policy
Meanwhile, at the Supreme Court
Three health-related cases came before the high court yesterday. Here's what you need to know:
The justices ruled unanimously in favor of the FDA in a case regarding the agency's crackdown on sweet-flavored vapes. It did not violate federal law, they said, by denying a company's application to sell flavors like "Jimmy The Juice Man in Peachy Strawberry" and "Suicide Bunny Mother's Milk and Cookies." But the battle isn't quite over yet — read more.
The court also ruled in favor of a truck driver who failed a drug test and lost his job after taking a CBD supplement for chronic pain that was advertised as not having THC in it. In a 5-4 decision, the justices decided that Douglas Horn can continue with an anti-racketeering lawsuit to hold the company that made the product responsible.
Later in the morning, the court heard oral arguments in Medina v. Planned Parenthood South Atlantic. In 2018, the governor of South Carolina issued an executive order prohibiting any clinic where abortions are performed from participating in state Medicaid. The Supreme Court is considering one specific question: Can people on Medicaid sue the state over a ban like this, citing the Medicaid Act's free choice of provider? Planned Parenthood argued that patients should be able to do so, while the Trump administration and South Carolina said no.
The justices are expected to issue a ruling by the end of the term this June. The outcome will have implications for people seeking reproductive care in South Carolina, but also in several other states that have similarly attempted to keep Planned Parenthood out of their Medicaid networks. If you want to learn more, KFF published a great primer on the case, and Vox's Ian Millhiser wrote some helpful analysis after the arguments about how politics could interfere with the law.
first opinion
The pharma scandal you forgot
Erythropoietin — also known as EPO — is mostly remembered as one of the drugs that cyclist Lance Armstrong used to win seven Tours de France wins. But what you may have forgotten, or never known, is the role this blood thickener played in a disaster that by one estimate cost nearly half a million people their lives.
It started in 2003, when a study concluded that EPO could be killing cancer patients. Johnson & Johnson sold it as a cancer treatment under the brand name of Procrit, and experts initially assumed the study was an outlier. But it wasn't the first study to come up with these alarming results — months earlier, a study found that almost three times as many participants died when taking Procrit as did in the placebo group. So what happened?
"Lies, feckless government oversight, and the participation of nearly every oncologist and cancer hospital in the country are all part of this story," writes Gardiner Harris in a new First Opinion essay. Read more.
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