Women's health, unstuck
Jeff Pinetten for STAT
Bill Gates is concerned about vaccine skepticism
STAT hosted billionaire philanthropist Bill Gates live in Cambridge yesterday, at our event: Women's Health, Unstuck. In a conversation with Matt Herper, Gates expressed concern over growing vaccine skepticism in the U.S. and the damage that can be done globally when those claims are exported. "Vaccine skepticism in the U.S. kills more children outside the U.S. — because it transfers that skepticism — than it does inside the United States," Gates said. STAT's Helen Branswell wrote about it.
Earlier in the day, the Gates Foundation announced that it will commit $2.5 billion through 2030 to support dozens of different approaches for improving women's health, particularly focusing on research and development. At the event, I spoke to four leaders in women's health about the promise of innovation in women's health and the importance of making sure medical advances are made available to the people most in need. "Innovation is meaningless if people don't access it," said Bisola Ojikutu, Boston's public health commissioner.
Scott Johnson, a biotech CEO working to address preeclampsia, agreed: "It's invention, but doesn't change the marketplace."
brain-computer interface
A new bombshell has entered the villa — handsfree scrolling
There's a man named Mark who can control an iPad with his thoughts. Others will soon join him, thanks to a new partnership between Apple and Synchron. It's the latest step forward for a field that a 2024 Morgan Stanley report suggests could eventually grow to $400 billion in total market share.
The brain-computer interface company published a video Monday showing Mark, who has ALS, lying on a bed while he flicks through various applications on the device. In May, Apple announced a new protocol that would help companies such as Synchron and Neuralink link a person's device with their phone or a computer. The device works via a stent threaded into a vein in the brain's motor cortex. The electrodes pick up brain activity and send it to a small computer before beaming it via Bluetooth to the phone.
While not as flashy as Neuralink's demo of an implantee playing Counterstrike, Mark clicking through applications on an iPad is much more in line with what people with disabilities say they want out of a brain-computer interface: increased independence and communication abilities. — Rose Broderick
REPRODUCTIVE HEALTH
New approach to infertility has backing of MAHA, but not science
A new approach to infertility, labeled restorative reproductive medicine, could "restore" women's ability to conceive through natural methods. It could offer a solution to falling birth rates, medical practices which bypass the root causes of infertility, and women's lack of control over their health. That is, according to proponents of the approach, which has been gaining legislative traction at both the state and national levels over the past year.
However, critics say that RRM is nothing new. Rather, they maintain that it is an ideological repackaging of ineffective and sometimes outdated techniques, such as exploratory surgery and hormone balancing. For many clinicians, the approach contributes little to the science of reproductive health, while spreading harmful, non-evidence based rhetoric about IVF.
And its political backing by MAHA supporters and conservative interest groups like the Heritage Foundation is also of concern for many. Read more about the approach and its scientific validity. — Veronica Paulus
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