Table of Contents
Get your daily dose of health and medicine every weekday with STAT’s free Morning Rounds newsletter. Sign up here.
Good morning! Some of my great colleagues are hosting a LinkedIn Live conversation today about how Donald Trump’s presidency could transform healthcare and biotechnology. If you’re overwhelmed by all the news analysis that has come out on this topic in the past week, look no further: Rachel Cohrs Zhang, Allison DeAngelis, and Nick St. Fleur have your back.
That’s today at 1:00 PM ET. More information here.
Why is the opioid recovery community hostile to life-saving medications?
There is a common saying in 12-step recovery circles: “There is no easier, gentler way.” The idea is that recovery from addiction requires sacrifice. But when it comes to opioids, yes is an easier, gentler way. Medications such as methadone and buprenorphine are the gold standard for opioid addiction. They are cheap and easy to distribute. But in programs like Narcotics Anonymous they are completely banned.
In part 5 of his War on Recovery series, STAT’s Lev Facher reports how thousands of the programs and institutions that claim to provide refuge from opioid addiction are among the most hostile to these lifesaving medications. In dozens of interviews, former Narcotics Anonymous participants and residents of sober living homes, detox centers and rehab centers describe how they were forced to choose between basic medicine or a supportive community.
Mark Palinksi, pictured above, said his first time using buprenorphine “was the best [profanity] feeling I have ever felt in my life.” He credits the medication with saving his life, but that didn’t matter to leaders at an NA meeting where Palinksi pushed back on the idea that someone taking the drug wasn’t really “clean.” “Three people came up to me and said, ‘You’re going out, and you’re not coming back here,’” Palinski recalled.
Read more from Lev about how recovery groups offer rejection instead of refuge, and watch the entire series here.
1%
According to a study published yesterday in JAMAThat’s the percentage of people who purchased flavored nicotine vape products online and then had their identities scanned by delivery staff to verify their age — a step required by federal law since 2020.
That 1% came from 105 completed deliveries, most of which did not involve any interaction with drivers. The same 2020 law that required age verification also banned the use of the U.S. Postal System to ship vape products. And yet, 81% of packages came via USPS, while others came via couriers that have their own company policies restricting tobacco shipments.
The study took place in just one U.S. county — San Diego — but the authors note that “its tobacco control ordinances are among the strictest in the country.” And this is when I remind you of the classic video where former STAT reporter Nick Florko and multimedia icon Alex Hogan bought a dozen illegal products, including vapes, right in the FDA’s backyard.
Generative AI is already present in hospitals
OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, had no intention of tackling healthcare. But despite lingering concerns about the technology’s tendency to hallucinate, the technology is already being used in hospitals, pharmaceutical care and cancer care. Early adopters told STAT’s Mohana Ravindranath that they ensure the company does not provide medical advice directly to patients. Instead, they leverage the ability to draw from disparate data sources to generate coherent responses in narrowly defined situations, such as summarizing medical records. proposing treatment plans, or distilling medical jargon into plain language.
Early versions of the generative AI model are known to fabricate information and present it convincingly. But it has improved dramatically, Othman Laraki, CEO of Color Health, told Mohana. Read more in STAT+ about what OpenAI’s contracts with healthcare companies look like, and what’s next for AI in healthcare.
Asthma is incredibly common among American youth, affecting approximately five million children. Research published yesterday in JAMA network opened found that the condition could have an effect on the development of episodic memory in some children.
In a longitudinal study of 475 children aged 9 to 11 years, children with asthma scored lower on memory tests (where they were asked to remember a random series of pictures) than children without asthma. The team also found that those with earlier-onset asthma (meaning they already had it at the start of the two-year study) saw less improvement in their episodic memory over time. The researchers also conducted a cross-sectional analysis of more than 2,000 children.
Asthma is a disease that affects the airways, but there is also systemic inflammation that can infect the brain. The study results indicate that asthma can disrupt children’s neurological development, especially in brain areas such as the hippocampus that are vulnerable to environmental factors, the authors write. More research is needed.
ADHD prepared this researcher for scientific discoveries
For years, Jeff Karp viewed his ADHD as a deficit. But in a new First Opinion essay, he writes about how he came to understand his own unique brain as a source of power. He can use his tendency to hyperfocus to concentrate on a task with particular intensity. “While mundane tasks can feel like Herculean efforts, when genuine curiosity or passion is ignited, I can dive into a subject with ruthless focus, yielding unexpected results,” he writes.
Tired: The range of labels like “lazy,” “unmotivated,” and “disruptive” that teachers used to describe Karp and so many other kids with ADHD. Wired? How people like Karp can use ADHD to become ‘the coder of [their] own brain.” Read more.
What we read
-
Controversial Prop. 65 Warning Labels About Toxic Chemicals Are Effective, Study Says: LA times
-
She beat cancer when she was 27. Her battle had only just begun, Wall Street Journal
- How Pfizer Used Wearables to Tackle the Promise of an Experimental Drug, STAT
- There really is a deep state, Atlantic Ocean
- Invest in ‘triple rapid’ tests to detect mpox, the H5N1 bird flu and more, STAT