Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Longer Looks: What Causes Sexual Assault; The Plan To End Measles; And A Food Science Crisis
FiveThirtyEight: Science Says Toxic Masculinity — More Than Alcohol — Leads To Sexual Assault
Years of research both in and out of the lab suggests that there is a connection between young men drinking alcohol and making choices that destroy young women’s lives. But it’s not accurate to say alcohol causes sexual assault. Preventing rape will take more than simply convincing young men not to drink (let alone telling their victims to abstain). That’s because booze is only part of the problem. (Maggie Koerth-Baker, 9/26)
The Atlantic: Opioid Overdoses In Public Bathrooms: Service Workers Respond
People searching for places to use opioids often rely on public bathrooms. This has been an issue in hospitals; at least eight people overdosed in Massachusetts General Hospital in about a year. But it’s not just hospitals. People also overdose in the easily accessible restrooms of popular businesses. In May, a man in Illinois died of a suspected overdose in a Starbucks. Last month, a pregnant woman in Ohio overdosed—and gave birth—in a Burger King. (Lolade Fadulu, 9/21)
WIRED: Here's The Plan To End Malaria With Crispr-Edited Mosquitoes
In 2003, scientists at London’s Imperial College hatched a somewhat out-there idea. They wanted to deal with the increasingly pesticide-resistant mosquitoes that were killing half a million people a year by spreading malaria in sub-Saharan Africa. What biologists Austin Burt and Andrea Crisanti proposed was nothing short of hacking the laws of heredity. (Megan Molteni, 9/24)
Vox: Measles Cases Have Hit A Record High In Europe. Blame Austerity.
Europe is in the midst of a massive measles outbreak, with more than 41,000 cases reported in the first half of this year. The deadly virus has spread to 21 out of 30 countries in the region, and the World Health Organization says cases have hit a record high, with more than Europe’s annual total during the past five years. (Julia Belluz, 9/20)
The Atlantic: Cornell's Brian Wansink: A Crisis In Food Science
Your life has almost certainly been affected by Brian Wansink. Wansink is a professor at Cornell University—for nine more months, before he is to retire, as he described it to me Sunday evening, “sooner and under different circumstances than I expected.” Others describe it as disgrace, an abrupt fall from a position of great prestige that casts a shadow on a highly consequential but already widely distrusted area of science: how food affects our health. (James Hamblin, 9/24)
FiveThirtyEight: Does CBD Really Do Anything?
What is it that CBD is supposed to do? I visited a cannabis dispensary in Boulder to find out what the hype was all about. (Christie Aschwanden, 9/25)
