Q&A
Stephen Quake talks about his career in life science, and the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative's ambitious goals
Chan Zuckerberg Initiative
How is the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative going to "to help cure, prevent, or manage all disease by the end of the century"? My colleague Jonathan Wosen asked CZI's head of science, Stephen Quake.
In an interview, they discussed — among other things — how the sight of his wife getting an amniocentesis got Quake, then a theoretical physicist, to turn to life sciences, how his physics background helped him improve prenatal testing, and what made him want to join CZI. And on the question of how to achieve such a bold goal within a century, his answer is: by bringing along the rest of the scientific community. "We're not going to do it ourselves, that's for sure!" he said. More here, including the disclosure of the location of CZI's headquarters.
first opinion
Medical debt relief isn't a silver bullet
Medical debt in the U.S. is a huge, ubiquitous problem, affecting 40% of American adults and amounting to $220 billion a year. But a recent study showed that simple debt relief programs don't seem to cut it: Paying off a patient's debt didn't increase the use of health care services, or reduce financial stress; in fact, some of the beneficiaries of debt relief interventions fared worse than before.
While counterintuitive, these results are telling, and highlight the limited impact of debt forgiveness, writes Katherine Hempstead, a senior policy adviser at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, in First Opinion.
Debt relief programs don't actually address the mechanism by which debt is created, and instead exploit the same incentives that motivate collection agencies. But in order to have significant improvement in the impact of medical debt, systemic reform is inevitable, and debt relief is just a Band-Aid, Hempstead says. Read more.
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