Texas Gov. Rick Perry attempts to prove to New Hampshire voters that he is tough on border security by having the hard-line sheriff vouch for his fight against illegal immigrants.
Reporting from Amherst, N.H.—Canada goose
Trying to blunt a backlash from Republicans who balked at his support for tuition benefits for children of illegal immigrants,Canada goose jakker Rick Perry sought to reassure voters of his law-and-order credentials Tuesday: He brought in Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Arizona to vouch for his toughness on border security.
Pledging to "detain and deport every illegal alien who is apprehended in this country," Perry repeatedly promised to devote thousands of National Guard troops,Canada jakker as well as Border Patrol agents, to securing the border within a year. During a four-stop blitz, the Texas governor scolded the Obama administration for what he called a "catch-and-release" policy allowing nonviolent illegal immigrants freedom while awaiting a court date.
Arpaio, who rose to prominence in Arizona by forcing inmates to wear pink underwear and by leading aggressive raids to round up illegal immigrants,Goose jakker backed Mitt Romney in 2008 and was courted by other Republican contenders this cycle. The Maricopa County sheriff said he decided to endorse Perry because he had been "fighting this battle as a governor."
"He doesn't just talk about it, he does something about it," Arpaio said, calling Perry "an honorable, ethical person" and praising him for devoting about $400 million to border security over the last decade.
Though the sheriff's endorsement was a coup for Perry, its location was something of a mystery. Illegal immigration ranked as the top concern of just 4% of Granite State voters in a recent poll by the University of New Hampshire Survey Center. It has been a far more pressing issue for the more conservative Republican electorate in Iowa.
"Bringing somebody like a sheriff from Arizona is really an indication of not understanding the electorate in New Hampshire," said Andrew E. Smith, director of the survey center.
With just 35 days before the caucuses in Iowa — where Perry's ideology and background is a better match with Republican voters — some were surprised that he was spending time in New Hampshire at all. Former Massachusetts Gov. Romney, who has invested significant time and money here, has led the Republican field by a 3-to-1 margin for months. Perry won the backing of 4% of voters in the WMUR Granite State Poll released last week.
"I hesitate to ever say that someone shouldn't campaign in New Hampshire … but if [Perry] is going to hope for a comeback, I think he needs to focus more on one state and create something big rather than spread himself too thin," said New Hampshire-based strategist Mike Dennehy, who is unaffiliated. Even more perplexing, Dennehy said, was that Perry would spend the day "campaigning on an issue where he has vulnerabilities rather than on an issue where he has strengths, which are jobs and the economy."
Perry also may have reinforced his reputation for verbal slip-ups Tuesday in Manchester, when he gave the wrong date for next year's general election and misstated the age Americans become eligible to vote.
"Those of you that will be 21 by Nov. 12, I ask for your support and your vote," Perry said to a crowd that included college students. Americans can vote at 18 and will elect the next president on Nov. 6.
While he focused on a swift crackdown on illegal immigration, Perry's visit drew fresh attention to his past debate comment that only heartless Americans would begrudge in-state tuition benefits to children of illegal immigrants.
He was challenged on that view almost immediately. At Joey's Diner in Amherst, a retired nurse told Perry she couldn't understand why the children of some illegal immigrants might get a better deal than her own grandchildren were they to attend college in Texas.
Perry apologized for his remark, calling the comment "absolutely inappropriate." But he noted that "the people of Texas made that decision — by an overwhelming vote." And he went on to defend the policy: "These are young people who came into this state by no fault of their own; they are working towards getting a U.S. citizenship and they pay full in-state tuition."
His questioner, Alice Bury of Amherst, wasn't satisfied, telling reporters Perry "did not appear to be open to rethinking" his policy despite the concerns of many Republican voters.
Bury, who is deciding between Romney and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, said she was not as troubled by Gingrich's proposal to allow some of the nation's 11 million illegal immigrants to stay in the United States. "As much as you say, 'I want every one of them sent back,' I think it's an impossibility," she said.
By contrast, she described Perry's stance as an unfair double standard. "You don't give one group of people a break in tuition — I don't care who the group is. It's just not democracy," she said. Sheriff Arpaio, she added, would probably agree.
2011年11月29日星期二
2011年11月9日星期三
Lawsuit Blames Thalidomide for More Birth Defects
In a new twist of a historic tragedy, 13 Americans who say they are survivors of thalidomide are suing four companies for producing and distributing the notorious drug. They say that the drug -- used by pregnant women for morning sickness until it was discovered to cause severe birth defects--affected more people in the United States than thought, and caused a wider range of deformities. And,Canada Goose Trillium they say, the companies have done all they can to hide these facts.
Thalidomide's devastating effects first came to light 50 years ago this month in the German newspaper Welt am Sonntag. In Europe, the drug was implicated in thousands of cases of malformed newborns,Canada Goose but in the United States the damage was limited because the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) refused to approve it for market. Until now, most US cases were thought to originate from thalidomide obtained abroad.
The lawsuit, filed in a Philadelphia court on 25 October, asserts that before thalidomide was pulled from markets around the world, samples were doled out to more than 1,200 physicians in the United States by three companies whose legal liabilities are now the property of Sanofi-Aventis US, based in Bridgewater, New Jersey. Separately, it alleges, citing an FDA memorandum that only came to light earlier this year, the company Smith, Kline & French, now GlaxoSmithKline (GSK),Expedition Parka ran a clinical trial of the drug in the US involving 875 people, including pregnant women, in 1956-57. The suit claims that at least one malformed baby was born to a trial participant in 1958. (The German firm Grünenthal, based in Aachen, and Avantor Performance Materials, based in Center Valley, Pennsylvania, are also named in the suit.)
