Tag: Knee

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Tribes Need Medals Awarded for Wounded Knee Bloodbath Rescinded

Tribes Want Medals Awarded for Wounded Knee Massacre Rescinded

On December 29, 1890, the US Army killed hundreds of unarmed members of the Lakota Sioux tribe, many of them women and children, at Wounded Knee Creek on Pine Ridge Reservation in the southwest corner of South Dakota.

After one of the bloodiest acts of violence by American forces against Native Americans, the government investigated the behavior of Seventh Cavalry forces – and decided to award 20 Medals of Honor, the highest military distinction in the country, to the soldiers involved in the massacre.

Now members of the tribe are stepping up a long-running pressure campaign to overturn these medals, saying the government should recognize the atrocities for what it was and take a step that could help heal the historic wounds of that day.

They were recently backed by the South Dakota Senate, which passed a resolution in February calling on Congress to investigate the award of the medals. On Capitol Hill, advocates of the effort, led by Senators Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Jeff Merkley of Oregon, both Democrats, are hoping, on behalf of the legislation they sponsored, the Remove the Stain Bill to give a new boost to the medals cancel.

“I think we have an ever-present sadness because of our reservation, which is here because of the Wounded Knee massacre, the massacre. It was never resolved and it was never closed,” said Marcella Lebeau, a citizen of the Two Kettle Band, Cheyenne River Sioux.

Ms. Lebeau, a 101-year-old veteran who served as a surgical nurse near the front lines at the 25th General Hospital in Liege, Belgium and later worked for the Indian Health Service, urges medals to be lifted, among other things. Ms. Lebeau said she was particularly concerned that men who slaughtered women and children had received the most prestigious military award in the country.

Many of the award quotations indicated “gallant behavior in combat” and “excellent” or “showy” bravery, while few details were documented to justify these characterizations.

To date, the nation has awarded more than 3,500 Medals of Honor, including approximately 400 to soldiers who fought against Indians during campaigns. According to the Congressional Medal of Honor, around 900 awards were revoked, most for awards given during the Civil War. However, no medals were revoked for service in the Indian campaigns.

Troy Heinert, a Democrat serving in the South Dakota Senate, supported the resolution calling for a Congressional investigation. Mr. Heinert, a member of the Rosebud Sioux tribe, said Congress and the Biden government owed it to Native Americans to take a closer look at the medals worn by soldiers involved in the massacre. The resolution was passed unanimously in a deeply republican state.

The medals for service in the U.S. Army’s Indian War campaigns are part of the country’s history, where divisive figures were celebrated as heroes, Heinert said. Many of the medals awarded during this period were for violent acts by white settlers and the federal government against Indians as they tried to occupy more of the south and west.

The decade-long drive to repeal the medals gained new impetus last year in a broader national wave of reckoning on historical and systemic racism. Confederate monuments fell, military support efforts to rename military bases in southern states that now honor Confederate generals, and protesters holding large-scale protests against the police murder of black men and women.

“The US government has done everything to exterminate and assimilate the indigenous people in our country,” said Heinert. “Our ancestors fought and died to preserve our language, tradition and ceremonies, and I think the climate has put us in a space and time that allows us to have an open conversation about public order and on what it means to be native to this country. “

Kevin Killer, president of the Oglala Sioux Tribe, said the urge to keep the medals responded to the wishes of the elders, whose calls have gone unheard for generations. Mr. Killer said it was important for future generations to know that an injustice has been addressed.

“It was one of the greatest atrocities in the history of this country, in which mainly women and children were massacred for trying to have peace,” said Killer. “The story tries to retell and say that there was a misunderstanding, but it was an atrocity the way you look at it.”

Bernardo Rodriguez, a representative of the tribal council of the Wounded Knee District of the Oglala Sioux Tribe, said the tragedy was commemorated every day by a memorial to the community – and that the government has cracked down on the medals for more than 100 years, overdue.

“We’ve been pushed, pulled, put aside and treated like second-class citizens since day 1 and got no chance,” said Rodriguez. “I want you to know and understand that this is the same as giving the Auschwitz Nazis a Medal of Honor.”

Despite some bipartisan support for the lifting of the medals, it is not clear whether Congress or the Biden administration could act on the matter. The Medal of Honor is awarded by the Presidents but can be revoked by Congress.

