October 12, 2025

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First Opinion editor

I've updated the First Opinion submission guidelines on STAT to give some (much) more granular information about what I'm looking for: the types of arguments, the writing style, how to link to supporting evidence. Perhaps most importantly, it spells out my thinking about AI. Namely: Please don't use it.

For a while now, STAT has been asking First Opinion writers to disclose any use of AI in our author agreement. But the guidelines go a step further, asking for any disclosure with the submission.

Of course, using it for transcription, some research (so long as you're checking the source actually says what AI claims it says), etc., is fine.

But increasingly I'm getting submissions that authors say have been "edited and formatted" by AI. To be honest, I can usually tell: There's a very clear format that AI loves to use, involving lots of bolded headers, bullet points, and line separators. But the piece also becomes weirdly flat and personality-free. I often end up asking the author if they used AI and, if so, for them to send me the original.

AI is just bad at editing. I'd rather get a rougher piece that I help shine up than an AI-mediated one that has no sparkle at all.

Is there anything else you think should be in the new First Opinion submission guidelines? Email me.

First Opinion Podcast: This week, I spoke with oncologist Samyukta Mullangi and historian Joy Lisi Rankin. It was a deeply personal conversation: Years ago, Joy's mother elected not to treat her breast cancer. As Joy wrote in First Opinion, her mother's doctors did not respect the decision. Sam, who wrote a recent First Opinion on a former MTV VJ who died after deciding not to treat her breast cancer, shared an oncologist's perspective on the difficult choices patients make and how physicians can and should support them. Listen here.

Also: I'll be at the STAT Summit in Boston this week. I'm really excited to hear the speakers and get ideas for First Opinion. If you're there, please say hello! And it's not too late to attend either in person or virtually. More information on registration here.

Recommendation of the week: The podcast "Lost Hills" looks at the darker side of Malibu, Calif. I recently binge-listened to the season "The Dark Prince," focused on a groundbreaking (seabreaking?) surfer who changed the sport but also may have poisoned it.

The author's mother, Layna Portugal, on the day she moved into her room on the nursing floor of a continuing care retirement community in Evanston, Ill.

Courtesy Emily Portugal

My mother had Alzheimer's. I watched her slip away in the fragile care system

My mother's treatment at a continuing care community was a casualty in the math of profit over people.

By Emily Portugal

The NIH ordered me to stop my 'dangerous' gain-of-function research. It isn't dangerous at all

Gain-of-function experiments have been crucial for increasing our understanding of bacteria in the pursuit of discovering new treatments.

By Sarah Stanley

What RFK Jr. gets wrong about medical school and nutrition education

Adding a few more nutrition classes to already-full medical school curriculums is not the fix RFK Jr. thinks it is.

By Tiffany Onyejiaka

INDRANIL MUKHERJEE/AFP via Getty Images

STAT+ | Pharma's shift away from infectious disease research could spell disaster for the world's poorest people

Fundamental changes to pharma are destroying the model that let my nonprofit bring medicine to the Global South.

By Laurent Fraisse

Parents of children with rare diseases ask: How long until our CRISPR miracle?

There is a critical gap in communication about the potential of gene therapies, and it's hurting parents of kids with rare diseases.

By Celena Lozano

Patients shouldn't be pressured to 'just check that box' on informed consent forms

Informed consent is integral to providing high-quality health care, yet it is too often treated as an obstacle.

By Sarah Wright

Adobe

STAT+ | 5 things to consider to bring ambient digital scribes to clinical research

Bringing AI scribes into clinical research will bring regulatory, ethical, contextual, and technical requirements.

By Elise Felicione

RFK Jr. says vaccines don't save lives. He's wrong

Health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. says nutrition and sanitation, not vaccines, stopped polio and measles. Here's the truth.

By Ezekiel J. Emanuel, Abe Baker-Butler, and Michael T. Osterholm

When patients refuse cancer treatment

On the "First Opinion Podcast," an oncologist and a breast cancer survivor discuss the complicated relationship between doctor and cancer patient.

By Torie Bosch

STAT

When patients don't want to treat their cancer

This week on the "First Opinion Podcast": When patients decline treatment for cancer, how should oncologists respond?

By Torie Bosch

STAT+ | Onshoring could threaten the resilient supply chain for biosimilars and generics

Generics and biosimilars are already operating their manufacturing and supply chains to maximum efficiency with very thin margins. Onshoring threatens this.