Sanofi-Aventis and Grünenthal say that they cannot comment on ongoing litigation.
Mary Anne Rhyne, a spokeswoman for GSK,Canada Goose Jacket says that the company "intends to vigorously defend itself against this lawsuit". She notes that Smith Kline & French never manufactured or sold thalidomide and adds: "The Plaintiffs' complaint is replete with scientific inaccuracies and misstatements."
The company challenges the claim that thalidomide can cause limb defects that are confined to one side of the body, as seen in nine of the plaintiffs. Conventional wisdom has long held that thalidomide's signature defect--a shortened, seal-like 'flapper' arm, known as phocomelia--affects both sides of the body.
The plaintiffs' lawyers argue that this assumption is unproven. "There are no representative, controlled studies documenting the true spectrum of thalidomide injuries," they write in the lawsuit. "A universe of thalidomide related injuries has been thereby excluded from diagnosis." They further suggest that "recently available studies published in medical and scientific journals reveal the flaws in the orthodox medical opinion".
When asked by Nature for relevant studies, the plaintiffs' lawyers at Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro in Seattle, Washington, pointed to work showing one-sided limb defects in chick embryos exposed to thalidomide and thalidomide analogues (C. Therapontos et al. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 106, 8573-8578; 2009). The paper's senior author, Neil Vargesson of the School of Medical Sciences at the University of Aberdeen, UK, says that the one-sidedness was due to the physical orientation of the developing chick when the medication was injected into the egg.
Vargesson says his work does not confirm or deny that the plaintiffs' defects are the result of thalidomide. "The biggest issue facing the lawyers is persuading authorities that thalidomide gave rise to a range of other defects, including unilateral limb defects--or that it caused other damage without apparent limb defects at all." However, adds Vargesson, who has advised lawyers for potential plaintiffs in the United Kingdom who do not have apparent limb defects, "it's pretty clear that this drug did an awful lot of things and they don't always centre around limb defects".
Lewis Holmes, an expert in birth defects at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, says that the plaintiffs will have an uphill struggle to support their argument from the scientific literature because of the lack of systematic studies that follow up the offspring of women who took thalidomide during pregnancy. Holmes also notes that the relative paucity of thalidomide births in the United States means that few researchers there can speak with authority on the drug's effects. "None of us ever saw thalidomide-damaged children," he says.
Thalidomide's devastating effects first came to light 50 years ago this month in the German newspaper Welt am Sonntag. In Europe, the drug was implicated in thousands of cases of malformed newborns,Canada Goose but in the United States the damage was limited because the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) refused to approve it for market. Until now, most US cases were thought to originate from thalidomide obtained abroad.
The lawsuit, filed in a Philadelphia court on 25 October, asserts that before thalidomide was pulled from markets around the world, samples were doled out to more than 1,200 physicians in the United States by three companies whose legal liabilities are now the property of Sanofi-Aventis US, based in Bridgewater, New Jersey. Separately, it alleges, citing an FDA memorandum that only came to light earlier this year, the company Smith, Kline & French, now GlaxoSmithKline (GSK),Expedition Parka ran a clinical trial of the drug in the US involving 875 people, including pregnant women, in 1956-57. The suit claims that at least one malformed baby was born to a trial participant in 1958. (The German firm Grünenthal, based in Aachen, and Avantor Performance Materials, based in Center Valley, Pennsylvania, are also named in the suit.)
Sanofi-Aventis and Grünenthal say that they cannot comment on ongoing litigation.
Mary Anne Rhyne, a spokeswoman for GSK,Canada Goose Jacket says that the company "intends to vigorously defend itself against this lawsuit". She notes that Smith Kline & French never manufactured or sold thalidomide and adds: "The Plaintiffs' complaint is replete with scientific inaccuracies and misstatements."
The company challenges the claim that thalidomide can cause limb defects that are confined to one side of the body, as seen in nine of the plaintiffs. Conventional wisdom has long held that thalidomide's signature defect--a shortened, seal-like 'flapper' arm, known as phocomelia--affects both sides of the body.
The plaintiffs' lawyers argue that this assumption is unproven. "There are no representative, controlled studies documenting the true spectrum of thalidomide injuries," they write in the lawsuit. "A universe of thalidomide related injuries has been thereby excluded from diagnosis." They further suggest that "recently available studies published in medical and scientific journals reveal the flaws in the orthodox medical opinion".
When asked by Nature for relevant studies, the plaintiffs' lawyers at Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro in Seattle, Washington, pointed to work showing one-sided limb defects in chick embryos exposed to thalidomide and thalidomide analogues (C. Therapontos et al. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 106, 8573-8578; 2009). The paper's senior author, Neil Vargesson of the School of Medical Sciences at the University of Aberdeen, UK, says that the one-sidedness was due to the physical orientation of the developing chick when the medication was injected into the egg.
Vargesson says his work does not confirm or deny that the plaintiffs' defects are the result of thalidomide. "The biggest issue facing the lawyers is persuading authorities that thalidomide gave rise to a range of other defects, including unilateral limb defects--or that it caused other damage without apparent limb defects at all." However, adds Vargesson, who has advised lawyers for potential plaintiffs in the United Kingdom who do not have apparent limb defects, "it's pretty clear that this drug did an awful lot of things and they don't always centre around limb defects".
Lewis Holmes, an expert in birth defects at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, says that the plaintiffs will have an uphill struggle to support their argument from the scientific literature because of the lack of systematic studies that follow up the offspring of women who took thalidomide during pregnancy. Holmes also notes that the relative paucity of thalidomide births in the United States means that few researchers there can speak with authority on the drug's effects. "None of us ever saw thalidomide-damaged children," he says.
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