Torie Bosch is back!

August 18, 2024 Check out STAT+

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By Pat Skerrett Departing editor, First Opinion

Torie Bosch (torie.bosch@statnews.com) is back at the helm of First Opinion. She's amazing: it took all of five seconds on Wednesday for her to get up to speed. Please welcome Torie back by showering her with timely, forceful, provocative, must-read essays she can't wait to publish. My stint back at STAT filling in for Torie reminded me of the passion and hard work of the people who submit essays to First Opinion. They have day jobs, families to tend to, and maybe even find time to go hiking or read a book. But they somehow carve out the hours needed to write, clearly and with purpose, about wrongs that need to be righted, injustices that must be acknowledged, issues that deserve wider recognition, and things that just tick them off. To borrow a line from some old Anheuser-Busch commercials, here's to you, essay writers: May the muse be with you, and may there be a receptive reader at the other end of your pitch. This week's First Opinions kicked off with an essay deftly responding to the FDA's denial of an application to approve a psychedelic drug plus therapy for treating PTSD, and finished with essays about the damage wrought by "patent hopping" for a drug to treat HIV and the impact of Medicare drug price negotiations. In between: ultra-processed foods and cancer, bringing more resources to bear on mpox, restoring confidence in vaccines, and more. You can read them all here. That's it from me (I know: I said that in March 2023, but this time I really, really mean it!) as I once again wholeheartedly embrace retirement. Over to you, Torie. As ever, if you have an idea for a First Opinion essay, or have written one, please send it to first.opinion@statnews.com

Adobe - this image was created using generative AI Can AI help ease medicine's empathy problem? Modern medicine has an empathy problem. Artificial intelligence — done right — might be able to help ease it. By Evan Selinger and Thomas Carroll HHS says it is working to stop the climate crisis. But it's really just climate washing The HHS Office of Climate Change and Health Equity has done nothing regulatorily to mitigate health care emissions. By David Introcaso STAT+ | What the newly released Medicare prices for 10 drugs do and don't tell us The head of ICER examines a milestone in CMS's efforts to deliver savings for drugs that lack generic competition. By Sarah Emond Photo illustration: Dan Kitwood/Getty Images Ultra-processed foods: the tobacco of the 21st century? Rise in cancer among people under age 50 correlates to rise in ultra-processed food consumption. FDA should handle UPF like it did tobacco. By Nicholas DeVito Gilead must be held accountable for the harm caused by 'patent hopping' an HIV treatment Gilead needs to own up — and pay up — for the damage its "patent hopping" caused people living with HIV who took its toxic TFD drug. By Peter Staley Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP The FDA should withdraw approval of more than 400 tainted medicines After learning about fraudulent work by a drug testing company in India, the FDA should have taken the drugs off the market. It didn't. By Suzanne Robotti Better safety studies could restore America's confidence in vaccines I study vaccines for a living. A Covid-19 shot worsened my tinnitus. The U.S. needs stronger research on vaccine safety. By Gregory A. Poland Emma H. Tobin/AP Aspirin after a broken bone: health equity in a $5 bottle NEJM study showed aspirin was as effective at preventing blood clots after surgery as a far more expensive blood thinner. Why didn't doctors change their ways? By Deborah M. Stein and Robert V. O'Toole Some 'inconvenient' truths about pharmacy benefit managers PBMs are seen as middlemen that contribute little except for driving up prescription drug prices. Their true roles need to be clarified. By T. Joseph Mattingly II, David A. Hyman, and Ge Bai

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