False Hope Fools the FDA: The Atrocious Authorization of the Alzhiemer’s drug Aducanumab
On June 7, advocacy groups, Alzheimer’s patients, and their families celebrated as the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) authorized the drug Aducanumab to treat Alzheimer’s. On the surface, this novel therapy—the first approved in 2003—seems massively encouraging for both the patients afflicted with Alzheimer’s and society as a whole. Unfortunately, in authorizing Aducanumab, the […]
Impacts of Direct-to-Consumer Pharmaceutical Advertising on Quality of Care
Advertisements for drugs have long inundated television and other media platforms. They all follow roughly the same formula: miraculous claims, moving images of families, the music swells, and then a long, incomprehensible list of possible side effects written in fine print and recited so quickly that the dangerous ones almost go unnoticed. This style of […]
The Economics 101 of Post-Pandemic Healthcare
While “opportunity” is rarely used to describe the COVID-19 pandemic, Americans have had a unique opportunity to witness both the strengths and pitfalls of the healthcare system over the past year. The high cost of medical care provides a strong entrepreneurial culture that the pharmaceutical industry harnessed to create and distribute innovative treatments rapidly. Yet, […]
Millions of people could go unvaccinated. Here’s why.
A pandemic-free world is a pipe dream unless every person is vaccinated. And that can only be reached if every single person has access to the vaccine. Each day, hundreds of thousands of Americans receive the vaccine for the novel coronavirus. Yet, as millions of people have their fear of the virus erased, millions more […]
Bold Reforms on America’s Health-Care Quilt
From “Medicare for All” to a full private option, health-care reform is a widely debated key issue this election cycle. While politicians discuss the topic, there must be an emphasis on the characteristics of an effective health-care system—efficacy, equity, affordability, and accountability. Efficacy measures a health-care system’s capacity to perform an intended task—a vital gauge […]
How a Lack of Diversity in Genetic Research is Holding Us Back
The dawn of genetic testing has allowed scientists to see patients’ entire DNA sequence and identify any changes in that sequence that could cause disease. Genetic testing and sequencing is expected to become commonplace in primary care within the next few years. Genetic screening is also used in oncology and in the context of reproductive […]
How to Save Millions of Lives
If history and science have taught us anything, it’s a simple lesson: vaccines work. They’ve saved countless lives and allowed millions of children to grow up without fear of debilitating diseases. Because of vaccines, we’ve nearly eradicated several diseases that once posed significant danger to the public. In 1916, polio killed about six thousand people […]
The Need for Universal Access in Healthcare
This September, I was traveling on a bus through the rural farmland of Chiapas, the southernmost state of Mexico. While driving down a dirt road, our bus had to stop. With my face pressed up against the glass, I could see about 30 people gathered in a circle in the middle of the road, huddled […]
The Case for the Right to Health
As a college student, you might not be particularly interested in politics. You might not see its relevance to your life or to the lives of anyone you know. You might steer clear from cable news, Facebook shares, and Twitter brawls at all costs. However, even if all of these things are true, it’s likely […]
Healthcare Reform After Obama
I. For those committed to the protection of vulnerable populations in the United States, perhaps the most reassuring part of a Hillary Rodham Clinton victory on November 8th would have been her administration’s ability to uphold and improve the Affordable Care Act (ACA). Despite Republican insistence that the central pillar of President Obama’s legacy is […]