#RareDiseaseDay 2017

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

In 2015, when I wrote about Rare Disease Day, a friend asked, tongue firmly in cheek, “Why not have Rare Disease Day on February 29th?” I admit that when I learned about Rare Disease Day several years ago, after I was diagnosed with one, a similar joke crossed my mind.

Each year, the last day in February is the date for International Rare Disease Day, and Leap Day or not, today offers the opportunity for us to remind the world that rare diseases are not at all rare.

Today, February 28, is International Rare Disease Day, and “Research” is this year’s theme.
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Carnival vs. Lent

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s Kampf zwischen Fasching und Fasten (The Fight Between Carnival and Lent) depicts today, the day before Lent. Today is an important enough day in the Christian calendar to go by a few nicknames: Shrove Tuesday, Mardi Gras, “Fat Tuesday,” “Pancake Day.”

Any day that is associated with food, whether because restrictions are about to be imposed or restrictions are to be erased for one special day, by rights ought to have as many nicknames as it can bear.
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Unfairly Detained by ICE

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

“When Will We Know?”—an ongoing series

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José Coyote Pérez, an immigrant laborer and labor activist in upstate New York, was detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) on February 24. He is prisoner number A#099757267 in the Buffalo Federal Detention Facility in Batavia, New York.

He ought not be there. He should not be detained.

Pérez has been in America for fifteen years, he has a permit to work in the U.S., he has a social security number, and he was about to earn his driver’s license. Further, his ICE case was administratively closed in September 2016. In other words, he was a part of the New York State economy, he was a law-abiding resident on his way to citizenship. ICE had closed its file on him.
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