23 May, 2026
Allison covers what hot startups are getting up to, and who’s financing them. She is also co-host of the weekly biotech podcast, “The Readout Loud.” You can reach Allison on…
WASHINGTON — A group of Senate Democrats is proposing that Medicare cover in-home care, which would create the first new benefit in the program since the Part D retail drug…
The Trump administration has made sweeping changes to vaccine policy over the past year justified by invocations of patients’ “personal autonomy.” In January, Department of Health and Human Services head…
Below is a lightly edited, AI-generated transcript of the “First Opinion Podcast” interview with Shelley Wood and Eric Topol. Be sure to sign up for the weekly “First Opinion Podcast”…
Allison covers what hot startups are getting up to, and who’s financing them. She is also co-host of the weekly biotech podcast, “The Readout Loud.” You can reach Allison on…

STAT readers weigh in on gun silencers and ENT surgeons

First Opinion is STAT’s platform for interesting, illuminating, and provocative articles about the life sciences writ large, written by biotech insiders, health care workers, researchers, and others. To encourage robust, good-faith discussion about issues raised in First Opinion essays, STAT publishes selected Letters to the Editor received in response to them. You can submit a […]

11 mins read

Autism researcher cited by Trump officials had testimony tossed out

A Harvard dean and preeminent epidemiologist whose work was cited by top health officials in the Trump administration as justification for severely curtailing Tylenol use by pregnant women due to a supposed link to autism provided expert testimony in a lawsuit against the drug’s maker that a federal judge called “unreliable.”  Andrea Baccarelli, dean of […]

7 mins read

Trump questions vaccine safety, urges changes to timing

WASHINGTON — President Trump on Monday suggested an overhaul to how children get vaccinated after claiming, without evidence, that many vaccines are unsafe as currently given. The president said he has talked with health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. about his proposed changes. While Trump has occasionally expressed skepticism of some vaccines, the president’s comments […]

9 mins read

Barth syndrome treatment approved by government regulators

After months of uncertainty, the Food and Drug Administration offered accelerated approval for an ultra-rare disease drug that had become a symbol of the fraught balancing act between upholding regulatory standards and accommodating desperate patients and their families. The agency endorsed a treatment for Barth syndrome, a rare illness that afflicts about 150 people in […]

1 min read