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GGood morning, today is my grandmother’s 90th birthday. Happy Birthday Joanie! I’m taking the day off to celebrate, so you’ll hear from Timmy tomorrow.
Lawmakers are taking action to preserve telehealth addiction treatment
Two Democratic lawmakers are drafting a bill to preserve health care providers’ right to prescribe controlled substances such as stimulants and buprenorphine via telehealth, STAT’s Lev Facher and Mario Aguilar report in an exclusive story. The news comes months before the expiration of temporary waivers first established by the DEA during the pandemic.
“If flexibility disappears without a permanent framework of some kind of contingency plan in place, we will jeopardize the care of thousands of patients,” one of the lawmakers, Rep. Doris Matsui, said during a House committee meeting last week . Read more in STAT+ about how things are going.
CDC issues mpox health alert for travelers
The CDC is urging certain travelers to get vaccinated against MPox if they are heading to countries in East and Central Africa where the virus has spread. Doctors should recommend vaccines to those who think they might have sex with a new partner, at a commercial location, in exchange for money, or at a large public event while in the region, the agency recommended. The first of two vaccine doses should be given at least six weeks before any travel.
The spread of mpox in Africa – especially in the Democratic Republic of Congo – has been more serious than in the US since 2022. Follow STAT’s mpox coverage for more information.
Is our access to cheap, effective generic medicines threatened?
We’re experts on the Hatch-Waxman Act now, right? (To summarize with this interpreter.) It’s like the generic drug constitution. Generic drugs make up 9 out of 10 prescriptions in the country, but experts worry we won’t always have access to them. In a story from our partners at Tradeoffs, experts cite three major concerns: the increasingly fragile generic drug supply chain, increasing quality issues, and how difficult it is to copy newer, expensive brand-name drugs.
“Times have changed,” said Al Engelberg, a retired attorney who helped draft the Hatch-Waxman Act. “You have to invent a new paradigm for new times.” Read more in STAT+.
What happened when this doctor’s mother got West Nile?
Christopher Hartnick, a head and neck doctor in Boston, knows that you should look for common causes of illness before flipping to the textbook pages that cover the more far-reaching possibilities. So when his mother started getting sick, he thought she might have had a stroke. But then her speech started to become slurred and her blood pressure dropped.
It took a week for the problem to be identified as West Nile virus. Hartnick’s mother eventually began to slowly recover, but one symptom continued to haunt her: “I feel like someone else,” she told her son. “I don’t feel like me.” A colleague of Hartnick’s in infectious diseases confirmed that this is in fact a common experience for West Nile patients. Read more in his First Opion essay about the experience.
Former football players who thought they had CTE saw an increase in suicidality
Chronic traumatic encephalopathy – the brain disorder caused by repetitive head injuries and better known by its acronym CTE – can only be diagnosed through an autopsy after a person has died. But even if someone doesn’t know they have the condition, they may still have it feeling like them, dealing with symptoms such as memory loss, impaired judgment, aggression, depression and more.
A survey of more than 4,100 former footballers who had professional contracts between 1960 and 2020 found that 34% self-identified as having CTE, according to a study published yesterday in JAMA Neurology. The researchers found that these men were twice as likely to experience suicidality as those who did not think they had CTE. The data could be useful in detecting suicidality among former football players and getting help for them, the study authors wrote.
If you or someone you know is considering suicide, contact the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline: call or text 988 or chat 988lifeline.org. For TTY users, use your preferred relay service or dial 711 then 988.
Q&A: Rachel Levine on blood shortages, climate change, and gender-affirming care
You may have heard that there was a blood shortage this summer. There is always a seasonal ebb and flow in blood donations, but experts say climate change could also have an effect, with extreme heat and worsening storms in certain regions keeping people away from blood banks.
To learn more about the shortage, I spoke with Admiral Rachel Levine, the assistant secretary for health care at the Department of Health and Human Services. Levine’s office works to raise awareness of the importance of blood donation and the threat climate change poses to broader health. In a question-and-answer session, Levine spoke about how climate change could impact public health and responded to a criticism published last month in First Opinion that her office has not taken sufficient regulatory action in that area. We also talked about how gender-affirming care has become even more politicized since we last spoke two years ago. Read more.
What we read
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After being suspended for sexual harassment, a prominent biologist’s return to campus sparks consternation. Science
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The letters of Oliver Sacks, New Yorker
- Millions of people are missing from US disability data, STAT
- Africa sees dementia increasing as people live longer Semafor
- Epic Systems, Electronic Health Records Giant, Sued for Alleged Monopolistic Practices, STAT