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Lambda Legal Files Suit Against Assisted-Living Facility For Allegedly Discriminating Against HIV-Positive Resident
Lambda Legal, a group that represents HIV-positive people, on Tuesday filed a law suit against the Fox Ridge assisted-living facility in North Little Rock, Ark., for allegedly evicting a resident because he is HIV-positive, the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette reports.The Rev. Robert Franke, a retired biology and religion professor who was diagnosed with HIV in 1987, moved into Fox Ridge, which is operated by Parkstone Living Center, in February. The day after he moved into the facility, an unidentified administrator told his daughter, Sara Franke Bowling, that her "superiors" said Franke needed to be discharged from the facility "because of his HIV." Franke disclosed his HIV status on application materials before moving into the facility. The suit alleges that Parkstone violated the Fair Housing Act, the Americans with Disabilities Act and the Arkansas Civil Rights Act and requests a permanent injunction to prevent the facility from denying apartments or services to people living with HIV/AIDS. The suit also seeks compensatory and punitive damages and attorneys" fees and costs. The case was assigned to U.S. District Judge G. Thomas Eisele. The facility declined to comment on the suit. Julie Munsell, a spokesperson for the state Department of Human Services, said Arkansas law allows for people who have been discharged for assisted-living facilities to remain in the facility pending a hearing if the discharge is appealed. Munsell said the department"s Long-Term Care Division received notice that Franke was appealing the discharge but that the appeal was later dismissed without a hearing. According to Munsell, facilities are not permitted to discharge residents based on medical diagnoses but that some facilities have said they do not have the capacity to provide care for certain conditions. Munsell also said that Fox Ridge is "claiming that they did not admit this client so there is no need for a hearing." Scott Schoettes, staff attorney for Lambda"s HIV Project, said that Franke was not seeking medical care from Fox Ridge, although the facility does provide medical services. "He didn"t require any services beyond which they were licensed to provide," Schoettes said. Franke"s eviction is "particularly blatant and egregious, but unfortunately, not all that uncommon," Schoettes said, adding, "This happens all across the country. We want to send a message that this kind of discrimination is not going to be tolerated" (Satter, Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, 5/13).
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Prime Minister Pledges Action On Maternal Mortality, UK
Today, the Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, said he was determined to keep the issue of maternal mortality high on the agenda of the G8 summit in Italy next week.
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Sleep Deprivation Affects Older Adults Less Than Younger Adults During Cognitive Performance

According to a research abstract that will be presented on Wednesday, June 10, at SLEEP 2009, the 23rd Annual Meeting of the Associated Professional Sleep Societies, older adults are able to retain better cognitive functioning during sleep deprivation than young adults. Results indicate that older adults (ages 59 through 82 years) showed more resiliency to total sleep deprivation (TSD) than young adults (ages 19 to 38 years) on a range of measures of cognitive performance, including working memory, selective attention/inhibition and verbal encoding and retrieval. Performance of young adults significantly declined on all three tasks during TSD while that of older adults did not change significantly. According to principal investigator Sean Drummond, PhD, at the UCSD/VA healthcare system in San Diego, Calif., older adults may have performed better because only very healthy people were included from that age group, which may have caused a selection bias that does not exist in younger adults. "It may be that older adults who remain the healthiest late in life are less vulnerable to a variety of stressors, not just sleep loss," said Drummond. The study included 33 older adults and 27 younger adults. The performance of older and younger adults was compared on three distinct cognitive tasks before and after 36 hours of sleep deprivation. According to Drummond, sacrificing sleep to study or work is a false-trade off; findings of this study and many others show that sleep deprivation produces impaired performances across a variety of different tests. Abstract Title: Older Adults are Less Vulnerable to Sleep Deprivation than Younger Adults during Cognitive Performance Presentation Date: Wednesday, June 10 Category: Sleep Deprivation Abstract ID: 0420 Kelly Wagner American Academy of Sleep Medicine


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