Closer Look
Drug shortages hit ovarian cancer patients harder
Michelle Gabel for STAT
The now-familiar cancer drug shortage is especially difficult for ovarian cancer patients. That's because the platinum drugs used to treat it — cisplatin and carboplatin, in combination with the chemotherapy drug paclitaxel — help the most but are among the hardest to find. The lack of good alternatives to platinum drugs "reflects the fact that it does work so well," said Michael Birrer of the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences.
STAT's Annalisa Merelli tells us what that means for one patient: Sarah Evans (above), who at 68 is dealing with her second ovarian cancer recurrence. Her cancer was responding to carboplatin treatment earlier this year, but when there was no carboplatin available in May, she was shifted to cisplatin, which caused more severe side effects. She's back on carboplatin now, but her treatment wasn't as effective. "Psychologically it did a little number on me," she said last month. Read more.
pandemic
Doctors who spread Covid misinformation faced few consequences
If public health recommendations had been followed, roughly one-third of U.S. Covid deaths could have been avoided, a new study in JAMA Network Open begins, citing higher death rates for unvaccinated vs. vaccinated people. Individual health decisions may stem from early inconsistencies from public health officials, mistrust of science, or political division. But this study also points to doctors, cataloging how 52 of them amplified misinformation — defined as "false, inaccurate, or misleading information according to the best evidence available at the time" — about vaccines, medication, masks, and conspiracy theories, among other topics.
"Although professional speech may be regulated by courts and the FDA has been called on to address medical misinformation, few physicians appear to have faced disciplinary action," the authors write. "Factors such as licensing boards' lack of resources … and state government officials' challenges to medical boards' authority to discipline physicians propagating misinformation may limit action."
whoa
Pink Floyd song recreated from brain activity
Ludovic Bellier, PhD (CC-BY 4.0, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)
Listen here. Can you hear it? It's a little muffled, but still recognizable as Pink Floyd's "Another Brick in the Wall, Part 1." The song comes from the brains of 29 epilepsy patients with electrodes already implanted in their brains. While they listened to the song, intracranial EEGs recorded their neural activity in response to guitar, rhythm, voice, and other elements that compose a song, translated into 128 frequencies. This kind of computer remodeling has been used before to recode and rebuild speech, but the authors believe this is the first time it's been attempted in music, they write in their PLOS Biology study.
They hope to apply what they've learned to brain-machine-interfaces that might help people better perceive rhythm and melody in speech, too. Why did patients hear this particular song? "If they said, 'I can't listen to this garbage,'" the data would have been terrible, study co-author Gerwin Schalk told the New York Times.
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