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For decades, the Food and Drug Administration has partnered with clinicians and industry to deliver evidence-based medical innovations using a gold-standard framework for drug development and oversight. The agency has the authority to review any approved drug, and such reviews are a vital part of ensuring public health. That process has long been grounded in transparent and methodologically sound science. (Grace Colon, 7/19)

The move by HHS comes in the wake of the Supreme Court’s June 27 decision in Kennedy v. Braidwood Management Inc., in which the justices ruled against a group of Christian-owned businesses and individuals challenging the constitutionality of the task force’s role in mandating what private insurance policies cover. (Karen Tumulty, 7/18)

Kennedy, who has no training in medicine or health, has long been the nation’s foremost peddler of junk science and the crackpot conspiracy theories that flow from it. The greatest danger in elevating him to HHS secretary was always that he would use his position to undermine public confidence in vaccines, which would lead to needless suffering and even death. And so it has come to pass. (Michael R. Bloomberg, 7/21)

My mother died in January 2007. She told the family that she had breast cancer in 2002. We still don’t know when she knew, or when she had been diagnosed. One thing we did know: She chose not to treat the cancer. (Joy Lisi Rankin, 7/21)

Sometime next year, my wife and I will look for a new health insurance plan. She is retiring early, and we won’t have access to the plans offered by her employer. Thanks to President Donald Trump and Republicans in Congress, our replacement likely will not be from the Colorado individual health insurance marketplace. (Mario Nicolais, 7/20)

They say death is one of life’s few certainties. For a boy or young man living with Duchenne muscular dystrophy, that certainty has a cruel twist: the anticipation of dying young. As mothers of children with this disease, we have wept helplessly in recent months as friends — fellow members of a club we never asked to join — said goodbye to their sons, the babies they once held in their arms, whose dreams they held in their hearts until Duchenne robbed them of working muscles or a healthy future. (Jennifer Handt and Kelly Maynard, 7/18)

From gene therapies to cancer breakthroughs, California has been the driving force behind America’s biotechnology industry. But today, that edge is slipping. A National Security Commission on Emerging Biotechnology report to Congress in April stated that the U.S. is dangerously close to falling behind China in biotechnology innovation, and called for urgent investment and strategic coordination to maintain global leadership. (Ash Jogalekar, 7/20)