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Buongiorno STAT readers, it’s been some time! The final time I hosted this text I knew of standard sleep patterns, predictable schedules, a house that didn’t resemble the positioning of a nuclear catastrophe. Now I’ve a toddler, and I’ve traded the entire above for … pleasure (not solely, or course. However quite a lot of it!). Talking of, there’s a thought-provoking piece about surrogacy in our lineup about which I’d love to listen to your opinions. Hit reply, will you?
‘I don’t suppose AI in well being care has had its penicillin second but’
AI instruments designed to make well being care extra environment friendly are ubiquitous, although many stay piecemeal and siloed, as researchers wrestle to scale them up. Enter Vega Well being, a startup designed to assist well being methods undertake AI expertise past the ever present documentation instruments.
Founder Mark Sendak left an instructional profession at Duke College to pursue this enterprise. He stated he needs to create the “Costco of well being care AI,” providing well being methods a subscription charge to entry to a curated market of AI instruments able to be adopted. It’s an infrastructure designed to satisfy the “penicillin second” of well being AI, Sendak advised STAT’s Casey Ross, when “someone invents one thing that quickly saves thousands and thousands of lives.” Learn extra concerning the technical challenges of such a platform, its enterprise mannequin, and the way Vega Well being is considering the long run.
Can higher regulation remedy surrogacy’s moral challenges?
Surrogacy — particularly business surrogacy — doesn’t have many supporters. An unlikely coalition of spiritual establishments, feminists, and human rights advocates condemn it wholeheartedly, and a UN rapporteur has labeled it a type of violence in opposition to girls. But, for as many as 17% of infertile girls, surrogacy is the one choice to have genetically associated kids.
There are not any scarcity of issues with surrogacy — exploitation, coercion, scams, inequality. However a robust regulatory framework can create a extra moral system, New York College ethicist Arthur L. Caplan argues in a brand new First Opinion essay. For example, he writes, a system much like kidney donation might regulate altruistic surrogacy, and stricter disclosures and screenings needs to be utilized to business circumstances. However these interventions must be made shortly, or else the follow could possibly be totally banned. Learn extra.
The scientific technique turned in opposition to science, and an knowledgeable’s tackle Trump’s drug insurance policies
The primary Trump administration funded mRNA vaccine improvement and celebrated its historic success. The second has demonized the expertise, canceling a $766 million contract for chicken flu vaccines and filling a vaccine advisory board with vaccine and mRNA skeptics.
It’s only the start, enterprise capitalist and Moderna co-founder Noubar Afeyan argued on the STAT Summit in Boston. “The scientific technique — the place scientists are skilled to be continually skeptical — is getting used as an ‘opening,’ he stated, for individuals to come back in ‘with zero background, zero speculation, and simply make s— up.’ Already, he stated, persons are questioning chemotherapy. They’ll doubtless query new breakthrough medication for different severe ailments,” writes Jason Mast. However not each well being innovator agrees together with his dire prediction. Learn extra.
Additionally on the summit: Stephen Taylor, the president of the American Society of Habit Drugs, spoke with Lev Facher about his issues with the Trump administration’s hardline drug insurance policies, and criticized well being secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr’s claims that 12-step restoration packages needs to be the “gold commonplace” for opioid habit restoration — versus medicines similar to methadone and buprenorphine.
Learn extra concerning the panel to seek out out what makes Taylor hopeful about the way forward for habit therapy.
Biodiversity is as essential to well being as local weather
Local weather change is formally a public well being subject. At COP28 in 2023, greater than 150 international locations endorsed a declaration on local weather and well being, and the UN referred to as local weather change “the one greatest well being menace going through humanity.” However one other subject is simply as crucial for well being — one which 200 scientific journals have stated needs to be thought-about inextricable from local weather change: biodiversity.
Biodiversity is important for our survival — it evokes drug discovery, gives meals, and regulates illness transmission. But it hasn’t captured the eye of the well being neighborhood the best way local weather change has, write Neil Vora, a doctor and senior adviser for One Well being at Conservation Worldwide and Chris Walzer, a wildlife veterinarian and the chief director of Well being on the Wildlife Conservation Society. Learn extra.
California will quickly roll out an $11 insulin pen
Beginning in January 2026, low-cost insulin will make an entrance within the California market. After three years of improvement, the generic insulin shall be made accessible in packs of 5 pens for $55 by the CalRx program, launched in 2020 by Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) to offer entry to cheaper medicines to California residents.
The pens shall be manufactured by Biocon Biologics utilizing a biosimilar model of insulin glargine, and distributed by nonprofit Civica Rx. The branded model of the product, Sanofi’s Lantus, prices pharmacies upward of $92, studies Ed Silverman, who has particulars about different medication coming to CalRx sooner or later.
What we’re studying
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America’s retreat from help is devastating Somalia’s well being system, The New York Instances
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What comes after hunger in Gaza? The New Yorker
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It’s a Chook! It’s a Aircraft! It’s a Chemtrail? New Conspiracy Principle Takes Wing at Kennedy’s HHS, KFF Well being
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mRNA Covid pictures could enhance the consequences of sure most cancers therapies, research suggests, STAT Information
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‘Woman, Take Your Loopy Capsules!’ Antidepressants Recast as a Scorching Life-style Accent, The Wall Avenue Journal