FOSTA in Legal Context

In the spring of 2018, Congress passed the Allow States and Victims to Fight Online Trafficking Act of 2017 (FOSTA), which combined a House bill of the same name with provisions from a Senate bill, the Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act (SESTA).[1] FOSTA as passed makes changes to three federal statutory schemes: the Communications Decency Act (Section 230), the Trafficking Victims Protection Act (TVPA), and the Mann Act. Members of Congress claimed FOSTA would fix loopholes in those statutory schemes through which they believed websites such as Backpage.com had avoided liability for sex trafficking. This Article analyzes the legal reality of FOSTA, fully exploring its changes to the Mann Act and the TVPA in context along with the more broadly discussed changes to Section 230. When contextualized, the changes to 230 are far less broad than initially reported, with a strict textual reading of the amendments resulting in relatively little change to immunity in most circumstances.  The new criminal provisions, on the other hand, have the potential to criminalize vast amounts of speech and advocacy. This Article is the first piece to comprehensively analyze the scope of all of these various components of the law

High Risk Hustling: Payment Processors Sexual Proxies and Discrimination by Design

Sex workers are increasingly documenting financial discrimination when accessing banks, payment processors and financial providers. As hustle economy workers, barriers to digital financial infrastructure impact sex workers’ abilities to maintain their livelihoods, resulting in structural marginalization and vulnerability to violence. Internationally, peer-led sex worker organizations have documented payment processors that discriminate, collating public policies and user experiences. They report refusals of merchant services, being unable to open accounts, being denied loans, finance or insurance, higher premiums, and having money frozen, withheld or forfeited. In this article, we examine the policies of banks and payment providers who refuse service to sex workers, sex industry businesses and other sexual purposes. Drawing from sex worker media from two different regulatory environments, the United States and Australia, we show how sex workers are identified via multiple means, including through algorithmic detection, malicious flagging, unique business names, service descriptions, external links, use of pseudonyms, linking of personal and professional identities, and sex work activism. We argue that the ‘sexual proxies’ that identify sex workers are founded on problematic assumptions of sex as high risk and operate to capture a wide variety of uses, including access to sex education, abortion services and mutual aid funds. We position financial discrimination against sex workers as a multi-layered problem, stemming from classist, racist, transphobic, and whorephobic laws and policies, accelerated by automated risk assessments and privatization of financial infrastructure. Financial discrimination is enabled by the criminalization of sex work, and, due to the exportation of U.S. policy, continues even in jurisdictions where sex work is decriminalized, buoyed by anti-trafficking policies that conflate sex work with exploitation and identity verification policies driven by anti-terrorism and anti-fraud legislation. As a result, financial discrimination disproportionately impacts sex workers who are undocumented, marginalized or most at risk of violence. The current challenge facing sex workers is how to survive in this system, including by holding payment processors accountable. We outline a series of potential accountability measures, including an overhaul of law and policy frameworks

2001-2002 From Russia with Love

https://spiral.lynn.edu/conservatory_otherseasonalconcerts/1092/thumbnail.jp

Structuring communication relationships for interprofessional teamwork (SCRIPT): a cluster randomized controlled trial

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Despite a burgeoning interest in using interprofessional approaches to promote effective collaboration in health care, systematic reviews find scant evidence of benefit. This protocol describes the first cluster randomized controlled trial (RCT) to design and evaluate an intervention intended to improve interprofessional collaborative communication and patient-centred care.</p> <p>Objectives</p> <p>The objective is to evaluate the effects of a four-component, hospital-based staff communication protocol designed to promote collaborative communication between healthcare professionals and enhance patient-centred care.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>The study is a multi-centre mixed-methods cluster randomized controlled trial involving twenty clinical teaching teams (CTTs) in general internal medicine (GIM) divisions of five Toronto tertiary-care hospitals. CTTs will be randomly assigned either to receive an intervention designed to improve interprofessional collaborative communication, or to continue usual communication practices.</p> <p>Non-participant naturalistic observation, shadowing, and semi-structured, qualitative interviews were conducted to explore existing patterns of interprofessional collaboration in the CTTs, and to support intervention development. Interviews and shadowing will continue during intervention delivery in order to document interactions between the intervention settings and adopters, and changes in interprofessional communication.</p> <p>The primary outcome is the rate of unplanned hospital readmission. Secondary outcomes are length of stay (LOS); adherence to evidence-based prescription drug therapy; patients' satisfaction with care; self-report surveys of CTT staff perceptions of interprofessional collaboration; and frequency of calls to paging devices. Outcomes will be compared on an intention-to-treat basis using adjustment methods appropriate for data from a cluster randomized design.</p> <p>Discussion</p> <p>Pre-intervention qualitative analysis revealed that a substantial amount of interprofessional interaction lacks key core elements of collaborative communication such as self-introduction, description of professional role, and solicitation of other professional perspectives. Incorporating these findings, a four-component intervention was designed with a goal of creating a culture of communication in which the fundamentals of collaboration become a routine part of interprofessional interactions during unstructured work periods on GIM wards.</p> <p>Trial registration</p> <p>Registered with National Institutes of Health as NCT00466297.</p

Analysis of the 10q11 Cancer Risk Locus Implicates MSMB and NCOA4 in Human Prostate Tumorigenesis

Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) have established a variant, rs10993994, on chromosome 10q11 as being associated with prostate cancer risk. Since the variant is located outside of a protein-coding region, the target genes driving tumorigenesis are not readily apparent. Two genes nearest to this variant, MSMB and NCOA4, are strong candidates for mediating the effects of rs109939934. In a cohort of 180 individuals, we demonstrate that the rs10993994 risk allele is associated with decreased expression of two MSMB isoforms in histologically normal and malignant prostate tissue. In addition, the risk allele is associated with increased expression of five NCOA4 isoforms in histologically normal prostate tissue only. No consistent association with either gene is observed in breast or colon tissue. In conjunction with these findings, suppression of MSMB expression or NCOA4 overexpression promotes anchorage-independent growth of prostate epithelial cells, but not growth of breast epithelial cells. These data suggest that germline variation at chromosome 10q11 contributes to prostate cancer risk by influencing expression of at least two genes. More broadly, the findings demonstrate that disease risk alleles may influence multiple genes, and associations between genotype and expression may only be observed in the context of specific tissue and disease states

Shared heritability and functional enrichment across six solid cancers

Correction: Nature Communications 10 (2019): art. 4386 DOI: 10.1038/s41467-019-12095-8Quantifying the genetic correlation between cancers can provide important insights into the mechanisms driving cancer etiology. Using genome-wide association study summary statistics across six cancer types based on a total of 296,215 cases and 301,319 controls of European ancestry, here we estimate the pair-wise genetic correlations between breast, colorectal, head/neck, lung, ovary and prostate cancer, and between cancers and 38 other diseases. We observed statistically significant genetic correlations between lung and head/neck cancer (r(g) = 0.57, p = 4.6 x 10(-8)), breast and ovarian cancer (r(g) = 0.24, p = 7 x 10(-5)), breast and lung cancer (r(g) = 0.18, p = 1.5 x 10(-6)) and breast and colorectal cancer (r(g) = 0.15, p = 1.1 x 10(-4)). We also found that multiple cancers are genetically correlated with non-cancer traits including smoking, psychiatric diseases and metabolic characteristics. Functional enrichment analysis revealed a significant excess contribution of conserved and regulatory regions to cancer heritability. Our comprehensive analysis of cross-cancer heritability suggests that solid tumors arising across tissues share in part a common germline genetic basis.Peer reviewe