Opinion: How we got herd immunity wrong
Herd immunity was always our greatest asset for protecting vulnerable people, but public health failed…
Category: First Opinion
Opinion: Private equity, health care, and profits: It’s time to protect patients
In his State of the Union address, President Biden expressed concern with the growing —…
Opinion: Listen: Pharma companies market their drugs to young adults — so why don’t they include them in clinical trials?
Sneha Dave has been living with a chronic disease for 17 years — almost her…
Opinion: Google’s ongoing stem cell problem points to a larger issue with its search results on unproven therapies
Hey, Google: Remember that stem cell problem you tried to fix in 2019 by banning…
Opinion: Covid-19 vaccine policy should be made by public health experts, not company executives
In a March 13 interview with CBS, Albert Bourla, Pfizer’s CEO, said his company intended…
Opinion: The case for decriminalizing the street sale of buprenorphine
Isolation and anxiety caused by the Covid-19 pandemic has fueled an already out of control…
Opinion: Checklists work well for complicated health care problems. But they don’t work to solve complex ones, like pandemics
Federal public health officials did many good things in response to Covid-19, like investing in…
Opinion: The Breen bill to protect health providers is well-intentioned. But it won’t stop burnout
Both the Senate and the House of Representatives have passed a bill to “improve the…
Opinion: Biden administration (finally) elevates healthy buildings as part of national Covid strategy
The White House announcement on Thursday that it is elevating “clean air in buildings” as…
Opinion: Welcome back, Dr. Califf: Patients will see you now
The confirmation of Robert Califf to lead the Food and Drug Administration is among the…
Opinion: If pharma can market to youths by TikTok, it should include them in clinical trials
The pharmaceutical industry has rapidly adapted to promoting prescription drugs to young people on TikTok,…
Opinion: Health-related artificial intelligence needs rigorous evaluation and guardrails
Algorithms can augment human decision-making by integrating and analyzing more data, and more kinds of…
Opinion: Emergency response systems must not overlook people with substance use disorders
When the storm unofficially known as Winter Storm Uri barreled across much of North America…
Opinion: Listen: The ‘underground market’ for insulin and diabetes supplies
It’s a sad reality that people with diabetes know all too well: The price of…
Opinion: Covid-19 and telehealth: Holding on to the gains of remote care
In January 2020, telehealth companies were proceeding with a long, slow slog toward sustainability. Four…
Opinion: Applied neuroscience needs a task force to craft effective governance
In the United States alone, more than 100 million people are affected by at least…
Opinion: Commissioner Califf needs to put the F back in FDA
Robert Califf is taking the reins as commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration with…
Opinion: Giving gender-affirming care: ‘gender dysphoria’ diagnosis should not be required
As people around the world come to acknowledge that gender is something defined along a…
Opinion: Another way to empower nurses: Listen to them
Five days before my mother died of septic shock, a nurse tried to alert me…
Opinion: Gaslighting of Black medical trainees makes residency something to ‘survive’
Some say the lack of Black physicians is a pipeline problem, with too few Black…
Opinion: Ignoring behavioral and social sciences undermines the U.S. response to Covid-19
The U.S. has bungled many of its efforts to rein in the Covid-19 pandemic. We…
Opinion: Hospitals need to get ahead of regulations on climate change
Climate change, an issue that hospital leaders should have voluntarily been working on following the…
Opinion: Penelope, a fictional pig, taught me how to talk with my patients about their fractured sleep
“How is your sleep?” I’ve posed this question to hundreds of patients. Read the rest……
Opinion: The U.S. must fix its innovation engine: the patent system
If your car starts to smoke and sputter, you’d take it to an auto repair…
Opinion: Politicians should not be deciding what constitutes good medicine
Most people get their medical advice from their doctors. But many may soon get it…
Opinion: Sunsetting medical license reciprocity would return medicine to the dark ages
Like many other 3-year-old boys, Braxton Davis is lively and at times playfully mischievous. But…
