The spread of HIV through contaminated blood was a tragic illustration of the risk that blood products could harbor undetectable and latent infection that's only revealed once it's widely distributed.
It's now evident that public health is part of national security.
Zika is an addressable threat. While it falls outside of the regular routine of public health preparedness, we shouldn't be scrambling for new resources each time a threat like Zika starts to emerge.
One option is to run Medicaid like a health program - rather than an exercise in political morals - and let states tailor benefits to the individual needs of patients, even if that means abandoning the unworkable myth of 'comprehensive' coverage.
The nature of food processing had changed substantially in America. Much of it owed to corresponding changes in food packaging and the logistics for faster shipping. The scope of outbreak from foodborne illness no longer has a clear geographic boundary.
Gene editing will be used to alter DNA to erase the origins of a range of debilitating inherited disorders.
It's important to protect the old and the vulnerable, who are at the highest risk of severe illness and bad outcomes. But like most issues of medicine, it isn't a binary choice. Given the uncertainties of how this virus spreads and its high risk of infirmities, it would be unwise to abandon efforts to limit Covid spread wherever possible.
ObamaCare has accelerated many of the detrimental trends doctors see in their profession, and introduced new ones.
Before Obamacare, insurance networks typically covered an entire state. Under Obamacare, insurers are able to bid to offer coverage mostly on a county-by-county basis. It means that health plans only need to fashion doctor networks as wide as the county that they're bidding to offer coverage in.
EpiPen is not unique. It falls into a category of old drugs, many of which should have long been subject to generic competition.
Once an effective drug is approved to treat a deadly condition, introducing a second drug to treat the same disease can be hard. It's tough to recruit patients with a debilitating disease for a clinical trial when a proven medicine is already available.
In the U.S, Zika outbreaks are hopefully going to be easy to isolate. The biggest threat is likely to be from the fear Zika sows, especially among expectant moms.
Politicians wage broad wars on medicine to claim thin strips of ideological terrain. This would be good political theater if there weren't so many human victims.
If drug development becomes the domain of government researchers, it's a sure bet that political lobbying will eventually trump scientific promise and commercial viability when it comes to investment decisions.
When people age, the main valve carrying blood out of the heart becomes brittle. As this aortic valve narrows, it can cause debilitating heart failure, and even death.
The higher cost of getting a generic drug approved by regulators means that many old medicines don't face competitors. It's only after substantial price hikes that these drugs offer enough revenue to offset the rising generic entry costs, and start to entice competition.
A seductive technology that works like a dream and improves lives will set off a consumer clamor, whether the new tool is an iPhone 4S or an implantable blood-sugar meter.
Smallpox can be personally devastating. After a 14-day incubation period, patients experience high fevers, headaches, and sometimes severe abdominal pain. A rash resembling chicken pox appears in the mouth and throat, face, and forearms, and spreads to the trunk and legs. As patients recover, scabs break and pitted scars appear.
America is home to a vast, dynamic life-science industry.
By law and institutional culture, FDA seeks to apply a single tool to its approach to regulation - the requirement for pre-market approval. The agency is accustomed to compelling innovators to submit evidence to FDA and seek permission for marketing.
