Can Anne Wojcicki save 23andMe?

Plus surprising data on cancer diagnoses post-Covid

September 25, 2024 Check out STAT+

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By Timmy Broderick Disability in Health Care Reporting Fellow

Good morning! What are your autumn rituals? Every fall I try to catch a falling leaf. I know, it's very twee, but I love seasonal ceremonies. And I did it! I caught a falling leaf while biking to the ocean on Sunday. Happy fall, y'all.

matt's take What's the future of 23andMe in 2024?  Illustration: Alex Hogan/STAT, photo: Milken  Do healthy people care about their DNA at all? That's the question at the heart of Matthew Herper's story on 23andMe. It's also the question facing the embattled genetics-testing company after every member of its board of directors — except 23andMe CEO and co-founder Anne Wojcicki — quit last week. The company has endured catastrophic losses since its initial $3.5 billion public offering in 2021, prompting Wojcicki to try to cobble together investors to take the company private again.  But the board did not believe in her plan. And now, as Matt explains, it's unclear if anyone wants to help Wojcicki pick up the pieces again. Come for the story about Matt's memorable lunch with Wojcicki at a Brazilian sandwich shop; stay for the nuanced and thought-provoking look at why investors have soured on a company that turned genetic testing into a cultural phenomenon. cancer Unexpected data on post-pandemic cancer diagnoses  Remember when the world shut down in early 2020? With checkups on hold during the first wave of Covid-19, people weren't getting their screening mammograms or colonoscopies. A precipitous drop in all cancer screening was matched by a plunge in cancer diagnoses, a dive experts predicted might lead to 10,000 excess deaths in the U.S. over the next 10 years, just from breast and colorectal cancer.   It's too soon to breathe a sigh of relief, but newly released data shows that an uptick in new diagnoses, including at a later stage, so far hasn't materialized across all cancer types. Looking to see if missed diagnoses from 2020 surfaced in 2021, researchers found that diagnoses are back to pre-pandemic levels, with no significant rebound to account for 2020's drop. An exception: New diagnoses of metastatic breast cancer went up in 2021, per Tuesday's study in the Journal of Clinical Oncology. The authors caution "continuous monitoring is necessary." — Liz Cooney disability How the Special Olympics began the push for better disability data What do Yale, Boyz II Men, Hillary Clinton and a steady stream of athletes sent to the ER have in common? That's right, you guessed it: The 1995 Special Olympics. That year, officials debuted Healthy Athletes, a program to improve health care for the competitors with intellectual and developmental disabilities. The program also kick-started an ongoing movement to improve the health and demographic data for this population, and for all people with disabilities. As I write in the story, the missing data is about more than an empty box on a patient's chart. It puts lives at risk. During the pandemic, people with these disabilities were 2.6 times more likely to die from Covid-19 than people without one, but the data gap thwarted attempts to address this disparity. Read more about how researchers and activists have been pushing for more robust data for decades, and why this will help everyone.

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first opinion Veterinarians can help combat antimicrobial resistance ALASTAIR PIKE/AFP via Getty Images On Thursday, the U.N. General Assembly will discuss the global threat of antimicrobial resistance. While scientists have known about antimicrobial resistance since penicillin entered the market in the 1940s, veterinarian and pathobiologist Scott Weese says that the antibiotics fed to animals are an overlooked part of the conversation.  Veterinarians desperately need official guidance on antibiotic use in animals so that they can ethically treat animals while also responsibly curbing their contributions to this global resistance. The impact of the problem is immense. A recent analysis published in The Lancet estimated that AMR was directly responsible for 1.3 million deaths and contributed to nearly 5 million more globally in 2019 alone. Read more. reproductive health Pregnancy-related arrests on the rise post-Dobbs I learned the phrase "pregnancy criminalization" yesterday after reading a new report that at least 210 pregnant people faced criminal charges associated with pregnancy in the first year after the Supreme Court's Dobbs decision. That's the highest number of people to face such charges in one year since 1973, when researchers began tracking, according to Pregnancy Justice, the nonprofit that published the report. The majority of cases occurred in states that have severely restricted abortion access and enshrined fetal personhood protections in their laws, including Alabama and Oklahoma. The charges brought against the pregnant people ranged from child neglect, abuse, or endangerment to murder, but most cases only required a perceived risk of harm, rather than "proof" of harm to the fetus or baby. The report's authors note of cases involving substance use that "criminalizing substance use and pregnancy deters pregnant people from seeking healthcare and actually increases risks to maternal, child, and fetal health."

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What we're reading  ​​Tony Robbins was reeling from backlash. Then came an unlikely ally: Stanford, San Francisco Chronicle Sanders says PBMs won't penalize Novo for cutting Ozempic, Wegovy prices, STAT 1 in 7 scientific papers is fake, says one researcher, Retraction Watch How the next president should reform Medicare, STAT Retired NFL quarterback Brett Favre says he has Parkinson's disease, AP

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Thanks for reading! More tomorrow — Timmy

timmy.broderick@statnews.com

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