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Good morning. I was nearly late for a meeting yesterday because I was engrossed in this Caity Weaver piece detailing her epic search for the country’s best free restaurant bread. For the other Massachusetts millenials out there, Bertucci’s (and those of us who proselytize it) did get a shoutout.
AI could review scans for heart risk, if someone will pay for it
Every year, patients receive 19 million general chest CT scans — looking for lung cancer, investigating a cough, etc. Afterward, radiologists will often flag any coronary artery calcium they spot, even if it’s not what they were looking for. The more calcium, the higher a person’s risk of heart attack or stroke. But an estimated 20% to 40% of that incidental calcium goes unreported. As experts look for ways to catch more of those patients, AI is emerging as a potential solution.
“Without anybody needing to lift a finger on a day-to-day basis, patients can get screened for cardiac diseases,” said Nish Khandwala, CEO of Bunkerhill, one of many companies with FDA-authorized algorithms to find incidental calcium in existing chest CTs. But few health systems are utilizing these tools. Read more from STAT’s Katie Palmer on the challenges of this type of opportunistic screening.
Trump DOJ report says Biden administration treated anti-abortion protestors unfairly
The DOJ’s Weaponization Working Group — a purportedly apolitical effort to weed out politically motivated actions within the department — released a report yesterday arguing that the Biden administration inappropriately enforced the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act by largely prosecuting anti-abortion protestors while working with abortion clinics and pro-choice groups. The law, established in 1994, prohibits using or threatening physical force or obstruction to stop somebody from obtaining an abortion or exercising their First Amendment right to religious freedom.
One key finding notes that the Biden administration requested higher average sentences for “peaceful pro-life defendants” (26.3 months) compared to “violent pro-abortion defendants” (12.3 months). The report claims that the Biden DOJ “downplayed” attacks on crisis pregnancy centers and religious institutions, but critics say the report leaves out important context.
Analysis of the new report in the law journal Just Security points out that cases against those “peaceful” pro-life protestors were often regarding conduct like firebombing, arson, bomb threats, and coordinated blockades. As a 2024 article from the Southern Poverty Law Center put it, “one of the anti-abortion movement’s most effective weapons has been terror.”
What happens if med schools stop teaching health equity
It wasn’t until 2015 that formal accreditation requirements for medical schools to teach about health disparities and equity were established. More than a decade later, as political pressure mounts, the leading accreditation body has removed that language from its standards, replacing it with a focus on “structural competency.”
“This change isn’t trivial,” physician Uché Blackstock writes in her new First Opinion essay. “The LCME has made this content easier to deprioritize at a moment when its understanding remains essential to clinically competent care.” Read more on the everyday emergency room encounters that have shown Blackstock how important this training is.
Since 2009, hundreds got tetanus despite effective vaccine
A new CDC analysis of tetanus cases and deaths in the U.S. underscores the fact that failure to vaccinate or maintain immunity through recommended boosters is still putting people at risk from this dangerous and ubiquitous bacteria.
Between 2009 and 2023, at least 402 tetanus cases were reported in the United States; 37 of those people died. Though a lot of the records were incomplete, it appears a substantial portion of cases were in people who had never been vaccinated against tetanus, hadn’t had the full primary series of shots, or had gone longer than the recommended 10 years without getting a booster. None of the deaths involved people who had had three or more doses of tetanus-containing vaccine.
Most of the patients should have been offered a tetanus vaccine when they sought care for their wounds, and about three-quarters should have been offered tetanus immune globulin, said the report, published in CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. But that care was delivered in just a fraction of the cases. The report suggests health providers would benefit from brushing up on appropriate response when tetanus is a possibility. — Helen Branswell
An expression of concern over one journal’s expression of concern
If an academic journal releases a warning in a digital forest and nobody is around to notice it, is it actually an effective, transparent warning? This question — posed in a less convoluted way than I just attempted — is at the heart of Ed Silverman’s latest Pharmalot column. The warning in question came last fall from the Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry.
The journal issued an “expression of concern” regarding a controversial 2001 study on a widely prescribed antidepressant. It also retracted the study. But as Ed explains, the study itself was easier to find online than the expression of concern. That is, until he reached out to the journal and publisher. Read more on Ed’s trip down this rabbit hole, and what it signifies about academic publishing more broadly.
What we’re reading
States change custody laws to keep children of detained immigrants out of foster care, KFF Health News
You should be more freaked out by shingles, Wired
- Listen: Hosting the ‘intellectual wrestling match’ between MAHA, public health, STAT
- The problem with thinking you’re part Neanderthal, MIT Technology Review
