Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Critics Question Culture Of Secrecy Around Deadly Bacteria At Medical Institutions, But Facilities Say Transparency Would Scare Patients Away
The New York Times: Culture Of Secrecy Shields Hospitals With Outbreaks Of Drug-Resistant Infections
In January, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention sent out an urgent public alert about a deadly bacteria, resistant to virtually every known antibiotic, that sickened more than a dozen Americans who had elective surgery at Grand View Hospital in Tijuana, Mexico. But when similar outbreaks take place at hospitals on American soil, the C.D.C. makes no such public announcement. That is because under its agreement with states, the C.D.C. is barred from publicly identifying hospitals that are battling to contain the spread of dangerous pathogens. (Jacobs and Richtel, 4/8)
The New York Times: You’re Covered In Fungi. How Does That Affect Your Health?
The connections among different parts of the human body are full of surprises, but here’s one you might not have considered: Could a thing that causes dandruff on your head also be contributing to your digestive problems? That’s one mystery that scientists are trying to unravel with research into the fungi that live in your gut. While the bacteria that colonize our intestines have been a scientific focus for more than a decade, the fungal critters there are starting to get more attention. (Rogers, 4/9)
The Wall Street Journal: Roundup, The World’s Best-Selling Weedkiller, Faces A Legal Reckoning
For years, scientists at Monsanto Co. worked closely with outside researchers on studies that concluded its Roundup weedkiller was safe. That collaboration is now one of the biggest liabilities for the world’s most widely used herbicide and its new owner, Bayer AG, which faces mounting lawsuits alleging a cancer link to Roundup. Plaintiffs’ attorneys are putting Monsanto’s ties to the scientific community at the center of a series of high-stakes suits against Bayer. Since the German company acquired Monsanto last June, two juries in California have sided with plaintiffs who have lymphoma and blamed the herbicide for their disease. Bayer’s shares have fallen roughly 35% since the first verdict. (Bunge and Bender, 4/8)
The New York Times: Choose Foods, Not Supplements
Taking dietary supplements will not extend life, researchers report, and taken in large quantities may even be harmful. In a study in the Annals of Internal Medicine, scientists gathered dietary information in repeated in-person interviews with almost 31,000 men and women 20 and older. They also collected data on supplements used over the previous 30 days, including type, dosage and frequency of use. Slightly more than half the participants took supplements, and about a third took multivitamins. (Bakalar, 4/8)
CNN: Rose Marie Bentley Lived For 99 Years With Organs In All The Wrong Places And Never Knew It
On an early spring day in 2018, the faint smell of formaldehyde floating in the air, 26-year-old medical student Warren Nielsen and four of his classmates prepped a cadaver in the chilly dissection lab at Oregon Health and Science University in Portland. Similar groups of five gathered around bodies on the other 15 tables in the anatomy class, all eager to explore the mysteries of the human body they had seen only in textbooks. The cadaver assigned to Nielsen's team was a 99-year-old woman who had died of natural causes. (LaMotte, 4/9)
