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U.S. President Joe Biden and China’s Xi Jinping emerged Wednesday from their first face-to-face meeting in a year vowing to stabilize their fraught relationship and showcasing modest agreements to combat illegal fentanyl and re-establish military communications. But there were still deep differences on economic competition and global security threats. (Madhani, Long, and Tang, 11/16)

The agreement is aimed at limiting the manufacturing and export of fentanyl precursor molecules from China to Mexico, where much of the synthetic opioid in the U.S. now originates. In 2019, China banned the production sale and export of all fentanyl-related drugs in most circumstances, but that simply shifted the supply chain around. Cooperation on fentanyl has previously become entangled in broader geopolitical tensions. Last year, for example, China suspended cooperation with the U.S. on the issue to protest then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's trip to Taiwan. (Owens and Snyder, 11/15)

Chinese President Xi Jinping, speaking at the Hyatt Regency in downtown San Francisco, said a fentanyl deal between China and the United States would help crack down on the manufacturing and export of the deadly opioid that is devastating San Francisco and the rest of the U.S. “I would like to let you know that China sympathizes deeply with the American people, especially the young, for the sufferings that fentanyl has inflicted upon them. President Biden and I have agreed to set up a working group on counternarcotics to further our cooperation and help the United States tackle drug abuse,” Xi said. (Toledo, Li, Mishanec, Ravani and Munce, 11/15)

Italian police have arrested six people in a crackdown on a network that allegedly played go-between for fentanyl trafficking from China to the United States, Guardia di Finanza police and prosecutors in the northern city of Piacenza said on Wednesday. (Parodi, 11/15)

San Francisco is on track to see the deadliest year on record for accidental drug overdose deaths in 2023, newly released preliminary data from the medical examiner's office shows. Between January and October, the city recorded 692 deaths — already higher than last year's total of 649, and 642 from the year before. If the city continues its average pace of 69 deaths per month, it will close out the year with a total of 830 deaths. That’s 28% higher than last year’s total, and 14% higher than the previous peak of 726 deaths in 2020. (Leonard, 11/15)

Sunlight is streaming through holes in the walls of a disused, corrugated metal shack, revealing its modest insides: Dirt floors, stacks of two-by-fours, and a pile of Little Caesars pizza boxes under attack by a work crew on lunch break. This building is clearly not ready to be a home. But in the next 24 hours, it must become one. At this time of year, sleeping outdoors is deadly. And barely 100 yards away, on the historic pow-wow grounds of the Bad River Tribe, stands a small tent city still thawing out from yesterday’s first snow. Its inhabitants, left homeless by addiction to fentanyl and methamphetamine, have nowhere else to go. (Facher, 11/16)

The Senate on Wednesday passed legislation to extend funding for federal agencies, sending the bill to avert a government shutdown to President Biden’s desk just days before the weekend deadline. The bill, which passed by an 87-11 vote, represents a marked de-escalation between congressional Democrats and new House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.). Without the new spending measure, called a continuing resolution or CR, the government would have shut down just after midnight Saturday, forcing federal workers — including military members and airport security agents — to work without pay or go on furlough on the eve of the Thanksgiving holiday. (Bogage, 11/15)

Program extensions relevant to the healthcare industry largely fall under the former cutoff date. These include scheduled $8 billion-per-year cuts to Medicaid disproportionate share hospital program payments as well as funding for community health centers, the National Health Service Corps and teaching health centers operating Graduate Medical Education programs. Additionally, scheduled multiyear pay cuts to the Clinical Laboratory Fee Schedule set to take effect Jan. 1, 2024, have been pushed back a full year. (Muoio, 11/15)

Panels in both the House and Senate have now passed restrictions to drug middlemen business practices, increasing the chances of those measures being included in future government spending bills. (Wilkerson, 11/15)

House lawmakers late Tuesday voted to attach a U.S. ban on controversial infectious disease research to legislation that could ultimately fund federal health agencies like the National Institutes of Health. The bill would bar any federal agencies from funding so-called gain-of-function research, which involves altering a pathogen to study its spread, potentially making it more transmissible or severe in the process. (Owermohle, 11/15)

