HHS Plans To Delete 20 Years of Critical Medical Guidelines Next Week (thedailybeast.com) 414
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Daily Beast: The Trump Administration is planning to eliminate a vast trove of medical guidelines that for nearly 20 years has been a critical resource for doctors, researchers and others in the medical community. Maintained by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality [AHRQ], part of the Department of Health and Human Services, the database is known as the National Guideline Clearinghouse [NGC], and it's scheduled to "go dark," in the words of an official there, on July 16. "Guideline.gov was our go-to source, and there is nothing else like it in the world," King said, referring to the URL at which the database is hosted, which the agency says receives about 200,000 visitors per month. "It is a singular resource," Valerie King, a professor in the Department of Family Medicine and Director of Research at the Center for Evidence-based Policy at Oregon Health & Science University, added. [She] said the NGC is perhaps the most important repository of evidence-based research available.
Medical guidelines are best thought of as cheatsheets for the medical field, compiling the latest research in an easy-to use format. When doctors want to know when they should start insulin treatments, or how best to manage an HIV patient in unstable housing -- even something as mundane as when to start an older patient on a vitamin D supplement -- they look for the relevant guidelines. The documents are published by a myriad of professional and other organizations, and NGC has long been considered among the most comprehensive and reliable repositories in the world. AHRQ said it's looking for a partner that can carry on the work of NGC, but that effort hasn't panned out yet. Not even an archived version of the site will remain, according to an official at AHRQ.
Medical guidelines are best thought of as cheatsheets for the medical field, compiling the latest research in an easy-to use format. When doctors want to know when they should start insulin treatments, or how best to manage an HIV patient in unstable housing -- even something as mundane as when to start an older patient on a vitamin D supplement -- they look for the relevant guidelines. The documents are published by a myriad of professional and other organizations, and NGC has long been considered among the most comprehensive and reliable repositories in the world. AHRQ said it's looking for a partner that can carry on the work of NGC, but that effort hasn't panned out yet. Not even an archived version of the site will remain, according to an official at AHRQ.
The Administration that Keeps On Taking (Score:5, Insightful)
They just can't stop themselves. Sad.
America elected an anti-government (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:America elected an anti-government (Score:5, Informative)
Point of fact: ~20% voted for him, not 45%. ~21% voted Clinton, another ~1% wasted their votes on throwaway protest "message" which effectively let Trump eke out an electoral victory. The others, nearly 60% of the US population, did not vote at all.
Re: America elected an anti-government (Score:4, Insightful)
Not voting is effectively endorsing the winner. You don't care who wins.
When people quote these figures they are implying that the non-voters oppose the winner, but that is not the case.
If you don't vote, you are equally responsible for the result as those who vote for the winner.
Re: America elected an anti-government (Score:5, Insightful)
Not voting is effectively endorsing the winner. You don't care who wins.
When people quote these figures they are implying that the non-voters oppose the winner, but that is not the case.
If you don't vote, you are equally responsible for the result as those who vote for the winner.
Either that or you didn't want to vote for any of them.
What "democracy" really needs is a meaningful "none of the above" box on the voting papers.
How should it work? If the number of people who vote "none of the above" is greater than the difference between the top two candidates then it should force a new election with new candidates.
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How should it work? If the number of people who vote "none of the above" is greater than the difference between the top two candidates then it should force a new election with new candidates.
How should it work? Puree the candidates and feed them to Congress.
Re: America elected an anti-government (Score:4, Informative)
Absolutely correct.
The GP has tried to work around the problem rather than finding a solution for it. The solution is preferential or ranked voting.
As an example of how this works, see what Maine just did [bangordailynews.com] for their primaries. And that's what will happen there in November too.
Yes, it's more complicated, but it's far less complicated than the "solution" that the GP describes. Imagine that happening twice in a row!
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I really wish we'd move towards ranked voting. Not only would it give a better idea of voter preference over "pick column A or B:, but it would also allow third party candidates to run.
