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By the time Elizabeth Erickson was a freshman at Davidson College in 2002, she knew she wanted to become a doctor. Because she understood that the earliest health interventions are among the most important, she set herself on a pediatrics track. After four years of premed classes, she went straight to medical school at Wake Forest University, which took another four years. Then came three years of residency at Duke University, plus one final year as chief resident. In 2014, she joined the faculty of Duke’s School of Medicine. Her dream was realized at the steep price of 12 consecutive years of learning and training, plus about $400,000 of debt. (Derek Thompson, 2/14)

Without any proposed new funding for his initiative “to end cancer as we know it,” President Biden walked into the White House’s East Room on Feb. 2 to inaugurate what his former science adviser, Eric Lander, called an “audacious” effort to reduce the death rate from cancer by at least 50 percent within 25 years. While there are many admirable ideas in the president’s proposed plan, his reignited “moonshot” — downsized from an earlier campaign promise to “cure” cancer — was greeted with skepticism. With no new investment, critics noted, the moonshot is not ready for liftoff. (Edward Abrahams, 2/13)

Washington state legislators have ignored for decades children, youth and adults with developmental disabilities, failing to provide critical services to live full and thriving lives many take for granted. Gov. Jay Inslee recognizes the problem and has a solution. In his proposed budget, the governor has prioritized funding to forecast how many individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities are requesting services from the Department of Social and Health Services, and how many people are eligible and need community and residential services. (Stacy Dym, 2/11)

After I woke up one morning several years ago with freakishly blurred vision, doctors figured out quickly what was wrong: I’d had a rare stroke of sorts. Overnight, it had ravaged the optic nerve behind my right eye. Worst-case scenario? The left eye would follow suit, leaving me blind. Best? Some improvement. Much adjustment. But I’d never see as clearly as before. (Frank Bruni, 2/15)

“First, do no harm.” Those four words, and the Hippocratic oath of which they are a part, have served as an ethical guide for medical practitioners for centuries. While the oath itself has evolved over the years — a more modern one was coined by Dr. Louis Lasagna in 1964 — it hasn’t been updated since then and its application to modern health technology has stagnated. The oath is anchored in medical ethics with four broad principles: autonomy, non-maleficence, beneficence, and justice. Its goal is to protect the health and privacy of patients above all else. But it’s not 1964 anymore, and digital communications, social media, and the ease of person-to-person connections have dramatically changed how people shop, learn, work — and how medicine is practiced. (Ries Robinson and Aneesh Chopra, 2/15)