Lawmakers and Veterans Affairs officials on Tuesday touted the potential for psychedelic drugs to treat mental health conditions and prevent veteran suicide, but they said additional research and FDA-approval is needed before the therapies could be available. In one of the first hearings in Congress on psychedelics since 1966, when Dr. Timothy Leary testified on the therapeutic potential for LSD, a House Veterans Affairs panel drilled VA physicians and advocates on psychiatric treatments that use MDMA, known recreationally as molly or ecstasy, and psilocybin, or magic mushrooms. (Kime, 11/15)

A bipartisan group of U.S. Senators has written to Meta Platforms CEO Mark Zuckerberg demanding documents about its research into the harm to children from its social media platforms. A whistleblower's release of documents in 2021 showed Meta knew Instagram, which began as a photo-sharing app, was addictive and worsened body image issues for some teen girls. (11/15)

Meta is pushing for rival tech giants such as Google and Apple to play a bigger role in keeping teens off potentially harmful sites, calling for the first time for legislation to require app stores to get parental approval when users age 13 to 15 download apps. The proposal, which the Facebook and Instagram parent company is set to announce Wednesday, counters mounting calls by state and federal policymakers for individual sites to proactively screen kids to limit their use of social media platforms over safety concerns. (Lima and Nix, 11/15)

Indiana's near-total abortion ban has functionally ended the procedure. Doctors performed zero abortions in Indiana's formal health care system in August, the month the new law took effect, per the Guttmacher Institute, an abortion rights organization that tracks data. That's down from almost 700 in July. (Briggs, 11/16)

A St. Louis judge on Thursday will hear arguments in a lawsuit challenging Missouri’s abortion ban on the grounds that lawmakers who passed the measure imposed their own religious beliefs on others who don’t share them. The lawsuit was filed in January on behalf of 13 Christian, Jewish and Unitarian Universalist leaders who support abortion rights. It seeks a permanent injunction barring the state from enforcing its abortion law, and a declaration that provisions of the law violate the Missouri Constitution. (Salter, 11/16)

A week after Ohioans voted to enshrine abortion rights in the state constitution, members of the state legislature are considering a bill that would give tax credits for donations to anti-abortion facilities. On Tuesday, the Ohio senate finance committee discussed a bill from the state senator Sandra O’Brien, a Republican, who proposed that individuals who give to “qualifying pregnancy resource centers” may be eligible for tax credits, at a cost of up to $10m to Ohio. (Sherman, 11/16)

A leading national abortion rights organization endorsed Rep. Barbara Lee for Senate on Wednesday. Reproductive Freedom for All, which changed its name from NARAL Pro-Choice America in September, backs Lee because she has “loudly, proudly, and boldly” been a “driving force in our fight for abortion rights and access,” the organization’s president, Mini Timmaraju said. (Garofoli, 11/15)

Allie Phillips, a 28-year-old running as a Democrat for the Tennessee House of Representatives in District 75, has told her abortion story countless times. She has explained it to her followers on TikTok, to the lawyers helping her sue her state over restrictions to reproductive care, and to the lawmakers who failed her. (Herchenroeder, 11/16)

Nursing homes will be required to disclose their owners and other affiliated businesses to federal authorities under a final rule the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services published Wednesday. The regulation seeks to shed light on an often opaque industry. Many skilled nursing facilities have complex corporate structures that make it difficult for government agencies to hold owners, operators and other parties accountable for violations of laws governing such matters as safety and quality. (Bennett, 11/15)

For example, nursing homes must disclose individuals or entities that provide administrative services or clinical consulting services. They will also be required to disclose entities that exercise financial control over the facility, such as an organization the nursing home hires to manage its finances. Also, the rule requires additional information about entities that lease or sublease property to nursing homes, since the facilities and property owners may be set up as a different corporate entity. (Morse, 11/15)

The Biden administration's plan to establish national staffing minimums at nursing homes is shaping up to be a tricky political balancing act. President Biden has vowed to "crack down" on nursing homes, which were at the epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic, but his staffing proposal has split members of his own party while facing broad opposition from Republicans. (Goldman, 11/16)

Massachusetts legislators are eyeing reforms to the long-term care industry, with a bill that would increase oversight and help ease access issues. Long-term care, which includes nursing homes and skilled nursing facilities, is a critical component of the health care system, and staffing challenges have led to a shortage of beds for patients needing to be discharged from a hospital. Hospitals have subsequently faced a capacity crisis, as patients have stayed in hospital beds longer. (Bartlett, 11/15)

