First Edition: December 4, 2018

Kaiser Health News: In Grandma’s Stocking: An Apple Watch To Monitor Falls, Track Heart Rhythms 
For more than a decade, the latest Apple products have been the annual must-have holiday gift for the tech-savvy. That raises the question: Is the newest Apple Watch on your list — either to give or receive — this year? At first glance, the watch appears to be an ideal present for Apple’s most familiar market: the hip early adopters. Its promotional website is full of svelte young people stretching into yoga poses, kickboxing and playing basketball. (Bluth, 12/4)

The New York Times Fact Check: The Misleading Claim That $21 Trillion In Misspent Pentagon Funds Could Pay For ‘Medicare For All’
Representative-elect Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the New York Democrat who has become a darling of the progressive left, was quoting from an article in The Nation about “massive accounting fraud” committed by the Pentagon from 1998 to 2015. But her suggestion that the $21 trillion in military transactions could have “already” paid two-thirds the cost of a “Medicare for all” health care system goes beyond what the article reported — and is misleading. For starters, the combined Pentagon budget from 1998 to 2015 was $9.2 trillion. One study by a libertarian economic think tank found that “Medicare for all” legislation by Senator Bernie Sanders, independent of Vermont, would cost the federal government $32.6 trillion over 10 years. So where did the $21 trillion figure originate? (Qiu, 12/3)

The Washington Post Fact Checker: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s $21 Trillion Mistake
Regardless, in the situation Skidmore is describing, the $21 trillion is not one big pot of dormant money collecting dust somewhere. It’s the sum of all transactions — both inflows and outflows — for which the Defense Department did not have adequate documentation. “The same dollar could be accounted for many times,” as Philip Klein wrote in the Washington Examiner. (Rizzo, 12/4)

The Associated Press: Freshmen House Dems Prefer Bills Over Investigations
Forty-six newly elected House Democrats pressed party leaders Monday to focus next year on legislative priorities like health care and infrastructure over investigations of President Donald Trump and his administration. "We must heed the call from our constituents," the group wrote in a letter to their leadership. The letter demonstrates how the huge class of freshman Democrats in the new Congress hopes to use its clout. (Fram, 12/3)

The Washington Post: Freshman Democrats: Legislation, Not Investigations, Should Be House Priority
“While we have a duty to exercise oversight over the Executive Branch, particularly when the Administration crosses legal lines or contravenes American values, we must prioritize action on topics such as the cost of healthcare and prescription drugs, our crumbling infrastructure, immigration, gun safety, the environment, and criminal justice reform,” the freshmen wrote. “While we may not always agree on how to approach every issue, we are united in the belief that we have a mandate to debate, draft, and work across the aisle to pass legislation.” (DeBonis, 12/3)

The Washington Post: Trump Begins Making Overtures To Democrats Amid Skepticism It Will Lead To Any Deals
President Trump, facing a Congress that will become dramatically more antagonistic toward him in January, has begun courting Democrats who could determine whether his next two years are spent scoring legislative deals or staving off an onslaught of congressional investigations. Trump’s charm offensive was on display Monday when he hosted Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.) at the White House for a meeting that the two men had spent days trying to schedule. (Kim and Dawsey, 12/3)

The New York Times: ‘He Did Not Lead On AIDS’: For Bush, Activists See A Mixed Legacy
The death of George Bush on the eve of World AIDS Day was a painful reminder for some of the most lethal days of the epidemic, when people — predominantly gay and bisexual — were struck down by an illness that few in the White House seemed to lose sleep over. For them, the 41st president was a slow-moving leader whose response to the crisis was hard to separate from his public uneasiness with gay men and lesbians. “If one was being charitable one could say it was a mixed legacy, but in truth it was a bad legacy of leadership,” said Urvashi Vaid, who led the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force from 1989 to 1992. “He did not lead on AIDS.” (Stack, 12/3)

The Associated Press: Kansas Sees LGBT Milestones, Yet Big Change May Come Slowly
Kansas will swear in its first two openly LGBT state lawmakers next month and the new Democratic governor promises to end a ban on discrimination over sexual orientation or gender identity in state hiring and employment decisions once she takes office. Yet other goals for LGBT-rights activists, such as expanding the state's anti-discrimination law covering landlords and private employers, might not be much closer to fruition — despite a historic national wave of victories by LGBT candidates and Gov.-elect Laura Kelly's promise to break with Republican predecessors on policy. (Hanna, 12/3)

