Viewpoints: New Vaccine Guidance Impairs Good Medicine, Governance; Gendered Ageism Limits Our Potential

Stat: RFK Jr., With Covid Booster Move, Mounts An Attack On Health
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s unilateral decision that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention would no longer recommend Covid-19 boosters for healthy people during childhood or pregnancy represents a bulldozing of safeguards intended to keep public health officials honest and their decisions transparent. It also tramples on individuals’ ability to make their own decisions about medical evidence. (Matthew Herper, 5/28)

Stat: How Ageism Holds Back Women In Medicine 
Though women make up more than half of medical students, they remain underrepresented in health care leadership: Women comprise just 29% of full professors, 25% of department chairs, 27% of deans, and 25% of health care CEOs. Among the reasons for this imbalance are the systemic barriers that sideline women out of the workforce. In some specialties, women leave the profession up to 12 years earlier than men. (Adaira I. Landry and Resa E. Lewiss, 5/28)

The Washington Post: The GOP Should Treat Any Decline In Trump’s Health The Same As Biden 
When I decided to write a column on Joe Biden’s cognitive decline and the many people who covered for him, I anticipated pushback from my more liberal readers. As you can see from comments on that column, they delivered, in the thousands. Wasn’t Biden a great president? Didn’t I know he’d just been diagnosed with metastatic cancer? Why kick a man when he’s down? More important, why pick on Biden? Wasn’t Ronald Reagan suffering from Alzheimer’s during his time in office? Isn’t the current occupant of the Oval Office — in addition to his many offenses against our democratic norms — acting a little addled? (Megan McArdle, 5/27)

Stat: Don’t Confuse Race With Genetics In Medicine 
Race has no biological basis and no effect on the onset or progression of disease. Being Black doesn’t put you at a greater risk for sickle cell disease; having ancestry from a place with high rates of malaria does. You can have white skin and still have sickle cell disease, especially if you have Mediterranean ancestry. When race is used as a crude proxy, we miss the real risk — we underdiagnose and misdiagnose. We increase medical costs and preventable diseases. (Jennifer Lutz and Richard Carmona, 5/28)

The Washington Post: Baltimore Program Shows How To Fight Generational Poverty 
Joni Holifield grew up in West Baltimore in a neighborhood plagued by gun violence and addiction. When she was younger, her goal was to leave as soon as she could — and she did. She worked her way up from a call center job to becoming an executive at Comcast. (Leana S. Wen, 5/27)