A Florida Senate panel this week backed a proposal that would allow veterans' spouses to qualify to live in state-run long-term care facilities for veterans. The measure (SB 174) also would allow parents of military members who died in service to be eligible. The Senate Military and Veterans Affairs, Space and Domestic Security Committee approved the bill in a unanimous vote. (Dailey, 11/15)

U.S. News evaluated more than 15,000 nursing homes throughout the country and rated most of them in two different areas: short-term rehabilitation and long-term care. (Adams and Wen, 11/14)

Papa Inc., a startup that sends contractors to the homes of the elderly to help them with household tasks and offer companionship, is facing a flurry of contract terminations by health insurers for next year, following a Bloomberg Businessweek report that revealed extensive allegations of abuse from its workers and the elderly who rely on it. Nearly three dozen insurance plans and employers have determined they will not renew partnerships for next year, according to a document reviewed by Bloomberg. (Anand, 11/15)

When Vernon Langford sees patients, he typically wears a white lab coat with his title — “Dr.” — and his credentials as a nurse practitioner stitched on the front. ... A Florida bill lawmakers considered this year would have barred Langford and others with similar credentials from using the “Dr.” title in clinical settings. The bill was amended to exclude nurse practitioners before it reached the desk of Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, who vetoed it without explanation. But Langford, who is president of the Florida Association of Nurse Practitioners, expects the legislation to reemerge. (Claire Vollers, 11/15)

State-run health insurance exchanges would have to ensure that provider networks are at least as adequate as those required on the federal marketplaces under a proposed rule the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services announced Wednesday. Beginning in 2025, insurance policies sold through full-featured state-based exchanges and through state-operated marketplaces that use the federal HealthCare.gov enrollment platform would have to meet the time-and-distance measure of provider access that is applied to plans sold via fully federal exchanges. States can seek exemptions. (Young, 11/15)

A trade group representing the home health industry is developing recommendations on how home health agencies can protect employees from dangerous situations as more care moves into the home. The National Association for Home Care and Hospice convened a task force in January to address growing concerns over workplace violence. It is recommending training for staff by law enforcement officers, sending security escorts with nurses into homes and, when necessary, doubling the number of nurses making in-home visits. (Eastabrook, 11/15)

�鶹Ů�� Health News: Compensation Is Key To Fixing Primary Care Shortage 

Money talks. The United States faces a serious shortage of primary care physicians for many reasons, but one, in particular, is inescapable: compensation. Substantial disparities between what primary care physicians earn relative to specialists like orthopedists and cardiologists can weigh into medical students’ decisions about which field to choose. Plus, the system that Medicare and other health plans use to pay doctors generally places more value on doing procedures like replacing a knee or inserting a stent than on delivering the whole-person, long-term health care management that primary care physicians provide. (Andrews, 11/16)

A federal jury in Manhattan on Wednesday convicted two former National Basketball Association players over their roles in a scheme to defraud a league healthcare plan into paying millions of dollars for bogus medical procedures. Glen Davis, 37, who played for three NBA teams and won a championship in 2008 with the Boston Celtics, was convicted on four counts including wire fraud, health care fraud, conspiring to commit fraud, and conspiring to make false statements. Will Bynum, 40, who played for three teams including the Detroit Pistons, was found guilty of conspiring to make false statements, but acquitted on a fraud conspiracy charge. ... Examples of the alleged fraudulent medical procedures included Davis and another player receiving crowns on the same six teeth on the same day, and Davis receiving crowns on eight teeth in Beverly Hills though he was in Nevada. (Stempel, 11/15)

Scientific information and data analytics giant Elsevier is partnering with a medical startup to give doctors the ability to use generative AI to access the most up-to-date medical research as they treat patients in real time. Experts say the adoption of AI could dramatically improve the quality of care patients receive — while also lowering costs, cutting wait times and expanding access. (Fried, 11/15)

Dr. Rohaid Ali, a neurosurgery resident at Brown University ... grew concerned about patterns of racial and gender bias among the AI tools and decided to investigate how unrepresentative they are. Their study, which was published Wednesday in the journal JAMA Surgery, found that two of the systems depicted 98 percent of surgeons as white males — not representative of the industry’s increasingly diverse makeup. ... “It’s really a slap in the face to the surgeons who are women and people of color.” (Scales, 11/15)