The New York Times: Trump Says China Will Curtail Fentanyl. The U.S. Has Heard That Before.
China vows to stem the supply of the powerful opioid fentanyl flowing into the United States. It pledges to target exports of fentanyl-related substances bound for the United States that are prohibited there, while sharing information with American law-enforcement authorities. Such promises, echoed in the recent meeting between the countries’ presidents, ring familiar. (Wee, 12/3)

The Washington Post: U.S.-China Fentanyl Pact Is Not Expected To Produce Immediate Results
“I think it’s a very good thing,” said Vanda Felbab-Brown an expert on illicit economies at the Brookings Institution. “However, I wouldn’t hold my breath on how big that impact will be.” Trump and some U.S. politicians are describing the deal in sweeping terms, issuing statements that China plans to completely control the substance, said Bryce Pardo, an associate policy researcher at the Rand Corp. The Chinese, by contrast, have said they’re going to enforce existing regulations. Both appear to be playing to powerful domestic interests. (Bernstein and Zezima, 12/3)

Bloomberg: The Opioid Epidemic’s First Corporate Casualty May Be A Drugmaker That Helped Fuel The Crisis 
Insys had bribed doctors and their employees with payments for sham medical events that often turned out to be parties. Physicians who didn’t write prescriptions for the company’s powerful opioid were cut off from the company’s money. There were lavish dinners, strip-club visits and gun-range outings, all of which led to booming sales of one of the world’s most powerful — and dangerous — pain drugs. (Griffin, 12/4)

The Washington Post: Study: Dental Painkillers May Put Young People At Risk Of Opioid Addiction
Dentists who prescribe opioid painkillers to teenagers and young adults after pulling their wisdom teeth may be putting their patients at risk of addiction, a new study finds. The study, published in JAMA Internal Medicine Monday, shines a light on the largely overlooked role dental prescriptions play in an epidemic of addiction that has swept the United States, leading to a record 70,237 drug overdose deaths in 2017. (Cohen, 12/3)

Stat: Justice Departments Tells Supreme Court It Wants To Scuttle Case Against Gilead
In a surprising development, the U.S. Department of Justice filed a brief telling the U.S. Supreme Court that it wants to end a closely watched whistleblower lawsuit filed against Gilead Sciences because it is “not in the public interest.” Moreover, the Justice Department further indicated it would seek to dismiss the case if the Supreme Court were to send it back for further review by a federal circuit court, even though the agency appeared to support the legal theory underpinning the case. (Silverman, 12/3)

Stat: Philly City Council Committee Eases Ordinance To Restrict Sales Reps 
After lobbying by the pharmaceutical industry, a Philadelphia City Council committee late last week agreed to amend a controversial ordinance that would ban drug makers from giving gifts to doctors and also require all sales reps to become licensed in hopes of blunting the opioid crisis. The key concession by the lawmakers was to offer an exemption for conventions, while yet another exemption would delay enforcement for 180 days after the ordinance becomes law. As it so happens, the BIO trade group has such an event scheduled in Philadelphia in early June. (Silverman, 12/3)

Stat: Bluebird’s Gene Therapy Improved Outcomes For Patients In Clinical Trial
Bluebird Bio presented data Wednesday that for the first time links its gene therapy for sickle cell disease to improved clinical outcomes for patients. It’s part of a plan to speed up a regulatory filing for the one-time treatment called LentiGlobin. In many ways, Bluebird is following the successful sickle cell disease regulatory playbook written by Global Blood Therapeutics. Both companies are seeking to take advantage of flexibility at the Food and Drug Administration and a desire to see new sickle cell treatments reach the market. (Feuerstein, 12/3)

CNBC: How A Judge Can Rule On Justice Department's Deal With CVS, Aetna
A federal judge is considering halting the integration of CVS Health and Aetna — even though the two companies closed their merger last week. Judge Richard Leon of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia in a hearing Monday floated the idea that CVS and Aetna keep their companies separate until he can determine whether the agreement the Justice Department struck with the companies clears anti-competitive concerns, according to a transcript of the hearing. (LaVito, 12/3)

