Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Longer Looks: Interesting Reads You Might Have Missed
The Washington Post: Ben Franklin’s Bitter Regret That He Didn’t Immunize His 4-Year-Old Son Against Smallpox
Five weeks had passed since the death of Benjamin Franklin’s son, and rumors were swirling. Four-year-old Francis “Franky” Franklin had died after being inoculated for smallpox, the rumor went, and now his pro-inoculation father was trying to hide it. The gossip reached such a point that on Dec. 30, 1736, the grieving father, then 30, confronted it in the pages of his newspaper, the Pennsylvania Gazette. “Inasmuch as some People are, by that [rumor] ... deter’d from having that Operation perform’d on their Children,” he wrote, “I do hereby sincerely declare, that he was not inoculated, but receiv’d the Distemper in the common Way of Infection.” (Brockell, 8/14)
Los Angeles Times: 'Here We Go Again': Inside A COVID-19 Unit As Cases Surge
It wasn’t long past noon and Dr. Anita Sircar found herself again saying the phrase she had repeated in the halls of Providence Little Company of Mary Medical Center in Torrance, like the chorus to a rueful song: “Here we go again.” Twelve new patients suffering from the virus had come in overnight, including a 19-year-old whose parents were already hospitalized for COVID-19. And they kept coming in that morning, one after the next. Nurses were strategizing about how to expand the isolated segment of the intensive care unit that they had set aside for the sickest of their COVID-19 patients as room after room was occupied — the kind of planning that the hospital has had to refine for pandemic surges as it juggles the needs of other patients. (Alpert Reyes, 8/15)
Medscape: Shouldn't Docs Who Spread False COVID-19 Info Lose Their Licenses?
Across the country, state medical licensing boards and state and national medical associations are struggling with how to respond to scientifically baseless public statements about COVID-19 by some physicians such as [Dr. Daniel] Stock. They fear such statements are increasing public confusion and are heightening political conflict. Physicians accused of spreading false information include public officials such as Scott Atlas, MD, who served as President Donald Trump's COVID-19 advisor, and Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, an ophthalmologist, whose YouTube account was temporarily suspended in August after he posted a video disputing the effectiveness of masking in stopping the spread of COVID-19. (Meyer, 8/18)
Politico: Inside America’s Covid-Reporting Breakdown
There were too many cases to count. Covid-19 was spreading rapidly throughout the United States, as cold winter weather began to drive people indoors, but the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was flying blind: The state agencies that it relied on were way behind in their tracking, with numbers trickling in from labs by fax or even snail mail. (Banco, 8/15)
The Washington Post: In Confronting The Opioid Crisis, A Video Game Could Become A Valuable New Tool
As drug-related deaths have spiked across the United States in recent years, doctors seeking to curb that surge are getting an unlikely new tool: a video game. The game, titled “PlaySmart,” was developed by Lynn Fiellin and funded in part by the National Institutes of Health. A professor at the Yale School of Medicine and Yale Child Study Center, as well as the founder and director of the play2PREVENT video game development lab, Fiellin hopes that by using “PlaySmart,” she and her team will be able to collect more data related to adolescent opioid misuse and provide aid to both kids who play the game and the adults who work those youths. “The more you know that something is dangerous, the less likely you are to do it,” Fiellin said, noting that many opioids are prescription drugs and can sometimes be found in their homes. (Smith, 8/11)
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The Washington Post: Football’s Darrell Green Was Called The ‘Ageless Wonder.’ Now He Wants To Be A Model For Senior Health.