Representative Dusty Johnson, a Republican from South Dakota, said in a statement that Congress understood that it was a mistake to award the medal to those who participated in the massacre. Mr Johnson’s statement said he asked the Army to open a formal review in 2019, but was told that only the President had authority to do so.

In 1990, Native American descendants who were killed and injured in the wounded knee massacre received an apology from Congress after lawmakers passed a resolution expressing “deep regret” at the army’s actions.

The resolution provided no redress for the descendants or declared the remote site a national monument, as the Wounded Knee Survivors Association had requested.

“This was a sin of our nation and the United States Congress formally apologized. That won’t make the massacre go away, but it is these reconciliation efforts that I believe can help heal the heart and mind and enable it to move forward, ”said Johnson.

“Today’s Medal of Honor recipients are of an enormously higher standard,” he said. “Our history painfully shows that the United States did not have the same standards in 1890.”

In 2019, Senator Mike Rounds, a Republican from South Dakota, said he thought Wounded Knee was more of a massacre than a battle, but was also against changing medal recommendations.

His office did not respond to a request for comment. South Dakota Republican Senator John Thune and South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem also did not respond to a request for comment.

Ms. Warren’s office said the bill remains a priority for her, and she and a number of Democratic sponsors have reintroduced it in both the House and Senate for the current Congress to consider.

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Health

Intense Power Coaching Does Not Ease Knee Ache, Research Finds

Intense Strength Training Does Not Ease Knee Pain, Study Finds

The idea made so much sense that it’s rarely been questioned: exercise to strengthen the muscles around the knee will help patients with osteoarthritis and make moving the inflamed joint easier and less painful.

Nearly 40 percent of Americans over 65 have knee osteoarthritis, and tens of millions of patients have been instructed to do these exercises. In fact, the American College of Rheumatology and the Arthritis Foundation recommend weight training regularly to improve symptoms.

Stephen Messier, professor of biomechanics at Wake Forest University, believed in the guidance. However, he decided to test the recipe in a rigorous 18-month clinical trial with 377 participants. The verdict appeared in a study published in JAMA this week: Weight training didn’t appear to relieve knee pain.

One group lifted heavy weights three times a week while another group tried moderate strength training. A third group received “healthy living” counseling and instruction on foot care, nutrition, medication, and better sleep practices.

Dr. Messier had expected that the group doing the heavy lifting would do the best and that those participants who received advice only would see no improvement in knee pain. However, the results were the same in all three groups. All reported a little less pain, even those who only received advice.

Some pain relief can be expected in the exercising patient. But why should those who haven’t trained also report improvement? “It’s an interesting dilemma we’ve gotten into,” said Dr. Messier.

A simple placebo effect could explain why they felt better, he said. Or it could be something that scientists call regression of the mean: arthritis symptoms tend to fluctuate and subside, and people tend to seek treatments when the pain peaks. If it decreases, as it would have been anyway, they attribute the improvement to the treatment.

“The natural history of osteoarthritis of the knee includes the growth and decrease of symptoms,” said Dr. Adolph Yates, vice chairman of orthopedic surgery at the University of Pittsburgh Medical School, unrelated to the study. “It is what makes the study of osteoarthritis knee interventions difficult.”

Dr. David Felson, professor of medicine at Boston University, argued that the study did not find any strength training to be useless. Instead, the trial showed that very aggressive weight training wasn’t helpful and could actually be harmful, he said, especially if the arthritic knees are bent in or out as usual.

Strong muscles can act like a vise, putting pressure on tiny areas of the knee that carry most of the load while walking. When Dr. Felson looked at the study data, he saw evidence that the high-intensity group had slightly more pain and poorer function.

Patients tend to resist the advice to exercise at all, said Dr. Robert Marx, Professor of Orthopedic Surgery at Weill Cornell Medical College in New York City: “You want a reason not to exercise and you asked, ‘Will it improve my arthritis? Will it improve my x-rays? ‘”

He tells them that the answer to their questions is no, but that exercise stabilizes the joints. While it’s not as effective for pain as anti-inflammatory drugs, “it’s a piece of arthritis treatment.”

For Dr. Messier, who has researched arthritis and exercise for over 30 years, the new findings are a bit of a departure. His first study, published in JAMA in 1997, found that exercise groups ended up having less pain than the control group, but that wasn’t really because the participants got better. It was because the control group got worse.

He also noted that half of the participants in his study were overweight or obese. “What if we added weight loss to the workout?” he asked.

He tried this in another study published in JAMA in 2013, which showed that a combination of weight loss and exercise provided more pain relief than either alone.

