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Happy Monday — it’s Sarah subbing in. A colleague at one of my old jobs used to love using the icebreaker, “Would you rather be a dog or a ghost?” (H/T GQ.) Maybe try it at your next networking event and report back on how it goes?
What to know about top FDA vaccine official’s ouster
Peter Marks resigned from his post as the FDA’s top vaccine regulator Friday after Trump administration officials told him it was that or be fired. Public health experts, former FDA commissioners, and biotech executives alike are alarmed by Marks’ ouster and what it portends about containing infectious disease given health secretary Robert F. Kennedy’s anti-vaccine agenda. “[I]t has become clear that truth and transparency are not desired by the Secretary, but rather he wishes subservient confirmation of his misinformation and lies,” Marks wrote in his resignation letter, saying Kennedy has undermined confidence in vaccines at a time when measles outbreaks are growing across the U.S.
Read more from a deep bench of STAT reporters on Marks’ resignation and reactions across the health and life sciences communities, including the pharma and biotech execs who had mostly stayed quiet about the new administration till now. From the CEO of Ovid Therapeutics: Marks’ letter “signals that the very infrastructure we rely on to evaluate, approve, and monitor life-saving medicines — and to protect patients from harm — is at risk of collapse.”
Texas measles cases jump 20%
Speaking of measles, the outbreak in Texas is getting worse. Officials said they had identified 400 cases as of Friday, primarily in the western part of the state, a 20% jump from 327 cases just a few days prior on March 25. Outbreaks are also underway in New Mexico (44 cases), Kansas (23 cases), Oklahoma (9 cases), and Ohio (10 cases). The CDC defines outbreaks as three or more related cases.
The news comes as alarm grows among public health experts over HHS secretary Kennedy’s response to the outbreak, including his suggestion that things like vitamin A and cod liver oil could be effective treatments for measles. Recent federal cuts have impacted people who track the spread of measles and other infectious diseases, and canceled grants include research on vaccine hesitancy. Read more on the outbreak.
FDA clears at-home test for three STIs
An estimated one in five people in the U.S. have a sexually transmitted infection on any given day. But people may put off going to the doctor’s office to get checked out, whether because of the anxiety and stigma that’s still associated with STIs or other barriers to care. Many public health experts see at-home tests as a promising way to curb the spread of infections and help people get the treatment they need — an alternative that’s made further gains with the FDA authorization on Friday of an at-home test for chlamydia, gonorrhea and trichomoniasis from Visby Medical.
The kit, which is meant for women, includes a vaginal swab for collecting a sample as well as a testing device that provides results within 30 minutes, and can be purchased without a prescription. The FDA authorization follows its 2023 clearance of an at-home test for chlamydia and gonorrhea, although that test required people to send their samples to a laboratory in order to get results. The agency also authorized an at-home test for syphilis in 2024.
The differences between men’s and women’s hearts
Heart attacks look different in women — rather than clutching their chests, as men stereotypically do, they may experience more diffuse pain shooting through their jaw, neck, arm, back, and stomach. That’s just one of the myriad sex and gender differences in cardiovascular disease that researchers have discovered, from risk factors to the number and function of muscle cells in the heart.
At a moment when research into women’s health is under threat in the United States as a casualty of the Trump administration’s attack on diversity efforts, researchers are worried that this kind of potentially lifesaving progress may be stymied. Read more from Liz Cooney on what we’ve learned about women and heart disease in recent years, and where experts say we should focus next.
The end of cadavers in medical school training
More medical schools are phasing out the use of cadavers in favor of virtual reality and other 3-D visualization tools. That means future doctors will lose out on a valuable education about being comfortable in the presence of death, according to First Opinion writer and medical student Nadir Al-Saidi.
“Coming face-to-face with a body in that raw state was one of the most powerful moments of my first year in medical school,” Al-Saidi writes of an early encounter with a cadaver. “It taught me reverence and the gravity of what it means to choose this path in health care.” Read more — and if you want to learn more about the long and ethically complicated history of cadavers in medical training as well as in uses like crash testing, check out Mary Roach’s 2006 book “Stiff.”
Already rare, cardiac deaths during marathons have fallen
Just in time for spring marathons, we have a study published Sunday in JAMA updating the infrequent but alarming incidence of sudden cardiac arrest among runners. It’s quite rare that someone’s heart will stop beating on the race course, and even rarer that they will die.
Here’s the good news: The death rate fell by nearly half in a recent case series from 2010 through 2023 compared to rates gleaned in an initial study conducted the decade before. There were 59 deaths and 117 survivors for a case fatality rate of 34%, down from 71% in the earlier timeframe. Incidence was stable, which means among more than 29 million competitors in full and half-marathons — triple the participants reported in the initial RACER study — there were 176 cardiac arrests, most among men, most during a marathon and most after the 20-mile point.
Why the change? The authors point to CPR and AEDs on the course. Every runner in cardiac arrest got resuscitation and most had access to a defibrillator to shock their hearts back into rhythm. That puts race routes on a par with airports and casinos for AED availability. — Liz Cooney
What we’re reading
- Utah becomes the first state to ban fluoride in public drinking water, AP
- The confessions of insurance executives, New York Magazine
- Peter Marks’ ouster is an ominous sign for biotech — and for public health, STAT
- ‘He still figures in my nightmares’: how a sinister psychiatrist put hundreds of women in deep, drug-induced comas, The Guardian
- Trump chooses Fox News contributor Sara Carter as next drug czar, STAT
