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Sara.Till

While there are clips of various spokesmen and women for the marine corps, I would have liked to see an interview with them directly. Particularly, a female appears several times to directly meet with the survivors of Camp Lejeune and to speak at the senate hearing (she's not listed on any outside resources). She serves as the "Marine Corps Representative", and appears to be reserved at best. Her view on the former residents and the situation would be intriguing.

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joerene.aviles

The policy was created in in 1999 after concerns brought up by the Team Leader of the Chemical Weapons Improved Response Team (CWIRT), U.S. Army Soldier and Biological Chemical Command over whether first responders to WMD (weapons of mass destruction) incidents were liable for pollution and other environmental consequences of their decontamination/ life-saving efforts.

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Sara.Till

1) Hocas: an anglicized ottoman-Turkish word meaning "master, professor, teacher"; it evolved from "khawaja", and is an honorific title given to a teacher of the Muslim faith, particularly a sufi teacher. 

2) Tonic-clonic seizure: formerly described as "grand mal seizures", they include two sections (hence the "tonic" and "clonic"). The tonic phase includes the initial rigor and consciousness, while the clonic phase is the characteristic muscle spasms. These phases each last around 1 minute and 3 minutes, respectively.

3) Jinns: anglicized to "genie", this is the term for a supernatural creature in the Muslim faith. Many of the patients interviewed in Dr. Good's work spoke of a terrifying event prior to the onset of their epilepsy, often involving the presence of a "jinn". 

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joerene.aviles

The article's main points cover the major challenges impeding research studies on violence that affects health service delivery in "complex security environments". The problem isn't lack of data regarding violence affecting health service delivery, but the lack of "health specific" and "gender-disaggregated" data, or data that's not completely tied to humanitarian aid.

The authors suggest several ways to increase research: increased collaboration between academia, NGO's, and health service organizations, inserting a research component in aid operations, and increasing funding to academic and aid organizations.

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Sara.Till

1) "It is important to note that these changes that incorporated gender-based violence into the human rights realm also brought the law to bear as a primary instrument of change and struggle. Calling this ‘governance feminism’, Janet Halley argues that this was the work of a certain group of feminists who came together in the 1990s, taking criminal law as a primary instrument of reform, and working in a top-down fashion to institute punishment for a global war against women."

2) "This approach inherently limits the mode of intervention. The mandate of humanitarianism – again, as defined by the new wave of ‘sans frontiere-ism’ exemplified by ` MSF – is not to reform or improve the kind of life one lives, only to preserve life itself. And yet gender-based violence is about the kind of life one lives. Under the rubric of human rights, freedom from gender-based violence is part of a parcel of rights that define what it means to be human in ways that include the right to be free from violence, the right to equality and the right to dignity"

3) "In MSF’s General Assembly debate, Rony Brauman, the former president of MSF, suggested that rather than descending into politics, humanitarians should make a distinction between describing what one witnesses, and qualifying it, which entails making a judgement. He asked one of the MSF Holland representatives, ‘How do you know the women were raped? Did you see it happening?’ Brauman proposed sticking close to what one sees, and letting others take it from there – he felt strongly that MSF should not have called for action. For him, and many others, humanitarianism is not about justice, politics or taking sides. The MSF Holland representative responded that there was a slippery slope between political neutrality and irresponsibility, and a fierce debate ensued"

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Sara.Till

Dr. Schmid's fourteen-page report includes an additional four pages of references. These references date from mid-twentieth century (1961) to mid-summer 2012 (publication of the book was 2013). The list includes studies, reports, policies, review articles, and publications, spanning from radiation absorption of Strontium to overarching reviews of nuclear energy to organizational reliability studies. These sources, if nothing else, indicate Dr. Schmid has crafted her report from multiple angles, and is not simply re-hashing Fukushima reviews. 

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Sara.Till

As mentioned earlier, this group is heavily experienced in dealing with traumatic injuries and responding to larger scenes. I imagine the hardest challenge they face is funding; they typically run on a budget made of a few hundred thousand dollars. This encompasses salaries for some personnel (although the vast majority are voluntary), classes for CPR, EMT, First aid certification, and supplies. With such a large call volume of complex cases (think of all the resources needed to treat an individual with multiple gun shots to the chest or someone who has been stabbed several times), this is quite extraordinary that they can function adequately with such little funding.

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joerene.aviles

The main argument was that there are "biosocial phenomena" or "structural violence" that lead to the tendency for certain diseases or lack of treatment in populations, particularly those in poverty. Their three major findings were: they can make structural interventions to "decrease the extent to which social inequities become embodied as health inequities", proximal interventions can reduce premature morbidity and mortality, and structural interventions "can have an enormous impact on outcomes.