Forward, a tech-enabled, subscription-based care company, raised $100 million in funding to manufacture and deploy self-service healthcare pods. Forward said the pods, called CarePods, will use AI, telehealth and biometric sensors to serve patients with diabetes, hypertension, anxiety and depression. The company plans to place CarePods in malls, gyms and offices. (Turner, 11/15)

The Food and Drug Administration granted marketing approval to a home test for chlamydia and gonorrhea on Wednesday, the first such authorization of a home test to detect the two most common sexually transmitted infections in this country. (Branswell, 11/15)

Amazon is removing seven eye-drop products from its e-commerce site after the Food and Drug Administration warned the company that the products were unapproved, the company announced Wednesday. The FDA listed these products: Similasan Pink Eye Relief; The Goodbye Company Pink Eye; Can-C Eye Drops; Optique 1 Eye Drops; OcluMed Eye Drops; TRP Natural Eye Floaters Relief; Manzanilla Sophia Chamomile Herbal Eye Drops. (Mark, 11/15)

The updates to the 2014 guidelines on naturally occurring anthrax, published today in Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, include an expanded list of alternative antimicrobial drugs to use if first-line drugs are contraindicated, not tolerated, depleted, or ineffective after a bioterroristic release of aerosolized B anthracis or a multidrug-resistant genetically engineered strain of the bacterium. (Van Beusekom, 11/15)

Regulators in the U.K. on Thursday approved a CRISPR-based medicine to treat both sickle cell disease and beta thalassemia, making it the world’s first therapy built on the revolutionary gene-editing technology and ushering in a new phase of genetic medicine. (Joseph, 11/16)

If you’re a Novo Nordisk A/S employee with obesity, you will have access to a unique company perk: Free Wegovy. Novo offers to reimburse staff who have been prescribed the expensive weight-loss drug by a doctor in its homeland Denmark, the company said by email. The perk, which is still taxable, is also available to employees diagnosed with conditions that other Novo drugs treat, such as diabetes and hemophilia. (Wass, 11/15)

A gene therapy study, halted when four children with a rare neuromuscular disorder died after treatment, showed enough promise to merit finding a path forward, according to the medicine’s manufacturer. The treatment, made by the Japanese pharmaceutical company Astellas, led to severe and fatal liver problems for four of the 24 treated children with X-linked myotubular myopathy, or XLMTM, a genetic disease that severely degrades muscle function and kills most patients before the age of 10. (Garde, 11/15)

There’s about to be a new acronym in town. The Food and Drug Administration is in the final stages of cementing sweeping changes to the Office of Regulatory Affairs, which oversees inspections and compliance for all its regulated products, according to three people familiar with the planning. That overhaul includes a new name: Meet the Office of Inspections and Investigations. (Owermohle, 11/15)

The patents on medicines and devices approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration were more frequently invalidated due to information misrepresented or withheld from patent examiners than any other industry sector, according to a new analysis. (Silverman, 11/15)

The Food and Drug Administration’s top cancer drug regulator doesn’t always ask for permission before taking on big initiatives. Richard Pazdur, director of the FDA Oncology Center of Excellence, hates bureaucracy. It stifles his ideas for getting treatments to cancer patients faster — of which there are many. (Wilkerson, 11/15)

Getting a Covid booster and a flu shot together is better than getting them separately, a new study has found. The study, presented at an annual Vaccines Summit in Boston, involved two groups of Massachusetts healthcare workers. (Salam, 11/15)

Great news for those who lost some or all of their sense of smell or taste due to COVID-19: The effect, while persistent, does not appear to be permanent. A study led by the University of Trieste, Italy, has found that despite the loss of taste and smell associated with COVID-19, progressive recovery and restoration of the senses occurs slowly over time. (Jackson, 11/16)

At 3, 6, and 12 months, rates of wet and dry cough were similar, but the proportion of patients producing sputum without coughing rose over time compared with those with both sputum production and coughing. At all follow-up visits, analyses of cough and sputum production identified the risk factors for persistent symptoms as the use of intermittent mandatory ventilation (IMV), smoking, and older age. (Van Beusekom, 11/15)