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Opinion: Finding cures faster: Bring the FDA into the 21st century with advanced testing
From every sector, the cry is being raised: “We can’t go back to the way…
Opinion: Health care workers don unnecessary protective gear. The CDC and WHO need to update their PPE guidance
Every time we enter a Covid patient’s room, we first don gloves, and a disposable…
Opinion: Inappropriate march-in actions would jeopardize public-private partnerships that make lifesaving medicines possible
For decades, partnerships among government-funded academic institutions and private companies in the United States have…
Opinion: Turning to social media to get affordable insulin: a clear sign of a broken health care system
I am part of an underground market for drugs that looks a lot different from…
Opinion: Rediscovering a language of healing that doesn’t require ‘cure’
I am a biotech investor and entrepreneur. But more central to my worldview is that…
Opinion: The future of pharma and health care will come in small (molecule) packages
Rightful accolades to Moderna and Pfizer/BioNTech for the Covid-19 vaccines they created and developed in…
Opinion: Equitable access to digital health innovations requires a systems thinking approach
Over the last decade, the dawn of digital health has accelerated biopharmaceutical innovation, the pace…
Opinion: STAT+: What biotech can learn from past stock market downturns
“Dumpster fire.” “Biotech bear market.” “A market rout.” Going by recent descriptions of the performance of…
Opinion: If academic medicine is serious about diversity, its institutions need to pay up
As I began interviewing for my first post-fellowship position as a neuro-oncologist, I immediately realized…
Opinion: Treating kids with sleep disorders stirs thoughts of a lifetime of restless nights
When I was about 7 years old, I lost the ability to place my head…
Opinion: Fair hearings often fail to live up to their name when hospitals try to suspend physicians
Over the past five years, there has been an alarming trend in the United States…
Opinion: Improving diversity in Alzheimer’s research can help update the ‘gold standard’ for all medical research
The health inequities that have long plagued the U.S. were highlighted and worsened by the…
Opinion: A ‘more, more, more’ approach to cancer screening is misleading and harmful
Enormous progress has been made against cancer in the last 50 years — at least…
Opinion: To restore public trust, the CDC must stop legitimizing the expulsion of asylum seekers
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has come under fire in past weeks over…
Opinion: Recognizing obesity as a disease, not a choice, is a step toward health equity
When the American Medical Association recognized obesity as a disease in 2013, doctors and other…
Opinion: Containing Covid-19 requires rapid tests that are highly sensitive to infections. Why is the FDA asking for something different?
With rapid testing becoming a key tool in the fight against Covid-19, in a mid-October…
Opinion: The case for Califf: Don’t let politics prevent confirmation of best FDA commissioner candidate
President’s Biden’s nomination of Robert Califf to head the Food and Drug Administration is in…
Opinion: ‘Protect our hospitals’ might convince Britons to get Covid-19 vaccines, but it won’t work in the U.S.
The resurgence of Covid-19 is again leading health care systems across the globe to brace…
Opinion: Health tech needs to rebuild trust in the wake of the Theranos verdict
Monday’s news that Elizabeth Holmes, the founder and CEO of Theranos, was found guilty of…
Opinion: Opioid overdoses are killing Americans. Improving access to methadone can save lives
The United States recently reached a grim milestone: 100,000 overdose deaths in one year. This…
Opinion: Confessions of a ‘human guinea pig’: Why I’m resigning from Moderna vaccine trials
In July 2020, I volunteered to be in Moderna’s Covid-19 vaccine trial. If I knew…
Opinion: Will the Biden administration use ‘march-in’ to protect prostate cancer patients from excessive drug prices?
Astellas Pharma, a drug company headquartered in Japan, is charging U.S. patients $156,000 a year…
Opinion: The No Surprises Act: Beyond the emergency department, a silver lining of patient engagement
When I was pregnant with my first child, I needed a prenatal test that could…
Opinion: My son will be fine, she told the doctors, because he is the Lord God Jesus Christ
Editor’s note: This essay, initially published a year before the emergence of the global coronavirus…