December 22, 2024

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First Opinion editor

We have almost made it to the new year. Whether you'll be working, celebrating, both, or neither over the next two weeks, I hope that you get to enjoy some peace and warmth. I for one will both work and celebrate. Are you one of the approximately 8,000 people to whom I owe an edit of a First Opinion essay? If so, please know that I hope to use the relatively quiet last two weeks of the year to edit it.

A few weeks back, I asked you to share 1) what stories you thought had gone underexplored in health/medicine/biopharma this year and 2) what you expect from 2025. I was so pleased to get a massive response from a wide range of readers. This coming week, I'll publish many of those reactions on STAT.

On Wednesday, the last episode of this season of the "First Opinion Podcast" came out. I spoke with Will Flanary, aka Dr. Glaucomflecken, about his approach to medical comedy — but also about the societal response to the shooting of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson. Flanary told me that he finds it difficult to scold people for their emotional reactions when he knows how much the insurance system has both literally and figuratively hurt people. He hopes to continue to use comedy to spotlight the ways the system fails patients (and health care practitioners). I too love to use humor in a space where it can be hard to find — if you have an idea for a funny First Opinion, email me: first.opinion@statnews.com. The podcast will return in the spring, and I'm eager for your thoughts on what we should do to mix up the show.

This newsletter will be on hold next week, but we'll be back again in 2025. Happy holidays!

And in the meantime: I'd love to hear what low-stakes opinions cause the most chaos at your holiday tables. Please tell me who argued about drones, what music to listen to, or anything else that ends up becoming a symbol of something much bigger.

Recommendation of the week: I'm a wholly secular Christmas celebrant. But there are 90 minutes of the holiday season I hold sacred: my annual Christmas Eve viewing of "Muppet Christmas Carol."

Adobe

The 'skin in the game' approach to health care spending has failed

If we want a humane health care system that delivers better outcomes, we must design payment policies that serve patients, not the insurance industry.

By Merrill Goozner

Gene therapy trials should emphasize transparency, not secrecy

Two recent deaths in gene therapy trials demonstrate that the industry needs to take a new approach to data sharing.

By Rafael Escandon and Arthur L. Caplan

STAT+ | AI's dangerous mental-health blind spot

Study finds chatbots were unable to reliably detect mental health emergencies, offered harmful information to users having symptoms of mania or psychosis.