Congress appears destined to end the year without renewing expired federal pandemic preparedness programs after questions about emergency stockpiles, drug shortages and cracks in the nation's health security system got subsumed in COVID-19 politics. Reauthorizing the Pandemic and All Hazards Preparedness Act was billed as a must-do early this year, after the pandemic exposed gaps in countermeasures and disease surveillance. (Knight, 11/16)

Los Angeles County has confirmed its first flu death of the season, and with the bulk of the season still ahead, health officials are reminding residents to get vaccinated. The person who died was elderly and had multiple underlying health conditions, according to the county Department of Public Health. There was no record of the person being vaccinated for flu this season, officials added. (De Leon, 11/15)

It's not too late to get that annual flu shot before Thanksgiving. Experts say it's safe to get the vaccine one week ahead of time, and it's wise to consider it if you're traveling to visit friends and family. Interactions across the generations, for example, between school-age children with their grandparents, are ripe moments for the influenza virus to spread. Different strains of the virus can combine under one roof when groups get together during the chilly months, said Dr. Jonathan Temte. (Cuevas, 11/16)

The seasonal surge in the respiratory illness RSV has begun in Massachusetts, as prospects dim for adequate supplies of a drug that experts had touted as a lifesaver for babies. “The surge is on its way,” said Dr. Laura J Cardello, director of inpatient pediatrics at South Shore Hospital. “We’re not at the peak, but we’re definitely on the upswing.” In the last two weeks, RSV was diagnosed in half of children seen at the hospital for respiratory illness, and it is expected to soon become the dominant virus, Cardello said. (Freyer, 11/15)

Pesticides used in our homes, gardens and lawns and sprayed on foods we eat are contributing to a dramatic decline in sperm count among men worldwide, according to a new analysis of studies over the last 50 years. “Over the course of 50 years, sperm concentration has fallen about 50% around the world,” said senior study author Melissa Perry, dean of the College of Public Health at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia. (LaMotte, 11/15)

Advances in childhood cancer are a success story in modern medicine. But in the past decade, those strides have stalled for Black and Hispanic youth, opening a gap in death rates, according to a new report published Thursday. Childhood cancers are rare and treatments have improved drastically in recent decades, saving lives. Death rates were about the same for Black, Hispanic and white children in 2001, and all went lower during the next decade. But over the next 10 years, only the rate for white children dipped a little lower. (Johnson, 11/16)

It’s long been thought that a torn ACL, or anterior cruciate ligament, has limited ability to heal on its own and requires surgery. Recent research suggests that a nonsurgical treatment, including physical therapy, could be as effective, sparking controversy among surgeons who perform dozens of ACL reconstructions every year. The study, published in June in the British Journal of Sports Medicine, found that 90% of ACL tears in 80 participants showed signs of healing on an MRI after they followed a new bracing protocol. (Camero and Herzberg, 11/15)

Infants born to mothers who used marijuana during pregnancy were twice as likely to be underweight and nearly twice as likely to be premature than infants who were not exposed to cannabis, a new study found. Cannabis-exposed infants were 2.5 times as likely to be admitted to a neonatal intensive care unit, compared with unexposed babies, according to the study. (LaMotte, 11/16)

Yellowstone National Park and the Wyoming Game and Fish Department (WGFD) announced yesterday that chronic wasting disease (CWD) has been confirmed for the first time in the park, which involves an adult mule deer found dead. ... So far, no infections in humans have been found, but health officials urge people to avoid eating meat from infected animals and to take precautions when field-dressing or butchering animals. (Schnirring, 11/15)

Despite the psychological toll of being shot by a firearm and surviving, victims may not seek mental health services from licensed professionals due to stigma, fear, and a lack of trusted resources, a new study found. (Li, 11/15)

The World Health Organization is making loneliness a global health priority, it said Wednesday, launching a new Commission on Social Connection. For the next three years, the commission will focus on ways to address the “pressing health threat” of a global epidemic of loneliness, reviewing the latest science and designing strategies to help people deepen their social connections. (Christensen, 11/15)

�鶹Ů�� Health News and MTPR: It’s Getting Harder To Find Long-Term Residential Behavioral Health Treatment For Kids 

Connie MacDonald works for the State Department at the U.S. consulate in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. It’s a dream job, and she loved living abroad with her two sons. But earlier this year, MacDonald said, her 8-year-old son started to become aggressive. At first the family thought it was ADHD. Her son was indeed eventually diagnosed with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder — as well as disruptive mood dysregulation disorder, which makes it difficult for her son to control his emotions, particularly anger. (Bolton, 11/16)

