~marginalrevolution | Bookmarks (26)

A record number of drugs are in shortage across the United States. In any particular case, it’s difficult to trace out the exact causes of the shortage but health care is the US’s most highly regulated, socialist industry and shortages are endemic under socialism so the pattern fits. The shortage of Adderall and other ADHD […] The post The Adderall Shortage: DEA versus FDA...

I’ve long been an advocate of increasing the use of incentives in organ procurement for transplant; either with financial incentives or with rules such as no-give, no-take which prioritize former potential organ donors on the organ recipient list. What I and many reformers failed to realize, however, is that the current monopolized system is so […] The post UNOS Kills appeared first on Marginal...

Scott Alexander rules against Lab Leak as most likely.  Of course this is not the final word, but it is fair to say that Lab Leak is not the go-to hypothesis here.  Analytical throughout.  And Nabeel comments. The post Another Thursday link appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.         CommentsIn reply to Juanita del Valle. Other problem: the super ... by Hazel MeadeIn reply to...

COVID-19 vaccination reduced the risk of post-COVID-19 cardiac and thromboembolic outcomes. These effects were more pronounced for acute COVID-19 outcomes, consistent with known reductions in disease severity following breakthrough versus unvaccinated SARS-CoV-2 infection. Here is the full article by Núria Mercadé-Besora, et.al. The post Sentences of note appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.         CommentsFour years later and the same polarized arguments, citing data ......

During my visit to Prospera, one of Honduras’ private governments under the ZEDE law, I interviewed Prospera CEO Erick Brimen and Vitalia co-founder Niklas Anzinger. I learned a lot in the interview including the real history of the ZEDE movement (e.g. it didn’t begin with Paul Romer). I also had not fully appreciated the power […] The post In Conversation with Próspera CEO Erick...

The next time you send your doctor an email, don’t be surprised if they charge you a fee to answer. More healthcare groups are charging fees to answer patients’ electronic messages, often the ones you exchange via their portal. Doctors say it’s only fair if they’re spending time on the messages and note that an email […] The post As it should be appeared first...

Besides the usual, that is.  Max Thilo of the UK has a new and excellent study on this, here is one excerpt from the foreword by Lord Warner: Second, and critical, the Singaporeans are not fixated on delivering services from acute hospitals – the most expensive part of any healthcare system because of its fixed […] The post What can be learned from Singaporean...

Between January 2016 and December 2022, the monthly antidepressant dispensing rate increased 66.3%, from 2575.9 to 4284.8. Before March 2020, this rate increased by 17.0 per month (95% confidence interval: 15.2 to 18.8). The COVID-19 outbreak was not associated with a level change but was associated with a slope increase of 10.8 per month (95% […] The post U.S.A. yikes fact of the day...

Is DNA all you need? In new work, we report Evo, a genomic foundation model that learns across the fundamental languages of biology: DNA, RNA, and proteins. Evo is capable of both prediction tasks and generative design, from molecular to whole genome scale. pic.twitter.com/BPo9ggHhmp — Patrick Hsu (@pdhsu) February 27, 2024 The post It’s happening appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.         CommentsThere's nothing you...

Genetic testing identifies disease risk, enabling individuals to dodge environmental triggers, optimize treatments, and improve planning. Yet, the fear of increased insurance premiums deters many from undergoing tests. Genetic testing offers societal benefits but also presents significant distributional challenges. To address this, my 1994 paper proposed the idea of genetic insurance. For a small fee […] The post Genetic Insurance appeared first on Marginal...

The nation’s 56 organ procurement organizations collect organs — mainly kidneys — from deceased donors at hospitals and arrange for them to be transported to surgeons at the 250 U.S. medical centers that perform transplants. Each procurement group holds a government-guaranteed monopoly over a swath of U.S. territory where it operates. Some have failed for […] The post Monopolized organ collection appeared first on...

ProPublica: In January, the Biden administration pledged to increase public access to a wide array of Medicare information to improve health care for America’s most sick and vulnerable. …So researchers across the country were flummoxed this week when the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services announced a proposal that will increase fees and diminish access to claims […] The post Access to Medical Data Saves Lives...

