by Alison Bass | May 7, 2015 | prostitution, public health, sex trafficking, sex work
Even some of the most respected news outlets in the United States are getting it wrong. In a recent Talk of the Town in The New Yorker, Philip Gourevitch referred to the men who are smuggling migrants from Africa to Europe as traffickers instead of what they really...
by Alison Bass | Nov 8, 2014 | prostitution, public health, sex trafficking, sex work, Uncategorized
Nick Kristof is at it again. On Sunday, the New York Times columnist wrote yet another column about sex trafficking that was filled with inaccuracies and misleading statements. He was writing about a new lawsuit filed by two young women who say they were trafficked as...
by Alison Bass | Nov 26, 2012 | biotech industry, drug marketing, medical devices, opiods, pharmaceutical industry, prescription drug abuse, public health, Uncategorized
In my previous blogs about West Virginia’s shockingly high rate of prescription drug overdoses — the Mountain State has the second highest rate of overdoses in the nation — I focused on “the culture of disability” that created this...
by Alison Bass | Oct 8, 2012 | coal mining industry, disability, opiods, overdoses, prescription drug abuse, public health
Ever heard of the term “culture of disability?” It was first coined by Judith Greenwood, who published a paper in the ’80s about how the coal mining industry in West Virginia, because the jobs were so difficult and dangerous, had created a culture...
by Alison Bass | Sep 24, 2012 | prostitution, public health, Uncategorized
Wasn’t it Mark Twain who said that a lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is still putting on its shoes? I thought of his famous quote when my husband passed along a link he had received (from a social work listserv he subscribes to) to a...
by Alison Bass | Sep 10, 2012 | antidepressants, antipsychotic drugs, drug marketing, health care costs, patient care, pharmaceutical industry, prescription drug overdoes, public health
Did you know that West Virginia has the second highest rate of deaths from prescription drug overdoses in the country? I didn’t, until I moved to the Mountain State to live and work and became curious as to what was behind this tragic statistic. According to a...
