The studies all came to the same conclusion: government officials, public health experts, and private philanthropies across the country need to invest in research, community forums, and other tools to put the people most affected by our dysfunctional system at the center of conversations about building a new path to community-first public health.
We can’t pretend that COVID-19 doesn’t exist anymore, and we can’t ignore the impact it is having on communities of color.
The writer directs the Vaccine Equity and Access Program at Community Catalyst.
The Washington Post’s May 27 front page story, “Federal COVID-19 Response Fading,” was both instructive and sobering. The pandemic is over, but it’s now clear that both the government and the public have become too complacent.
For example, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention should never have stopped collecting meaningful data on infections and cases. Without such data, increases and surges caused by new variants could go undetected for weeks or even months. Meanwhile, most people who get sick with flu- or COVID-like symptoms don’t get tested. This is a mistake, because if they knew they had COVID-19, they would be more likely to be vigilant about infecting others, especially the elderly, by isolating themselves strictly for 3-6 days. And if they develop long-term health problems after contracting COVID-19, they would know why and be able to get the right treatment.
As for vaccination, the continued decline in vaccination rates, even among the elderly, is a public health failure. The government should launch large-scale vaccination campaigns for influenza, respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) and COVID-19 in September and October this year. COVID-19 vaccines will be improved and newly formulated. Nevertheless, one message must be constantly emphasized: COVID-19 is not influenza. Although the direct risks from the emerging variants of both diseases change over time, COVID-19 patients appear to be at higher risk of long-term health problems associated with the disease.
The pandemic has been truly devastating for everyone, and it is understandable that we and our governments would like to take a break from it, but that is not the responsible thing to do.
Stephen Findlay, Burnsville
It’s hard to argue with the recommendation made by Mikael A. Sekeres in his May 27 online health essay, “I’m an oncologist. This is what I advised my mother after she was diagnosed with cancer,” with one caveat: just because one type of cancer is frequently misdiagnosed doesn’t mean it applies to all types of cancer. Suggestions like this reinforce the misconception that cancer is one disease and instill a false sense of distrust in dedicated physicians. To gain a patient’s trust, it is essential not to oversimplify the information provided.
For example, Dr. Sekeres suggests that patients “request that the biopsy specimen be examined by a second pathologist,” and cites the results of a study he and his colleagues conducted, ” [myelodysplasia syndromes] “There was a 20 percent disagreement with the diagnosis made by the non-diagnostic pathologist.”
However, a 2018 study found that the likelihood of a discrepancy large enough to potentially affect patient care between the diagnoses of pathologists at National Cancer Institute-designated cancer centers and those of other pathologists for the much more common cancers of lung, colorectal, and breast was just 2.0%, 2.7%, and 1.1%, respectively.
The promise of truly personalized oncology includes recognizing and communicating to patients the shortcomings of our specialty, such as the disagreement between pathologists in identifying myelodysplasia, and our almost certain successes in identifying breast cancer. Patients can honestly decide which of Dr. Sekeres’ wise suggestions they want to pursue based on their own resources, personality, and how they want to spend their precious, sometimes tragically limited, time.
Stephen Solscher, Winston-Salem, North Carolina
The author is a retired professor of oncology from the University of California, San Diego and Wake Forest University.
Regarding the May 25 online health article, “Medical Mystery: She Wasn’t Diagnosed Until It Was Too Late”:
Ann Malik’s struggle with diagnosis should be a reminder that women who have never smoked are twice as likely to develop lung cancer as men who have never smoked. Lung cancer is the number one cause of cancer death in women. It kills more women than breast and ovarian cancer combined. It is estimated that 164 women die from the disease every day, which means a woman dies about every nine minutes. Yet funding for this women’s cancer is lacking compared to other major cancers.
In other words, given what researchers have learned in the past decade, Malik said did Her grandfather died of lung cancer and she herself had a history of mild asthma – two high-risk factors that fit her disease profile. If we change our understanding of who is at risk for lung cancer and what its fatality rate is, we can save lives.
We know that lung cancer can run in families and can occur in people who have not been exposed to tobacco products. A study launched in 2010 by GO2 for Lung Cancer, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, and the Addario Lung Cancer Medical Institute and published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology identified certain genetic markers that predispose to lung cancer.
But even while the study is ongoing, the findings may encourage doctors to request low-dose lung screening for patients with a family history of cancer. If doctors encounter patients like Malik, they might be more proactive in offering these scans and potentially diagnose cancers like hers earlier.
While we should be aware of the risks, we also need to be clear that lung cancer is easily treatable if detected early. Early diagnosis is a challenge, as symptoms rarely appear until it is too late. Patients and healthcare providers need to work together to identify high-risk individuals and allocate more funding to lung cancer research, prevention and education.
Laurie Ambrose, Washington
The author is President and CEO of GO2 for Lung Cancer.
Peter Arno and Catherine Ardizzone’s online op-ed, “Angered by High Drug Prices? A Letter to the Washington Post is to Blame (Sort of),” on May 30, misconstrues the views of my former boss, Senator Birch Bayh (D-Indiana), and the power his eponymous Bayh-Dore Act gives the federal government to step in and license patents resulting from government-funded research to new manufacturers. This law is a cornerstone of American innovation. For more than 20 years, Arno has pursued the idea that the Bayh-Dore Act gives the federal government the power to regulate drug prices, but the reality has not changed.
The authors allege that in 1997, Bay “urged the federal government to use march-in rights to address drug prices.” Indeed, in 2021, a Washington Post fact-checker denied this claim, writing that the march-in petition Bay supported “was not a case about pricing, it was a case about health and safety.” Bay argued that the government should step in and relicense the patent to CellPro because the original licensee had not engaged in good faith in product development. The purpose of march-in rights is to ensure that products are developed and made available to the public.
More broadly, the Post’s fact-checkers noted that while Arno’s theory, put forward in a 2001 law review and a 2002 Post op-ed, has supporters, “it has never been accepted by any government agency or court.” [Arno’s] “inference”
As a member of the staff who helped draft this bill and wrote the Senate Judiciary Committee report, I know firsthand that Bayh-Dole does not allow Washington to set prices, nor was it ever intended to do so. Its purpose was to encourage the development of federally funded inventions, and this law has done that very well.
The Economist’s Technology Quarterly called the Bayh-Dole Act “perhaps the greatest piece of legislation enacted in America in the past half century.” Millions of people around the world are alive today because of Senator Bayh and his bill co-author, Senator Robert J. Dole (R-Kansas). They do not deserve such poor treatment from those who seek to undo their accomplishments.
Joseph P. Allen Bethesda, Ohio
The author is Secretary General of the Bay Dore Coalition.
