June 23, 2024

Sponsored By

Editor, First Opinion

The good life you've worked hard to create suddenly comes crashing down. That's the theme of countless crime and mystery novels. It's also the reality for people like Rachel Hall-Clifford, for whom Covid-19 came calling in January 2022 and has never gone away. Millions of people in the United States and around the world are now living with long-term consequences of what may have initially been a mild bout of Covid-19. They experience a variety of seemingly unrelated issues, including extreme fatigue, brain fog, cardiovascular problems, migraine, and more. Hall-Clifford writes in a First Opinion essay, then eloquently explains in an episode of the First Opinion Podcast, how long Covid has changed her life as a wife, mother, friend, and medical anthropologist. If you enjoy listening to podcasts, I recommend you check out this one.

On a different note, health care executive Hal Rosenbluth opens up about his life as a hypochondriac. Rosenbluth understands how this condition costs the U.S. health care system billions of dollars in unnecessary testing and treatment each year, and offers some solutions to the problem. A side note: While doing some fact-checking, I was curious about the name of this condition, which applies to people with excessive concern about their health, especially when accompanied by imagined symptoms. I'd expect something like this to start with "hyper," meaning too much, instead of "hypo," which means too little. It turns out it originally referred to the soft region of the body below (Greek: hupo) the ribs (Greek: khondros). Early physicians thought that this excessive worry was a type of melancholy that arose from the liver and spleen.

And don't miss an account of why journals should retract articles — but are reluctant to act — by Richard Lynn that were written to further his notions of white supremacy.

Those are only the tip of this week's First Opinion topics. You can read them all here.

An installation of 300 cots, set up in front of the Washington Monument in May 2023 to represent people suffering from long Covid and myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome.

Andrew Harnik/AP

Long Covid feels like a gun to my head

I have spent my career studying neglected infectious diseases. Now I have a neglected disease — long Covid.

By Rachel Hall-Clifford

Listen: Why Long Covid can feel scarier than a gun to the head

Millions of people around the world are living with long Covid, a medically perplexing, and potentially debilitating, condition.

By Patrick Skerrett

I'm a hypochondriac. Here's how the health care system needs to deal with people like me

A professed hypochondriac — and high-ranking health care executive — sees way to improve care while eliminating unnecessary tests and costs.

By Hal Rosenbluth

Arantza Pena for STAT

Journals that published Richard Lynn's racist 'research' articles should retract them

Richard Lynn's work, especially his "national IQ" data, has been condemned as seriously flawed. It's time to retract these racist studies.

By Dan Samorodnitsky, Kevin Bird, Jedidiah Carlson, James Lingford, Jon Phillips, Rebecca Sear, and Cathryn Townsend

Medical experts must step up if health justice is to enter the courtroom

First Opinion essay: Georgia case shows need for increased access to medical expert witnesses for defendants. Nine shaken baby syndrome verdicts overturned.

By Zoe Adams and Asher Levinthal

Getting ahead of a non-alcoholic beverage boom among youths

Non-alcoholic beverages are for adults; their marketing to minors shouldn't be permitted, since the path to alcohol use for youth appears fairly direct.

By Molly Bowdring, Aaron S.B. Weiner, and Judith Prochaska

Protesters in Mississippi during the Freedom Summer in 1964.

Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party Records via Wisconsin Historical Society

It's been 60 years since Freedom Summer, yet the fight for affordable, compassionate, and equitable health care is still going on

Freedom Summer in 1964 aimed to challenge segregation in voting rights and health care in the South. The fight is still going on.

By Cheryl R. Clark

With the threat of H5N1 bird flu, hospitals must stay prepared

Hospitals must implement screening protocols, strengthen ties with public health partners, educate health care workers, and engage in public outreach.

By Syra Madad, Carlos del Rio, Scott J. Becker, and Ewa King

'Patients like mine' technologies must rest on solid evidence

First Opinion essay: Expert outlines five-step plan for safeguards with patients-like-mine technologies: "Simple analytics must not be passed off as evidence."