Viewpoints: Time For Sen. McConnell To Lead Fight Against Maternal Mortalities; How Fake Science Helped Create The Opioid Epidemic

Louisville Courier-Journal: McConnell, Mothers Are Dying While Giving Birth. Please Help.
Moms are dying. Pregnancy is one of the most common health conditions in the United States, and yet it is also one of the most dangerous. Thanks to reporting in national media, including the USA TODAY Network, pregnancy and pregnancy-related deaths have finally moved to the center of the health policy conversations being had by elected officials. But we must move beyond conversation. We need lawmakers to approve the funding to establish maternal mortality review committees — panels of experts that review pregnancy-related deaths and recommend solutions to prevent them. The House just passed a bipartisan bill to help with funding. We need Sen. Mitch McConnell to take the lead in the Senate. (Bekah Bischoff and Cheryl Parker, 12/12)

Stat: Solving The Fake News Problem In Science
Five sentences. Longer than a tweet but shorter than the average elementary school essay. That’s the length of an influential letter published in 1980 in the New England Journal of Medicine, the world’s most prestigious medical journal. It alleged that narcotics are not addictive. This letter, combined with aggressive marketing efforts by pharmaceutical companies and the emergence of improving pain control as a focus for physicians and hospitals, led doctors to begin prescribing opioids as painkillers for conditions that once simply called for aspirin. The outcome of this perfect storm? Millions of Americans addicted to opioids, and more than 200,000 dead by overdose between 1999 and 2016. And that number keeps growing. Why was such a short letter so influential? It has what are considered to be the hallmarks of a reliable scientific publication: It appears in a prestigious journal and it has been highly cited by other researchers, 608 times as of 2017. (Josh Nicholson, 12/13)

Bloomberg: Crispr Babies: Gene Editing In Embryos Demands Caution, Consensus
A Chinese scientist’s claim to have edited the genes of human embryos has provoked condemnation from scientists worldwide, and rightly so. He Jiankui barged ahead without ensuring that the genetic changes he says he made — meant to confer resistance to HIV infection — would not cause unintended harm to the children, twins who have now been born.His insistence that he fully informed the parents of the risks involved is absurd: The risks are unknown. His experiment was conducted without oversight, and he’s published no report that would allow other scientists to check and verify his assertions. (12/12)

USA Today: Health Care Law Is Alive Despite Trump Drive To Destroy It, So Sign Up
If you want to buy individual health insurance through the Affordable Care Act, you need to do it by Saturday. Yes, this law is still with us. But while President Donald Trump’s two-year effort to destroy it has failed, his many smaller actions have made Americans less secure and ultimately less able to meet their fundamental health care needs. During Trump’s first year in office, the uninsured rate increased for the first time since 2010. This is bad for Americans and their health. It's also politically bad for Trump, and getting worse. (Andy Slavitt, 12/13)

Austin American-Statesman: Deadline Is Approaching To Sign Up For Health Insurance
The time is now and the clock is ticking to sign up for health care through HealthCare.gov or the Texas health insurance exchange. They are open for business, but only until Dec. 15, and we need your help to get anyone who needs it the health insurance that is right for them. (Geronimo Rodriguez Jr., 12/12)

New England Journal of Medicine: Influenza Cataclysm, 1918 
This year marks the centennial of an influenza pandemic that killed 50 million to 100 million people globally — arguably the single deadliest event in recorded human history. Evidence suggests that another pandemic at least as severe may occur one day. (David M. Morens and Jeffery K. Taubenberger, 12/13)

USA Today: Kids Need More Physical Education, It Should Be A Core School Subject
Spot quiz: What is the only subject in school that engages a child’s mind, body, and spirit, promotes their physical and emotional health, helps them to learn better and cultivates the character they need to become productive adults? And what subject is consistently underfunded, understaffed and underscheduled? If you answered physical education to both questions, you get an A grade. (William E. Simon Jr., 12/12)

New England Journal of Medicine: Remembering William
William was smoking on the shelter’s porch the day we met, looking like hell. When I introduced myself, he exhaled a brick of smoke into my face. I would need to earn his trust. But over time, William would lay the foundation for my education in patient care. (Britt Hultgren, 12/13)

The Washington Post: Teaching About Catastrophes While The World Burns Outside
Much of what we study in my class is remote in time — the Black Death, the Irish potato famine. But the 2004 tsunami, Hurricane Katrina and now the California fires remind us that catastrophes are not a thing of the past, nor are they experiences limited to developing nations. Catastrophes are a constant, but by understanding them, those of us in California and beyond can be better prepared for the long process of recovery that lies ahead. (Laird M. Easton, 12/13)

New England Journal of Medicine: MACRA’s Patient Relationship Codes — Measuring Accountability For Costs 
Billing-code modifiers allow clinicians to report their relationship to the patient at a given point in time and for a particular service rendered. Ultimately, they will be used to assess clinician performance, particularly with respect to resource utilization and cost. (Samuel U. Takvorian, Justin E. Bekelman and Matthew J. Press, 12/13)

San Francisco Chronicle: Uprooting A Cause Of Homelessness — Racism
While black San Franciscans make up just 5.5 percent of the city’s general population, more than 40 percent of the city’s homeless population is black. Compare this to the proportion of white San Franciscans in the general population (48 percent) and in the homeless population (44 percent). We know that the black community is not alone in facing inequities in homelessness. (London Breed, 12/12)

Philadelphia Inquirer: Despite Good Intentions, City Council Bill Deters Physician Education And Limits Patient Access
On Nov. 30, the Council of the City of Philadelphia moved a proposed ordinance out of committee that could drastically reduce learning opportunities for physicians and other health-care providers in Philadelphia and require manufacturers to submit any product marketing materials to the city for review, even though the data has been reviewed by the FDA. A final vote is scheduled for Dec. 13. (Brad Klein, 12/12)