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Death by Robots? Automation and Working-Age Mortality in the United States

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The automation of U.S. manufacturing—robots replacing people on factory floors—is fueling rising mortality rate among America's working-age adults, according to a new study by researchers at Yale and the University of Pennsylvania. The study , published Feb. 23 in the journal  Demography , found evidence of a causal link between automation and increasing mortality, driven largely by increased "deaths of despair," such as suicides and drug overdoses. This is particularly true for males and females aged 45 to 54, according to the study. But researchers also found evidence of increased mortality across multiple age and sex groups from causes as varied as cancer and heart disease. Public policy, including strong social-safety net programs, higher minimum wages, and limiting the supply of prescription opioids, can blunt automation's effects on a community's health, the researchers concluded. "For decades, manufacturers in the United States have turned to automatio

Mandate This!

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Mandate This! Robert E. Wright Do the people who want to mandate masks and vaccines realize that their arguments apply even more strongly to firearms, at least in America?  To see this, consider the Second Amendment, which through the doctrine of selective incorporation through the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, applies to  state governments . It  reads :  A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed. The main clause is clear as day: The government shall not infringe on the right of the people to own and wield firearms. Its exact meaning in terms of policy is disputed and currently under the Supreme Court’s review, but an increasing number of states have taken it to mean what the Founders did: that governments cannot heavily tax or otherwise regulate firearms ownership or transportation. They can enforce laws forbidding people from shooting their guns into the air or in

Covid Vaccines: The Next Vioxx?

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Covid Vaccines: The Next Vioxx? Covid vaccines: “a freaking miracle” or the next Vioxx? ( Statnews ) Shocking new data on covid vaccine and booster safety out of Israel and Germany – will covid vaccines overtake Vioxx and thalidomide as the largest ever drug scandal? Israeli booster safety data Already back in August 2021, Israeli health authorities published preliminary booster safety data showing that a  full one percent  of people, i.e. one in one hundred, had to “seek medical help” due to booster side effects. But two weeks ago, the Israeli Ministry of Health (MoH) published  a new report  that provides much more detailed, and much more disturbing, data on booster side effects. The original MoH report, published in Hebrew on February 10,  was translated  into English on February 15 by US-Israeli retired medical professor Eyal Shahar and several volunteers. On February 18, Dr. Josh Guetzkow, a senior lecturer in health policy at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, published a  first