to be inaccurate. Nonetheless, activists demanded a new formula, officially rolled out in 2021. Less accurate than the previous method, the new one lowers kidney-function assessment for black patients to the point that some who did not qualify for placement on the transplant list now meet the requirement. It is a case study in politicized manipulation of data to achieve a predetermined goal.
OPTN isn’t just using this new assessment going forward. It is retroactively applying the new formula—potentially tracing back decades—to previous assessments of kidney function in black patients. Many black patients previously regarded as ineligible for the transplantation waitlist will now be listed, and some will even be moved ahead of others already on the waiting list. How many patients waiting for years for a transplant will be forced to wait still longer? Some estimates say that roughly 70,000 black patients could potentially benefit. That’s a huge number, considering that the current kidney waiting list stands at about 90,000 patients.
OPTN is also preparing, in the name of equity, to abandon its longstanding pledge to those who selflessly donated a kidney to a loved one or even to a stranger through a matching program. Currently, these courageous donors are listed at the top of the transplant waiting list should they ever require a transplant. Donating a kidney does not increase the risk of developing kidney failure, so the need is unlikely. Yet this was the only compensation for the charitable act allowed by law. And it helped reassure donors, many understandably worried about the possibility of needing a transplant of their own.
Five times as many whites as blacks donate kidneys, which means that many more whites enjoy this benefit. Activists therefore see it as racist, and they want OPTN to change its policies. The group is considering four proposals; all would eliminate prior donors’ waitlist priority and give them a mere 10 percent–15 percent improvement on their waitlist position. That would virtually eliminate the chance that a white patient might move ahead of a black patient on the wait list, even after he or she donates a kidney. And this policy, which OPTN expects to finalize before the end of this year, risks discouraging kidney donors as a whole. White people are being punished in the name of righting nonexistent wrongs, but patients of every race will suffer from this move.
The corruption of medicine continues apace. Black patients are being pushed toward the front of the kidney-transplant waiting list on the basis of something other than need. Racial reparations have arrived in health care, and kidney transplants are just the beginning.
https://www.city-journal.org/article/medical-reparations-have-arrived
******************************************************Trump Commuted His Sentence. Now the Justice Department Is Going To Prosecute Him Again
When Philip Esformes walked out of prison in December 2020, he'd spent four and a half years behind bars, the majority of which were in solitary confinement. He reportedly weighed about 130 pounds. He was, in many ways, a broken man. But Esformes' luck was changing: He had recently received clemency from former President Donald Trump, giving him the chance to rebuild his life after paying a debt to the country.
That fortune has quickly soured.
In a move that defies historical precedent, the Department of Justice under President Joe Biden is using a legal loophole to reprosecute Esformes' case—raising grave questions about double jeopardy, the absolute power of the clemency process, and the weaponization of the criminal legal system against politically expedient targets.
A former executive overseeing a network of skilled nursing and assisted living facilities, Esformes was arrested in 2016. The prosecutors, who were found to have committed substantial misconduct throughout the case, alleged he paid doctors under the table to send patients his way and subsequently charged Medicare and Medicaid for unnecessary treatments. The government held him without bond in the years leading up to his trial, placing him in solitary. He was ultimately found guilty of money laundering and related charges, as well as bribing regulators to give him notice of upcoming inspections so he could attempt to obscure shoddy conditions at those facilities.
But Esformes was not convicted of the most serious charges leveled against him. The government failed to convince a jury, for example, that he committed conspiracy to commit health care fraud and wire fraud. So his 20-year sentence—handed down by U.S. District Judge Robert N. Scola of the Southern District of Florida—may appear grossly disproportionate to his convictions.
Until you realize the judge explicitly punished Esformes for charges on which the jury hung.
That is not an error. "When somebody gets sentenced [at the federal level]…they get sentenced on all charges, even the ones they're acquitted on, [as long as] they get convicted on one count," says Brett Tolman, the former U.S. Attorney for the District of Utah who is now the executive director of Right on Crime. It is a little-known, jaw-dropping part of the legal system: Federal judges are, in effect, not obligated to abide by a jury's verdict at sentencing. They can, and do, sentence defendants for conduct on which they were not convicted. In this case, Esformes was already sentenced—and had that sentence commuted—for the crimes that the DOJ now wants to retry.
"This defendant, as much as you might not like him…do you think he should be punished two or three times for the same conduct?" asks Tolman. "I don't find anybody who thinks that's fair."
Esformes is just one person. And he's perhaps a convenient bullseye at which the Biden administration and Attorney General Merrick Garland can aim, as many on the left have a particular sort of ire for white-collar crime. But it is difficult to overstate the implications of his case for the broader public, regardless of partisan affiliation.
"While there are a lot of people who disagree with how Donald Trump handled his clemencies, it's his absolute right as a president to issue commutations and pardons. And I think that's an important right to protect," says the prominent left-leaning attorney and advocate Jessica Jackson, who was instrumental in shepherding the passage of the FIRST STEP Act. "Philip is struggling with anxiety and depression. He's been triggered by the threat of being reprosecuted and brought back to a prison where he was assaulted multiple times…. It might be Philip Esformes today, but it could be thousands of young mothers and fathers stuck in the system tomorrow."
A Case Tainted by Prosecutorial Misconduct
The government's misbehavior in the Esformes case was "deplorable," wrote U.S. Magistrate Judge Alicia Otazo-Reyes in August 2018.
In 2016, the FBI raided one of Esformes' medical facilities. The agency, as well as prosecutors, knew that the building contained documents subject to attorney-client privilege, which the government was therefore barred from seeing. That didn't stop them from retaining and reviewing such documents anyway—for months. They also leveraged government informants to secure recordings of private conversations between Esformes and his lawyers.
