Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Longer Looks: Elizabethkingia; HIV In Cuba; Danger In The Pysch Ward
Vox: Elizabethkingia, The Rare And Deadly Bacteria That's Sickening People In The Midwest, Explained
Since last November, more than 50 people in Wisconsin have been sickened by mysterious bacteria called Elizabethkingia anophelis. This is the largest recorded outbreak caused by what's to date been a rare microbe — and the same bug was identified last week in a patient who died in Michigan. Public health officials in both states don't yet know what sparked the outbreaks or how people became infected, but they're worried. So far, 18 people have died from the infection, and researchers believe this particular strain is resistant to many of the antibiotics that could stop it. (Julia Belluz, 3/22)
STAT: One Man's Desperate Quest For A Brutal Surgery
The operation is so terrifying some call it MOAS: the Mother of All Surgeries. It can take 16 hours. The risk of complications is high. And after 30 years of research, doctors are still arguing about how well it works. But as Stephen Phillips shimmied himself onto the operating table one recent morning, he was almost relieved. He’d spent five months desperately trying to arrange this surgery in the hope that it would beat back his rare cancer of the appendix. (Eric Boodman, 3/24)
BuzzFeed: Addicts For Sale
One early evening last October, a group of young men and women were hanging out at the Starbucks on the main drag here, Atlantic Avenue, smoking cigarettes and bullshitting. They were sitting next to a pile of suitcases, the telltale sign of an addict looking for a place to stay. Some get kicked out of their old halfway house because they relapse; others because their insurance coverage has been used up. (Cat Ferguson, 3/19)
WBUR: Oral History: Bittersweet Memories Of A Cuban HIV Sanitarium
President Obama’s visit to Cuba this week has highlighted the fading of U.S.-Cuba alienation — but also the deep and lingering differences between the two countries, on issues from freedom of speech to free health care. Here, reporter Rebecca Sananes shares a chapter of medical history in which Cuba chose a policy diametrically opposite to America’s: Back in the 1990s, Cuba created a network of sanitariums, where people with HIV were confined indefinitely. It sounds barbaric, but as former patient Eduardo Martinez’s recollections reveal, it’s complicated. Life in the sanitariums was so much better than outside that some people purposely infected themselves with HIV. (Rebecca Sananes, 3/22)
Vox: The IUD Revolution
Birth control pills are currently the most popular contraceptive among American women, followed by condoms. These methods are especially susceptible to human error and have high failure rates. Of 100 women who rely on birth control pills, about six get pregnant every year. By contrast, long-acting reversible contraceptives (LARCs) like IUDs and implants are placed by health professionals and last for at least three years after insertion. They are 20 times more effective at preventing pregnancy than the pill, with failure rates between 0.2 and 0.8 percent. (Sarah Kliff, 3/23)
The Dallas Morning News: Danger In The Psych Ward
In Sherman, workers at a psychiatric ward dropped a suicidal patient off at a bus stop; a day later he was found dead after jumping from a Dallas bridge. In San Angelo, hospital employees created infection risks by leaving an observation room covered in vomit and a kitchen black with grease and dead bugs. And in Austin, male nurses stripped a teenage sex-abuse victim and shut her in solitary confinement, naked. (Miles Moffeit, 3/18)
The New York Times Magazine: Should Parents Of Children With Severe Disabilities Be Allowed To Stop Their Growth?
Physicians began prescribing estrogen to treat children with acromegaly, or excessive-growth disorder, in the 1940s. Later, in the 1950s through the 1970s, healthy preteen and teenage girls whose tall stature was merely deemed unattractive were given estrogen to reduce their predicted height by several inches. But as greater height in girls became increasingly acceptable, even desirable, growth attenuation fell into disfavor. By the turn of the century, the practice was all but obsolete. (Genevieve Field, 3/22)
The New Yorker: The Bugs That Live On Us And Around Us
New Yorkers received tainted water for decades, despite persistent protests over the foul taste. The city only bowed when a group of beer brewers began complaining that unpleasant water was undermining their product. An aqueduct was built that began to draw clean water from the Croton River, in 1842; eventually, cholera all but disappeared from New York. As Sonia Shah demonstrates in her new book, “Pandemic: Tracking Contagions, from Cholera to Ebola and Beyond,” the vicissitudes of political will—along with other environmental factors—can tip the balance between pathogens and humans. (Amanda Schaffer, 3/18)
The New York Times: An Experimental Autism Treatment Cost Me My Marriage
What happens to your relationships when your emotional perception changes overnight? Because I’m autistic, I have always been oblivious to unspoken cues from other people. My wife, my son and my friends liked my unflappable demeanor and my predictable behavior. They told me I was great the way I was, but I never really agreed. (John Elder Robinson, 3/18)
