Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
After False Advertising Accusation, EpicGenetics Halts 2 Blood Test Sales
A diagnostics company has agreed to stop selling two questionable blood tests as part of a settlement with a consumer watchdog that accused the firm of using false and misleading advertising to promote the products.(Boodman, 8/23)
Buzzy gene-editing startup Tome Biosciences is floundering, just nine months after launching with $213 million in funding, according to several sources with direct knowledge of the matter. (Mast and DeAngelis, 8/22)
One person felt a sensation of slowly floating into the air as images flashed around. Another recalled the most profound sense of love and peace, unlike anything experienced before. Consciousness became a foreign entity to another whose whole sense of reality disappeared. These were some of the firsthand accounts shared in a small survey of people who belonged to an unusual cohort: They had all undergone a near-death experience and tried psychedelic drugs. (Nuwer, 8/22)
In global pharma news
An Indonesian court ordered two local companies to pay up to 60 million rupiah ($3,850) to each family whose children died of an acute kidney injury or were seriously injured after consuming toxic cough syrup. (Widianto, 8/23)
The privately-held Escientia Advanced Sciences makes intermediate chemicals and active ingredients for export to the United States and other Western countries. (Sadam and Patel, 8/22)
Alzheimer's patients in Britain's state-run health service are unlikely to get access to Eisai and Biogen's new Leqembi drug, after it was approved on Thursday by the country's regulator but deemed too expensive for wide use. (Fick, 8/22)
In tech updates
Elon Musk's brain technology startup Neuralink said its implant, designed to allow paralyzed patients to use digital devices by thinking alone, is working well in a second trial patient. The company said the patient, identified as Alex, did not face issues of "thread retraction", unlike Noland Arbaugh, Neuralink's first patient who received the implant in January. (8/22)
The use of artificial intelligence in hospitals is ramping up so fast and with such little transparency that it is impossible to track how any given product is impacting the cost or quality of care. Whether AI is monitored at all is entirely up to individual health systems. (Ross, 8/23)