"This violates any person's right to defend themselves by virtue of the government having access to your communications and therefore your theory of your defense…. If [prosecutors] know in advance what the defense is going to be, and the particulars of that defense, that gives the government a hand up," says Michael P. Heiskell, owner of Johnson Vaughn & Heiskell and President-elect of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers (NACDL). "This intrusion offends bedrock principles of our American criminal legal system and taints the legitimacy of the adversarial process and assurance of justice."
Otazo-Reyes spared few prisoners in her sprawling opinion, which exceeded 100 pages, though she stopped short of barring further prosecution. That was likely to be expected. What was not necessarily expected is that she allowed those same prosecutors to stay on the case after gaining privileged information they were legally barred from seeing.
In November 2018, Judge Scola—the same judge who would later sentence Esformes—agreed the prosecutors had been "sloppy, careless, [and] clumsy." The government "conducted multiple errors over the course of its investigation," he said. And he, too, would ultimately rule that those prosecutors could stay on the case as it went to trial, despite the fact that their misconduct was so comprehensive it necessitated they hire their own private counsel—a significant step when considering prosecutors are protected by absolute immunity and rarely have to worry about consequences for misbehavior on the job.
That development is "remarkable," adds Heiskell. "It is very troubling that prosecutors have been allowed—and still, in many instances, are allowed—willy-nilly to just flaunt their ethical obligations, and even the laws in many respects, to prosecute an individual."
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Washington State To Allow Children to Be Legally Taken From Parents If They Don’t Consent to Gender Transition
Washington state passed a bill allowing children to legally be taken away from their parents for not consenting to gender transition procedures on their child.
According to Senate Bill 5599, shelters could contact the Department of Children, Youth, and Families instead of parents for minors seeking reproductive health services or gender-affirming care.
The proposal would pave the way for more of a "compelling reason" to conceal a child who seeks sex change operations or reproductive health services such as abortion.
Democratic State Rep. Tana Senn praised the bill's passing, saying she supports children who believe they belong in a different body than they were born.
"I am saying tonight to them that I see you, that I affirm you, that I hear you, that I love you," Senn said. "With this bill passage, we say that Washington State does too."
However, the Democrat-led state received much backlash for passing the radical bill, calling it an attack on families and parents by the Left.
State Senate Republican Leader John Braun said the troubling legislation "clears the way" for kids to "game the system" by taking away parent's God-given rights.
"The only thing SB 5599 would do is cause harm by driving a wedge between vulnerable kids and their parents, at a time when a teen lacks the perception and judgment to make critical life-altering decisions," Braun said. "A parent may not even know why the child ran away and could involve law enforcement or other groups in a desperate search… all the while going through an unnecessary emotional nightmare, imagining the worst about what might have happened."
Braun also argued that children's brains are not fully developed until they are at least 22 years of age, which means Democrats are pushing minors to believe they can make a life-altering decision that they may regret one day.
"Right now, [Democrats] are sponsoring a juvenile offender sentencing bill based on 'the expansive body of scientific research on brain development, which shows that adolescents' perception, judgment, and decision-making skills differ significantly from that of adults,'" Braun continued.
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Conservative group Consumers’ Research will ping shoppers about to purchase ‘woke’ products
A conservative nonprofit launched a text alert system this week designed to warn shoppers to avoid products from companies accused of catering to the “woke agenda.”
Consumers’ Research, a Washington, DC-based group poised at the intersection of policy and consumerism, introduced the “Woke Alert” on Friday.
By entering a phone number, conservative-minded shoppers will receive text updates on companies deemed to have strayed too far left in their marketing and other strategies.
“Many corporations are putting progressive activists and their dangerous agendas ahead of customers,” the sign-up page reads.
“They’ll only succeed if we look the other way.”
As of Friday morning, the group had already issued warnings on Bud Light — which recently came under fire from the far right for partnering with trans activist Dylan Mulvaney — and Jack Daniel’s 2021 “Small Town, Big Pride” campaign.
The Woke Alert launch is supported by a six-figure ad campaign to drive interested users, Axios reported.
“We are launching Woke Alerts to help consumers make better-informed decisions about where to spend their money,” executive director Will Hild told the outlet.
“We believe companies should focus on their customers and not woke politicians and progressive activists.”
Left-wing voices, however, were quick to hit back at Consumers’ Research’s efforts.
“I hate to break it to the radical right, but people in this country are a lot more concerned about paying for an eighty-dollar tank of gas than the color of their Budweiser bottle,” Anna Bahr, a political consultant with Left Flank Strategies, told Axios.
“The right wing is hell-bent on moving our country backwards, and this new text service is laughable,” Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Calif.) agreed.
In addition to the Woke Alert, the group’s website features a tracker of environmental, social and governance (ESG) legislation.
Consumers’ Research maintains that the so-called “movement” is another ideological play by the left.
But despite all its public efforts, the self-appointed watchdog remains somewhat mysterious. Consumers’ Research had an $8 million budget in 2021, the Washington Post reported earlier this year — but does not disclose its donors.
Hild, who joined the group in 2020, is also close with Leonard Leo, a Republican lawyer and former executive vice president of the Federalist Society who campaigned for the Supreme Court confirmations of Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett, among others, the Washington Post said.
https://nypost.com/2023/04/14/conservative-group-launches-woke-alerts-for-shoppers/
****************************************My other blogs. Main ones below:
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs
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Kristina Pimenova, once said to be the most beautiful girl in the world. Note blue eyes and blonde hair
Bliss: What every woman wants: to feel safe and secure in the arms of her man. Robert Irwin and Rorie Buckey. See 
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