Elizabeth Currid-Halkett writing in the NYTimes discusses her son’s muscular dystrophy and his treatment with the controversial gene-therapy Elevidys. Currid-Halkett, like many parents whose children have been treated with Elevidys, reports much better results than appear in the statistics. On Aug. 29, [my son] finally received the one-time infusion. Three weeks later, he was marching […] The post Give Innovation a Chance appeared first...

Works in Progress has a good review of the state of compensating organ donors, especially doing so with nudges or non-price factors to avoid backlash from those who find mixing money and organs to be repugnant. My own idea for this, first expressed in Entrepreneurial Economics, but many times since is a no-give, no-take rule. […] The post Avoiding Repugnance appeared first on Marginal...

That is the topic of my latest Bloomberg column, here is one excerpt: The human and economic costs of recessions are deep and well-documented. They can also have real health benefits, however, and seldom are they expressed so starkly as in this sentence in a new paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research: “The Great Recession provided one in twenty-five 55-year-olds […] The post Do recessions benefit our health? appeared...

Accelerating these vaccines by one week saves >156,000 lives. pic.twitter.com/WdcqckPnaY — Maxwell Tabarrok (@MTabarrok) February 5, 2024 The post Hurry up, people appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.         CommentsOdd that an HIV vaccine isn't on that list. by CIn reply to MikeP. Of course I know what VAERS is, and I knew ... by MikePIn reply to MikeP. Did you honestly not know what...

Lack of speed kills: We study how delays in NIH grant funding affect the career outcomes of research personnel. Using comprehensive earnings and tax records linked to university transaction data along with a difference-in-differences design, we find that a funding interruption of more than 30 days has a substantial effect on job placements for personnel […] The post Scientific Talent Leaks Out of Funding...

NYT: In 2022, there were 941 reported cases of measles in the World Health Organization’s European region. Over just the first 10 months of last year, according to an alarming bulletin the W.H.O. issued in mid-December, there were more than 30,000. This is the kind of spike — a 3,000 percent increase — that looks implausible […] The post Vaccine Induced Social Amnesia appeared first...

Dengue outbreaks can affect 390 million persons yearly. In a trial involving 16,235 persons in Brazil, the live, attenuated, tetravalent Butantan vaccine was efficacious in all age groups at 2 years. Read the full trial results: https://t.co/YY0iRP2Xqb pic.twitter.com/8QkfoW6bif — NEJM (@NEJM) January 31, 2024 I have been telling people that most major maladies will be […] The post Dengue vaccine seems to be working?...

What would happen if the FDA regulated pharmaceuticals much less than currently? I have pointed to one useful comparison, new uses of old drugs do not have to go through FDA required efficacy trials in the new use. In other words, new uses of old drugs are regulated for safety-only. Thus, “off-label prescribing” provides a […] The post Surgery is Not FDA Regulated appeared...

There is a new NBER working paper on this very good question by David M. Cutler and J. Travis Donahoe: Opioid overdose death rates in the United States have risen continuously for over three decades, increasing 2,142 percent in total from 1990 to 2020. This is surprising. One might expect drug epidemics to be self-limiting, […] The post Why hasn’t the opioid epidemic converged...

1) From the recent annual meeting of the American Society of Tropical Medicine & Hygiene (abstract 6949) we learn that the R21/Matrix-M malaria vaccine maintained it’s efficacy over 4 seasons. …Importantly, maintained high efficacy over four malaria seasons with only four doses is demonstrated, with no concerns to date of rebound in those who have […] The post Two Updates on the Value of...

During the pandemic, when vaccines doses were scarce, I argued for fractional dosing to speed vaccination and maximize social benefits. But what dose? In my latest paper, just published in PNAS, with Phillip Boonstra and Garth Strohbehn, I look at optimal trial design when you want to quickly discover a fractional dose with good properties […] The post Dose Optimization Trials Enable Fractional Dosing...

Your friends are not always good for you: The role of friends in the US opioid epidemic is examined. Using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Adolescent Health (Add Health), adults aged 25-34 and their high school best friends are focused on. An instrumental variable technique is employed to estimate peer effects in opioid […] The post The Role of Friends in the...