/PRNewswire/ Steve Nelson, MD, Dean of LSU Health New Orleans School of Medicine, and Greg Feirn, Chief Executive Officer of LCMC Health, have appointed.
Nykerrius Williams knows about the close relationship between hip-hop and opioid use. Williams, 27, an independent rapper from Gibsland, Louisiana, who goes by the name Young Nyke, took oxycodone pills for the first time when he was 16 and has continued patterns of misuse of those pills, as well as Lortabs, Xanax and codeine cough syrups, until recently. To him, it's part of the business.
Image from Shutterstock.
A sickle cell trait is sometimes blamed for deaths of suspects that happen during police arrests and custody, even when the circumstances raise questions about use of force by officers.
Lawyers for fired and convicted Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin had cited the trait carried by George Floyd in an unsuccessful motion to dismiss the case, the New York Times reports.
The motion contended that Floyd died because of health problems and drug use, rather than having a knee pressed into his neck. Chauvin is currently appealing his conviction, according to Minnesota Public Radio.
In the last 25 years, the trait was cited at least 46 other times by medical examiners, police or officers’ defenders as a factor in the deaths of Black people in custody, the New York Times found. In about two-thirds of the cases, the person who died has been forcefully restrained, pepper-sprayed or shocked with stun guns.
How a Genetic Trait in Black People Can Give the Police Cover
Michael LaForgia and Jennifer Valentino-DeVries, New York Times, May 15, 2021
When they carried the body of a 32-year-old Black man named Lamont Perry out of the woods in Wadesboro, N.C., there were no protests over his sudden death in police custody.
No reporters camped at the scene. No lawyers filed suit.
Instead, the final mark in the ledger of Mr. Perry’s life was made by a state medical examiner who attributed his death in large part to sickle cell trait, a genetic characteristic that overwhelmingly occurs in Black people. The official word was that he had died by accident.
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