The Wall Street Journal: Federal Judge Voices Concerns About Justice Dept. Approval Of CVS-Aetna Deal
It is highly unusual for a judge to make such an announcement, since Justice Department antitrust enforcers had approved the deal in October under the condition the companies sell Aetna’s Medicare drug business to preserve competition. The companies sold those assets to WellCare Health Plans Inc. When the Justice Department identifies concerns with a merger—and reaches an agreement with the merging companies to address them—a federal law called the Tunney Act requires the government to file the proposed settlement for approval by a federal court, which determines whether the deal is in the public interest. (Kendall, 12/3)

The Hill: Chinese Scientist Who Claimed Gene-Editing Success Now Missing: Report
The Chinese scientist who claimed to have created the world's first gene-edited babies, He Jiankui, is missing after his former employers denied that he was detained over the weekend, the South China Morning Post reports. A spokeswoman for his former workplace, the Southern University of Science and Technology in Shenzhen, denied reports that He was being detained. “Right now nobody’s information is accurate, only the official channels are," the spokeswoman told the newspaper, while also declining to elaborate. (Keller, 12/3)

The Associated Press: World Health Organization Wants Panel To Study Gene Editing
The chief of the World Health Organization says his agency is assembling experts to consider the health impacts of gene editing. WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said Monday that gene editing "cannot be just done without clear guidelines" and experts should "start from a clean sheet and check everything." Tedros' comments followed Chinese scientist He Jiankui's announcement last week that he had helped alter the DNA of newborn twins in hopes of making them resistant to the AIDS virus. (12/3)

Stat: Chinese Lab Sought Help Editing PCSK9 Gene In Human Embryos 
Scientists were stunned because editing the human germline — the genomes of embryos, eggs, and sperm — has been considered taboo or at least not ready for reproductive use, because such changes would be inherited by descendants. And CRISPR’s safety, including the potential for unintended health effects, remains very much unknown. The birth announcement made [Dr. Kiran] Musunuru dig out his old emails — which he shared with STAT — and do some sleuthing. The University of Pennsylvania researcher quickly found that the student, Feifei Cheng, worked with He and presented a paper written with him at a meeting on genome editing this past April in China sponsored by Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. That paper reported editing PCSK9 in human, monkey, and mouse embryos. (Begley, 12/4)

The Associated Press: WHO Says It Can Fight Ebola Outbreak Despite US Withdrawal
The head of the World Health Organization said Monday it can fight the deadly Ebola outbreak in Congo despite the withdrawal of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, insisting: "We can cover it." The comments by WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus came in the wake of commentaries in two medical journals appealing to the CDC to return to the epidemic zone in Congo — saying its expertise is needed. The U.S. experts have been sidelined for weeks, ordered away from the region because of State Department security concerns. (12/3)

The Wall Street Journal: A City Solves Veteran Homelessness
Rockford, about 90 miles northwest of Chicago, is one of the first cities to effectively end homelessness among veterans, according to the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness, the Department of Veterans Affairs and the Department of Housing and Urban Development. Officials consider its programs a model for other cities. Its goal is now to eliminate all homelessness by 2020. Rockford and dozens of other cities accepted a challenge posed by then-First Lady Michelle Obama in June 2014 to end veteran homelessness, creating a network for city officials to brainstorm and share ideas. Since then, some 63 communities and three states have followed Rockford’s lead to be certified as having solved the problem, including bigger cities like Miami, which was certified last summer. Other major metros, including Chicago, Los Angeles and New York have also signed on to the challenge. (Snow, 12/4)

The Wall Street Journal: Agent Orange’s Other Legacy—A $12 Billion Cleanup And A Fight Over Who Pays
The Ironbound neighborhood of Newark, N.J., has been revitalized. The tree-lined river that runs beside it has not. Half a century ago, the herbicide Agent Orange was manufactured along the banks of the Passaic River. Poison hosed off factory floors drained into the waterway, where it sank to the bottom and became toxic sludge. The estimated cost of cleaning it up and compensating for environmental damage could run as high as $11.8 billion. (Brickley and Morgenson, 12/3)

