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KHN: KHN’s ‘What The Health?’: Contemplating A Post-‘Roe’ World

With those on both sides of the abortion debate anticipating that the Supreme Court this year will weaken or overturn Roe v. Wade, which established the right to the procedure, activists are arguing about how best to proceed. The Biden administration has thus far avoided much mention of the divisive issue, while anti-abortion forces disagree on whether to try to ban abortion at the state level in a single step, or more gradually. Meanwhile, millions of Americans who have been covered by the Medicaid program since the pandemic struck are at risk of losing that coverage when the federal government ends the declared covid-19 “public health emergency,” likely later this year. (2/24)

More people are taking their health into their own hands as the Covid-19 pandemic has made it more difficult to see a doctor and get tests done, but taking the do-it-yourself approach requires navigating a lot of technology. The tech industry has raced to fill consumer demand. A flood of new health-tracking wearables, monitors, tests and apps—more than 350,000 apps, according to health research firm IQVIA—promise to help people screen, monitor or flag all sorts of maladies and conditions, with or without a doctor’s orders. Some of these healthcare tools have proved helpful, but consumers also report experiences with at-home lab tests that have been disappointing, confusing or misleading. Tools like sleep-tracking apps and blood testing kits aren’t always regulated by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, and the regulations are so complicated that often it is unclear to consumers which ones should be.  (Morris, 2/22)

Barbara Han, a disease ecologist at the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies, knew it was a question of when, not if, the coronavirus would spread to animals. As the first reports of infected animals appeared in 2020, she began working on an artificial intelligence model that would predict which creatures might be next. “We had a pretty lofty goal of being able to predict exactly which species we should be keeping an eye on, given that we think it’s going to spill back,” Dr. Han said. As her team worked, the trickle of cases in new species became a flood: cats and dogs in homes and mink on farms. The virus infiltrated zoos, infecting the usual suspects (tigers and lions) as well as more surprising species (the coatimundi, which is native to the Americas and resembles a raccoon crossed with a lemur, and the binturong, which is native to Southeast Asia and resembles a raccoon crossed with an elderly man). (Imbler and Anthes, 2/22)

In her mind, Cathy Chen pictures a scene that she herself says could be drawn from a TV drama: Falling into the arms of her husband after long months apart, when he meets her off the plane from Beijing. Scooping up their two young daughters and squeezing them tight. “I just imagine when we’re back together,” the Olympic Games worker says, “and I just can’t control myself.” So athletes from countries where the coronavirus has raged can compete in the Olympic host nation with few infections, China’s workforce at the Winter Games is making a giant sacrifice. (Leicester, 2/14)

For nearly 80 years, recruits reporting to central California’s Fort Ord considered themselves the lucky ones, privileged to live and work amid sparkling seas, sandy dunes and sage-covered hills. But there was an underside, the dirty work of soldiering. Recruits tossed live grenades into the canyons of “Mortar Alley,” sprayed soapy chemicals on burn pits of scrap metal and solvents, poured toxic substances down drains and into leaky tanks they buried underground. When it rained, poisons percolated into aquifers from which they drew drinking water. (Mendoza, Linderman and Dearen, 2/23)

Scientists have long hypothesized that viruses, including Epstein-Barr, are involved in the development of autoimmune diseases, in which the immune system mistakenly attacks healthy tissue. Evidence links it to lupus, and a recent study reported that people with long Covid were more likely than others to have an active Epstein-Barr infection (though it is unclear whether that infection causes symptoms, because the virus can proliferate when the immune system is under stress without creating any health problems). There are documented associations between mono and multiple sclerosis, a disease in which the immune system destroys a protective sheath called myelin that coats nerve fibers, often disabling communication between the nervous system and the rest of the body. “People have been trying for many, many decades to prove that a virus causes M.S. or rheumatoid arthritis,” says William H. Robinson, the chief of the immunology and rheumatology division at Stanford. “And they have not been able to convincingly demonstrate that it does.” (Tingley, 2/23)

As global temperatures rise, mountain glaciers around the world are sweating. This could affect nearly 1.9 billion people living in and downstream of mountainous areas who depend on melting ice and snow for drinking, agriculture and hydroelectric power. In the tropical Andes, for instance, glaciers provide almost one-third of the water that millions of people in major cities use during the dry season. (Patel and Francis, 2/7)

Since the Yale cognitive scientist Laurie Santos began teaching her class Psychology and the Good Life in 2018, it has become one of the school’s most popular courses. The first year the class was offered, nearly a quarter of the undergraduate student body enrolled. You could see that as a positive: all these young high-achievers looking to learn scientifically corroborated techniques for living a happier life. But you could also see something melancholy in the course’s popularity: all these young high-achievers looking for something they’ve lost, or never found. Either way, the desire to lead a more fulfilled life is hardly limited to young Ivy Leaguers, and Santos turned her course into a popular podcast series “The Happiness Lab,” which quickly rose above the crowded happiness-advice field. (It has been downloaded more than 64 million times.) “Why are there so many happiness books and other happiness stuff and people are still not happy?” asks Santos, who is 46. “Because it takes work! Because it’s hard!” (Marchese, 2/18)