American Morning
PolitiFact Truth-O-Meter
Editor's Note: PolitiFact.com is a project of the St. Petersburg Times that aims to help you find the truth in politics. Every day, reporters and researchers from the Times examine statements by members of Congress, the president, etc. They research their statements and then rate the accuracy on their Truth-O-Meter.
Levin claims that other Western countries have lifted their bans
[cnn-photo-caption image=http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnn/2009/images/10/13/levin.carl.gi.art.jpg caption="Sen. Levin says other Western countries have ended their "don't ask, don't tell" policies."]
President Barack Obama has repeatedly said that he plans to repeal the military's "don't ask, don't tell" rule, which prevents openly gay and lesbian people from serving in the military.
But so far, no go.
"Meet the Press" host David Gregory asked Michigan Democrat Carl Levin, who chairs the Senate's Armed Services Committee, whether Obama would follow through on his promise.
"I think he, he will and he can," Levin said on the Oct. 11, 2009, episode. "I think it has to be done in the, in the right way, which is to get a buy-in from the military, which I think is now possible. Other militaries in the West, the British and other Western armies, have ended this discriminatory policy. We can do it successfully."
The Truth-O-Meter says: TRUE
Doc makes more cash selling clothes on eBay
CNN Senior Correspondent
HIAWATHA, Iowa (CNN) - As Dr. Jennifer Lickteig examines patients at the Linn Community Care Health Center in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, she's also earning money from a second career that has nothing to do with medicine.
[cnn-photo-caption image= http://i.l.cnn.net/cnn/2009/LIVING/worklife/10/07/mainstreet.ebay.doctor/art.ebay.doc.cnn.jpg caption="Dr. Jennifer Lickteig started her online clothing business while taking time off from medicine to raise her family. "]
Lickteig runs a clothing store on eBay, where she's a "Gold PowerSeller," ranking among the top 1½ percent of merchants on the online marketplace.
The 35-year-old family practitioner says she earned $120,000 last year on eBay, more than she did practicing medicine.
"It's just kind of this thrill," she said. "It think it's the thrill of having built up this business and just done it myself. I don't have to get an MBA. I don't have to have a storefront."
As health care reform threatens to shake up the business of medicine, recruiting firms promote alternatives for doctors at pharmaceutical, biotechnology, insurance and investment banking firms. But eBay?
Lickteig was juggling medicine with mothering her two boys when she became pregnant with twin girls. Once Natalie and Melanie arrived, Lickteig had to take time out from her practice.
Between feeding and changing her genetically identical daughters, Lickteig was online, discovering that she had the genes of a businesswoman - a trait that had been hiding behind her medical degree.
What’s on Tap – Tuesday October 13, 2009
Here are the big stories on the agenda today:
- The Senate Finance Committee will vote on its $829 billion dollar version of health care reform in just a few hours. Supporters say it matches key parts of the president's wish list without busting the budget, but the insurance industry is launching a last-minute attack.
- Pressure is building on the battleground. The call for more troops in Afghanistan is kicking up a lot of debate. Right now it's all about the numbers. The general says he needs 40,000 more to win this war. But is that even enough? Our military experts weigh in.
- Concern about Iran’s nuclear ambitions has secretary of state Hillary Clinton meeting with Russian leaders in Moscow. She also summed up her political aspirations in one word. We'll tell you what she's saying.
From an icy slope, a medical miracle emerges
CNN Senior Medical Producer
NARVIK, Norway (CNN) - Fresh from medical school, Anna Bågenholm chose to do her residency in the Norwegian city of Narvik because of its spectacular mountain slopes. An expert skier, Bågenholm had gone off the trail with two other young doctors on a warm spring afternoon when she fell.
[cnn-photo-caption image= http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnn/2009/HEALTH/10/12/cheating.death.bagenholm/art.bagenholm.rescue.jpg caption="Rescuers worked frantically to save Anna Bagenholm from a hole in the ice of a mountain stream."]
What happened that day in 1999 changed her life and has redefined what is possible in cases of accidental hypothermia.
Bågenholm slid down a steep, icy gully and ended up submerged head first in a hole in the ice in a mostly frozen stream. Only her skis and Telemark boots and bindings protruded from the thick, opaque ice. As the 29-year-old struggled, her friends Marie Falkenberg and Torvind Næsheim began a frantic effort to free her, made impossible by a torrent of frigid spring runoff pouring over them into the hole where their friend was submerged.
They called for help, starting a chain of events that is now part of medical literature and local lore.
Bård Mikkalsen, a police lieutenant in Narvik at the time, took the call.
"I realized this was really a serious case," said Mikkalsen, who has since retired. He scrambled a pair of rescue teams in Narvik, one from the top of the mountain, the other from the bottom. He also contacted the nearest rescue team in Bodø, nearly 200 miles away, but the Sea King helicopter had already left to transport a sick child. Read the full story »
Buying time to save patients
CNN Medical Senior Producer
North of the Arctic Circle, the weather is unforgiving, the population is scattered and the distances are immense. At the University Hospital of North Norway in Tromsø, the northernmost teaching hospital in the world, doctors routinely use a helicopter ambulance and fixed-wing plane to transport the most serious cases for care – or to bring emergency care to the patient. It’s all about buying time.
During a visit Tromsø, we shadowed Dr. Mads Gilbert, who heads the Department of Emergency Medical Services at the hospital, a small city surrounded by water and mountains. He describes trauma care in this part of the world as “cold, dark, distance and dangerous.” The cold poses its own challenges, and Dr. Gilbert and the team see a lot of hypothermia from ski accidents and people who’ve fallen out of fishing boats falling into the water.
Dr. Gilbert was on call 24 hours a day all week when we were there. He is 62, a rangy man with the energy and enthusiasm of someone half his age.
“What we do with emergency medicine — be it airway breathing, chest compressions, bleeding control, treating hypothermia — is to slow or even stop the death process. So it’s really the struggle between life and death and I always feel like we’re standing on the shore with the tide coming up. We’re trying to pull people from the tide of death and onto the dry land of life,” Gilbert said with a flourish.
Hours after we arrived, his team scrambled in the middle of the night, putting on jumpsuits and helmets and climbing aboard the helicopter ambulance. The temperature was just a degree or two above freezing as the helicopter lifted off and a chilling rain soon began to fall. A young man was suffering from an uncontrollable seizure, and the local doctor wasn’t sure whether it was an allergic reaction or something more serious. The helicopter ambulance team brought the patient back to the hospital.
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