Viewpoints: Is There A Benefit To The New Alzheimer’s Test?; Florida Is Bungling The Measles Outbreak

Bloomberg: Do You Really Want To Find Out If You'll Get Alzheimer's? 
A few years ago, researchers made the unnerving discovery that in the brains of people with Alzheimer’s disease, disordered clumps of abnormal proteins had been growing for 15 or even 20 years before their diagnosis. That means these pathological-looking deposits are silently accumulating in the brains of millions of seemingly healthy individuals in their 50s and 60s. (F.D. Flam, 3/2)

Scientific American: Florida Surgeon General Risks Making A Dangerous Measles Outbreak Much Worse 
An outbreak of measles in Florida has grown to 10 cases. Most have been linked to an elementary school with nearly three dozen unvaccinated students. The count includes seven cases tied to the school, two in the same county, and one travel-related case in another county. The situation is likely to get worse. Florida allows nonmedical vaccine exemptions, which have been slowly increasing in the state since 2021. (Katelyn Jetelina and Kristen Panthagani, 3/1)

Los Angeles Times: How Alabama's IVF Ruling Unmasks The Hypocrisy Of Antiabortion Zealots 
We don’t know whether former Vice President Mike Pence and his wife, Karen, had any leftover embryos after they availed themselves of the advanced reproductive technology known as in vitro fertilization to become the parents of their three children, who are now adults. In November 2022, after the Supreme Court overturned the federal right to abortion, the virulently antiabortion Pence told CBS’ “Face the Nation” that the couple had struggled with infertility for years and that he would never dream of trying to stop others from using such technology to have kids. (Robin Abcarian, 3/3)

The New York Times: Living Slow Deaths Behind Bars
Many long-termers languish in cells or in substandard prison infirmaries or even in so-called long-term care units. With labored breathing, they limp to the mess hall and miss their chance to eat, sink deeper into dementia, fall and get seriously injured, and navigate hearing and vision impairment. At the same time, they are under the supervision of guards who lack the training and often the empathy to properly manage the diminished capacity of many older people to follow often senseless prison rules. When I was a commissioner, from 1984 to 1996, it was unusual for me to meet a parole candidate over the age of 50. Now there are more than 7,500 incarcerated people age 50 or older in New York, or about 25 percent of the state prison population. (Barbara Hanson Treen, 3/3)

The New York Times: Ozempic May Blow The Federal Budget 
The magnitude of potential benefit and potential cost — roughly $15,000 per year per person — posed by these drugs suggests that policymakers may have no alternative but to step in and bring their costs in line with their social benefits. If policymakers succeed in doing so, we could build a model for drug price negotiation that enables an extraordinary medical breakthrough to improve both our health and our fiscal position. Or we could do nothing and create one of the biggest fiscal problems of the decade, with pharma companies profiting at the expense of the taxpayer and of equitable health outcomes. (Brian Deese, Jonathan Gruber and Ryan Cummings, 3/4)