Dear Reader,
STAT is on fire! Not literally, of course.
But if you’ve followed our coverage in recent days, you would understand that it’s not hyperbole that we call ourselves the leading source of news from the frontiers of health and medicine. In the past week alone, our indefatigable team published roughly 75 stories — not merely run-of-the-mill news, but stories that you could not get anywhere else, with exclusive details and insights.
So today I’m asking you to subscribe to STAT+ to get all-you-can-read access. Why? Our differentiator is trusted, sophisticated, world-class journalism. It is no accident that in our relatively short history we’ve been recognized twice as a Pulitzer Prize finalist and been showered with journalistic honors. Subscriptions enable us to fund all our journalists, including the accomplished and deeply sourced team of reporters behind these stories. Today, we are offering readers a 25% discount on the STAT+ annual plan.
Whether you work in health or medicine, related fields, or just care about these issues, which are crucial to all of us, our journalism will give you unflinching, often indispensable insights into the technologies, personalities, power brokers, and political and policy forces driving a revolution in human health.
Today, we report that a company built around star Harvard biochemist David Liu and backed by blue chip investors has vastly scaled back its plans to use its new gene-editing technology across 18 different diseases, including conditions as disparate as ALS, congenital blindness, and muscular dystrophy — and what that means for early stage biotechs whose work might not reach their patients for years.
Also today, we published an exclusive analysis of CEO pay in the health care industry, revealing that despite a downturn in stocks in 2023, the biggest names in the field made a combined $3.5 billion last year. The top CEO pulled in $305 million, plus more than $1 million for a security detail due to a “heightened threat environment.”
We are hard at work on upcoming installments of our must-read series “Health Care’s Colossus,” which documents how UnitedHealth Group has gobbled up multiple pieces of the health care industry and exploited its growing power.
Some other recent STAT stories:
- A tour de force by six STAT reporters about what the abrupt withdrawal of a sickle cell drug means for Pfizer, patients, and the FDA. We also published this wrenching follow-up, capturing how sickle cell patients are now scrambling to find a safe alternative.
- Only Matt Herper, our senior writer for medicine, has the deep sourcing and relationships to have produced this story on how the CEO of 23andMe is struggling to save her company.
- For years, STAT has made reporting on the intersection of technology and health a priority. So there is no better outlet to explain how a lawsuit against Epic Systems could influence how technology innovation plays out in the American health care system.
- In this piece looking ahead to the high-stakes presidential election, we dive into the complex world of how hospitals could make money off of Kamala Harris’ medical debt relief plan.
- As China becomes a more important and ambitious force in biotech, this exclusive story examines how a little-known Chinese company’s cancer drug beat Keytruda and now has global ambitions.
- Helen Branswell, arguably the foremost infectious disease reporter anywhere, night and day chronicles the rise of bird flu infections in humans — serving as an early warning system just as she did for millions of readers as Covid was unfolding.
I hope I’ve enticed you enough to give STAT+ a try. Subscribers also get free access to Adam Feuerstein’s weekly biotech newsletter, always provocative, drawing from his decades of covering the intersection of biotech and Wall Street
I hope you will consider subscribing. Please reach out to me if you have any questions or suggestions. I’m at [email protected].
Sincerely,
Richard L. Berke
Co-founder & Executive Editor