Letters to the Editor is a periodic characteristic. We welcome all comments and can publish a variety. We edit for size and readability and require full names.
What’s Up With Our Wheat?
Great article (“How the FDA Opens the Door to Risky Chemicals in America’s Food Supply,” March 10). Another matter that wants extra analysis is the truth that the FDA permits glysophate to be sprayed on wheat for human consumption to kill it off earlier than harvest. It is then harvested seven days later and processed for meals. In beans and corn, it’s utilized months earlier than the meals portion is developed, so it’s not as massive of a priority. The query could be: How a lot residual glyphosate remains to be within the wheat when harvested? Does the FDA know, or care? What are the well being ramifications?
— Irving Geary, St. Croix Falls, Wisconsin
A small farm in North Carolina’s Forsyth County that shuns herbicides, pesticides, and chemical fertilizers shared the article on the social platform X:
What affordable (not corrupt) individual thinks it’s a good suggestion to let meals corporations decide whether or not their components & components are protected. Companies haven’t got to inform the FDA about these choices, and so they do not should record all components on labels. https://t.co/ndRTNXDKmD
— Amber Lake Farm(stead) 🕊️ (@AmberLakeFarm) March 13, 2025
— Amber Lake Farm, Lewisville, North Carolina
CT Scans, Done Safely, Are Worth the Radiation Risk
Together with our colleagues, we learn with nice curiosity your latest article “Some CT Scans Deliver Too Much Radiation, Researchers Say. Regulators Want To Know More” (March 12). We share the essential concern of affected person security, a mandate that has pushed and may additional drive technological innovation in imaging. But we observe that there’s an much more necessary mandate that ought to concern us all: imaging profit.
We consider that the article overemphasized the danger related to medical radiation publicity, and that such a fear-inducing method to radiation safety is dangerous to sufferers. We agree that further care ought to be exercised when prescribing a diagnostic imaging examine, particularly in weak teams, like pediatric and pregnant sufferers. However, as soon as an examination is deemed medically crucial, its profit is already judged to outweigh any potential danger. With the justification of the examination settled, the primary problem is how one can carry out the examination as greatest as doable for the medical want at hand. In that job, prioritizing radiation dose discount over different concerns can probably be detrimental to the affected person. Radiation security is a precedence however solely along with the standard of the diagnostic info for the scientific want.
We lately published a study in Nature Communications Medicine on a inhabitants of 1 million digital twins simulating the U.S. inhabitants, and we discovered that the scientific profit related to a radiological process largely outweighs the radiation danger, by at the very least an element of 4. The discovering, that the advantage of detecting an issue is well worth the small potential danger of radiation, is opposite to frequent perception. This examine exhibits that placing a lot emphasis on radiation security to the tune of avoiding exams or lowering dose to make the examination “safe” would make the general process much less protected by negatively impacting sufferers’ path of care. Exaggerated dose reductions can hurt sufferers. That shouldn’t be protected!
Diagnostic imaging exams are prescribed with the particular function of discovering info that’s important in enhancing affected person’s life, and to diagnose or rule out pathologies. As well being care professionals, it’s our responsibility to supply the perfect care to sufferers, and to realize the perfect diagnostic efficiency whereas exposing sufferers to the bottom danger doable. Excellence doesn’t come up from spreading irrational fears. Excellence could be attained solely with the cautious evaluation and stability of dangers and advantages. And the successes of recent drugs are the irrefutable proof of the irreplaceable diagnostic imaging advantages.
— Francesco Ria and Ehsan Samei, Duke University Health System, Durham, North Carolina
A reader who manages an internet site predicting the collapse of the American well being care system commented on X:
It’s careless work. This is extra sobering proof of the large administration information hole that’s ruining US healthcare from inside. Medical errors are the identical carelessness that’s killing greater than 400K sufferers every year, harming hundreds of thousands, and costing about $80 billion yearly.
— Francis Anthony Toto (@francisatoto) March 12, 2025
— Francis Anthony Toto, San Diego
I’d Take Mushrooms Over Pills Any Day
Your article “The Colorado Psychedelic Mushroom Experiment Has Arrived” (March 24) states: “Psychedelic mushrooms and their psychoactive compound psilocybin have the potential to treat people with depression and anxiety, including those unresponsive to other medications or therapy.”
In my expertise, they work for a few months after only one use, and they don’t have the lasting unintended effects of pharmaceuticals, which not often work as supposed for despair or anxiousness. I want I had been given the choice of microdosing mushrooms as an alternative.
