Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Viewpoints: The Vaccine Injury Compensation Program Is Essential; Why Autism Diagnoses Have Risen
In the latest effort to ruin America鈥檚 health, Rep. Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.) wants to abolish the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program. He may have been partly influenced by claims from health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. that the program is broken. That鈥檚 simply not true. Eliminating it would harm not just people with valid claims of being harmed by vaccines but also the rest of us, by making vaccines less available. (Dorit R. Reiss and Arthur L. Caplan, 7/31)
A global review found no clear evidence for a rise in prevalence between 1990 and 2010. It鈥檚 not just that the explosion of autism in recent decades doesn鈥檛 look all that mysterious; there is a pretty strong argument that there hasn鈥檛 been any big increase at all. (David Wallace-Wells, 7/30)
A person may serve as an organ donor only after being declared dead. (Until then, transplant surgeons are not allowed even to interact with a dying patient.) This common-sensical rule underpins organ donation in the United States and many other countries. (Sandeep Jauhar, Snehal Patel, Deane Smith, 7/30)
Vinay Prasad鈥檚 three-month tenure as one of the top officials at the Food and Drug Administration was bad for medicine. But his forced departure is probably worse. (Matthew Herper, 7/30)
In his first six months in office, President Donald Trump has launched a relentless campaign of fear and intimidation aimed at dismantling the network that provides health care to transgender adolescents. (Lisa Jarvis, 7/30)
Primary care medicine should be and is the bedrock of American healthcare. As a family physician and chairman of a department of family medicine at a medical school, I admit to being biased. Nonetheless, I am concerned that we are losing two essential bedrock elements of successful patient care: the biopsychosocial model of effective primary care and the concept of shared decision-making between clinician and patient. (Howard Selinger, MD, 7/30)
鈥淒o a pelvic exam,鈥 the surgeon said casually.聽The patient lying before me was about to undergo a hysterectomy. Did she know a student would be performing an unnecessary pelvic exam while she was unconscious? (Chad Childers, 7/31)