A dozen social media influencers and two trade associations received warnings from the Federal Trade Commission on Monday for endorsing the safety of aspartame, an artificial sweetener, or for promoting the consumption of products containing sugar. By using health and diet creators, many of whom have large platforms on Instagram and TikTok, to market these products without adequately disclosing their connection to the advertiser, the American Beverage Association and the Canadian Sugar Institute may have violated FTC rules, according to warning letters the commission sent the two groups. (Yang, 11/15)

There's been a staggering decline in the number of trips Americans take by putting one foot in front of the other, per a new report. The number of annual average daily walking trips dropped a whopping 36% in the contiguous U.S. between 2019 and 2022, per a new StreetLight Data report. (Fitzpatrick and Beheraj, 11/16)

The case has never been clearer: Eat less bacon and more beans. An analysis published Wednesday in the journal BMC Medicine, drawing on data from 37 studies, adds to the evidence that eating fewer animal-based foods — especially processed meats — and replacing them with whole grains, legumes and nuts is linked to a reduced risk of cardiovascular disease and Type 2 diabetes. The study is particularly useful because it details which dietary changes are most strongly linked to better health, said Qi Sun, an associate professor of nutrition and epidemiology at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, who was not involved with the study. (Callahan, 11/15)

Can a strawberry a day keep dementia away? A study published in the journal Nutrients last month suggests that could be possible. Researchers from the University of Cincinnati (UC) studied a total of 30 patients between 50 and 65 years of age who had experienced symptoms of mild cognitive decline. The participants were told to avoid eating any berry fruit — and instead added a packet of supplement powder to their water each morning, according to a press release from UC. For half the group, the powder contained strawberries. (Rudy, 11/15)

Clinical trials have shown that lifestyle programs — which include diet, exercise, and behavioral coaching — can help people in danger of developing type 2 diabetes from tipping into a diagnosis of the condition. But there’s been a nagging question of whether such intensive regimens work in the real world. (Joseph, 11/15)

The words "clean" and "natural" might look appealing on cosmetic labels, but those adjectives mean squat when it comes to what's in the product and how it's made. There's little stopping manufacturers and marketers of cleansers, makeup and other grooming products from using misleading language to sell to consumers concerned about harmful ingredients and the environment. (Mallenbaum, 11/15)

New York state sued PepsiCo (PEP.O) on Wednesday, accusing the beverage and snack food giant of polluting the environment and endangering public health through its single-use plastic bottles, caps and wrappers. The lawsuit filed in state court in upstate Erie County is among the first by a U.S. state to target a major plastics producer. New York Attorney General Letitia James said such pollution can enter drinking water after breaking down, contributing to health problems. (Mindock and Stempel, 11/15)

A Muslim legal expert on Thursday afternoon will sign a religious ruling that will give Muslim families in Minnesota the OK to use donor breast milk for their vulnerable babies while in intensive care. The religious clarification, forged over the past few months in discussions between Minnesota health systems and Islamic faith leaders, is believed to be the first of its kind in the United States. (Miles, 11/16)

Salem Hospital warned some patients who may have been exposed to HIV and hepatitis due to incorrectly administered IVs. The hospital says about 450 endoscopy patients may have been exposed to HIV, Hepatitis B and Hepatitis C over a two-year period. Salem Hospital says the possibility of infection from the incident is “extremely small” and that there are no reported instances of infection yet. (Brace, Morelli and Lambert, 11/15)

An additional 110,000 Connecticut residents had their personal data compromised during a six-week cyberattack of three Prospect Medical Holdings hospitals in the summer, according to a letter from their attorney to the state. Initially, Prospect believed the data breach affected only 63 Connecticut patients, along with 24,000 employees. (Altimari and Carlesso, 11/15)

While Stephanie Darroch was donating blood, a soothing voice spoke to her through a headset: “I need your help to turn this room into a beautiful, magical garden.” The goggles on the headset displayed a floating bag of seeds. Darroch, using only her eyes, placed the seeds around the room and watched them sprout into colorful blooms around her. (Munz, 11/15)

