where science and ethics intersect with politics
When trace metals were detected in tampons, panic wasn’t the real problem — policy failure was. The viral reaction exposed a deeper truth: menstrual products used inside the body for thousands of hours over a lifetime remain under-regulated, under-researched, and insufficiently transparent.
December opens with World AIDS Day — a global moment of remembrance and resolve — but it also reveals a deeper reality unfolding across the United States: a federal government growing increasingly silent in the face of suffering. From HIV prevention and civil rights protections to hunger, housing, and public health, compassion is receding from national leadership at a time when communities need it most. This month’s This Month in Compassion examines where empathy is thriving at the grassroots level, where it is disappearing at the federal level, and why ethical governance demands that compassion remain at the heart of every policy decision.
The U.S. Senate has voted to end the long-standing milk mandate in American schools, breaking an 80-year dairy monopoly. If approved by the House, the reform would allow schools to serve plant-based milks without medical exemptions, opening the door to nutritional equity and humane, evidence-based policy.
President Trump’s executive order on “Promoting Agriculture and Rural Prosperity in America” assigns a task force to identify impediments to farming in the US. One particular impediment is the animal agriculture business. The Humane Party’s Agricultural Policy Transition Team has already done the labor intensive task of crunching numbers and ultimately resolving such impediments.
The Humane Herald 