Children with disabilities offered ‘do not resuscitate’ orders amid pandemic

The so-called ‘do not resuscitate’ orders, known as DNACPRs, were offered to families of children with autism and other learning disabilities amid concerns about pressure on the UK’s socialized National Health Service, The Telegraph reported on Sunday. 

The media outlet cited interviews with families that were presented the opt-out for resuscitation during routine medical appointments. For instance, the mother of a 16-year-old boy with Down’s syndrome said that a clinic employee offered her the option of a DNACPR for her son during a checkup.

“It is a disgusting question,” the mother, Kent resident Karen Woollard, said. “The health assistant was following a form and she was very polite about it – suggesting she knew I wouldn’t want it to be ticked – but the question should not have appeared. It was very upsetting.”

The mother of a 16-year-old boy with autism said her son was offered a DNACPR during an NHS appointment and initially agreed because he didn’t understand the question. The boy is happy and healthy and has won gold medals in swimming competitions, his mother, Debbie Corns, said.

“I collapsed on the floor crying when I got home,” Corns said. “I am a strong person, but I was devastated… The doctor devalued his life.”

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Racist school board unanimously approves plan to pay non-white teachers more

If you feel like you live in an alternative universe where reductionism replaces logic and superficiality trumps character, here’s more evidence that you may be right. We might just be living in a racist version of The Twilight Zone.

The Mankato School Board in Minnesota voted unanimously to pay non-white teachers “additional stipends” based only on the color of their skin, according to BizPac Review. If you happen to be born black or Native American and teach for the school district, you ostensibly deserve to be paid more than your peers.

You don’t have to earn the raise for going the extra mile to help students or for actually doing anything at all. The pay raise is based upon the accident of skin color and nothing else. Forget the fact that nobody gets to determine the color of skin they’re born with.

The chair of the board, Jodi Sapp, is no stranger to controversy. She raised eyebrows when she required parents to give their name and address before commenting on school matters, The Daily Wire reported.

In this latest move, Sapp led the charge to amend district policy so that only non-white teachers are eligible for additional stipends to become mentors to other non-white colleagues.

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Paralyzed man with brain chip posts ‘first direct-thought’ tweet

A 62-year-old man in Australia diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) – a disease that causes paralysis – is now able to communicate thoughts with others with no muscle activity involved. On Thursday, he published a post on social media “using only direct thought,” the company that enabled him to do so, Synchron, announced.

“I created this tweet just by thinking it” – the tweet read, said to be posted by Philip O’Keefe to the account of Synchron CEO Thomas Oxley.

The ‘first direct-thought tweet’ was created wirelessly from O’Keefe’s brain, according to the company. Following progressive paralysis caused by ALS, the man had a brain computer interface called ‘Stentrode’ installed last year. The implant, “designed to enable patients to wirelessly control digital devices through thought,” was inserted via the jugular vein to avoid drilling into the skull.

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Canada Admits To Secretly Tracking 33 Million Phones During Covid-19 Lockdown

Canada – which has a population of 38 million – has admitted to secretly tracking 33 million phones during the Covid-19 lockown, according to the National Post, citing Blacklock’s Reporter which first noted the disclosure.

The country’s Public Health Agency (PHAC) did so to assess “the public’s responsiveness during lockdown measures,” according to the report.

In March, the Agency awarded a contract to the Telus Data For Good program to provide “de-identified and aggregated data” of movement trends in Canada. The contract expired in October, and PHAC no longer has access to the location data, the spokesperson said. -National Post

“Evidence is coming in from many sources, from countries around the world, that what was seen as a huge surveillance surge — post 9/11 — is now completely upstaged by pandemic surveillance,” according to “Pandemic Surveillance” author David Lyon, the former director of the Surveillance Studies Centre and Queen’s University in Ontario. “I think that the Canadian public will find out about many other such unauthorized surveillance initiatives before the pandemic is over—and afterwards.”

Location and movement data was purchased from Canadian telecom giant Telus in order to “understand possible links between the movement of populations within Canada and the spread of COVID-19,” according to an agency spokesperson, who said that the mobility data analysis “helps to advance public health objectives.”

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‘1619 Project’ Creator: ‘I Don’t Really Understand This Idea That Parents Should Decide’ What’s ‘Taught’ In Schools

Nikole Hannah-Jones, the creator of the far-left “1619 Project” – which has been widely criticized by historians – said during a segment on Sunday that she did not understand why parents should get a say in what their children learn in school.

Jones made the remarks during a panel on NBC News’ “Meet The Press,” when pressed on how parent’s involvement in education shaped the governor’s race in Virginia.

“Well, I would say the governor’s race in Virginia was decided based on the success of a right-wing propaganda campaign that told white parents that they needed to fight against their children being indoctrinated as race – as being called racists. But that was a propaganda campaign,” she claimed without providing any evidence.

“And I don’t really understand this idea that parents should decide what’s being taught,” she later added. “I’m not a professional educator. I don’t have a degree in social studies or science. We send our children to school because we want them to be taught by people who have an expertise in the subject area. And that is not my job. When the, when the governor or the candidate said that he didn’t think parents should be deciding what’s being taught in school, he was panned for that. But that’s just the fact. This is why we send our children to school and don’t homeschool, because these are the professional educators who have the expertise to teach social studies, to teach history, to teach science, to teach literature. And I think we should leave that to the educators.”

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New Zealand Allows Euthanasia for Coronavirus Patients ‘in Some Circumstances’

New Zealand’s Ministry of Health has confirmed that patients suffering from the Wuhan coronavirus could be eligible for a right to a lethal injection under the nation’s new euthanasia law.

The End of Life Choice Act 2019, which came into force last month, was enacted “to give persons who have a terminal illness and who meet certain criteria the option of lawfully requesting medical assistance to end their lives; and to establish a lawful process for assisting eligible persons who exercise that option.”

The Health Ministry responded to a request for clarification regarding provisions of the Act, declaring that “in some circumstances a person with COVID-19 may be eligible for assisted dying,” the Catholic Herald reported last week.

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Americans get warning they’re being watched digitally

Americans are getting a warning that they are being watched digitally, whether they agree to the spying or not.

The warning is coming from the Rutherford Institute, which has filed a friend-of-the-court brief in a dispute now pending before the Supreme Court, in Hammond v. U.S.

The warning is that “Americans are being swept up into a massive digital data dragnet that does not distinguish between those who are innocent of wrongdoing, suspects, or criminals. “

The Rutherford Institute said it is “challenging the government’s unconstitutional practice of warrantlessly tracking people’s location and movements through their personal cell phones in violation of the Fourth Amendment.”

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