A Missouri University of Science and Technology scientist will soon travel to South Africa to study how powdered glass could heal wounds and prevent infections. Mark Towler, a chemical and biochemical engineering professor at the university, has for years worked to investigate how powdered glass can stop bleeding in injuries caused by car accidents, gunshots and stab wounds. (Fentem, 11/15)

Carnival Cruise Line has issued a lifetime ban to a Texas woman because security found a pack of CBD gummies in her suitcase as she was going through security at the Port of Miami in August. The company’s guidelines say that certain CBD products are prohibited at sea because they are “not legal in all the ports we visit,” regardless of whether they are available for “medicinal purposes” across parts of the United States. (Perez-Moreno, 11/15)

Compared to the 3 years prior to the pandemic, children with medically complex conditions and otherwise healthy children saw decreases in severe non-COVID respiratory illnesses in 2020 and 2021, the authors of a study yesterday note in JAMA Network Open. (Soucheray, 11/15)

Pancreatic cancer is one of the deadliest types of cancers in humans. It is the fourth leading cause of cancer-related deaths in the western world. The early stages of the disease often progress without symptoms, so diagnosis is usually very late. (Karlsruher Institut für Technologie (KIT), 11/15)

For more than 100 years, American women have outlived American men, largely due to differences in rates of cardiovascular disease and lung cancer. Now COVID-19 has widened the gendered life expectancy gap, according to a research letter published yesterday in JAMA Internal Medicine. (Soucheray, 11/14)

A special kind of genetic test that helps determine the best antidepressant for patients with moderate-to-severe depression could generate substantive health system savings and greatly improve patient outcomes, according to new research. The study shows that in B.C. alone, implementing pharmacogenomic testing could save the provincial public health system an estimated $956 million over 20 years. (University of British Columbia, 11/14)

It’s in the diagnosis of rare diseases — which afflict an estimated 30 million Americans and hundreds of millions of people worldwide — that AI could almost certainly make things better. “Doctors are very good at dealing with the common things,” says Isaac Kohane, chair of the department of biomedical informatics at Harvard Medical School. “But there are literally thousands of diseases that most clinicians will have never seen or even have ever heard of.” (Bina Venkataraman, 11/15)

Hospitals link people to treatment in their time of greatest need. That includes drug overdoses, which now kill more than 100,000 people in the U.S. every year. However, the standard hospital urine drug tests often do not detect fentanyl, which today is the leading cause of fatal overdoses, or other “synthetic” substances. (Eric D. Wish, Amy Billing and Erin Artigiani, 11/15)

Over 100,000 Americans now die from drug overdoses annually. To combat this crisis in New York City and save lives, Mayor Bill de Blasio decided to support an initiative rife with controversy: In November 2021, his government allowed OnPoint, a nonprofit, to open two overdose prevention centers, where people with addictions can inject or smoke drugs like opioids and stimulants under medical supervision to reduce the risk of overdose death. (Maia Szalavitz, 11/16)

Fentanyl and other synthetic opioids kill tens of thousands of young Americans a year, and the compound is helping to poison the US relationship with China. It was one of the issues on the table as the two leaders of the world’s most powerful economies, Chinese leader Xi Jinping and US President Joe Biden, met outside San Francisco on Wednesday. (Peter Bergen, 11/15)

In 2020, many Americans told themselves that all it would take to halt the pandemic was replacing the president and hitting the “science button.” In 2023, it looks like we’re telling ourselves the opposite: that if we were given the chance to run the pandemic again, it would have been better just to hit “abort” and give up. (David Wallace-Wells, 11/15)

In 1993, I published “Listening to Prozac,” a book that grew out of my clinical experience prescribing what was then a new class of medications, ones thought to moderate depression through their effect on the way that the brain handles the neurotransmitter serotonin. Some of my patients had reported marked favorable reactions to the drugs — first Prozac and, soon after, Zoloft. On medication, the patients were more confident, less anxious, and less pessimistic. (Peter D. Kramer, 11/16)

Three months ago, my aunt Margaret had a stroke. Days before, she was repainting her bathroom and driving herself. Now, she needs help with dressing and getting in and out of bed, and our family is grappling with the fact that this fiercely self-sufficient woman will never live independently again. This health crisis has been compounded at every turn by failures of the health care system — failures that are particularly infuriating to me because I have devoted my life to solving these very problems. (Dawn Alley, 11/16)