Imagine a Ranked Voting situation in 2016. Hillary and Trump win their primaries. For the moment, we'll ignore the third party candidates who did run and suppose that Bernie Sanders decided to run third party. Perhaps someone from the GOP (let's say Jeb Bush just to pick one at semi-random) would have ran third party also.
Som
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I agree completely.
I just hope that the two main parties adopt this thinking it's going to benefit them and hurt the other to the extent that the third parties/candidates can actually make a real difference. For the 2016 election, I don't think we disagree that it would have been better for the country to have had this voting method. We had two of the most disliked candidates ever, and to not have to vote for either one of them would have made most of both parties happier.
If Maine can do it, that shows it's
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Not voting is just a way to say the election is between "turd sandwich" and "giant douche".
To top it off, the current president didn't even turn out to be the least unpopular choice in the election, but won anyway.
Only an egomanic fool would consider that an endorsement.
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> Who could I have voted for?
You didn't have to vote for anyone.
You vote against the greater evil - Trump.
Clinton would have been "more of the same" but that's nowhere near as bad as the current accelerated radical path to fascist theocracy.
That's what you should have done - not vote for HC but vote against the nazi clown.
Voting against the greater evil isn't even a novel or unusual voting strategy - given that you'll probably never get a great candidate that you can support without reservation, it makes
Re:America elected an anti-government (Score:5, Insightful)
Specifically, we collectively - as Americans - have allowed ourselves to become incredibly stupid and brain-washed to the point that we prioritize who kneels at a sports game over who will guarantee a civilized level of medical coverage for all citizens.
As an old-school American patriot, it greatly saddens me to say that we deserve our declining fate.
When the President and Vice-President regularly appear on idiot shows (Fox and Friends, Hannity and Limbaugh, the epitome of "irritable mental gestures which seek to resemble ideas") to get their political blowjiobs and the broad electorate elects them...again, we deserve our fate of decline. Jesus wept.
I don't think we deserve our fate (Score:4, Insightful)
There's a lot out of folks hands. Hell, I'm stuck in a red state with a ton of problems I wouldn't have healthcare wise if I lived back east or even California. Why am I stuck here? Mom moved me here when I was 6 and by the time I was old enough to know better I couldn't afford to move. This country crushes people, and when it does you can't just go where life doesn't suck. You've got to make due with what you got.
Re:I don't think we deserve our fate (Score:5, Informative)
In 2016 [wikipedia.org], Clinton won a plurality (but not a majority) of the popular vote. However, Conservative parties combined won more popular votes than liberal parties combined (49.88% vs 49.13%, with the rest being cast for candidates without a party affiliation). So in 2016, the Electoral College awarded the election to the candidate whose ideology came closest to winning a majority of votes, rather than the individual who came closest to winning a majority. I didn't vote for Trump, but he was probably the correct winner in 2016.
People like to criticize the Electoral College. But IMHO the plurality-wins system they propose be used instead is nearly as bad (consider the California primaries where some candidates won one of two slots in the general election with barely 20% of the vote [nytimes.com]). We really need to switch to instant run-off voting [wikipedia.org], which is designed so that a candidate always gets a majority of votes before being declared the winner.
Re:I don't think we deserve our fate (Score:5, Insightful)
Probably the best thing to do would be to stop the gerrymandering of the districts. In Canada there is an independent third-party organization that sets the ridings (districts) according to a strict set of rules.
Re:I don't think we deserve our fate (Score:5, Interesting)
Gerrymandering has almost ZERO impact (Score:4, Informative)
Gerrymandering has almost ZERO impact on US Presidential elections.
Unless one considers state borders to be gerrymandered. Because 48 states use a winner-takes-all method for allocating electoral college votes. That is, the person receiving the most presidential votes within a state gets all the EC votes from the state. Maine and Nebraska have different rules that are impacted somewhat by district lines, but they have so few districts that its hard to figured gerrymandering has much impact. Maine has all of two districts, with Augusta and Portland and the section of the state between them comprising one district, and the rest of Maine the other, and Nebraska has 3 and their map is hardly what I'd consider gerrymandered, with the tow countries comprising Omaha in one, the suburbs of Omaha in another, and the rest of the state comprising the 3rd.
