Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Longer Looks: Interesting Reads You Might Have Missed
The Wall Street Journal: The Quest For Treatments To Keep Weight Off After Ozempic
Drugs or procedures to keep weight off could fuel an even bigger bonanza than Ozempic and its immensely profitable cousins. Losing weight is temporary, but maintaining it is lifelong. Maintaining weight is also a different challenge from losing it. (McKay, 5/8)
ProPublica: This School for Autistic Youth Can Cost $573,200 a Year. It Operates With Little Oversight, and Students Have Suffered
No state agency has authority over Shrub Oak, one of the country's most expensive therapeutic boarding schools. As a result, parents and staff have nowhere to report bruised students and medication mix-ups. (Smith Richards and Cohen, 5/8)
The New York Times: When Prison and Mental Illness Amount to a Death Sentence
Markus Johnson slumped naked against the wall of his cell, skin flecked with pepper spray, his face a mask of puzzlement, exhaustion and resignation. Four men in black tactical gear pinned him, his face to the concrete, to cuff his hands behind his back. He did not resist. He couldn’t. He was so gravely dehydrated he would be dead by their next shift change. “I didn’t do anything,” Mr. Johnson moaned as they pressed a shield between his shoulders. (Thrush, 5/5)
ProPublica: Facing Unchecked Syphilis Outbreak, Great Plains Tribes Sought Federal Help. Months Later, No One Has Responded
The syphilis rate among Indigenous people in the Great Plains is higher than at any point in 80 years of records. More than 3% of Native American babies born in South Dakota last year had the preventable and curable — but potentially fatal — disease. (Barry-Jester, 5/7)
The New York Times: Lead In Beethoven’s Hair Offers New Clues To Mystery Of His Deafness
Using powerful technologies, scientists found staggering amounts of lead and other toxic substances in the composer’s hair that may have come from wine, or other sources. High doses of lead affect the nervous system, and could have destroyed his hearing. (Kolata, 5/6)
The Washington Post: The Children Who Remember Their Past Lives
In the beginning, it seemed like Nina was just an imaginary friend. Two-year-old Aija had invented plenty of fictional characters before, but her parents — Ross, a musician, and Marie, a psychologist — noticed right away that Nina was different. From the time Aija learned how to talk, she talked about Nina, and her descriptions were remarkably consistent. Aija told her parents that Nina played piano, and she loved dancing, and she favored the color pink (Aija emphatically did not). When Aija spoke as Nina, in the first person, Aija’s demeanor changed: Her voice was sweeter and higher-pitched, her affect more gentle and polite than what Marie and Ross typically expected from their rambunctious toddler. (Gibson, 5/2)
The Wall Street Journal: A Lawyer’s Slide Into Psychosis Was Captured In A WSJ Profile. He Tells Us His Story
Rob Dart isn’t the successful lawyer and father who left the people who love him two years ago to follow his delusions. That Rob lives in the memory of friends and in family photos. This Rob, who arrives on time for our interview, is standing by the roadside under the blazing California sun, his eyes and hair competing in wildness, his grin difficult not to match. In the past year, this Rob has been hospitalized, shot, housed, unhoused, a winner and a loser in court battles. Ultimately, he has shed every scrap of evidence of his life before illness: his connections to his son, family and most friends. (Wernau, 5/4)
North Carolina Health News: Using Nature To Treat Mental Health Patients
Psychiatrist Nora Dennis works to build a care farm where people with mental illness can be healed as they nurture plants and animals.(Hoban, 5/8)
The New York Times: How Bad Are Ultraprocessed Foods, Really?
They’re clearly linked to poor health. But scientists are only beginning to understand why. (Callahan, 5/6)
