Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Using Brain Implant, Fully Paralyzed Man Spells Out His Thoughts
The New York Times: Brain Implant Allows Fully Paralyzed Patient To Communicate
In 2020 Ujwal Chaudhary, a biomedical engineer then at the University of Tübingen and the Wyss Center for Bio and Neuroengineering in Geneva, watched his computer with amazement as an experiment that he had spent years on revealed itself. A 34-year-old paralyzed man lay on his back in the laboratory, his head connected by a cable to a computer. A synthetic voice pronounced letters in German: “E, A, D…”The patient had been diagnosed a few years earlier with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, which leads to the progressive degeneration of brain cells involved in motion. The man had lost the ability to move even his eyeballs and was entirely unable to communicate; in medical terms, he was in a completely locked-in state. (Moens, 3/22)
Stat: With ‘Brain-Reading’ Research, A Once-Tarnished Scientist Seeks Redemption
Niels Birbaumer, once a prominent neuroscientist at the University of Tübingen in Germany, fell hard from his pedestal three years back. He was accused of scientific misconduct for his controversial “brain-reading” research, stripped of funding, and fired from his job. His work, which showed that people paralyzed with ALS could communicate with a brain-computer interface, was retracted by the journal that published it, PLOS Biology. Now, Birbaumer, who has fiercely defended his previous research, hopes to see his reputation restored. (Keshavan, 3/22)
In other science news —
Fox News: Identical Twin Brothers Each Receive Heart Transplants: 'Quite Unique'
Identical twins Donald and Ronald Crigler have been through just about everything together — including life-saving heart transplants. The 48-year-old twins from the St. Louis area of Missouri were both diagnosed with dilated cardiomyopathy, Donald in 2011 and Ronald in 2014. Donald Crigler received his heart transplant in 2017, while Ronald Crigler received his six months ago, in September 2021. Both men underwent their procedures at Saint Luke’s Mid America Heart Institute in Kansas City, Missouri. (Schmidt, 3/23)
Stat: New Results Against Covid May Point To Better Ways To Study Medicines
The battle against Covid-19 has been marked by false hope, as too many people embraced would-be cures like hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin only to have rigorous studies fail to show the drugs had a benefit. One lesson is to only trust the most rigorous studies, known as randomized controlled clinical trials. But an equally important one: We need to get much better at conducting these rigorous studies more quickly and cheaply — and that goes beyond the Covid pandemic. This is not just a problem of science, but of infrastructure. (Herper, 3/23)
CNN: Long Covid Sheds Light On Chronic Illness: Meghan O'Rourke Q&A
As Covid-19 infection rates fall, doctors and patients are sifting through the wreckage of symptoms left behind. Shortness of breath, heart palpitations, chest pain, fatigue and brain fog — those are just some of the ongoing complaints of a growing number of people, many of whom had only mild cases of acute Covid-19. "Long Covid," also known as post-acute sequelae of Covid-19, is associated with a whole host of problems involving multiple body systems, much like other chronic diseases that often go unrecognized and undiagnosed. Today, doctors and scientists are seeing epic spikes in immune dysregulation following Covid-19. (DuLong, 3/22)
