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Remember the 4-year-old Texas girl who was sickened with a mysterious, sometimes deadly, foreign bacteria not supposed to be in the United States? A clue to the possible source of what might have infected Lylah Baker and three others with the rare bacteria has emerged in a new report by investigators from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and state health departments, which links a 2019 case of Burkholderia pseudomallei infection in Maryland to an item in the victim's home: (Jason Lalljee, 9/28)

Americans believe they’re being ripped off by pharmaceutical companies, and almost any policy that promises to lower drug prices polls extremely well, even among Republicans. So it’s somewhat surprising that Democrats are fighting internally over a proposal to let Medicare negotiate drug prices. (Megan McArdle, 9/28)

The United States spends trillions of dollars each year on prescription drugs — more than any other country in the world. Meanwhile, America's largest pharmaceutical companies are raking in record-breaking profits and spending millions of dollars in dark money against public officials who stand up to them. Consider insulin, for example. Over the past decade, the drug — which was discovered more than a century ago — has seen prices skyrocket by 197%. A bottle of Humalog, one of the most commonly used types of insulin, cost $21 in 1991. Today, the average list price for a vial of Humalog is over $300. Right now, Minnesotans with diabetes can spend anywhere from $1,200 to $20,000 annually on insulin, a medication they literally cannot afford to live without. (Angie Craig, 9/28)

The Food and Drug Administration needs a wake-up call. More than 3 million U.S. high-school students and another half a million middle-school students use e-cigarettes, many of which are loaded with so much nicotine they could not be legally sold in Canada, the U.K. or Europe. The addictive nature of these products makes them a menace to students’ health, and it’s clear that kids are being drawn in by a tactic the industry has long used to hook young smokers: sweet, flavored products, including menthol. (Michael R. Bloomberg, 9/29)

The sad fact is that disproportionate rates of unnecessary suffering and death occur within the Black community. African Americans were 2.8 times more likely than white Americans to be hospitalized due to COVID-19, and twice as likely to die from it. Some of this difference is attributed to factors beyond our control such as differences in vitamin D absorption. Living and working conditions also put many African Americans at greater risk for contracting COVID-19. We cannot absolve ourselves from all responsibility to help fix these issues. (Talya Miron-Shatz, 9/28)

To the surprise of no one in Florida, a Texas-style antiabortion bill landed in the Florida state legislature last week. The bill, like the Texas version, is designed to ban most abortions by inviting citizen-filed lawsuits against anyone who helps a woman undergo the procedure. Florida joins at least a half-dozen other Republican-led states now considering their own versions of the law, which bars abortions around six weeks of pregnancy — before many women are aware that they’re pregnant. What is striking about the Florida GOP’s latest attack on abortion rights — “fetal heartbeat” bills have been tried before — is how little interest these Republicans take in trying to prevent the unplanned pregnancies that lead to abortions. (Lizette Alvarez, 9/28)

The latest statistics from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) are simply staggering: there were more than 95,000 drug overdose deaths between February 2020 and February 2021, an all-time record. With thousands of Americans dying from preventable overdoses each year, it is clear that persistent, societal, and systemic failures are perpetuating pain and suffering among far too many people. Policymakers and public health officials must do more to prevent these deaths. (William F. Haning, III, 9/29)