Further, gerrymandering does not impact Senate seats either. Senate seats are at-large within each state (no districts, only state borders).
Gerrymandering does impact the House of Representatives. It also impacts State legislature seats.
But please stop throwing gerrymandering around as a problem for Presidential elections...
Re:Gerrymandering has almost ZERO impact (Score:5, Insightful)
You are absolutely incorrect. I can understand why it doesn't seem like it could impact national elections, but it absolutely does.
Gerrymandering has allowed mostly republicans to hold onto state legislative majorities while receiving far less than half the vote. In 2012 in Wisconsin, Democrats won 52% of the aggregate vote but only 39% of the seats in the Assembly.
That majority in state legislature has allowed republicans to install laws designed to prevent voting, which disproportionately impacts democratic voters. If likely democratic voters aren't allowed to vote at all, national elections are absolutely impacted by gerrymandering.
As a great example, look at Wisconsin [motherjones.com]. While I know Mother Jones isn't necessarily a great source, feel free to click through and listen to the interview where Wisconsin Attorney General Brad Schimel says:
How many of your listeners really honestly are sure that Sen. Johnson was going to win reelection or President Trump was going to win Wisconsin if we didn’t have voter ID to keep Wisconsin’s elections clean and honest and have integrity?
It should be noted that you can count the voter fraud convictions in WI over the last decade on one hand. "if we didn’t have voter ID to keep Wisconsin’s elections clean and honest" is absolutely saying, "if we didn't have Voter ID to keep democrats, especially blacks, from voting".
23k-45k voters are estimated to have not been able to vote due to the voter ID law. Trump won the state by 22k votes.
If the state wasn't gerrymandered [jsonline.com], that law wouldn't have passed, and those people would have voted. The supreme court has decided to pass on this lawsuit, because apparently the democrats didn't have standing? Apparently it will take someone losing a gerrymandered district to sue, and then proving that it was the gerrymandering that caused it. I.E., gerrymandering by political parties is fine according to the supreme court. That's fucked up, and pretty undemocratic.
But we got a supreme court that thinks this way in part due to gerrymandering. How's that for full circle?
Re:I don't think we deserve our fate (Score:4, Insightful)
I've heard some ridiculous spin before to try to get past the fact you lost the popular, but claiming libertarians are conservatives and count towards conservative ideology is one of the great manipulations that sounds intelligent to people who have no idea what libertarians actually stand for. And the bottom line, the electoral college is a system that says "you live in a rural area, so your vote counts for more".
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> First, require all eligible voters to vote as they do in Australia.
> There is a financial penalty for not voting.
Yes, there's a fine for not voting here. It's only ever paid by those too stupid to tick the "I was too sick to vote" box on the "Why didn't you vote?" form you get sent - i.e. almost nobody.
This might seem pointless, but it has the effect of making not-voting almost as much work as voting. Actually, an equivalent amount of work since it's trivially easy to ask for a postal ballot so
False dichotomy (Score:4, Insightful)
San Fransicso's problem is that it's stuffed with people who don't want to live there but do so because that's where the work is. They're unhappy because the city is a bad fit for them, but when you've got no social safety you can't take risks like moving to a smaller city with less job opportunities and worse schools for your kids. So you suck it down. For the people who _want_ to live in San Fransisco it's a paradise and they'd never leave.
Basic income's a great way to solve this. People could live where they want to instead of where they have to to find work. Also, it would be a nice way to distribute the productivity gains from the last 40 years (which have doubled).
Or we could do your way and keep giving all the gains to the rich plus a huge chunk of what the working class already has. That's what we've been doing for 40 years. How's that turning out for you, Mr takes time out of their day to post a bitter rant on
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Just because I consider far left views harmful it doesn't mean I am on the opposite side. I am against big corporations as much as I am against big government. What I consider harmful in the far left is not the humanity of it, on the contrary any decent social system has an obligation to protect the weak. What I'm arguing against is the left's worldview of what I see as a blind faith in pseudo science and "experts" and mental models -- something I've grappled with in myself for much of my life. Applied beyo
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As an old-school American patriot, it greatly saddens me to say that we deserve our declining fate.
