[Correspondence] The Global Drug Policy Index: its rationale and the role of civil society
One of our goals in creating the inaugural Global Drug Policy Index (GDPI) was to encourage debate about how to best measure and compare states’ drug policies, and we therefore welcome well informed critical commentary. Although such commentary did feature in the World Report1 (for example, Harry Sumnall offered lucid and insightful criticism), we felt that this was not true across the piece.
[Correspondence] The vaccinated proportion of people with COVID-19 needs context
We read the Correspondence by Günter Kampf1 with surprise, as it appears to argue that the base-rate fallacy2 is, in fact, not a fallacy. In the context of COVID-19 vaccines, the base-rate fallacy is often described as the illusion that vaccines are ineffective because, in highly vaccinated populations, the majority of COVID-19 cases occur among vaccinated people. For example, if a population is 99% vaccinated against a hypothetical virus and 51% of infected individuals have been vaccinated, the base-rate fallacy (falsely) implies that the vaccine is ineffective at preventing infection.
[Correspondence] Stigma, vaccination, and moral accountability
Günter Kampf1 argues that use of the term pandemic of the unvaccinated by officials in Germany is both overly simplistic and dangerous. The danger he says arises from “engender[ing] negative experiences by stigmatising parts of the population…I call on high-level officials and scientists to stop the inappropriate stigmatisation of unvaccinated people, who include our patients, colleagues, and other fellow citizens”.1 I leave it to epidemiologists to comment on whether the description that Kampf condemns is simplistic.
[Obituary] Beatrice Mintz
Embryologist and pioneering cancer researcher. She was born on Jan 24, 1921 in New York, NY, USA, and died of heart failure on Jan 3, 2022 in Elkins Park, PA, USA, aged 100 years.
[Perspectives] More than truth or lies: staging Dr Semmelweis
Adapting the life of one of medicine’s most radical pioneers would be a challenge for any theatre company, but director Tom Morris, writers Stephen Brown with Mark Rylance, and the cast of Dr Semmelweis balance historicity and creative interpretation. Although the play takes a biographical approach to Ignaz Semmelweis’s story, it also highlights the difficulties of communicating new discoveries and implementing clinical reform.
[Perspectives] Deirdre Cooper Owens: bringing context to systemic medical racism
In the 1790s, François Marie Prevost, a young French surgeon fresh from his medical training in Paris moved to Port-de-Paix, Haiti. “Of course at that time Haiti was France’s most economically valuable colony”, says historian Deirdre Cooper Owens. “So there he began some experimental work on enslaved Haitian women, trying to perfect the caesarean section.” Prevost’s sojourn coincided with the leadership of Toussaint Louverture, who had been born a slave, the fight for Haitian independence, and the abolition of slavery.
[Perspectives] Keith Wailoo: framing health challenges through a historical lens
While growing up in New York City, NY, USA, in the 1970s, Keith Wailoo could not avoid noticing giant billboard advertisements promoting menthol cigarettes. “I was surrounded by an aggressive promotion of menthol tobacco aimed at Black Americans in urban areas”, says Wailoo, the Henry Putnam University Professor of History and Public Affairs at Princeton University, NJ, USA. The saga of menthol tobacco is documented in Wailoo’s book Pushing Cool: Big Tobacco, Racial Marketing, and the Untold Story of the Menthol Cigarette.
[Perspectives] Bridging the chasm between AI and clinical implementation
Many advances in artificial intelligence (AI) for health care using deep neural networks have been commercialised. But few AI tools have been implemented in health systems. Why has this chasm occurred? Transparency, suitability, and adaptability are key reasons. The deployment of any new technology is usually managed centrally in hospitals and health systems. For the information technology (IT) teams, there is the concern that input data are drawn from outside the health setting and the algorithm performance, source code, and input data are unavailable to review.
[World Report] Escalating threats to health workers in Myanmar
Health workers are still under threat in Myanmar, 1 year on from a military seizure of power. Megan Tatum reports.
[World Report] Gilead and ViiV Healthcare reach settlement over HIV drug
Gilead Sciences to pay US$1·25 billion, and royalties, settlement to ViiV Healthcare over patent infringement of the HIV drug, dolutegravir. Nayanah Siva reports.