Â鶹ŮÓÅ

The biggest threat to your health isn’t your inability to afford an inhaler or to get that weird mole checked, the GOP argues. It’s everything else about American society, from nutrition to neurotoxins. (Catherine Rampell, 1/14)

If anyone should have lobbied against the use of vaccines in this country, it was my family. My Aunt Jean, my father’s older sister, was a victim of the infamous Cutter vaccine, an early variant of the polio vaccine presumed to contain an inactivated version of the live virus. Except that it wasn’t inactive. (Laurie Maffly-Kipp, 1/15)

With the holidays past and the new year arrived, we look ahead — to losing weight. For some that resolve theoretically involves dieting or gym memberships, but for increasing numbers of overweight adults (roughly three-fourths of us) there is another option: GLP-1 drugs with names like Ozempic, Wegovy and Rybelsus, with a mean weight loss of 15% to 25% at 1-1.5 years of use. But weight, there’s more to the story. (David A. Brenner, 1/14)

A few months ago, I had an experience much more familiar to me as a writer than a physician: getting rejected. I had written a piece about my experience as a woman trying to hide her cancer diagnosis. No one wanted to publish it. One major online news outlet suggested a different essay altogether: Write about what I didn’t know about breast cancer as a doctor that I learned only as a patient. I stared at this request and then shut my computer. Months later, I saw that the outlet published that piece by a different doctor, who detailed her experience with breast cancer and how it made her a more understanding physician. Unlike this brave person, I couldn’t bring myself to write an essay about how I became a better, more empathetic and less judgmental doctor after my cancer diagnosis. Because it wasn’t true. (Alessandra Hirsch, 1/15)

When you go to the hospital to get better, you expect the food to help you recover. But sometimes, the food can actually make your health worse. Hospitals are meant for healing, yet many meals are full of unhealthy ingredients like fat, cholesterol and processed foods. These foods are not what people dealing with heart disease, diabetes or obesity need. (Angelina Marone, 1/14)

In 2018, Massachusetts launched a website, CompareCare, to help consumers shop for health care. The goal was to let people compare the price and quality of health care across hospitals and to provide information to researchers. (1/15)