Good morning. What a newsy week. I’m Isabella Cueto, a chronic disease reporter at STAT, and so it’s my duty to say: Pause. Deep breath. A sip of water would be nice. Maybe a piece of fruit? A short walk around lunchtime? Cool. To the news:
Trump picks Dr. Oz to lead CMS
President-elect Trump has chosen TV personality Mehmet Oz as administrator of the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Oz, who is a heart surgeon, would have influence over policies that decide payment to hospitals, health care providers and insurers. He would also oversee Medicare and Medicaid, and Affordable Care Act health plans.
Previously, Oz ran for U.S. Senate as a Republican with Trump’s endorsement, but lost to Democrat John Fetterman. While health secretary nominee Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has spurned the influence of pharmaceutical manufacturers, Oz’s senate bid was backed by Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla. Oz also attended Kennedy’s election-eve party in Palm Beach, Fla. (The two go way back.)
Though Oz has touted astrology as a medical tool and promoted a variety of dietary supplements, he also endorsed vaccines and masks. Read more from Rachel Cohrs Zhang and Sarah Owermohle on the news, and don’t miss this 2023 story from our archives on understanding Oz as both a source of medical misinformation and as a figure who’s “influenced people in the direction of science consistency.”
Pharma execs keep their cool on RFK Jr., while his legal battles against vaccines continue
Meanwhile, pharma executives seem to be channeling the “This is fine” dog as RFK Jr.’s nomination to the Department of Health and Human Services looms, despite the politician’s vocal criticism of the industry. At an investor conference in London this week, STAT’s Andrew Joseph reports executives projected casualness. Even vaccine makers, who stand to receive the worst of Kennedy’s ire, shrugged off potential impacts. “We do think that the Covid business is going to be here to stay,” Ryan Richardson, the chief strategy officer of BioNTech, said.
And while Kennedy has said he won’t take away vaccines, he and his nonprofit are involved in many legal battles about Covid shots, vaccine mandates, and online censorship of misinformation. Several pending cases are against the Food and Drug Administration, National Institutes of Health, and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — agencies Kennedy would oversee as HHS Secretary. Read more from Sarah Owermohle and me.
California reports bird flu case in a child
California reported on Tuesday a possible case of H5 bird flu in a child who had no known contact with infected animals. The child, who lives in Alameda County, southeast of Oakland, was treated for mild upper respiratory symptoms and is recovering at home, according to a news release from the state’s public health department. The child tested positive for other viruses that may be the true cause of the symptoms, the statement said. Other family members were symptomatic too, but all tested negative for bird flu.
State health officials, who are exploring the possibility the child was exposed to wild birds, are sending the child’s specimen to the CDC for confirmatory testing. The statement said levels of virus in the test were low, which may make it difficult for the CDC to confirm the infection. So far this year the CDC has confirmed 53 H5 cases in seven states, almost all of which were people who worked with infected dairy cows or were involved in culling infected poultry. Keep up with STAT’s reporting on the latest in bird flu here. — Helen Branswell
Where are all the Asian American doctors?
Trick question. A new study in JAMA Network Open finds that while Asian Americans are well represented in medicine, members of some Asian subgroups — Laotian Americans, Cambodian Americans, and Filipino Americans — are vastly underrepresented. Such underrepresentation has gone unnoticed because of the common practice of treating Asian Americans as a monolith, lumping them all into one group despite vast differences that exist in educational attainment, income, health outcomes, and food security.
The study also found that Asian Americans from nearly every subgroup were represented less at higher career levels and among academic medical school faculty. Laotian American, Cambodian American, and Filipino American medical students were also less represented in the most selective medical specialties that require the longest training. In contrast, those who were Taiwanese American, Pakistani American, Korean American, and Chinese American were represented at higher levels.
Disaggregating data to better understand Asian Americans populations is key, the authors write, and could help prevent underinvestment in this group, noting that in the past 25 years, just 0.17% of NIH funding has gone to study Asian Americans. — Usha Lee McFarling
48,870
That’s how many people died of alcohol-related causes in 2020. Put differently, that’s a mortality rate of 21.6 per 100,000 people — more than double what it was in 1999, researchers report in a new study in the American Journal of Medicine. CDC data suggest alcohol-related deaths went up in all age groups, but the largest increases were among those 25 to 34 (a 3.8-fold increase). Women, Asian people and Pacific Islanders experienced over two-fold increases.
Alcohol-related harms and death have been mounting for years, but the pandemic accelerated the problem. A separate study in the Annals of Internal Medicine found the prevalence of any drinking and of heavy alcohol use increased between 2018 and 2020, and the uptick persisted in 2022, though recent polling suggests public attitudes toward alcohol are shifting.
(The CDC offers a free tool for adults to check their drinking levels and build a plan for cutting back.)
If you or someone you know has concerns about substance use, call the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration’s National Helpline at 1-800-662-HELP (4357) or visit findtreatment.gov.
A cautionary tale of medical device safety, finally told
A woman in Georgia finds a piece of metal poking out of her inner thigh one day in 2011. Later, she learns it was from an implanted medical device that had come apart in her body. She sues the device maker, Cook Medical, and in the process dredges up evidence that critical safety issues were overlooked in clinical trials. That information is shielded from the public for years.
This is a case that researchers say illustrates how medical device regulation can leave patients in the dark — “a tangible example of where that lack of transparency really does cause harm,” device safety expert Kushal Kadakia told STAT’s Liz Lawrence. Kadakia is co-author of a new paper in the Annals of Internal Medicine that shares for the first time the confidential details of the Cook Medical case — including alleged shortcomings of the clinical trial, and how expert witnesses were barred from speaking about it for a decade. Read more.