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31
Aug
2020

The Data Are Telling Us to Prepare for a Difficult Fall

I could not resist using the above, peerless comic strip from Stephan Pastis. Indeed, the two “plagues” are not just co-existing, but they are mutually reinforcing each other and making things worse. We should take the “great wise ass on the hill” seriously and invest in science and (investigative, high quality) journalism. About two months ago, I wrote here about...
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28
Aug
2020

A Swing and a Miss from the CDC

Please help me understand the value of OUR Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in 2020. It’s baseball season — sort of. We have been waiting and waiting for the CDC to step up to home plate. The bases have been loaded for 7 months, and their fans have been waiting. The CDC is supposed to be our national cleanup...
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27
Aug
2020

Convalescent Plasma: Look Before You Leap

In the last few days I have been wondering how Michael Joyner and Arturo Casadevall have been feeling. Joyner and Casadevall are the first and senior authors, respectively, of the report, “Effect of Convalescent Plasma on Mortality among Hospitalized Patients with COVID-19: Initial Three Month Experience,” posted on Medrxiv on August 12. The preprint server allows researchers to make their...
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26
Aug
2020

An Underappreciated Aspect of Power: Listening

As the summer draws to a close, I thought TR readers might enjoy a final August distraction. I’ve always been an avid reader, and lately, I’ve found myself increasingly drawn to the history and science of American politics.  On the history front, and inspired by Stanford professor Jeffrey Pfeffer (an expert on power and leadership), I’ve started Robert Caro’s famously...
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24
Aug
2020

Insurance Reform, Not Executive Orders, Is the Best Tool to Protect U.S. Patients and U.S. Pharmaceutical Innovation

With today’s Aug. 24 deadline looming, it’s important to explain how President Trump’s “most favored nations” executive order to purportedly lower drug prices would actually backfire, and hurt patients both at home and abroad. The order, which ties prices for certain drugs paid for by Medicare to the lowest prices paid in other countries, including Canada and much of Europe,...
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11
Aug
2020

From Rio to Rome: Rosana Kapeller on The Long Run

Today’s guest on The Long Run is Rosana Kapeller. She’s the president and CEO of Cambridge, Mass.-based ROME Therapeutics. ROME aims to discover and develop drugs based on emerging science in what is sometimes called the “repeatome.” These are long repeat stretches of DNA that scientists until recently knew very little about, and still have a lot to learn about...
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31
Jul
2020

Closing Medicine’s Feedback Gap: Can Tech Help Integrate Clinical Care and Clinical Research?

Medicine is plagued by a feedback gap, or perhaps more accurately, a feedback paradox.  On the one hand, clinicians are bombarded by feedback. Every day, there are a slew of process and billing metrics to review, providing an accounting of the volume of patients seen, and the intensity of each visit.  How thorough was the exam? What procedures may have...
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30
Jul
2020

Jill Hagenkord’s Rags To Riches Story Reminds Us Why We Still Admire Entrepreneurs

Entrepreneurial stories, often told through the narrative framework of the hero’s journey, are by now well past the point of cliché.  Yet, it’s important, perhaps even instructive, to remind ourselves every now and again about the exceptional, transformative power of entrepreneurship, the can-do thinking it motivates, and the remarkable progress it can propel. This potential emerged as a central theme...
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