1) This was done to us deliberately by politicians who desire low-information voters. Like, all of them.
2) Not all of us are like that, and the people who are don't listen to us. We're victims, and you're blaming us. That's abusive.
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"I've never met anyone who cares more about kneeling than healthcare; only a blowhard would claim that "Americans collectively" do."
This statement is so demonstrably false as to be downright silly. There are a *lot* of people that care more about football players kneeling than about healthcare policy. Further, the general American focus is undeniably more on kneeling athletes than healthcare.
How can you tell? Because the people upset about the athletes learn their names. They know exactly who has betray
Re: America elected an anti-government (Score:2)
I looked this up in the soon-to-be-gone database, and it says that this is what's known as "projection". Recommended course of treatment is referral to a psychiatrist.
Re: America elected an anti-government (Score:5, Insightful)
The article is about deleting a valuable health database. Your response is to blame the unions. You're a moron. An abject shithead. For goodness sake, don't have children.
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Re: America elected an anti-government (Score:5, Insightful)
Anytime someone blames unions you can bet they consider themselves "fiscally conservative" and they vote R almost exclusively. But in this case I'm guessing they probably call themselves "libertarian" which means they want to do away with all taxes and regulations. They claim that they really believe that the general public will step forward and take care of everything the government currently does through private donations and private businesses will get the money and not government employees and red tape. The problem is that nobody who suddenly has an extra 25% or more income is going to immediately turn around and give that money out to people to do what the government did with our taxes.
My older brother is a good example of a modern American libertarian. He doesn't want to pay property taxes because he doesn't have kids and is 50. He doesn't think he should be paying taxes for public schools on his property. I asked him who should and he said people with children. When I pointed out to him that not very many parent could afford to send their children to what would basically become private schools he said that wasn't his problem they shouldn't have kids. I asked him if he would set aside the same % of his income he pays in taxes to support the programs and infrastructure that money currently goes to. He said he would take a look at what he wanted to support and put some of his income into that. He wouldn't say that he would give what he currently pays in taxes.
He is just another person who wants to keep more for themselves. He would not give a penny to anything because he thinks his income is his and poor people should just stop being poor. He thinks the roads and bridges will just build and maintain themselves and people will volunteer to serve in the military for free and that business will build all the weapons they need at no cost out of the goodness of their hearts. Conservative and Libertarian voters are basically one in the same. They simply don't care about what happens to everyone else as long as they get a bigger piece of the pie.
Both parties blame everything on the government and unions because it's an easy target and gives voters something to focus their anger on. I generally just ignore them because they never have any evidence to back up their claims. They can never post any peer reviewed studies to back their claims or any statistics from any official sources. It's all from websites that cater to that voter base and the only links those articles will have go to another similar website with what is basically the same article worded a little differently. They are full of solutions but every solution they offer always benefits them at the expense of others. They are not willing to make any sacrifices for the good of the country or the good of humanity as a whole. The only thing they care about is adding to what they already have. In most cases they already have more than most people but they want to get a new $250,000 RV to park at the lake where they have their $90,000 boat docked. So they blame unions and the government and vote for people who make bad laws that hurt the most vulnerable citizens of the nation and who embarrass the country in front of the rest of the world. Just so they can keep an extra few % of their income so they can add another toy to their collection.
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There are libertarians, and then there are Libertarians. Some people just take it too damn seriously. Increased social liberties at the same time as increased economic liberties, that sounds good. But then they start adding in lots of litmus tests, and welcome goofy theories like the gold standard with open arms. This is what political parties do, the want to attract those with the extreme views and purist ideologies, leaving moderates who think about things behind.
It's the fault of your dumbarse electoral system (Score:2, Insightful)
Your current system guarantees nutball vs shithead elections.
You need a preferential voting system. Only your main parties can field candidates with any chance of winning and thus every vote for an alternative is a lost vote. You need a system where voting for a minority party is not equivalent to putting your vote in the bin.
