Morning Rounds: The billionaire who wants you angry about the food supply

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We’ve got some nice awards news this morning. Yesterday, my colleague and friend Jason Mast won the the 2024 Evert Clark/Seth Payne Award, for his reporting at the intersection of medical science, business, and human lives. I asked Jason if there was a STAT story he was most proud of and he shared this heart-wrenching one from last summer when the first gene therapy was approved for 4- and 5-year-old boys with Duchenne muscular dystrophy.

We also learned that, over the weekend, the wonderful Usha Lee McFarling won AAJA’s Excellence in Science / Environment / Health Reporting award for stories covering Asian American health disparities.

Why ransomware is ‘the Covid of cybersecurity’ at U.S. hospitals

Earlier this year, Change Healthcare paid $22 million to ransomware hackers after a cyberattack wreaked havoc on the entire health care system and compromised private information for a “substantial portion” of Americans. And unfortunately for us, this wasn’t an isolated event. Between 2016-2021, the number of attacks like these in health care more than doubled.

The rocketing number of cyber incidents shows that patient care is at the mercy of technology’s double-edged sword, STAT’s Brittany Trang reports. She interviewed over a dozen cybersecurity experts, current and former federal officials, researchers, and hospital executives to better understand how the health care system is defending itself against cyber threats. One key problem: Decades of legislation have emphasized keeping bad guys out of patient records, ignoring potential mechanisms to minimize the damage if (when) systems do go down.

Read more in STAT+ on how health care became a gold mine for hackers.

Billionaire Todd Wagner wants you mad about the food supply

Todd Wagner is probably best known as a co-owner of Magnolia Pictures (responsible for hit films such as this year’s “Thelma” and 2009’s “Food, Inc”) along with entrepreneur and “Shark Tank” star Mark Cuban. But now he has a new venture: FoodFight USA, an advocacy organization focused on ultra-processed food that has the attention of some of the most powerful people in Washington. Wagner says he has already met with the White House, FDA’s Robert Califf, and dozens of congressional lawmakers.

“I want people angry,” Wagner said to STAT’s Nick Florko. “This is an indictment of food companies that have tainted our food supply.”

Nick sat down with Wagner for an extensive interview on the food system, regulatory obstacles like the “generally recognized as safe” loophole, Hollywood, and more. Read the interview.

$5 aspirin is as good as a $300 injection. Why are people still getting injected?

When the New England Journal of Medicine published a study finding that aspirin was just as effective as injectable blood thinners at preventing life-threatening blood clots after surgery, the authors believed that hospitals would immediately change their practices to reflect the findings. Providing people with aspirin would improve health equity (it’s cheaper) and quality of life (pills > injections).

But that was last January, and change has been slow to come. In a new First Opinion essay, those same physician-researchers argue that clinicians need to consider health equity in decision-making, not just hospital policies and old habits.

“Not every change in medicine needs to be a grand gesture,” they wrote. Read more on how small changes can have big impacts when it comes to equitable care.

How drinking habits affected mortality among older people

Older adults who drink more are at greater risk of dying than those who only drink occasionally, according to a study published yesterday in JAMA Network Open. People whose drinking was categorized by the study as high-risk (based on grams consumed per day) showed higher all-cause, cancer, and cardiovascular mortality. But even low-risk drinking was associated with higher mortality when people were also dealing with health-related or socioeconomic risk factors.

The findings are based on U.K. Biobank data from over 135,000 people over 60 who drink. A preference for wine and only drinking during meal times were found to be associated with less of an increased mortality risk, but the authors write that more research is needed to determine if those choices are simply reflective of healthier lifestyles or other factors.

(Related: Earlier this summer, STAT’s Isa Cueto and Emory Parker wrote a great breakdown of drinking habits in the U.S. and how they affect our health.)

Is raw milk cheese safe to consume, given the ongoing outbreak of H5N1 bird flu in dairy cows?

The FDA and U.S. Department of Agriculture hoped to get an answer to that question in a new round of testing of commercial dairy products that included butter, ice cream, pasteurized and unpasteurized cheeses purchased in multiple states. Of the 167 items purchased, 23 were raw milk cheeses bought in Idaho, Minnesota, Ohio, North Carolina, and Texas.

But a newly posted preprint (a yet to be published study) reports that the agencies still cannot give a definitive answer, because none of the raw milk cheeses purchased tested positive for the virus. It has been assumed that some of the processes involved in making raw milk cheeses would likely kill the virus. For instance, under FDA rules, raw milk cheeses that are sold across state lines must be aged for a minimum of 60 days. “Because there was no evidence of virus in the cheese, we can’t draw any conclusions on whether the current requirements of 60 days of aging are sufficient to inactivate viable virus,” the FDA and USDA authors said, adding more research needs to be done. Evidence of virus was found in some of the cheeses made with pasteurized milk, but additional testing showed it was inactivated virus.

— Helen Branswell

ICYMI: Three MDMA papers retracted over data integrity concerns

Over the weekend, we learned that the journal Psychopharmacology was retracting three papers about MDMA-assisted psychotherapy — just days after the FDA’s rejection of the closely watched PTSD treatment.

The retractions were due to “protocol violations amounting to unethical conduct,” particularly during a Phase 2 trial at the study site in Canada, Psychopharmacology said. This site is where an unlicensed therapist was accused of sexual assault in civil court by a trial participant.

Read more in STAT+ from Meghana Keshavan.

What we’re reading

• Dozens of pregnant women, some bleeding or in labor, being turned away from ERs despite federal law, AP

• You’ve lost weight taking new obesity drugs. What happens if you stop? New York Times

• Noah Lyles’ collapse with Covid: How not to manage health at the Olympics, STAT
• ‘Scared to death’: Nurses and residents confront rampant violence in dementia care facilities, KFF Health News
• Nurse began working at hospital during WWII and hasn’t stopped. She’s 97, Washington Post