healthcare
Thirty years ago, the sociologist Craig Reinarman observed.pdf) that there's something "woven into the very fabric of American culture" that makes us susceptible to believing that a "chemical boogeyman" is to blame for "society's ills." He added that every moral panic about drugs since the 19th century has been fueled by "media magnification" in which the danger of a particular substance is dramatized and distorted. Now that recreational marijuana is legal in about half of U.S. states, and more Americans are consuming weed than ever before, the chemical bogeyman is back, and he's armed with a ...
Reason
Greene County, Pennsylvania, District Attorney Brianna Vanata has dropped involuntary manslaughter and reckless endangerment charges against former 911 dispatcher Leon Price, who is accused of refusing to send help to a dying woman. The charges were filed by Vanata's predecessor as district attorney. Kelly Titchenell called 911 to report that her mother was unresponsive and turning yellow. Price at first agreed to send an ambulance, but then he repeatedly told Titchenell he needed her mother's consent, even though she could not speak. He never sent an ambulance, and Titchenell's mother died th...
Reason
Today marks two years since the U.S. Supreme Court issued a decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, overturning Roe v. Wade and the legal standards that had governed American abortions for decades. A lot can be said about the impacts of this decision, from direct changes to state abortion laws to its effect on politics, failure to actually reduce the number of abortions, or opening up new avenues in the drug war. But today I want to focus on one change that is on some level obvious but often goes unremarked upon: the way Dobbs shifted the focus of the abortion debate back to ...
Reason
One of my favorite memes on X this week showed two photographs—one of war and devastation and the other of a neat tree-lined street with middle-class suburban houses. The caption under the first picture: "This is the reality of life on Earth." The caption on the second one: "This is an anomaly and can end at any time." It's a great reminder of how good most of have it, especially within the context of millennia of human existence. It's also a reminder that many of our fears and fixations—especially those commonly expressed on social media and in legislatures—fall into what my daughter calls fi...
Reason
For more than a decade, patients who've needed certain controlled medications have suffered from ill-advised, untenable policies the U.S. government has instituted, allegedly to mitigate the ever-surging numbers of drug overdose deaths. These policies have been a dismal failure on multiple fronts: Not only have deaths continued to surge, but the terrifying intrusion of the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) into the practice of medicine has had a chilling effect on patients and their physicians. As the DEA relentlessly tightens production quotas on medications for pain and ADHD, it has begu...
Reason
A trio of Democratic senators are introducing a "Right to IVF Act" that would, among other things, force private health insurance plans to cover assisted reproduction treatments such as in vitro fertilization (IVF), egg freezing, and gestational surrogacy. The measure provides no exception or accommodations for religious objections, all but ensuring massive legal battles over the mandate should it pass. The "sweeping legislative package" (as the senators describe it) combines several existing pieces of legislation, including the Access to Family Building Act and the Family Building Federal Emp...
Reason
Today's guest is Jay Bhattacharya, a co-author of the Great Barrington Declaration and one of the plaintiffs in Murthy v. Missouri, the Supreme Court case charging that the Biden administration and other parts of the federal government illegally colluded "with social media companies to suppress disfavored speakers, viewpoints, and content." A decision in that case is imminent, and a victory for Bhattacharya's side would make it impossible for the government to pressure X (formerly Twitter), Facebook, and other platforms to ban or squelch legal speech. A professor of medicine at Stanford Univer...
Reason
In a recent essay in the journal Monash Bioethics Review, oncologist Vinay Prasad and health researcher Alyson Haslam provide a comprehensive after-the-fact assessment of the federal government's rollout of the COVID-19 vaccines. Their basic takeaway is that the vaccines were a "scientific success"tarnished by flawed federal vaccine policy. The two argue the tremendous benefits of the COVID-19 vaccines for the elderly were undercut by government guidance and messaging that pushed vaccines on the young, healthy, and previously infected when data suggested that wasn't worthwhile (and was in some...
Reason
The AI boom is causing a stir in workspaces and markets. Unsurprisingly, the conversation thus far has been dominated by panic, mostly over lost jobs. But AI also promises to make everyone's lives easier in a variety of ways. Don't let the gloomy narrative keep you from taking advantage of these useful life hacks. Medical Advice A trip to the hospital is rarely fun. The AI-powered app Vital aims to make the experience a little less painful. Used by more than 100 hospitals, the program predicts wait times and explains medical results to patients without technical jargon that can be difficult to...
Reason
To receive treatment and consultations for her hemophilia A, a rare bleeding disorder, Shellye Horowitz will periodically travel from her home in rural northern California to a hemophilia clinic associated with the Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU) Hospital in Portland, Oregon. California's telemedicine regulations require that doctors who treat or consult with patients in California must also be licensed in California. Since the specialists Horowitz sees aren't licensed in California, she's frequently having to make the 14-hour round trip up to Portland for appointments that could hav...
Reason
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