Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Longer Looks: Roller-Skating For Reproductive Rights, The Truth About Dentists & The Measles Resurgence
The New Yorker: Roller-Skating For Reproductive Rights
Stacey Abrams has called the life Act—which passed by one vote—“scientifically unsupportable” and “evil.” The A.C.L.U. of Georgia plans to fight it in court. Earlier this month, some three dozen protesters wearing black held a mock funeral on the third floor of the state capitol, for the seats of lawmakers who supported it. (Charles Bethea, 4/15)
Texas Monthly: Sorting Fact From Fiction In The Story Of Pro-life Celebrity Abby Johnson
Take that “road to Damascus” moment away, and you not only don’t have a Christian film, you have no Abby Johnson; it’s the moment that defines her as a conservative Christian celebrity. Which perhaps explains why she devoted the majority of her recent Federalist article to refuting Planned Parenthood’s assertion, first reported by Texas Monthly ten years ago, that the Bryan clinic has no record of the procedure Johnson described in her memorable account. (Nate Blakeslee, 4/16)
The Atlantic: The Truth About Dentistry
We have a fraught relationship with dentists as authority figures. In casual conversation we often dismiss them as “not real doctors,” regarding them more as mechanics for the mouth. But that disdain is tempered by fear. (Ferris Jabr, 4/15)
The New York Times: ‘I Want What My Male Colleague Has, And That Will Cost A Few Million Dollars’
Northern San Diego County is a scientific mecca, home to some of the world’s leading biotech companies, renowned research institutions and a world-class university. But the Salk Institute for Biological Research, perched on a cliff above the Pacific Ocean in La Jolla, is distinguished even among its neighbors. Jonas Salk founded the institution in 1963 as a kind of second legacy, after the millions of lives saved with his polio vaccine. He envisioned it as a place where scientists would work in open, collaborative laboratories, free from university bureaucracies: They would be professors, supervising graduate students and postdocs, but with no teaching requirements. He recruited 10 of the top men in biology to join him, including Francis Crick, newly famous for discovering, with James Watson, DNA’s double helix. In a 1960 letter, Watson called the idea “Jonas’s utopia.” (Mallory Pickett, 4/18)
Vox: Measles Is Back Because States Give Parents Too Many Ways To Avoid Vaccines
Most of the people with measles right now weren’t immunized from the virus. They all live in places that permit a variety of nonmedical — religious or philosophical — exemptions from vaccines. (Julia Belluz, 4/18)
The Atlantic: When Medical Schools Become Less Diverse
At Texas Tech University’s medical school, just 4 percent of students are black; 13 percent are Hispanic. And those numbers might soon shrink. Research has shown that’s what happens when schools stop considering race in admissions, and that’s what the school plans to do. (Adam Harris, 4/16)
Wired: Crispr Gene Editing Is Coming For The Womb
William Peranteau is the guy parents call when they’ve received the kind of bad news that sinks stomachs and wrenches hearts. Sometimes it’s a shadow on an ultrasound or a few base pairs out of place on a prenatal genetic test, revealing that an unborn child has a life-threatening developmental defect. (Megan Molteni, 4/17)
