‘This Was Worse Than Our National Election’: What We Heard This Week

“This was worse than our national election.” — Eric Peterson, MD, MPH, cardiologist and FDA advisory committee member, discussing his vote in support of elamipretide as a treatment for the ultra-rare Barth syndrome, despite a lack of definitive evidence.

“It’s a crap shoot every time.” — Lisa Sanders, MD, of the Yale New Haven Long COVID Consultation Clinic, on risk of developing long COVID and ways to prevent it.

“It’s a failure of us as a society to protect these individuals.” — Ziyad Al-Aly, MD, of the VA St. Louis Health Care System, describing the disproportionate number of deaths during the COVID pandemic among younger racial and ethnic minorities.

“You can be lonely, but socially integrated in terms of having interactions with people.” — Elizabeth Necka, PhD, of the National Institute on Aging, on links between loneliness and dementia.

“This really should be vilified rather than normalized.” — Adriane Fugh-Berman, MD, of the PharmedOut project at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., on financial conflicts among medical journal peer reviewers.

“People feel comfortable with providers who look and talk like them.” — Carl Schmid, executive director of the HIV+Hepatitis Policy Institute in Washington, D.C., discussing the growing HIV crisis among Latinos.

“The unusually large size of the mass did stand out.” — Christian Baastrup Søndergaard, MD, of Copenhagen University Hospital in Denmark, detailing a case of breakdancing-related “headspin hole.”

“Our hospitals withstood the impact of Milton without any major damage.” — Mary Mayhew, president and CEO of the Florida Hospital Association, on the success of hospital emergency preparedness plans.

“The bottom line is the two treatments were very similar.” — Elizabeth Hoge, MD, of Georgetown University Medical Center, comparing mindfulness meditation to an anti-anxiety drug.

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