Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Longer Looks: Opioid Withdrawal; Autism and Epilepsy; and Battling Superbugs
Stat: 'Like You're Living In Hell': A Survivor On What Opioid Withdrawal Did To His Body
The United States is in the throes of a nationwide opioid epidemic. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, more than 165,000 Americans died of prescription opioid overdoses between 1999 and 2014. Part of the reason so many users struggle to get clean is that opioid withdrawal can be physically excruciating. In this video, STAT explores exactly how opioids affect the human body — and why addiction can be so difficult to kick. (Alex Hogan, 5/25)
Georgia Health News: Behind The Curtain: The Story Of Grady’s Narrow Escape
In 2008 the hospital was gushing red ink. It owed the two medical schools that provided its medical staff — Emory University and the Morehouse School of Medicine — more than $60 million. Pharmaceutical companies and vendors were complaining of late payments or no payment at all. And there was constant speculation within the staff that Grady would not meet the next payroll. (Mike King, 5/24)
The Atlantic: The Genetic Link Between Autism And Epilepsy
Five years ago, pediatric neurologist Joseph Gleeson reached out to a doctor in Libya, seeking assistance with some scientific sleuthing. Gleeson’s research team at the University of California, San Diego, was amassing a genetic database of children in the Middle East who have inherited brain conditions. The researchers had a strong hunch that they had uncovered a genetic culprit that could instigate not only autism, but also epilepsy and intellectual disability, conditions that frequently occur alongside autism. In this database, they had just come across a large Libyan family whose members share this rare DNA defect. (Ingfei Chen, 5/23)
The Economist: When The Drugs Don’t Work
Some people describe Darwinian evolution as “only a theory”. Try explaining that to the friends and relatives of the 700,000 people killed each year by drug-resistant infections. Resistance to antimicrobial medicines, such as antibiotics and antimalarials, is caused by the survival of the fittest. (5/21)
The New York Times: Supporting Children Who Serve As Caregivers
In the normal scheme of things, parents and grandparents take care of children when they’re sick or need help or sustenance. But in well over a million American families, this pattern is reversed, with children as young as 8, 9 or 10 partly or fully responsible for the welfare of adults or siblings they live with. (Jane Brody, 5/23)
The Atlantic: The Plan To Avert Our Post-Antibiotic Apocalypse
Under instructions from U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron, economist Jim O’Neill has spent the last two years looking into the problem of drug-resistant infections—bacteria and other microbes that have become impervious to antibiotics. In that time, he estimates that a million people have died from such infections. By 2050, he thinks that ten million will die every year. (Ed Yong, 5/19)
Pacific Standard: Do Doctors Really Die Differently Than The Rest Of Us?
We’ve heard the same verdict on death in the United States for a while: Americans are not expiring well. We’ve been told repeatedly that most doctors, with their intimate knowledge of the medical system, would choose to die with less aggressive end-of-life care, which can often worsen patients’ quality of life in their last days. But recent research has found that, whatever their preferences, doctors end up meeting their ends pretty much like the rest of us. (Elena Gooray, 5/23)