The New York Times: Giving Patients A Voice In Their Mental Health Care Before They’re Too Ill To Have A Say
Steve Singer, who has bipolar and borderline personality disorders, knows when he’s on the verge of a mental health crisis. The female voice he hears incessantly in his head suddenly shuts up, and the hula hoop he gyrates while walking to the grocery store stops easing his anxieties. That’s when he gets to a hospital. Usually, talking briefly with a nurse or social worker calms him enough to return home. But this year a hospital placed him on a locked ward, took his phone, and had an armed guard watch him for 20 hours before a social worker spoke with him and released him. (Belluck, 12/3)

The Washington Post: Parenthood Lost: How Incarcerated Parents Are Losing Their Children Forever
Lori Lynn Adams was a mother of four living in poverty when Hurricane Floyd struck North Carolina in 1999, flooding her trailer home and destroying her children’s pageant trophies and baby pictures. No stranger to moneymaking scams, Adams was convicted of filing a fraudulent disaster-relief claim with FEMA for a property she did not own. She also passed dozens of worthless checks to get by. Adams served two year-long prison stints for these “blue-collar white-collar crimes,” as she calls them. Halfway through her second sentence, with her children — three toddlers and a ­14-year-old — temporarily under county supervision, Adams said she got a phone call from a family court attorney. Her parental rights, he informed her, were being irrevocably terminated. (Hager and Flagg, 12/3)

The Associated Press: Should Social Media Check Be Required To Get A Gun License?
Should authorities be able to deny handgun licenses for hateful tweets? A New York lawmaker is raising the question with a bill that would require police to scrutinize the social media activity and online searches of handgun license applicants, and disqualify those who have published violent or hateful posts. (Hill, 12/4)

The Wall Street Journal: A Reason To Think Twice About Your Child’s ADHD Diagnosis
Diagnosing attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder is inherently subjective. New research highlights how this can get especially tricky with young children. It shows that ADHD rates are significantly higher among children who are the youngest in their class compared with those who are the oldest. ADHD is characterized by difficulty concentrating and constantly active, sometimes disruptive behavior. (Reddy, 12/3)

KQED: Medical Detectives: The Last Hope For Families Coping With Rare Diseases
All over the country, specialized strike teams of doctors are giving hope to families who are desperately searching for a diagnosis. The medical sleuths have cracked more than a third of the 382 patient cases they're pursuing, according to a recent paper in the New England Journal of Medicine. The specialists, scattered across 12 clinics nationwide, form the Undiagnosed Disease Network (UDN).  Since the program began in 2014 they've identified 31 previously unknown syndromes. (McClurg, 12/3)

The Washington Post: Polio-Like Disease In U.S. Kids Appears To Have Peaked For 2018, CDC Says
Federal health officials said Monday that cases of the paralyzing, polio-like illness that was spiking in children in the United States this year appears to have peaked. In 2018, 134 cases of acute flaccid myelitis, or AFM, have been confirmed in 33 states, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Another 165 cases are under investigation. In a statement, the CDC said officials expect the number of cases to decline for the remainder of the year. Most of the latest confirmed cases occurred in September and October. (Sun, 12/3)

CNN: AFM: CDC Says Illness 'Appears To Have Peaked' In US For 2018
According to the CDC, in 2014, there were 120 confirmed cases between August and December; in 2015, there were 22 confirmed cases; in 2016, there were 149 confirmed cases; and in 2017, 35 confirmed cases were reported. The agency said Monday that it has previously seen a drop in cases in November. "That pattern appears to be repeating in 2018 because states have reported fewer PUIs [patients under investigation] over the past couple of weeks. CDC expects this decline to continue," it said on its AFM investigation website. (Goldschmidt, 12/3)

NPR: Statin Rethink: Who Should Take The Cholesterol-Lowering Drugs?
A study published Monday is pushing back against the notion that up to 40 percent of Americans should be taking statin drugs to reduce the risk of heart disease. The study, in the Annals of Internal Medicine, argues that current medical guidelines haven't adequately considered the risks from these widely used drugs. "Some harms are mentioned, but it's entirely unclear how they were considered when coming up with the recommendations," says Milo Puhan, a physician and epidemiologist at the University of Zurich and senior author of the new study. "In our approach we very explicitly considered the harms." (Harris, 12/3)