Also you need compulsory voting. Your main parties no longer target the middle. They target the extremes. And the extremes DO NOT want to vote for anyone who would compromise with
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There are libertarians, and then there are Libertarians. Some people just take it too damn seriously. Increased social liberties at the same time as increased economic liberties, that sounds good. But then they start adding in lots of litmus tests, and welcome goofy theories like the gold standard with open arms. This is what political parties do, the want to attract those with the extreme views and purist ideologies, leaving moderates who think about things behind.
Libertarianism is like all other isms some ideas are good, but the ideology always destroys the idea. Its always the core assumption
Capitalism assumes that the people who are driven by greed to accumulate, are also very generous.
Socialism (real, not the socialism that crypto conservatives bandy about) assumes the government is always benevolent and honest.
Communism assumes altruism on the part of the governed.
And Libertarianism assumes everyone is smart and honest.
Modern crypto-conservatives hav
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Just like what happened in the golden age before big government.
I'll tell you another thing, women and darkies knew their place too. NGOML!
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Good public education helps everyone, even people without kids. So everyone should pay for it. Better educated labor force creates a greater GDP.
What I find especially funny (Score:3)
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There's nothing wrong with wanting to keep more for themselves, nor is there with being a libertarian. The real problem is that people fail to understand that the vast majority of their propery, income and quality of life simply would not exist without a joint effort to create a properly organized safe and efficient country. Among western countries, the US already takes quite an extreme position in this w.r.t. health care, crime prevention, homelessness, unemployment and fossil fuels (where the ignorance ev
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From the outside looking in, it was pretty depressing how few votes went for anyone else. There's something really broken when with such shitty candidates, only roughly 1% voted for other.
Re:Compared to what? (Score:4, Interesting)
I say that knowing that 90%+ of Trump's vote was actually ABC (Anybody But Clinton).
Re:Compared to what? (Score:4, Insightful)
I say that knowing that 90%+ of Trump's vote was actually ABC (Anybody But Clinton).
I really don't get the attitude of "we hate clinton so much we'll vote for someone far worse!".
I also don't get the hate for Clinton (actually I do). I mean she's basically another poltician and has the same sort of patina that people grudgingly accept on most other politicians. And yet she gets far, far more hate for it. I wonder why...
Re:Compared to what? (Score:4, Informative)
I really don't get the attitude of "we hate clinton so much we'll vote for [anyone else]!".
I'm not sure very many people have that attitude. The Trump supporters I know actively like him (that's why they're supporters). Everyone I've talked to who voted for him can articulate some reason why they think he is better than Hillary. It's not always a fact-based reason, but they feel like they voted for the best candidate.
Re:Compared to what? (Score:4, Insightful)
Everyone I've talked to who voted for him can articulate some reason why they think he is better than Hillary. It's not always a fact-based reason,
Well, that's part of the problem. Lots of people here seem to be willing to believe outright lies in order to justify the thought that Trump was less bad than Hillary. The thing is they have an irrational hatred for Hillary and won't vote for her no matter what.
Re:Compared to what? (Score:4, Interesting)
Very true:
Hillary told lies so I voted for an much bigger liar. My point exactly.
Re:Compared to what? (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't think it's because she's a woman, if that's what you mean. Remember Sarah Palin? And Obama was, well, you know...
There were a few iffy things in her past - nothing proven, but mud sticks. She has the charisma of a tepid lettuce. And the whole dynasty thing, though I suspect we ain't seen nothin' yet on that front.
The survivors in 2050 or so might speak of 1776 as being the First American Revolution.
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Hillary and Trump really represented two opposite types of people. Hillary loved getting into the details on policy and learning everything about it. Her problem here, though, was that she wasn't really good at boiling that policy knowledge down to catchy statements and energizing speeches. "Read my twenty page policy proposal on Immigration on my website" doesn't exactly draw crowds to the voting booth.
