This week, as massive cuts hit the Department of Health and Human Services, I had the privilege of watching my brilliant and dogged reporter colleagues leap into action. (Are you a STAT+ subscriber? If so, thanks for supporting our work. If not, now is a great time to sign up — you can get 50% off your first year.) When this sort of news hits, I think that First Opinion's role is helping people make sense of it. I was delighted to publish some big names this week: Former CDC Director Tom Frieden, former director of the CDC's Office of Communications Kevin Griffis, and former Florida Surgeon General Scott Rivkees all wrote clarifying essays, and former HHS Secretary Donna Shalala joined me on the "First Opinion Podcast" (while wearing a broach given to her by Bob Dole).
As always, I am eager to publish arguments from the other side of the aisle, too. If you want to write a piece defending the cuts, or if there's a potential conservative writer you want to recommend, please email me.
There's one other, less newsy piece I want to call out this week. Nadir Al-Saidi, a first-year medical student, wrote a compelling essay about how his school is going to abandon the use of cadavers for financial reasons. "What will be lost when medical students are no longer made to uncomfortably face death to learn from what a real human body can teach?" he writes. It's a fantastic question.
Recommendation of the week: In the Atlantic, Daniel Engber wrote about the "evermaskers" — the people who still mask and otherwise take serious precautions against Covid. Though "hundreds of Americans die from it every week, even now in March of 2025," Engber writes, those who remain "Covid-conscious" are increasingly isolated. It's a thoughtful, empathetic chronicle of a group of Americans who feel that the rest of society has left them behind — and, arguably, they aren't wrong.
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