Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Longer Looks: Interesting Reads You Might Have Missed
The Washington Post: How Troubles At A Factory In India Led To A U.S. Cancer-Drug Shortage
The Intas Pharmaceuticals plant churned out medicine in a sprawling industrial park in western India, far from the minds of American cancer patients until its problems became theirs. The factory accounted for about 50 percent of the U.S. supply of a widely used generic chemotherapy drug called cisplatin, a reality that few understood until the U.S. Food and Drug Administration inspected the site in November. (Gilbert, 6/27)
Undark: The Invisible Effect Medical Notes Could Have On Care
Doctors sometimes describe their patients negatively. How does that affect their treatment down the line? (Novak, 6/28)
The Washington Post: Gene Editing Helped Crack A 100-Year-Old Mystery About Cancer
Researchers using modern gene-editing tools have discovered that the intuition of scientists from more than a century ago was right: Cells with unusual numbers of chromosomes are drivers of cancer. The study, published Thursday in the journal Science, renews scientific attention on an old-fashioned idea, one that could point toward new ways to target cancer cells with drugs. (Johnson, 7/6)
The Wall Street Journal: You May Have Adult ADHD, But Not Because TikTok Says So
More people are aware of adult ADHD, often thanks to videos and posts about it that they see on TikTok and Instagram. Doctors say that’s helped more people get treatment, but not everyone who feels distracted has ADHD. At St. Charles Psychiatric Associates in St. Louis, roughly half of the adults who come in seeking help for what they believe is attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, or ADHD, come in because of something they’ve seen on social media. (Reddy, 7/6)
NPR: 'Every Body' Documentary Explores What It Means To Be Intersex
As an intersex person, Alicia Roth Weigel knows that biological sex is more complicated than two boxes on a birth certificate. "Intersex people are born with physical traits that don't fit neatly into a 'male' or 'female' box," Weigel says. "We have combinations of hormones, chromosomes, internal reproductive organs, external genitalia that just doesn't fit neatly on one of those two binary options that you were taught in elementary biology class are the only options." (Gross, 7/5)