During his 19-year career as a cornerback for the Washington Football Team, Darrell Green could eat pretty much anything he wanted and hardly lose a step. He dined on burgers and fries, and shakes and pies, and still won all four of the National Football League’s Fastest Man competitions that he ran in. Drafted by Washington in 1983, Green was 22, just shy of 5-foot-9, and weighed 173 pounds. When he retired in 2002, at age 42, he weighed 189, having gained only 16 pounds. But in retirement, he was no longer motivated to do Olympic-level workouts twice a day. The fat in that fast-food diet that he used to burn off so easily began clinging to his waistline. (Milloy, 8/17)
The Washington Post: Exercising In This Sticky Heat Can Lead To Chafing. Here’s How To Ease The Pain
The warmer weather and longer days of summer — as well as continuing concerns about visiting indoor workout facilities — mean more outdoor exercise, more sweat and more potential for skin chafing. Generally caused by a combination of excess moisture and friction, chafing can affect runners, hikers, surfers, cyclists and swimmers. But you don’t have to be a fitness buff to experience chafing: Simply going about daily activities in warm weather is enough to create issues for some people. “Summer is a big setup for chafing,” says Harry Dao, dermatologist and chair of the dermatology department at Loma Linda University. He compares skin affected by chafing, also known as intertrigo or irritant contact dermatitis, to a dry riverbed. “When water evaporates out of that area, the mud or dirt will crack.” When your skin cracks after too much continuous exposure to sweat, water, and/or friction, it becomes red, itchy, and painful, and in extreme cases, bloody. As Min Deng, a dermatologist at MedStar Health in Chevy Chase explains, the top layer of skin can “exfoliate” to the point where it’s completely rubbed off. (Moore, 8/13)
Modern Healthcare: The Doctor At The Statehouse: How Medical Associations Fought Against Anti-Transgender Youth Bills
This past legislative session, Montana Medical Association CEO Jean Branscum knew her group would be quite busy educating lawmakers on the intricacies of care that transgender children receive. Lawmakers were advancing legislation that would have limited doctors’ ability to provide gender-affirming care to children and teens. “(There was) a gap in regards to knowledge of what they were really talking about, and what the reality was in regards to individuals who have gender dysphoria, so we knew there was a great need for education,” Branscum said. “And we thought we could be the best group to come in and provide evidence and science-based conversation with the legislators on what otherwise is a very polarizing topic.” (Gillespie, 8/17)
The Washington Post: He Was Paralyzed And Told He’d Never Walk Again. 12 Years Later, He Walked At His Graduation.
Corey Borner was having such a good spring football practice that he asked his coach to keep it going: “One more play.”Borner, who was looking to make his mark in May 2009 at his Dallas-area high school, prepared as “Deuce 84 P-Bubble and Up” was called as the final play of practice — a call that turned his life upside down. After the freshman cornerback made the tackle on the bubble screen, the 16-year-old urged teammates who came over to congratulate him on the hit not to touch him. Borner could not feel anything from his head to his feet. As he lay motionless on the field at DeSoto High School, he kept repeating the same phrase: “God, be with me.” (Bella, 8/16)
The Washington Post: An Employee Embezzled $12.8 Million From A Medical School’s Nonprofit. He Spent Most Of It At One Adult Site
Ralph Puglisi had been embezzling millions of dollars for years when he decided to try a new trick: laundering money through the pornographic website profile of a relative’s fiancee, investigators found. For a time, it worked. With the millions he stole, Puglisi renovated his house, covered rent for one of his parents, paid for a relative’s wedding expenses, traveled, chartered yachts and bought land on St. John in the U.S. Virgin Islands, investigators found.But higher-ups at the nonprofit where Puglisi worked began digging into ballooning expenses. It didn’t take long to unearth what he had been hiding. Puglisi, 59, who was a manager at a nonprofit tied to the University of South Florida’s medical system, admitted he stole at least $12.8 million over a six-year period, according to court records filed in the U.S. District Court in Tampa. He was working as an accounts manager for the University Medical Services Association, which pays for the operation of USF’s sprawling medical system. (Edwards, 8/17)
The New York Times: Are Robotic Surgeries Really Better?
Surgical procedures performed with the aid of a robot is sometimes marketed as the “best” form of surgery. But a recent review of 50 randomized controlled trials, testing robot-assisted surgeries against conventional methods for abdominal or pelvic procedures, suggests that while there may be some benefits to robotic surgery, any advantages over other approaches are modest. Robotic surgery is performed by surgeons, not robots. But instead of conventional hand-held tools used in laparoscopic surgery, which involves tiny incisions, and open surgery, in which the surgeon enters the body through a large incision, the doctor uses a machine. The surgeon controls the machine’s tools remotely by using joysticks and foot controls while viewing the surgical site through a high-definition monitor that provides a three-dimensional image of the procedure. (Bakalar, 8/16)
