Jan 23
Tobacco companies conducted a carefully crafted, decades-long campaign to manipulate throat doctors into helping to calm concerns among an increasingly worried public that smoking might be bad for their health, according to a new study by researchers at the School of Medicine. Beginning in the 1920s, this campaign continued for over half of a century.
“Tobacco companies sought to exploit the faith the public had in the medical profession as a means of reassuring their customers that smoking was safe,” said Robert Jackler, MD, the Edward C. and Amy H. Sewall Professor in Otolaryngology.
“Tobacco companies dreamed up slogans such as, ‘Not one single case of throat irritation with Camels;’ then, to justify their advertising claims, marketing departments sought out pliant doctors to conduct well-compensated, pseudoscientific ‘research,’ which invariably found the sponsoring company’s cigarettes to be safe,” Jackler said. “The companies su
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Tags: Doctors, Throat Doctors
Jan 20
Applications for the U.S. Department of Education’s fifth cohort of Teaching Ambassador Fellows opened on January 21st and are scheduled to close on February 22nd, 2012. Since 2008, this highly competitive program has enabled a total of sixty-nine outstanding teachers, each with a record of leadership, strong communication skills, and insights into educational policy based in classroom expertise to work with the Department on a full or part time basis. For more information about the application process, you can visit our program page at or go directly to the applications for the Washington, Classroom, and/or Regional Fellowship on .
The Teaching Ambassador Fellowship was created because we believe that teachers should have meaningful opportunities to both contribute to and understand the policies that impact their students and school communities. Also
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Tags: Open, Teaching Ambassador
Jan 17
Sheldon Adelson, left, has given millions to pro-Gingrich Super-PACs.
If time is money, and money is speech, does the 1st Amendment guarantee us free time? Dont hurt your brain thinking about it; its not meant to be serious. But you see the elastic logic employed by Republican candidates on any question involving the intrusion of private money into the public political realm isnt meant to be tried on a weary mind. The current election cycle is dominated by the monstrosities known as Super-PACS, roving beasts used by secretive organizations to funnel mis-information down the throats of voters. But dont worry, say some, its all in good fun. You see, money is now speech (although Ive never seen someone give a speech composed entirely of five-dollar bills).
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Tags: Money, Money Won’t
Jan 15
Plans to use a scorecard to rate the 24 applicants for Palm Beach County schools superintendent didn’t go too smoothly, says School Board Vice Chairwoman Debra Robinson.
She had hoped a community group would have been able to rank the strongest candidates based on a set of more than 30 factors, on a system called a rubric.
But they found it became impossible to obtain data for all of the applicants, preventing a completely fair comparison.
“There’s a lot of blanks where we couldn’t find the information,” Robinson said Tuesday night upon the release of the scorecard results, which do not show overall point totals. “It’s not comparing apples to apples.”
The applicants, who responded to a national search, are waiting on the School Board to settle on four finalists during a meeting planned for noon Wednesday.
Robinson says she’ll present her information with the hope that the rest of the board would consider it. The other board
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Tags: Beach County School, Board, County School, School Board