Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Longer Looks: Interesting Reads You Might Have Missed
Nature: How COVID Broke The Evidence Pipeline
It wasn’t long into the pandemic before Simon Carley realized we had an evidence problem. It was early 2020, and COVID-19 infections were starting to lap at the shores of the United Kingdom, where Carley is an emergency-medicine doctor at hospitals in Manchester. Carley is also a specialist in evidence-based medicine — the transformative idea that physicians should decide how to treat people by referring to rigorous evidence, such as clinical trials. As cases of COVID-19 climbed in February, Carley thought that clinicians were suddenly abandoning evidence and reaching for drugs just because they sounded biologically plausible. Early studies Carley saw being published often lacked control groups or enrolled too few people to draw firm conclusions. (Pearson, 5/12)
The Washington Post: Chronic Pain Can Be Burdensome. Isolation During The Pandemic Can Make It Worse.
Athena Knight, who served nearly 20 years in the Army, has undergone multiple surgeries for injuries related to her military service. As a result, she has had to cope with chronic pain for many years. She also struggles with debilitating migraines, and suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder, having been inside the Pentagon during the 9/11 terrorist attack. Until the pandemic hit, she had been able to manage her pain with physical therapy, acupuncture, meditation, electro-stimulation, non-opioid medications and — for PTSD — in-person counseling. The coronavirus disrupted those strategies for her and many others. (Cimons, 5/9)
The Washington Post: Samantha Power Wants To Restore U.S. Prestige By Getting 'Vaccines Into Arms' Around The World
Late last fall, as Joe Biden prepared to take office and act on his promise to restore America’s global leadership, Samantha Power had something to say.It was all well and good for Biden to declare “America is back.” But nothing would prove it more, after four years of Donald Trump, than a show of sheer American competence. ... The coronavirus pandemic, she argued, provided just such an opening. By spearheading global vaccine distribution, the United States could beat China at the biggest soft-power contest in generations, regain its reputation as the world’s “indispensable” nation and, not incidentally in Power’s view, do good. (DeYoung, 5/11)
Also —
The New York Times: The Psychedelic Revolution Is Coming. Psychiatry May Never Be the Same.
It’s been a long, strange trip in the four decades since Rick Doblin, a pioneering psychedelics researcher, dropped his first hit of acid in college and decided to dedicate his life to the healing powers of mind-altering compounds. Even as antidrug campaigns led to the criminalization of Ecstasy, LSD and magic mushrooms, and drove most researchers from the field, Dr. Doblin continued his quixotic crusade with financial help from his parents. Dr. Doblin’s quest to win mainstream acceptance of psychedelics will take a significant leap forward on Monday when the journal Nature Medicine is expected to publish the results of his lab’s study on MDMA, the club drug popularly known as Ecstasy and Molly. (Jacobs, 5/9)
Scientific American: Damage To A Protective Shield Around The Brain May Lead To Alzheimer's And Other Diseases
The blood-brain barrier deteriorates with aging, but animal studies indicate repairs can make old brains look young again. (Kaufer and Friedman, 5/1)
The New York Times: Palliative Care In The ICU: What To Know About Time-Limited Trials
In 2019, Dr. Richard Leiter, a palliative care specialist, met a patient and the man’s wife in the intensive care unit at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. The patient, in his 70s, had heart disease and kidney problems. But he had been living at home and doing reasonably well until sepsis, a life-threatening bloodstream infection, sent him to an emergency room. He had already spent several days on a ventilator, requiring drugs to keep his blood pressure from plummeting. Now, “his kidneys were no longer working and he wasn’t waking up at all,” Dr. Leiter recalled, adding, “We were very worried that he wasn’t going to survive.” (Span, 5/10)
PBS NewsHour: It’s Time To Recognize The Damage Of Childbirth, Doctors And Mothers Say
Generations of women have quietly endured the messy business of giving birth. Even after reading stacks of pregnancy books, faithfully following their health care provider’s advice and successfully delivering a healthy baby, women often enter motherhood with what suddenly feels like a broken body. They involuntarily pee when they sneeze or cough. It hurts to sit. They may feel consumed by anxiety or depression. Often, they feel too ashamed to ask for help, especially when they are laser-focused on trying to care for their brand-new baby. Many find that when they do speak up, their concerns are waved away as part of the healing process — one of the wide array of “normal” changes that happen to the body after giving birth. (Santhanam, 5/7)
The Washington Post: A Fire Drill Led A Teen To Fight For School Accessibility
As Catherine Contreras tells it, a fire drill changed how she saw her school. The teenager doesn’t have a disability, but some of her closest friends do, and she was with two of them in a theater class at her Maryland high school when the fire alarm started blaring. ... Her friend was frightened by the steepness of the sidewalk and the unevenness of the grassy field that the group had to pass over to get to a designated meeting spot, Contreras says. (Vargas, 5/5)
The New York Times: New Drugs Could Help Treat Obesity. Could They End The Stigma, Too?
If these new drugs allow obesity to be treated like a chronic disease — with medications that must be taken for a lifetime — the thought is that doctors, patients and the public might understand that obesity is truly a medical condition. “We all believe this drug will change the way we see obesity being treated,” said Dr. Caroline Apovian, an obesity specialist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. (Kolata, 5/11)
