Viewpoints: Risk-Taking Lessons On Biohacking; In Commentary On Kate Spade’s Death You Hear Common Myths About Depression

Bloomberg: Warning: Don’t Try This Biohacking At Home
Early this year, a 28-year-old self-described biohacker named Aaron Traywick injected himself with an alleged herpes vaccine prepared by fellow amateur medical researchers. The injection, which was broadcast on Facebook Live, brought on a volley of criticism and ethical concerns. Only a few months earlier, a colleague at the company Traywick founded, Ascendance Biomedical, injected himself with an alleged gene therapy for HIV. It’s unlikely either of these treatments worked, but they succeeded in proving how easy it’s become for amateurs to experiment with infectious agents and other biological materials that were once restricted to trained professionals. While it’s illegal to sell biohacked therapies or vaccines, or to test them on human subjects, so far at least, the FDA does not explicitly forbid experimenting on yourself. (Faye Flam, 6/5)

Stat: Taking Risks In Pursuit Of Innovation Is Good. So Is Preparing For It
As a pediatric surgeon who operates on sick children, I’m hardly one to forswear risk taking and innovation. But as I prepared to lead an FDA-approved study on a new surgery to treat sleep apnea in children with Down syndrome, I found myself wondering if our disruption-intoxicated culture places too much emphasis on innovation and not enough on the less glamorous preparatory work that must be undertaken to innovate responsibly. Some people shrink from risk taking, which can limit their potential. Others make the opposite mistake: They jump headlong into risk without carefully thinking it through. So-called biohackers inject themselves with untested gene therapies. Thrill-seekers on YouTube sneak into construction sites and climb the steel skeletons of tall buildings apparently without having undertaken planning or practice runs. ...Our culture of innovation today is all about thinking fast. I think we sometimes need to take a deep breath and inhale a big dose of “slow.” (Christopher Hartnick, 6/7)

Kansas City Star: Kate Spade's Life, And Her Suicide, Resonated With Women
In much of the commentary, you can hear the myths that many Americans tell themselves about depression, manic behavior and suicide — that it only happens in some families, that it can be fought off by sheer will and that it is the juice fueling so many creative talents. The Star published a difficult-to-read interview with Spade’s older sister, Reta Saffo. Her voice is virtually screaming in pain, anger and frustration. It is the voice of someone who has struggled with a mentally ill family member for years. “I’d come so VERY close to getting her to go in for treatment,” Saffo wrote in an email. She discussed the pressure of keeping up the Kate Spade image, admitting that it was part of the reason that her sister was reticent to seek treatment. Doesn’t society own a bit of that response? After all, it’s fed by a reluctance to understand mental illness, to see its treatment in the same light as we do physical ailments, like breast cancer. (Mary Sanchez, 6/6)

The Hill: Kate Spade’s Apparent Suicide Demonstrates US Needs A Mental Health Care Overhaul
The apparent suicide of fashion designer Kate Spade shows that untreated mental illness can affect anyone — regardless of their gender, the color of their skin, or the size of their bank account. Many news reports found that Spade had been suffering with her mental health for a long time. According to the Kansas City Star, Spade’s older sister said that her suicide was, “was not unexpected by me.” As a practicing psychologist, I find that most people with mental health disorders do not seek out or receive effective health-care services and treatments. (Joan Cook, 6/6)

USA Today: Donald Trump's Proposed Title X Changes Backward Step For Birth Control
Like thousands of our physician colleagues, we entered the medical profession to care for our patients when they are sick and to advocate for their needs. We feel compelled to raise serious concerns about proposed changes by the Trump administration to the Title X Family Planning program as they stand to reverse important public health progress and harm many low-income patients. Title X is the only federal program dedicated solely to providing family planning and related health and screening services. It improves the lives of 4 million people a year in all 50 states by funding breast cancer and cervical cancer screening, sexually transmitted disease testing and affordable birth control. Of note, its funds have already been prohibited from being used for abortion services. Established under a Republican president nearly half a century ago, Title X has enjoyed bipartisan support for most of its history. The proposed changes to Title X would have several harmful consequences. (Vivek H. Murthy and Alice T. Chen, 6/6)

The Hill: Despite Trump's Anti-Abortion Polices, The Number Of Abortions Aren't Decreasing
Ironically, many of the policies that Trump’s administration are advancing do not actually reduce abortions. The global gag rule, for instance, is associated with increases in the number of abortions that take place in other countries. So it is not preventing abortions, it is simply making them more dangerous and costing an untold number of women’s lives. Likewise, Trump took aim at the successful Teen Pregnancy Prevention Program in a move courts are now calling illegal. (Dawn Huckelbridge, 6/6)

Bloomberg: Athenahealth's Bush-Clearing Was Overdue
Let the bidding begin for Athenahealth Inc. The health-care technology company on Wednesday said controversial leader and co-founder Jonathan Bush would step down following allegations of inappropriate behavior toward female employees and physical abuse of his ex-wife. Bush, the nephew of President George H.W. Bush, was perceived to be one of the biggest impediments to a sale of Athenahealth. Activist investor Elliott Management Corp. made a $160-a-share takeover bid for the company last month to get the wheels in motion, and Athenahealth has yet to issue a verdict on that particular proposal. (Brooke Sutherland and Max Nisen, 6/6)

New England Journal of Medicine: The Scarlet Virus
This gregarious, confident woman, a “model patient” who had counseled her peers to be honest and candid as they sought care, who had reassured so many others that they would be okay, that she was living proof of that — she had never shared her status with her daughter (or, as I would later learn, any of her family). HIV was still so immense an anguish that one of the most open and free-spirited patients I knew never felt absolved enough to share her status with her loved ones. The burden of being stigmatized affects every aspect of our patients’ capacity to function, to engage in good health care, to adhere to medications, and to participate fully in their own lives as parents, siblings, partners, friends, and employees. (Ila Mulasi, 6/7)

New England Journal of Medicine: Assessing Drug Safety In Children — The Role Of Real-World Data
There are substantial gaps in evidence regarding the safety of many drugs in children. Increasingly, studies assessing drug safety can incorporate data obtained in the course of clinical care to generate real-world evidence and help fill these gaps. (Ann W. McMahon and Gerald Dal Pan, 6/7)