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A Nursing Home Owner Got a Trump Pardon. The Families of His Patients Got Nothing.

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Doris Coulson remained spirited even as her illness progressed — watching cooking shows on TV, working crossword puzzles and wheeling herself down the hallways of her nursing home to show off her granddaughter when she came to visit. Coulson had been admitted to Hillview Post Acute and Rehabilitation Center in Little Rock, Arkansas, in January 2016, after Parkinson’s disease left her at risk of choking when she swallowed. That April, the facility’s operations were taken over by Skyline Healthcare, a New Jersey-based company that was buying up nursing homes across the country. Medical records for the retired cardiac nurse, then 71, were marked “NPO” — nothing by mouth. Then that September, a nursing assistant found Coulson unresponsive and hanging off the side of her bed, her skin ashy and her breathing shallow. She was taken to a hospital in a coma and died several days later. The chief cause of death was aspiration pneumonia, according to her death certificate. “The doctors said t...
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Utah Bans Polygraph Tests for Those Reporting Sexual Assault

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For years, Utah allowed government officials to do something other states banned: ask a person who reports a sexual assault to take a polygraph test. That will change soon. Earlier this month, state lawmakers passed a bill that prohibits police and other government officials from requesting polygraph tests for alleged sex assault victims. Gov. Spencer Cox signed it into law on Thursday, and it goes into effect in May.  Experts say these tests are known to be especially unreliable with victims of sexual abuse. That’s because victims may have stress and anxiety recounting their assault that the polygraph may interpret as deception. Other states don’t allow them to be used with assault victims for this reason. It took two years and three legislative sessions for Utah state Rep. Angela Romero, the House minority leader, to get the bill across the finish line. When she first sponsored it in 2024, she cited reporting from The Salt Lake Tribune and ProPublica as she told her fellow le...
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The Horrors That Could Lie Ahead if Vaccines Vanish

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This story works best on ProPublica’s website . Before vaccines, death and disability stalked children. Then shots turned once-common infections into something doctors only read about in textbooks. When immunization rates drop, however, plagues from the past can come roaring back, as measles has in American communities where parents decided not to vaccinate their children. Imagine what would happen if even the people who wanted shots couldn’t get them. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who founded an antivaccination group, is considering changes that could prompt the handful of companies that make most shots for American children to stop selling them here. Over the last year, he has been transforming a government that long championed the lifesaving benefits of vaccines into one that questions their safety here and around the world. Shortly after Kennedy was nominated, questions swirled over how he might overhaul America’s immunization system. Two Stanford University researc...
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An OB-GYN Was Repeatedly Accused of Sexual Misconduct. The State Medical Board Let Him Keep Practicing.

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The woman, 52, lay on the exam table at a clinic in Richland, Washington. Her legs were parted and propped up. The OB-GYN, Dr. Mark Mulholland, stood between her legs, inquiring about the woman’s sex life as he had in prior visits, she wrote in a complaint filed with Washington state health care regulators. She said Mulholland had previously asked about her enjoyment of sex and if she had a boyfriend, a strange way to learn about a patient’s sexual activity, she thought. But this was her last checkup after her hysterectomy and the last time she expected to see Mulholland. “Do you masturbate?” Mulholland asked the woman during their final appointment, according to her complaint. The question shocked her. She wrote that Mulholland explained he wanted to “make sure the nerves were intact.” Then, the woman wrote, he inserted his fingers into her vagina and pumped his hand back and forth in a way she said felt “sexual and not medical.” “Does that hurt?” the woman said Mulholland asked...
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