CNN: Why The Risks And Benefits Of Statins Are So Complex
As with any medication, statins can come with side effects. Statins, drugs typically used to lower cholesterol, are relatively safe for most people. When they are taken specifically to prevent cardiovascular disease, a new study suggests, the side effects just might outweigh the benefits, depending on your age, sex and the specific statin you're taking. (Howard, 12/3)

The New York Times: Even A Little Weight Training May Cut The Risk Of Heart Attack And Stroke
Despite the muscle-building, flab-trimming and, according to recent research, mood-boosting benefits of lifting weights, such resistance exercise has generally been thought not to contribute much to heart health, as endurance workouts like jogging and cycling do. But a study published in October in the journal Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise provides evidence for the first time that even a little weight training might reduce the risk of heart attack or stroke. People appear to gain this benefit whether or not they also engage in frequent aerobic exercise. (Reynolds, 12/4)

The New York Times: A Water Crisis In Newark Brings New Worries
As evidence mounted that Newark’s drinking water was contaminated by lead, top officials began an urgent giveaway of tens of thousands of filters and told residents that the problem was limited to one of the city’s two treatment plants. But city documents and other records show that an engineering study that led to the distribution of filters, which was made public in October, only focused on one plant. Now the state is directing Newark to assess whether treatment methods at the second plant are protecting water from being contaminated by lead. Since 2017, samples of tap water taken at residences served by that plant have shown elevated lead levels. (Leyden, 12/3)

The Associated Press: Health Chief: Pediatric Deaths Show Communication Problem
Nearly two dozen children at a long-term care facility showed symptoms of a viral infection and two had died by the time New Jersey’s health department was notified about the outbreak this fall, said Dr. Shereef Elnahal, the department’s top official. At a hearing Monday on the deaths of 11 children at the facility, Elnahal told a legislative committee that he has formed new internal policy requiring him and his principal deputy to be notified of any outbreaks where pediatric deaths have occurred. (12/3)

The Hill: Study: Emergency Medical Services Take 10 Percent Longer To Get To Poor Neighborhoods
Emergency medical services take 10 percent longer to arrive on the scene in poor neighborhoods compared to wealthy areas, according to a new study in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA). People in poor neighborhoods waited on average four minutes longer to receive medical assistance for cardiac arrest in 2014, the study's researchers found. They used 2014 data because it was the most recent available as of June of last year. (Brinbaum, 12/3)

The Associated Press: Florida Deputies Fatally Shoot Armed Psychiatric Patient
Deputies fatally shot a psychiatric patient who they say was threatening to harm people with a sharp piece of glass at a South Florida behavioral health center. News outlets report the shooting happened late Saturday at the University Hospital center in Tamarac, which is near Fort Lauderdale. (12/3)

The Hill: Yale University Installing Emergency Contraception Vending Machine: Reports
Yale University is installing a vending machine that sells emergency contraception including the "morning-after pill," or Plan B, along with other over-the-counter medications and items aimed at improving sexual health, the university's newspaper, the Yale Daily News, reported. The college will reportedly launch the vending machine before winter break. The Plan B will be sold for $49.99, a price comparable to the contraceptive's cost at local pharmacies, Yale College Council representative Ileana Valdez told the newspaper. (Birnbaum, 12/3)

The Washington Post: A Turtle-Obsessed Boy Had His 22nd Surgery, And People From All Over Sent Him Turtle Photos
In Oklahoma, there is a 4-year-old boy named Jack Mickey who adores turtles. He carries around a stuffed turtle that he has had since birth. He has turtle stickers, turtle coloring books and turtle fact-books. For Halloween, he went as a turtle, of course. So last week, before Jack underwent his 22nd surgery to treat a rare spinal disease called early onset progressive infantile scoliosis, his mother pulled up Twitter and asked if fellow users might be willing to tweet a few images, videos or facts about turtles that she could share with her son to cheer him up. (Bittel, 12/3)

The Washington Post: Preschoolers Served Pine Sol Instead Of Apple Juice
Officials at a preschool in Hawaii have apologized after young children were given Pine-Sol instead of apple juice to drink during a morning snack time, a mix-up that health officials said occurred because the two liquids were “the same color.” The incident involving the household cleaning liquid took place on Tuesday at the preschool at Kilohana United Methodist Church in Honolulu. (Wang, 12/3)