Trump, on the other hand, has zero knowledge of policy and no desire to learn. He seems to go based on wh
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What you say is true. The way they go on about Benghazi you'd think she was on sentry duty. But she somehow failed to win people over on those issues. A lawyer who can't defend herself, FFS! Maybe she was just too old, by about 8 years.
The way the primary (I almost wrote primatary - Freudian slip?) was biased against Bernie probably turned some natural Dems against her too.
300 million people and those two were the least bad they could find? Then again, Boris ...
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Not what I meant and you know it. Compare her to when she ran against Obama. Can't you see the difference? She's clearly past her prime.
Same with McCain. I think he'd have been better than Shrub, but when he ran with Palin he just looked kind of frail. Then again maybe it was being around her...
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The Republicans have been building a hatred for Hillary Clinton since 1993 when he took office. The 2016 elections were over two decades of hatred erupting. You can see it how they still go on about Hillary even after she hasn't been in or running for public office for 20 months. They will STILL go on about her supposed crimes and how horrible she is. They turned her into a boogeyman (boogeywoman?) representing all evil in the world. Now that she's gone from public life, they need someone else to focus thei
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Bernie Sanders (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: Bernie Sanders (Score:5, Insightful)
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Good idea! Lets pick minority candidates who can't win, making it a toss-up between whether we get the greater or lesser evil. That's much better than picking the lesser evil, right?
In a first-past-the-post system, the majority party candidates are the only choices. If you don't like that, you're SOL. The only option is to change the system. You can't fix anything by choosing a third party candidate.
Re: VD guidelines (Score:2)
lol. That page looks like it was designed by the Time Cube guy.
I don't think I've ever seen a vitamin-shilling crank on slashdot before. Congrats on breaking new ground!
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I'd love to see it taken over by Illinois Lard Inc (est 1872).
Severed finger: Lard.
Myopia: Lard.
Diabetes: Even more lard!
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What prevented the database from being copied/archived in the first place?
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Even if it were copied - I would not be surprised if some people are desperately writing bulk-download scripts right now - it's a medical guideline database. It would quickly become outdated unless maintained by medical experts able to take the incoming stream of new guidelines from professional bodies, sanity-check them and incorporate them into the database.
Re: The Administration that Keeps On Taking (Score:2)
Apparently all of the various professional medical organisations are too dumb to figure out how to put together a wiki.
Re: The Administration that Keeps On Taking (Score:4, Funny)
They had a meeting about it, but afterwards nobody could read the notes they took.
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So actually no value then (Score:4, Insightful)
Nix has been helping coordinate an effort to get some outside stakeholder to take over the site's operations. She said she's still hopeful, and even days before the siteâ(TM)s scheduled demise, AHRQ spokesperson Hunt told the Daily Beast that the search continued.
So if it were truly a valuable resource where are the charities or groups of large insurance firms or hospitals willing to pay for this to be kept up?
The article mentioned how the database had been heavily politicized in the past, is it possible the value of this database is less than we are being told by the article writer?
Re:So actually no value then (Score:5, Insightful)
The administration really has no good argument for getting rid of it. The budget problem is entirely self-inflicted. Claims that it is politicized aren't particularly convincing considering that people who wound up in the Trump administration are the ones who tried to politicize it in the first place.
Re:Perhaps you should read the entire article (Score:5, Interesting)
What I see on Slashdot is an awful lot of non-doctors (myself included) pontificating on this move. Is it really widely used? I don't know. All *I* (and the rest of you) have to go on is the demonstrated value which currently is zero as there are no takers to carry on this data.
Not a doctor yet, but I am a biomedical nerd and aware of how useful those in the research area tend to consider best practices guidelines--and my first question about this actually was "Why is this not at NIH?"
The general rule of thumb is that the lag time is too long between where the research says are the medical best practices and what any published list anywhere will say--part of this is because, to put it bluntly, most doctors aren't particularly into research and don't keep up with it. Those best practices databases aren't going to be getting kept up-to-date and current, and I honestly don't think there's a solution for this short of starting from scratch--if nothing else, because each and every entry should have a date on it saying when it was last checked on and it should be routinely gone into to add data. There is no such thing as too much data if you're trying to figure out what works in which populations; the more you have, the more certain you can be...and the more likely you are to be able to pin down which populations that have strange responses, which is pretty much a basic requirement if you want to do anything more than shrug and move on...and it's also a requirement for improving and fine-tuning the evidence.