But he had long wondered if the intensity of the strength training was important. In previous studies, participants had used weights that lagged far behind what they could actually lift. The studies only lasted six to 24 weeks, and the patients showed only modest improvements in pain and function.

Despite the new, unexpected results, Dr. Messier still encourages patients to exercise, saying that doing so can prevent an inevitable decline in muscle strength and mobility. But now it seems clear that strength training with heavy weights offers no particular benefit, rather than a moderate intensity routine with more reps and lighter weights.

Arthritis is a chronic degenerative disease of the entire joint. “It’s busy,” said Dr. Messier. “It’s not just cartilage deterioration.”

But, he added, he believes the best non-pharmaceutical intervention for knee arthritis pain is 10 percent weight loss and moderate exercise.

Dr. Messier now plans to have his next study combine weight loss with exercise in people at risk for knee osteoarthritis in the hopes of preventing this debilitating disease from occurring.

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Health

The Greatest Footwear for Knee Arthritis

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Some experts recommend flat, flexible shoes for people with knee osteoarthritis, while others say sturdy, supportive shoes are better. Now a randomized study has found that the latter – a stiff and stable shoe with good cushioning – is better than a supple and pliable one.

Osteoarthritis is the most common joint disease in the United States. According to a recent estimate, 14 million Americans suffer from the pain and stiffness of knee arthritis.

Australian researchers randomly assigned 164 men and women, with an average age of 65 years, to wear a flexible or stiff shoe for at least six hours a day for six months. Shoes in the flat shoes category included the Merrell Bare Access, Vivobarefoot Primus Lite, Vivobarefoot Mata Canvas, Lacoste Marice, and Converse Dainty Low. The stable support groups included the ASICS Kayano, Merrell Jungle Moc, Rockport Edge Hill, Nike Air Max 90 Ultra, and New Balance 624.

Before and after the study, the researchers administered questionnaires and scales to measure pain, function, and comfort. The report is in the Annals of Internal Medicine.

The researchers found that 58 percent of those who wore sturdy shoes experienced clinically significant pain reduction compared to 40 percent who wore flexible shoes. When evaluating the function, 11 percent of the more stable shoe wearers reported improvements. Those who wore sturdy shoes were also less likely to report other problems: 15 percent of those who wore stable shoes reported problems such as knee swelling, ankle or foot pain, or pain in other parts of the body caused by the shoes, compared with 32 percent of those who did wear flexible shoes.

Senior author, Rana S. Hinman, professor of physical therapy at the University of Melbourne, said that while a supportive shoe is helpful, it is not a substitute for other effective strategies such as weight control and exercise.

Still, she said, “Based on our clinical study, people with knee osteoarthritis should rather wear sturdy, supportive shoes with thicker padded soles than flat shoes with thin, flexible soles without padding.”

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Health

Want a New Knee or Hip? A Robotic Might Assist Set up It

Need a New Knee or Hip? A Robot May Help Install It

“When I started practicing 30 years ago, if someone had hip pain we would take an x-ray, and even if they had arthritis and were in their forties, we told them to change their activity and wait,” he told Dr . William Maloney, professor of orthopedic surgery at Stanford University.

No longer. “The technology has fulfilled our patients’ desire to stay active,” he said.

One of the greatest innovations came in the late 1990s and early 2000s – just in time for the marathon runners who play tennis and play tennis to show signs of wear and tear.

“The industry has found a way to make the implants better,” said Robert Cohen, president of digital, robotic and activation technologies at Stryker’s orthopedic joint replacement division in Mahwah, New Jersey. and subject it to a post process of heat and radiation that made it even stronger. “

The implants made of “highly cross-linked polyethylene” significantly reduced the need for revision surgery. “One of the main reasons for the revision was the breakdown of polyethylene in the replacement compound,” he said.

Thanks to the advent of the stronger and more durable material, he says, “We’ve all but eliminated that.”

The new implants also contributed to faster recovery times.

“When I was a resident, people were hospitalized for 10 days after a total hip or knee,” said Dr. Dorothy Scarpinato in Melville, NY. “Now they’ll bring her out in a day or two.” As a result, she added, “People are no longer as afraid of this operation as they used to be.”

Some of the factors that contribute to shorter hospital stays, according to Dr. Maloney less invasive surgery, accelerated rehabilitation protocols, better pain management methods and the use of regional as opposed to general anesthesia.