‘They Don’t Play by Our Rules’: What We Heard This Week

“Hospitals are eating up practices all around us … and guess what? They don’t play by our rules.” — Mohammad Ibrahim, DO, of the Michigan State Medical Society, calling for the American Medical Association to adopt a policy to reform the Stark law.

“After 3 years, we still don’t understand why some people experience symptoms after having COVID.” — Shelli Farhadian, MD, PhD, of the Yale School of Medicine in New Haven, Connecticut, discussing long COVID immune profiles.

“Stimulant use disorder is treatable.” — Brian Hurley, MD, MBA, president of the American Society of Addiction Medicine, on new guidelines about stimulant use disorder.

“People will go to such extremes for that ultimate selfie.” — Elias Aboujaoude, MD, of Stanford Medicine in California, discussing selfie-related mortality.

“What else is the cinnamon in?” — Morri Markowitz, MD, of the Children’s Hospital at Montefiore in the Bronx, New York, on recent lead poisonings traced back to cinnamon-containing applesauce packets.

“You’re changing the genome forever.” — Karol Watson, MD, PhD, of the University of California Los Angeles, on positive proof-of-concept results of a new gene base editing therapy for lowering LDL cholesterol.

“If I spread it to a group of school kids, they lose a week of school; if I spread it to a group of people in the hospital, they die.” — MedPage Today‘s editor-in-chief Jeremy Faust, MD, of Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School in Boston, on COVID’s spread in hospitals.

“Without proper safeguards, generative AI can be misused to create and distribute large volumes of persuasive, customized disinformation.” — Ashley Hopkins, PhD, of Flinders University in Australia, on how ChatGPT can rapidly churn out misinformation.

“Many parents are looking for solutions for their children’s sleep difficulties.” — Lauren Hartstein, PhD, of the University of Colorado at Boulder, discussing melatonin use in kids and pre-teens.

“Milk is much cheaper, chicken is much cheaper, steak is much cheaper, cholesterol is much cheaper, saturated fat is much cheaper, and that’s the problem.” — Neal Barnard, MD, an American Medical Association delegate, calling for increased regulation of industrialized farms.