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Is it widely used
It says 200,000 users per month in TFS. That seems pretty significant.
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What i think we need to do is let republicans pass all the laws they want, BUT, they one apply to republicans. Want to cut social security... go for it... BUT, those cuts only affect republicans who get SS. Lets see the fucking conservative base have a collective head explode when they realize what fucking assholes they are.
For this it'd be si
It has lots of value (Score:5, Insightful)
It may have no commercial value, so no-one can make a profit from it.
But it can still have huge social value as general knowledge for medicine.
This is just the kind of thing the government should do.
Re: It has lots of value (Score:2)
Why? If wikipedia can host a much larger database, serve it to far more users per month, and fund the whole thing with donations from the public, why in the world does a smaller more specialised database geared towards doctors need government funding?
Are all those poor MDs so empoverished that they can't afford a $3 donation every now and then?
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You "conservative"s (in quotes for a reason) make me sick!
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From the article:
--- “Many guidelines are actually written mainly for commercial purposes or public relations purposes,” said Poses, and can be subtly shaped to promote a given course of treatment. A guideline written for the treatment of depression, for example, may emphasize pharmaceuticals over talk therapy.
“The organizations writing the guidelines may be getting millions of dollars from big drug companies that want to promote a product. The people writing them may have similar conflicts of interest,” Poses said. NGC’s process provided a resource comparatively free of that kind of influence. ----
Arguably this is just swamp draining. The summary sucks this advertising platform's cock pretty hard, but this is not some thing where "trump destroys science" like all the fucking comments are running with.
That sounds like it's not even actually evidence-based, given that the point with depression at which pharmaceuticals actually start being significantly better than non-pharmaceutical treatments is when you hit severe depression--especially given that good large swath of antidepressants cause dependency...and, in general, doctors don't know this so they don't know to warn their patients.
If it's as widely used as claimed, and it doesn't include that sort of info--which we've known for most of a decade at lea
Um... there utterly and completely overwhelmed (Score:5, Insightful)
In the entire history of humankind charity has never once solved any problem long term. It's always been civilization in the form of government that did. A few nice people at the middle can't make up for the bad done by folks up at the top. Complex, widespread problems (like public health) need comprehensive solutions done an a society wide scale. You and me dropping change into a plastic bucket twice a year is not a viable solution to the world's problems.
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What fucking moron moded you 'insightful'?
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So if it were truly a valuable resource where are the charities or groups of large insurance firms or hospitals willing to pay for this to be kept up?
These things take time to organise, even assuming the database is allowed to be hosted elsewhere.
Re: So actually no value then (Score:5, Insightful)
The private sector isn't magic. Hand this to the private sector and you'll wind up with something that's just drug pimping.
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And with DAMN good reason, you omitted.
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Basically, being ruled by warlords is even worse than Trump, and allowing the rich to rule the roost generally ends with something resembling the French revolution.
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If it is free to access, fork it. (Score:2)
If it is too big for a single group or site to pull, then coordinate, distribute the slice load, and differentially pull the needed slices.
Then, once the data is secured, see about establishing a trust or group to maintain it free of tiny orange hands.
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Most Americans would agree that Hells Angels supported by a couple of Terminators would solve this problem completely. Harley Davidson would probably fund the whole operation.
Content is king (Score:3)
Won't need "hundreds of thousands" for a static (Score:2, Insightful)
At the bottom of the linked article, the agency says it would cost them "hundreds of thousands of dollars" each year to host even a static archive of the site - some text..
If the agency is telling the truth, they don't know how to have a static site hosted for less than hundreds of thousands of dollars, somebody else should be doing it rather than them. That statement indicates they are either incompetent, dishonest, or both.
