Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Viewpoints: Lessons From A 1957 Bird Flu Pandemic; Trump's Transgender Order Isn't Supported By Science
The Conversation: US Dodged A Bird Flu Pandemic In 1957 Thanks To Eggs And Luck. Can We Do It Again?
In recent months, Americans looking for eggs have faced empty shelves in their grocery stores. The escalating threat of avian flu has forced farmers to kill millions of chickens to prevent its spread. Nearly 70 years ago, Maurice Hilleman, an expert in influenza, also worried about finding eggs. Hilleman, however, needed eggs not for his breakfast, but to make the vaccines that were key to stopping a potential influenza pandemic. (Alexandra M. Lord, 2/9)
The Baltimore Sun: The Science Doesn't Support Trump's Order On Transition Treatments
President Donald Trump last month issued an executive order, “Protecting Children from Chemical and Surgical Mutilation,” that promises to protect children from “destructive and life-altering procedures.” On the contrary, the executive order is full of inaccuracies and is cruel to children, adolescents and young adults (and their families) who suffer from gender dysphoria. (Oscar Taube, 2/9)
Stat: Combating Antibiotic Resistance Needs An Entirely New Approach
It’s easy to criticize the FDA, whether you think the agency makes it too hard for innovative treatments to help the patients who need them or that Big Pharma holds too much sway over decisions. We’ll avoid that fight and instead focus on why the public, with the FDA’s help, has misunderstood why so many Americans die from resistant infections every year. In short: The Food and Drug Administration focuses on bugs instead of patients. (Diana M. Zuckerman and John H. Powers III, 2/10)
The Baltimore Sun: Everyone Deserves Access To A Life-Saving Organ Transplant
Three days into my medical career, my first patient died. She was a 27-year-old who succumbed to an autoimmune liver disease. She had been denied a liver transplant for years because she was uninsured and undocumented. I watched her young children as they cried at her bedside, saying, “Mami no te vayas!” (mama, don’t go!). (Christine Lopez, 2/8)
Kansas City Star: Hope For Kansas Intellectual And Developmental Disabilities
I spent eight years on the Kansas Intellectual/Developmental Disability waiver waitlist. In my years on the list, I experienced more psychiatric hospital stays than I can count or even remember. I survived a suicide attempt. I wore my family out emotionally and physically as they tried to help me navigate a world that often felt unaccommodating and overwhelming. There were times when my meltdowns led to the police being called — and then I ended up in the back of a police car, even though I did nothing illegal or because I was a danger to anyone. (Whit Downing, 2/10)
Stat: The Life Sciences Industry’s Biochemical Focus Isn’t Working For Patients
The life sciences industry is experiencing an identity crisis. Despite great scientific innovation in the past decade and the highest per capita expenditure on health care in the world, U.S. patients are struggling. Obesity has more than doubled since the 1990s and has quadrupled in adolescents, anxiety and depression continue to rise, cancer rates and heart failure deaths have drastically increased in young adults, and health disparities persist as an economic and moral burden. (Noel Theodosiou and Yogi Hendlin, 2/10)
Stat: Why I Hate Talking About Indirect Research Costs
I’ve spent more than two decades of work in biomedical research policy, and there is no issue I hate talking about more than indirect costs. These costs, which are more correctly called facilities and administration (F&A) costs, are the expenses associated with research that are hard to assign to individual research projects, like utilities, physical laboratory buildings, or security needs, so they are charged using rates negotiated at the institutional level, between universities or research institutions, and the federal government. (Carrie Wolinetz, 2/8)
