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Show 4 Monday February 24, 2014 OPINION Civil rights: there is still work to do T A •K at N www.dailyutahchronicle.cor A BREA K. ► STUDY Columnist ebruary is Black History Month in the United States, and a perfect time to remember George Stinney, the 14-year-old black teen who was the youngest child ever executed in modern U.S. history. His story emanates the horrific discriminatory practices people of color had to suffer prior to the Civil Rights movement. We have come a long way in the fight for equality since Stinney was sent to the electric chair, but we still have work to do. Almost 70 years ago, Stinney, who stood a mere 5-foot-I-inch and weighed less than too pounds, carried his Bible to the executioner's chair in South Carolina. He was too short for the seat so his Bible was placed as a booster to prop him up to the cap that would insure his death. The cap was too large, and after two volts, his burned face was exposed as he died. George was accused of killing two white girls in Alcolu, S.C. in 1944. He and his sister had joined a search party for the girls after they went missing, and told the sheriff that they had seen the girls earlier in the day. After they recovered one of the girls' bodies, the sheriff took George to the police station and questioned him for murder. The Stinney family all said that George was home doing homework when the crimes occurred, and there was no physical evidence linking George to the deaths. After questioning George, the police claimed he had confessed, though there were no notes taken in the interrogation. He was sent to a one-day trial where an all-white jury convicted him, sentencing him to death after a 10-minute deliberation. Olin Johnston, South Carolina governor in 1944, was satisfied with the murder case, based solely on an unlikely confession, with no link to the crime scene, and court-appointed lawyer Charles Plowden who offered nothing in George's defense. When World War II ended, white U.S. soldiers came home with stories of black U.S. soldiers who had been fighting and sacrificing their lives side by side. The stories circulated and American racist opinions began to shift. Equal rights movements ensued, and white people began joining black people in the fight for justice for all. 1960 was an eventful year. Feb. 1, 1960 began the construct of the civil rights movement when Greensboro, N.C. saw four black students sit to eat in a segregated Woolworths lunch counter. According to Moyers & Company, that inspired Raleigh's Shaw University to engage in grassroots organized "sit ins, Freedom Rides, and voter registration drives." Jump ahead to Feb. 8, 2014, and again protesters marched from Shaw University to North Carolina's state capitol. Only this time there were people joined together from all walks of life. Every race, religion and nonreligion, gender orientation and ethnicity, marching together in what they are calling "Moral Monday." They are all unified in the drive for human rights and equality, tens of thousands of them. It is magnificent to see the diversity from 54 years ago until now. As Republicans are spinning further and further to the extreme right, once again trying to trample on voting rights and social programs, I have confidence in the Moral Monday concept. Protests and peaceful marches have brought about monumental change in the past, and will continue. Now, a lawsuit has been filed in South Carolina to throw out the wrongful murder conviction. Stinney's supporters are demanding a new trial, which has never before happened in South Carolina for someone that has already been executed. He could even be vindicated, something unheard of even 3o years ago. And the activists for the new "Moral Monday" are suited up in preparation for the upcoming "Freedom Summer 2014," said Moyers. F letters@chronicle.utah.edu LINDSAY SCHURING/The Daily Utah Chronicle Healthy habits mean better students BAILEY CARVER Columnist noticed in high school that there were many high-pressure evenings, trying to finish projects and studying for exams, not to mention filling out college applications. In the transition to college, the stress was magnified when you add in maintaining a part-time job. Life after college will no doubt bring even more strain than this. So how do we combat it? Life can be stressful and everyone needs to find a way to push through it. Many teenagers and adults adopt ' unhealthy habits to help cope with stress, including smoking cigarettes, drinking and eating unhealthily. How many times have you felt like taking the time to prepare a meal seems like too much effort? Next thing you know, you are eating cereal and McDonalds. There's a much simpler and healthier solution: One of the easiest and most beneficial ways to relieve stress is through exercise. In recent studies in Naperville, Ill., they implemented a first period gym class "math scores improve[d] by 20 percent and reading scores improved significantly, as well." Now, of course, not all of us are morning people, but the idea can be applied in different ways nonetheless. Finding a time of day where you can work out — and doing so at least two to three times a week — will be extremely beneficial to other areas of your life, including but not limited to your studies. WebMD even suggests that movement while studying can be helpful because "complicated movement stimulates thinking." One of the best things