Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Viewpoints: Big Wellness Makes Medical Freedom Feel Like A Trap; How Will Medical Boards Regulate AI Doctors?
The New York Times: If This Is Medical Freedom, Why Do I Feel Trapped?
I sometimes find it hard to resist what Big Wellness has to offer, even as I have been critical of an American system that allows so many drugs and supplements to be advertised without adequate disclosures and dispensed with the slightest nod to proper medical approval. (Jessica Grose, 8/1)
Stat: How Should State Medical Boards Handle AI Physicians?
Artificial intelligence is moving fast — so fast that old questions about whether AI should be licensed to practice medicine, in whole or in part, have become pressing ones. These questions are arriving everywhere, in policy debates, pilot programs, and draft legislation, particularly at the state level. (Humayun Chaundhry and Christy Valentine Theard, 8/3)
The New York Times: I Told My Patient That She'd Never Go Home. I Was Wrong.
When we doctors rush to provide certainty about how a patient’s disease will progress, we risk foreclosing possibilities. (Daniela J. Lamas, 8/3)
The New York Times: Small Towns Shouldn’t Have To Defend America’s Water Supply From Iran
Local communities need Washington’s help to fight foreign hackers. (Jen Easterly, 8/2)
Stat: A Neurologist With ALS On What His Diagnosis Has Taught Him
I have delivered ALS diagnoses. I know the exact weight of those words, the way the room changes when a person hears them, and the composure and presence a physician is trained to maintain. I spent nearly a decade in medical training learning how to sit across from someone and explain, gently but honestly, what their future might look like with a progressive, fatal disease that today has no cure. Then I found myself where I never expected to be: on the other side of that conversation. (Christopher Campos, 8/3)
