Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Longer Looks: Interesting Reads You Might Have Missed
Ten years ago, he was involved in a fiery crash in Los Angeles that left him severely burned. Now, he's an advocate for people with disabilities. (Arredondo, 7/27)
High-tech athletic clothes made with anti-odor fabrics are popular. But they also come with a little-known health hazard: The apparel may be infused with metal fibers that can cause burns in an MRI. 鈥淚t鈥檚 like putting your skin up against a hot plate,鈥 said Dr. Hollis Potter, chairman of the radiology and imaging department at the Hospital for Special Surgery in New York City. (Camero, 7/26)
At 15, Alex Parra received a diagnosis that would upend his life. After doctors detected bone cancer in his left leg, he made the decision to amputate the leg above the knee. Parra was told that he could get back to exercise with the right equipment. But a prosthesis that would allow him to run would cost $35,000.鈥淚 genuinely thought, like, 鈥業鈥檓 never going to be able to run again,鈥欌 said Parra, now 22. 鈥淢y family can鈥檛 afford that.鈥 (Wu, 7/25)
Where did it come from? More than three years into the pandemic and untold millions of people dead, that question about the Covid-19 coronavirus remains controversial and fraught, with facts sparkling amid a tangle of analyses and hypotheticals like Christmas lights strung on a dark, thorny tree. One school of thought holds that the virus, known to science as SARS-CoV-2, spilled into humans from a nonhuman animal, probably in the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market, a messy emporium in Wuhan, China, brimming with fish, meats and wildlife on sale as food. (Quammen, 7/25)
鈥淭he extent to which America nuked itself is not completely appreciated still, to this day, by most Americans, especially younger Americans,鈥 said Alex Wellerstein, a nuclear historian at the Stevens Institute of Technology in New Jersey.
The Intas Pharmaceuticals plant churned out medicine in a sprawling industrial park in western India, far from the minds of American cancer patients until its problems became theirs. The factory accounted for about 50 percent of the U.S. supply of a widely used generic chemotherapy drug called cisplatin, a reality that few understood until the U.S. Food and Drug Administration inspected the site in November. (Gilbert, 7/27)