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One hundred thousand dollars a year is enough to fund roughly one full-time senior engineer with the the broad skills to automate heavily and keep a bulky site with critical data alive. Anohter hundred thousand for one broadly skilled developer to keep the front end working and compatible with new browsers and new standards is also conservative. If we assume servers in AWS, at roughly $1/hour to support the necessary storage, backups, and web traffic for such a bulky system, hat is roughly $17,500/server p
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If they try to monetize it through advertising, then they have to worry about the advertisers being happy with the content. Considering the target audience, the advertisers would probably be drug companies, companies that, for example, want the Doctor to start the insulin course as early as possible instead of when needed as it is more profitable.
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Should that happen, it will return to the web."
This is just more of the typical panic over everything that happens.
Well, it's not a given that it will return. If you make people aware of things (which TFA does), then it is more likely to return, so TFA doesn't seem unreasonable, and the loss of federal funding is an accurate summary.
These people have no shame. (Score:2)
It's going to take the next administration (if there is one) years to fix all the things that the trumpies have laid to waste, if they can be fixed at all.
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This country works much better under Democrats...except for the neo-nazi's and other fascist and bigots, but they all need to go fuck themselves.
How to fix this (Score:2)
Have anyone interesting in entering medicine in the USA pass exams before getting accepted into starting any US medical education.
Accept only the very best. Cant pass an exam on merit and be in the top percentage? Consider further university education outside medicine.
Keep the testing and standards up until the medical professional has gradated.
The person now allowed to practice medicine in the USA should be able to understand, learn and study at a very advan
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That's the way it works in most countries. In the US, the MCAT is no cakewalk and serves as an entrance exam into med school, with a few other things like undergrad grades. Getting into medical school isn't easy, more difficult than it maybe even should be.
In France, entrance into the first two years of medical school is open-admission, but then the exam required to continue on to the third to sixth year is brutal. Only the top 10% pass and the exam can only be re-taken once in a lifetime.
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Every doctor has their results peer reviewed. Not getting what all the other doctors can do on average? Time for a look at that doctor and their results.
All kinds of issues per doctor quickly show up as all the other staff work to the best standards and their results are better.
When doctors need stop and use a computer when they should know that to do something in the level of education has to be considered.
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What we have here is clear proof of Dunning-Kruger at work!
So what? not really needed and this was well known (Score:2, Interesting)
Back in February the HHS, which runs the office which runs this, released its budget request for the upcoming year. In it, they identified this as being duplicated in other governmental agencies and requested money to transfer the duties and money to different offices or agencies.
The office than in April decided to kill this database even before any of that request to kill it off was approved by Congress and divert the money they were spending on it to someth
Re:So what? not really needed and this was well kn (Score:5, Insightful)
Not really needed by some pharmaceuticals lobby, maybe?
https://www.propublica.org/art... [propublica.org]
Also you should remember:
"Price was the first director of HHS, AHRQ's parent agency, under the Trump Administration, before resigning under pressure last year over his spending on chartered flights."
And of course people appointed by Trump Administration think it's a duplicate. How convenient... Less money spent in research, more budget available for chartered flights!
Archive.org to the rescue? (Score:2)
Is there any chance they will let the public sector copy this database before they just burn it along with all the books?
so they're not "deleting the database", eh? (Score:2)
TFS says they're dropping the URL. Nothing about the database being deleted.
And then there's TFA, which says that the group that maintains the database are looking for someone else to host it. Again, no suggestion that the database is being deleted.
So, chill, people. It's not the end of the world. It's not even the end of medical science....
Slashdotted... (Score:2)
Obvious solution ... (Score:2)
Multiple Choice Quiz
With regard to healthcare, the current Administration and Majority Party (not to name any names) doesn't really care about anyone: [select all that apply]
(A) poor
(B) sick
(C) both A and B
(D) all of the above
if it's that important, scrape it (Score:3)
Is there anything stopping somebody from just downloading everything and hosting a mirror?
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Yes, because we have discovered everything we'll ever need to know about medicine and treatment, and no bad actors are going to put up a revised version on AwezomeHealthCare.com.ru .
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