Morning, y’all! Remember the latest $500 tax refund checks Georgia officials promised us? You should have gotten them by now. If you haven’t, see if any of these explanations square up.
Let’s get to it.
ALTERNATIVE MEDICAL PRACTICES PROMISE A CURE — FOR A STEEP PRICE
Georgia’s thriving alternative medicine industry is attracting patients from other states and even from outside the country.
The draw: clinics that promote treatments with compelling tales of beating the odds.
But some of the doctors and other practitioners — including those who don’t have any kind of healthcare license — may be exposing patients to enormous debt and hidden risks, a new AJC investigation found.
Here are two red flags you can watch for:
- Shady payments: Most clinics the AJC investigated say up front they accept cash only. Some patients also report being steered into buying pricey supplements. As anyone who’s felt ignored by traditional healthcare can guess, these warnings don’t stop suffering people desperate for relief. Georgia’s medical board may not provide specific warnings, but medical boards in other states warn against clinicians who sell goods in their office without disclosing appropriate financial interests.
- Weak credentials: If you pursue alternative health treatments, watch for buzz phrases like “board certified.” Typically, that means years of study and training followed by rigorous review. However, the AJC found some of the “board certifications” earned by such clinicians were nothing more than weekend seminars or video courses. It could pay — literally — to do some in-depth research.
🔎 READ MORE: The AJC spoke to patients who shelled out thousands for unproven treatments and injections, and feel duped by what they say are “fraudulent” treatment centers.
This is part of the AJC’s multi-installation investigation into unproven medical treatments in Georgia, and why they’re so pervasive in the state. Browse the whole series here.
Not signed up yet? What’re you waiting for? Get A.M. ATL in your inbox each weekday morning. And keep scrolling for more news.
THE COASTAL TURTLE LIGHT FIGHT CONTINUES
I’m reading “An Immense World” by science writer Ed Yong, a book about animal perception so fascinating it’s best to bite off little chunks and savor them like pastry.
The premise is deceptively simple: Animals don’t only experience the world differently — they often have senses and ways of perceiving that are entirely alien to humans. They quite literally live in a different world.
I thought about that while reading the latest in an ongoing fight over light towers leading to a Buc-ee’s off I-95’s Exit 42 in Brunswick.
- Environmentalists have repeatedly and stridently pointed out bright lights disorient nesting sea turtles and their young.
- Sea turtles are guided by the lights of the sun and moon. Newly hatched turtles will naturally crawl toward the light, because that represents the direction of the open water as opposed to the shadowed dunes and inland places behind.
- Big, intrusive lights mess with this natural instinct and others, creating real danger for one of Georgia’s most beloved animals.
- Turtle-friendly bulbs could provide a solution without skimping on illumination.
However, in Glynn County, leaders have so far dismissed any calls for change despite mounting pressure from activists. They’re skeptical of claims the lights hurt turtles and say lighting alternatives would be too expensive.
🔎 READ MORE: Locals weigh turtle and human safety in ongoing struggle
HOW ABOUT SOME GOOD ENVIRONMENTAL NEWS?
Meanwhile, Georgia’s Okefenokee Swamp is still in the running for UNESCO World Heritage status.
- In fact, the ecological jewel just got an endorsement from the International Union for Conservation of Nature.
- Nothing about the process is final yet, but it’s taken 40 years for conservationists and environmentally minded leaders to bring the push this far.
🔎 READ MORE: What World Heritage status would mean for the swamp
MUST-KNOW POLITICS AND BUSINESS
🫏 Democratic candidates in Gwinnett, one of Georgia’s most diverse districts, are promising to challenge state GOP leaders over redistricting pushes spurred by the recent SCOTUS voting rights decision.
⚖️ Reality television stars Todd and Julie Chrisley filed suit against their Atlanta lawyer, saying they wouldn’t have been found guilty of several charges related to a $36 million bank fraud scheme and tax evasion if he’d done a better job. The pair faced prison sentences but were pardoned last year by President Donald Trump.
ATLANTA POLICE CHIEF SPEAKS OUT
Crime is not primarily a policing problem. It is a neighborhood health problem. And when neighborhoods are unhealthy — when there is concentrated poverty, abandoned properties, no jobs, no youth programming, no sense of ownership or belonging — crime fills that vacuum. We can make arrests every single day in a blighted neighborhood, but the underlying conditions will keep regenerating the same behavior. We are not going to arrest our way to a safe city.
In a new opinion article for the AJC, APD Chief Darin Schierbaum discusses his vision for crime reduction through “shared responsibility.”
He suggests community violence prevention programs and reinvestment in underserved neighborhoods as ways Atlanta can build a safer city without extra police boots on the ground.
NEWS BITES
How social media reacted to the big UGA college baseball win
Soak in the good vibes. Soak ‘em right up!
Don’t let the football snobs deter you. It’s OK to say ‘soccer’ at the World Cup
“Sorry about, uh ... language?”
The rain’s back, which means tick season has begun
I have a little spiel at the end of today’s newsletter about compassion toward animals. That compassion does not necessarily extend to animals actively biting you.
ON THIS DATE
June 9, 1914
Couple hikes six miles, leaving money and baggage, dad won’t send it, and board bill gets bridegroom in court. Because he and the girl of his choice had to run six miles across country to escape the wrath of a parent who did not wish to become an “in-law” … Just a month ago Easterland persuaded Miss Annie Herndon, a nineteen-year-old school girl who was living on a farm near Knoxville, Tenn., with her father, J.B. Herndon, to brave her father’s wrath and elope with him. The parent objected because the bridegroom-to-be was twice the age of the girl. As they were trying to get their baggage out of the house, Mr. Herndon saw them. He rushed to the front of the farm house, where Easterland had a buggy waiting to head them off, but the couple, not to be thwarted, left the buggy in the hands of Mr. Herndon and started across the country.
A little old-timey drama for you. I’m Team Dad on this one.
ONE MORE THING
I’ll share more animal facts from “An Immense World” later this week, but I love that such knowledge also encourages us to build our humility and compassion. Even as an animal lover, I’ve sometimes caught myself thinking with avuncular affection about how silly and dumb some animals must be within their limited worlds.
Now, I consider seals that can follow the trail of a fish long after any detectable current from its path has faded, or how some spiders can literally tune their webs like an instrument to alert them to different weights of prey. Intelligence takes forms we can’t even conceive of within diverse bodies we are just beginning to understand.
Anyway, if anyone asks, that’s why I apologized to a grasshopper I had to relocate off a cut flower yesterday.
Thanks for reading to the very bottom of A.M. ATL. Questions, comments, ideas? Contact us at AMATL@ajc.com.
Until next time.
About the Author
AJ Willingham is an National Emmy, NABJ and Webby award-winning journalist who loves talking culture, religion, sports, social justice, infrastructure and the arts. She lives in beautiful Smyrna-Mableton and went to Syracuse University.
