Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Longer Looks: Interesting Reads You Might Have Missed
The Washington Post: 'Oppenheimer' Fanfare Ignores N.M. ‘Downwinders’ Caught In Bomb Fallout
What happened here in the aftermath, surviving “downwinders” and their relatives say, is a legacy of serious health consequences that have gone unacknowledged for 78 years. Their struggles continue to be pushed aside; the new blockbuster film “Oppenheimer,” which spotlights the scientist most credited for the bomb, ignores completely the people who lived in the shadow of his test site. (Brulliard and Gilbert, 7/29)
The Washington Post: Controversy At Philadelphia's Mütter Museum Over Human Remains
What happens when 21st-century ethics collide with a 19th-century collection? (Judkis, 7/27)
The Boston Globe: Space Medicine: Doctors Prepare For Future In Earth's Remote Places
he patient arrived at the makeshift clinic near a Mount Everest base camp strapped to the back of a fellow porter. He was unconscious, on the verge of death. The clinic, a plywood hut powered by solar panels and car batteries, was miles from help. It had no imaging equipment to check for head injuries, no lab to help find clues of what might be going wrong. The doctor evaluating him, Luke Apisa, a physician from Massachusetts General Hospital, instead had to rely on a handheld device that showed fluid in his lungs and what he could observe. (Lazar, 7/29)
AP: Blue Blood From Horseshoe Crabs Is Valuable For Medicine, But A Declining Bird Needs Them For Food
A primordial sea animal that lives on the tidal mudflats of the East Coast and serves as a linchpin for the production of vital medicines stands to benefit from new protective standards. But conservationists who have been trying for years to save a declining bird species — the red knot — that depends on horseshoe crabs fear the protections still don’t go far enough. (Whittle, 7/30)
Stat: MIT Professor Designs An Ultrasound Bra To Detect Breast Cancer
Canan Dagdeviren has dedicated her career to creating tools that can capture data from every nook and cranny of the human body. An electrode that reads brain signals in Parkinson’s patients. A tattoo-like patch to detect skin cancer. And now, a bra containing a flexible ultrasound that could one day be used to more comfortably screen for breast cancer. (Lawrence, 7/28)
Scientific American: Your Genes May Influence What You Like To Eat
You are what you eat—and what you eat may be encoded in your DNA. Studies have indicated that your genetics play a role in determining the foods you find delicious or disgusting. But exactly how big a role they play has been difficult to pin down. “Everything has a genetic component, even if it’s small,” says Joanne Cole, a geneticist and an assistant professor at the University of Colorado School of Medicine. “We know that there is some genetic contribution to why we eat the foods we eat. Can we take the next step and actually pinpoint the regions in the genome?” (Young, 8/1)
The Washington Post: It’s A Busy, Noisy, Bright World. For Some, Going Out Is Hard
The unrelenting hum of harsh, fluorescent lights. Aisles crowded with people jostling your cart. Startling announcements blaring over loudspeakers. For some, these common shopping experiences are extremely stressful, debilitating or even painful. They have what is known as sensory processing disorder, a neurological condition that can cause people to be either over- or under-responsive to different internal and external sensory stimuli, as well as experience other sensory processing differences that can lead to challenges with language, coordination, movement or intellectual milestones. (Morris, 8/3)
The Wall Street Journal: In Ukraine, Amputations Already Evoke Scale Of World War I
In February, Ruslana Danilkina, a 19-year-old Ukrainian soldier, came under fire near the front line around Zaporizhzhia in southeastern Ukraine. Shrapnel tore her left leg off above the knee. She clutched her severed thigh bone and watched medics place her severed leg into the vehicle that took her to a hospital. “I was holding the bone in my hands… there and then I realized that this was the end, that my life would never be the same again,” Danilkina said. Danilkina is one of between 20,000 and 50,000 Ukrainians who have lost one or more limbs since the start of the war, according to previously undisclosed estimates by prosthetics firms, doctors and charities. (Pancevski, 8/1)
