public health
This ‘never event’ is happening more frequently
Camille MacMillin/STAT
A child born with congenital syphilis could suffer dire consequences: bone deformities, brain damage, blindness, deafness, and more. But that should be a ‘never event’ as public health officials say: A pregnant person can receive an injectable form of penicillin to prevent the infection. Somehow, rates keep going up anyway. Between 2012 and 2024, the U.S. saw an 800% increase in babies born with the disease. And since last year, there’s been a shortage of the drug.
Pfizer, the only company that sells it, has an emergency request system for pregnant patients. But public health officials say the program is confusing and that some companies may get preferential treatment. In his latest story, STAT's Eric Boodman illustrates each hurdle that kept one Arizona mother from accessing the medication before delivering her baby, despite multiple attempts on her behalf to obtain the drug. He reviewed email chains between Pfizer and health officials, while also conducting interviews with local health agencies, pharmacists, infectious disease specialists, OB-GYNs, and Mark Cuban. Read more.
exclusive
‘I’m really worried’: WHO leader on Ebola, war, and politics
With at least 708 confirmed cases and 141 deaths, the Ebola outbreak centered in the Democratic Republic of the Congo is already the third largest on record. In less than a month, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has been to the affected area twice. He’s profoundly worried about the outbreak, but community leaders and people on the ground told him there are other, bigger concerns facing residents.
“Why would they care about Ebola when they're dying more because of other problems, whether it's health problems or conflict?” Tedros told STAT’s Helen Branswell in a rare one-on-one interview. “They actually wonder why we are serious about Ebola and not the rest of their suffering.” I highly recommend you read this tough, honest conversation.
rewind
Where ‘democracy met science,’ 50 years ago
With the hindsight of half a century, biotechnology has been a win for Cambridge, Mass. But it wasn’t always seen that way. Fifty years ago this month, citizens, including scientists, were bitterly divided over the safety of experiments at Harvard to insert DNA segments into E. coli bacteria from other organisms, a genetic engineering technique called recombinant DNA. The public debate culminated in a hearing before the Cambridge City Council on June 23, 1976.
On Friday night, the historic event was recreated in the same packed city council chambers, in a Central Square Theater production called “No Recombination Without Representation.” It drew descendants of some of the key participants — including then-Mayor Al Vellucci, who was famously unimpressed by the professors at the city’s campuses — as well as biotech glitterati Noubar Afeyan and Phil Sharp. Protesters waved signs saying “Play With DNA No Way” and “Keep Frankenstein Fiction.”
The city council ultimately placed a seven-month moratorium on recombinant DNA work before adopting regulations to ensure safety and incorporate public input into oversight of the technology — a process the play implicitly held up as a model for governance of AI today. By providing fledgling companies predictability, the rules are widely viewed as having set the stage for the emergence of the Kendall Square biotech hub. “Democracy met science here in 1976,” Sharp, co-founder of one of those early companies, Biogen, said in brief introductory remarks. “That’s the cornerstone of our society.” — Gideon Gil