I’ve by no means met an antidepressant that labored for me and didn’t require a number of different drugs to offset the unintended effects of the primary capsule, and it took two weeks or extra to start out working. Then, one other 30 days or extra are required to cease the ailing results, and you determine that the unintended effects are far worse than any profit.
You can’t simply cease taking the tablets, otherwise you danger psychosis. Been there, performed that. The kind of craziness these tablets unleashed on me and my household was on account of my having to cease them abruptly, leaving scars on our whole household. Following the physician’s recommendation to start out antidepressants is the largest remorse of my life.
— Lori Muir, Helena, Alabama
I might change into a psychedelic healer. Vermont shouldn’t be good for my head. https://t.co/ee3q3pw1eQ
— Cassandra Carbee (@blackeyedcat69) March 20, 2025
— Cassandra Carbee, Wells River, Vermont
What’s in a Name?
What does KFF stand for? Is it Kaiser Family Foundation? Something completely different? I simply need to perceive what KFF stands for. Thank you.
— Margaret Chinn, Alameda, California
Editor’s observe: Years in the past, the group was often known as the Kaiser Family Foundation, however because it’s not a part of Kaiser Permanente, nor a basis, and doesn’t make grants, it’s clearer to easily say KFF, which is how many individuals already know and confer with it. KFF is a singular well being coverage info group that brings collectively coverage analysis, polling, journalism, and public info campaigns. KFF Health News is considered one of its core applications. You can learn extra concerning the group’s history here.
Three Timely Levers for Addressing Disparities in Cancer Care
Over the previous decade, the United States has witnessed a revolution within the growth and approval of cancer-fighting medication. From 2017 to 2021, the FDA accredited a median of greater than 50 new most cancers medication every year — a rise of about 40% from the earlier 5 years. FDA approvals for most cancers remedies are anticipated to speed up as synthetic intelligence additional quickens drug discoveries and trials.
While this rise in remedies is promising, disparities in entry to most cancers care are widening.
As foreign-born most cancers medical doctors from low-income nations who’ve practiced in each city and rural areas within the U.S. for practically three a long time and are significantly delicate to fairness points, we name on the U.S. medical ecosystem to work towards eliminating disparities in entry.
These new medication present hope for the two million Americans identified with most cancers every year and their family members. Thanks to the devoted and good researchers, pharmaceutical corporations, and funders — together with nonprofits and authorities — for figuring out and rigorously testing these novel drug discoveries.
Given the fast improve in FDA-approved medication, we should now work towards guaranteeing that these breakthrough remedies enhance outcomes for all sufferers. This shouldn’t be a given. Especially within the U.S., which suffers from great disparities in access to high quality most cancers care and outcomes.
Rural, low-income, and minority sufferers usually expertise most cancers at the next fee, obtain a analysis at a later stage, and face geographic and monetary obstacles to accessing cutting-edge, high quality care.
At the second, essentially the most highly effective three levers for addressing these unconscionable disparities lie in Washington, D.C., not your physician’s workplace.
First, it’s vital for the Trump administration to develop, not roll again the Affordable Care Act, also called Obamacare, which has performed a crucial role in reducing disparities by increasing Medicaid in rural and poor communities and guaranteeing protection for preventive companies. If the ACA is trimmed or eradicated, we are able to anticipate most cancers disparities to develop rapidly and dramatically.
Second, Congress should act rapidly to completely lengthen the protection of telehealth and telerehab companies, which may also help sufferers in rural areas entry equitable, handy most cancers care and assist most cancers survivorship. Medicare protection for telehealth, which was prolonged in the course of the pandemic, was set to expire this month.
Third, counterintuitively, the exponential fee of innovation within the most cancers drug growth sector is itself a risk to fairness. The American Society of Clinical Oncology has warned, “Rapid advances in cancer care will worsen existing disparities in outcomes for rural patients.”
That’s as a result of new remedies are extra rapidly built-in into normal care regimens in giant most cancers facilities in city areas — accessed by higher-income sufferers. The authorities must prioritize addressing the systemic information gaps and financial components that drive these disparities and provoke preventive and corrective measures.
We know it will take time to untangle. But our leaders in Washington, D.C., can shield the ACA, assist telehealth and telerehab, and paved the way towards reimagining the well being system that delivers lifesaving take care of us all.
— Binay Shah, a Seattle-based hematologist-oncologist and the co-founder of the nonprofit Binaytara, and Manish Kohli, a professor of oncology at Huntsman Cancer Institute
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