Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Longer Looks: Cancer And Deportation; Is Vaping Safe?; Surviving Atrocities; And More
The New York Times: She’s Fighting Cancer. Her Son Is Fighting Her Deportation.
It is a common occurrence: an undocumented immigrant gets pulled over for a traffic violation, ends up in detention and swiftly is removed from the United States. In the case of Tania Romero, a Honduran mother of four who was arrested recently in Georgia, a deportation could happen within days. But her case is not so common. Ms. Romero has been receiving treatment for Stage 4 oral cancer that needs continual attention. And she has a son, a doctoral student at Yale University who is himself undocumented, who was not about to stand idly by. (Jordan, 10/31)
Bloomberg: Is Vaping Safe? Scientists Disagree On Health Of E-Cigs Like Juul
Portland State University chemistry professor David Peyton had never been attacked with such intensity. Peyton and a group of other chemists discovered almost five years ago that e-cigarettes could sometimes produce more cancer-causing formaldehyde than regular cigarettes. Formaldehyde is produced by a chemical reaction when a regular cigarette is lit, and finding it at such high levels in e-cigarette vapor, which has been held out as a safer smoking alternative, was a surprise. The study made headlines when the New England Journal of Medicine published it in January 2015. But along with the publicity came a swift backlash. (Langreth, 10/31)
FiveThirtyEight: We’ve Been Fighting The Vaping Crisis Since 1937
Before there were vapes, there was sulfanilamide. One of the first great medicines of the antibiotic era, sulfanilamide was a miracle drug at a time when curing pneumonia with a quick trip to the pharmacy seemed akin to walking on water. When a sweet, raspberry-flavored liquid version appeared in stores in early September of 1937, it was a no-brainer prescription for doctors whose sick young patients were still picky enough they might reject even Jesus himself if he returned in the form of a bitter-tasting pill. (Koerth-Baker, 9/25)
The New York Times: How Does The Human Soul Survive Atrocity?
Enas was contemplating suicide. She was only 17. For three years she’d been living in Mamrashan, a remote mountain camp for displaced people in the Kurdish region of northern Iraq. Mamrashan was just one of 16 camps scattered around Duhok, a province smaller than Connecticut. At its peak, Duhok was home to nearly half a million people displaced by the Islamic State, also known as ISIS. Many have yet to return home. Two weeks earlier, her 16-year-old cousin lit herself on fire in a camp bathroom, next door to Enas’s tent. She was too scared to go to the hospital and see her cousin’s melted skin. “I saw the smoke,” Enas told me. “I could smell the body.” (Percy, 10/31)
The Atlantic: Marathon Food: Should You Eat Potatoes While Running?
The greatest fear of many distance runners is a devastating fate known as hitting the wall. In marathon running, that often happens about two hours into a race. The body says, Okay, we’re done here. It is no longer capable of motion. You want to collapse on the ground and weep, but instead you fall sideways and lie rigid in the road like a horrible work of taxidermy. Other runners step over you until someone can drag you off the course. (Hamblin, 10/31)
