First Opinion Podcast

Although billions of dollars have been poured into potential pharmaceutical cures for dementia, particularly Alzheimer's disease, none so far have been proven to slow or stop the disease from progressing. Yet even without an effective drug, incidence rates of dementia in the United States and several other countries have decreased since 1998. Why? Social changes like lower smoking rates and better education, along with better population-level health, have improved brain health.

This week, the show returns to a conversation with emergency physician Uché Blackstock about her decision to leave academic medicine. STAT's Usha Lee McFarling recently reported a stunning investigation about how white researchers have colonized research on health disparities and diversity over the past year. When racism persists in academic medicine and in research, it means that talented people like Uché will leave. Take a listen to her story and "First Opinion Podcast" will be back with a new conversation next week.

Research on excess body weight and obesity has long been predicated on the fundamental assumption that weight is gained based on a 'calories in, calories out' equation. If you consume more calories than you expend, you gain weight, right?  Science reporter Gary Taubes and reader-turned-friend Nick Gulino are among a growing faction that says it might not be so simple. As Gulino himself has experienced, this conventional paradigm often leads to a culture of fat-shaming and blame for heavy individuals.

The country is in a climate crisis, but it isn't an issue that can be left to the climate scientists — every disaster has consequences that reverberate through the health care system, often acutely affecting people of color, and particularly pregnant people and newborns. This week, flood disaster coordinator Emily Mediate and OB/GYN physician Neel Shah discuss how climate change will continue to wreak its worst havoc on our country's most vulnerable populations.

Alicia Zhou's son Davi was an early five years old when the pandemic started. Now, he's six and a half, entering the first grade. He's adjusted well to pandemic living as a young child, but Zhou says she's still worried sending him to in-person school. Luckily, as a chief science officer at a health technology company, she happens to be particularly qualified to advise schools on how that can happen safely. Zhou breaks down the risks and best precautions for this back-to-school season.

When the inventors of the iron lung wheeled their contraption into the hospital for the first time, they likely had one thing on their minds: saving the lives of children with polio. And they did. But there exists a darker side of these machines and their successors: people with persistent critical illnesses — like those with Covid-19 today — tethered to ventilators for weeks, if not longer, living in a "twilight existence" of being kept alive by a machine. This week, intensive care physician Hannah Wunsch explores the history of mechanical breathing, the countless lives it has saved, and the moral dilemmas it created that have only grown with the technology.

Bertrand Might was born with a rare disease that had never before been diagnosed, an odyssey that took four grueling years. He was 12 years old when he died last year — almost a decade older than physicians predicted he would live. This week on the First Opinion Podcast, Bertrand’s father, computer scientist Matthew Might, talks about how he used his coding skills to try to extend his son’s life, and how daring research projects could save lives across the country and around the world if the Biden administration’s proposed Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H) comes to life.

This week, physician Frank Lin discusses with former patient Anne Madison how difficult it can be for seniors to access care for hearing loss and hearing aids. "When you move into a community with older people, you get on two mailing lists: the hearing aids mailing list and the cemetery lots mailing list," Madison said. But the price tag is sky-high.

This week, Stephen Tourjee shares his experience contracting a breakthrough case of Covid-19, months after he thought he was safe thanks to the vaccine. Céline Gounder provides expert context on just how worried we should — or shouldn't — be about these breakthrough cases.

This week, writer and philosopher Adam Hayden opens up about what it's like to be in the minority of glioblastoma patients that have survived the harrowing brain cancer. Around 93% of patients with the disease will die before 5 years — as long as Hayden has survived so far. As the pandemic began, Hayden knew there were lessons for physicians and the public to learn from his experience.