Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Virtual Reality Could Circumvent Some Challenges To Diagnosing Pedophilia
A handful of scientists are testing聽a controversial practice of聽using virtual reality to diagnose pedophilia in men in hopes of helping them manage their sexual desires before they act on them. Pedophilia, a psychiatric disorder, affects up to 5 percent of men, according to the American Psychiatric Association. But it鈥檚 difficult to study because researchers don鈥檛 want to use real photos of children to measure arousal. So they鈥檙e turning to 3-D animated characters and virtual reality.It鈥檚 not foolproof, and it鈥檚 raised concerns among some psychiatrists who fear the computer-generated images could stimulate the men鈥檚 interest in children. (Seervai, 8/12)
A computer may soon be able to offer highly personalized treatment suggestions for cancer patients based on the specifics of their cases and the full sweep of the most relevant scientific research. IBM and the New York Genome Center, a consortium of medical research institutions in New York City, are collaborating on a project to speed up cancer diagnoses and treatment. (Kim, 8/12)
The hacker who infiltrated the computer system at Athens Orthopedic Clinic 鈥渉as attempted to extort the clinic for ransom money,鈥 the business said in a prepared statement released late Friday. In the same prepared statement, the clinic also said it would not pay for extended credit monitoring for the thousands of victims of the hack, two of whom indicated in a Friday story in the Athens Banner-Herald story they were dissatisfied with the clinic鈥檚 response to the data breach. (Thompson, 8/12)
Professors and researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health published an editorial in a campus publication this month speculating that Pokemon Go and other so-called augmented reality games could be "very useful" in encouraging young people to be more active....To be sure, the health benefits of Pokemon Go are so far largely anecdotal, but health care professionals are taking notice and are cautiously optimistic about what may still turn out to be a summer fad. (Wells, 8/12)