companies are currently doing is incentivising their employees to exercise. Several companies offer to reimburse some expenses or give prizes when employees reach certain goals. In the Harvard School of Public Health, it was stated that many employees "believed they could reduce their health care costs by influencing employees to adopt healthier lifestyles." There are plenty of reasons for companies to want healthier employees, they could save money and having healthy employees will lead to a better company. It seems that with all of this information it should be clear that colleges should adopt something similar. However, there are few programs that really motivate students to choose healthier options. At the U we have an excellent exercise facility free to students and extremely inexpensive classes offered each semester. These programs are great and the U should make an effort the encourage more students to participate. There are plenty of ways to increase participation, such as having a school-sponsored month of exercise. It is time that our university considers not only the academic excellence of their students, but also commit themselves to caring about the students developing and maintaining healthy habits. letters@chronicle.utah.edu FDA approval no longer lives up to purpose Lax approval guidelines endanger credibility and public health NAFISA MASUD4sr, Columnist or those of you who, like myself, stay up until ungodly hours of the early morning, there's always a time in which TV offers no solace: that of the infomercials. While I tend to disregard advertisements for bras that add 14 cup sizes or cooking appliances that can peel 37 apples in under a second, my curiosity's always piqued when I hear the words "FDA approved." Now there's a name I trust. Those two simple words strike me with an immediate sense of relief, a steely faith in whatever product that was eligible for FDA recognition. But recent instances of food and drug recalls throw this faith into question — how effective is the FDA? How exactly does it approve products, and what factors play into this process? I'd always thought of this as a glorified assembly line, thousands of products making their way in front of a panel of judges, metaphorically placed on some ethical "scale," and emblazoned with a large red "yes" if the scale tipped in its favor. Now I know better. A recent study by Yale University's School of Medicine examined more than zoo FDA approvals between 2005 and 2012 to ascertain exactly what this process entailed. While some drugs were only approved after large clinical trials a third of the approvals were of drugs tested by a single clinical F "I'm waiting for the FDA to approve my butt. They'll approve anything, you know." SALLY YOO/The Daily Utah Chronicle trial, others only tested by a small group of patients. This inconsistency reveals a weakness in the system of approval. The lack of a strict rubric allows potentially beneficial drugs to fall through the cracks while passing along harmful products to be distributed to the public under the guise of being approved as "good." The study admits that this flexibility allows for the "rapid approval" of medications for lifethreatening conditions, but how often are such drugs discovered compared to the ones millions of Americans take each day? Not having a rigid enough standard leads patients to believe that the medicines they're taking are approved of in every possible way before being placed on the market and this simply isn't the case. Few know of the 198os ordeal where many hemophiliacs suffered after realizing their medication Factor VIII, a form of blood plasma, contained the AIDS virus. Plasma was harvested from the public for cash, immediately drawing in impoverished and drug addicted Americans, and contaminated blood donations were mixed with the healthy ones. The blood was filtered out for the clotting factor needed to stop many hemophiliacs' constant "bleeds" and was shipped and marketed to the public immediately after. At first the FDA knew little about AIDS, continuing to approve of Factor VIII because they believed hemophilia to be the more serious condition of the two. But as researchers learned more about AIDS and its crippling implications, the FDA continued to sell Factor VIII, never warning the public on the risks of using this form of medicine. Even after it was discovered that exposing the medicine to heat could reduce the probability of contracting AIDS the FDA never shared this information. And as thousands of hemophiliacs continued keeping their medication in the fridge they unknowingly continued injecting themselves with AIDS, of which 10,000 Americans died in these few years alone. More recently carcinogens and sulfites have been found in food dyes and preservatives that caused behavioral problems and asthma attacks. The FDA didn't warn the public, conduct further testing, or restrict the levels of these chemicals in foods. And after trans fat was discovered by the Center for Science in the Public Interest to raise the likelihood of heart disease, it took a whopping 13 years for the FDA to place this information on Nutrition Facts labels. The purpose of the FDA according to their website is "protecting the public health" is a critical part of the medical industry but only if they're valuing the lives of patients themselves, not focusing on profiting from those desperate to be healed. letters@chronicle.utah.edu |