‘We’re Close to Beer Time Here’: What We Heard This Week

: They scour the most important new findings across the journals, curating and distilling the new information for the benefit of our readers. Our writers also attend roughly 75 medical conferences a year in the U.S. and abroad to bring you the most relevant meeting coverage across all the major specialties. “,”affiliation”:””,”credential”:””,”url_identifier”:”mt9773″,”avatar_url”:””,”avatar_alt_text”:”MedPage Today Staff”,”twitter”:””,”links”:{“signal”:””,”bluesky”:””,”website”:””,”linkedin”:””,”muckrack”:””},”has_author_page”:1,”byline”:null,”full_name”:”MedPage Today Staff”,”title”:””,”url”:”https:\/\/www.medpagetoday.com\/people\/mt9773\/medpage-today staff”,”bluesky”:””}]” categoryimage=”https://assets.medpagetoday.net/media/images/articles/What_We_Heard_subsicon_blue_200px.png” categoryimagealt=”What We Heard This Week”/>

“I realize we’re close to beer time here — promise to at least give you something very scintillating.” — Paul Richardson, MD, of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, before presenting trial results for a novel oral drug for multiple myeloma during a late-day session at the American Society of Clinical Oncology meeting.

“With so many faculty retiring, who’s going to teach the next generation of nurses?” — Jennifer Mensik Kennedy, MBA, RN, president of the American Nurses Association, warning that capping federal student loan amounts will exacerbate nursing faculty shortages.

“The time is now to invest in a clinical trial to see if these drugs are causal for cancer prevention.” — Elizabeth McDonald, MD, PhD, of Penn Medicine in Philadelphia, announcing a clinical trial to see whether GLP-1 medications can prevent breast cancer.

“This is pretty dystopian stuff.” — Elizabeth Ginexi, PhD, a former NIH scientific program official, discussing a proposed rule that would strip scientific experts of federal grantmaking power and hand it to political appointees.

“I think a question for us to consider is, what does it cost us to not have access to the science we already pay for?” — Corinna Turbes, of the nonprofit group SPARC, reframing a report that estimated it would cost $1 billion annually to comply with the federal open-access research mandate.

“What we need is providers to be competing for patient dollars, not providers and plans to be competing for political influence.” — Brian Blase, PhD, founder and president of the Paragon Health Institute, arguing that more free-market forces could help lower healthcare costs.

“You cannot order off a menu if the restaurant is closed.” — Tom Frieden, MD, MPH, former CDC director, warning that proposed funding structural changes to the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief program could dismantle the CDC’s global health support network.

“I would expect a mental health clinician now to routinely ask their patients, ‘Have you ever used AI chatbots for mental health issues?'” — Hao Yu, PhD, of Harvard Medical School in Boston, whose study revealed that one in five young people sought mental health advice from AI chatbots last year.