Weight loss medications without a prescription?

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Vice President Kamala Harris interviewed running mates this weekend, but there is still no word on who she will choose. If you’re the betting type, you might want to read more about the major candidates’ positions on health care.

The best tool we have to treat meth addiction is being held back by politics

When it comes to drugs like methamphetamine and cocaine, highly effective medications like those for opioid addiction do not exist. But behavioral incentives to treat meth addiction are settled science, and offering financial rewards such as gift cards to people who can demonstrate they have reduced or quit their meth use is particularly effective, STAT’s Lev Facher reports. Is the US pursuing this kind of high-end treatment?

Not really. The Biden administration has expressed support for these types of rewards, officially known as contingency management. But there has long been a $75 annual limit on the amount of money that can be given to patients in programs funded by select federal programs, and the Biden administration has declined to increase that amount. Read more about the current policy landscape.

45%

That’s the percentage of insured working-age adults who said they were billed or charged a co-pay in the past year for a medical service that they thought should have been free or covered by insurance, according to a new report from the Commonwealth Fund. Less than half of those people said they contested the bills. But nearly two in five who disputed their bill said it was ultimately reduced or eliminated by the insurer.

The ‘risky business’ of buying weight loss drugs online

As shortages of successful obesity and diabetes drugs continue, people have a “wild West” from online prescribers who provide this composed versions of the drugs, which have not been approved by the FDA and have not been evaluated for safety or effectiveness. Illegal online pharmacies also offer to ship the medications without a prescription. But how safe are the products they ship?

In a new study published on JAMA Network Open, researchers found that semaglutide ordered from illegal sites contained significantly more of the drug than stated on the label, and that one sample even contained signs of possible bacterial contamination during production.

“It’s just a very risky endeavor to buy this product online,” co-author Tim Mackey told STAT’s Katie Palmer. “Just because it is online, accessible and sold without a prescription does not mean it is authentic.” Read more.

Giving patients “full informed consent” about mental health and law enforcement crises

As a psychiatrist and as someone who has been hospitalized while in the midst of her own mental health crisis, Rupinder Legha knows the dangers that police can bring into a situation and how oppressive the conditions in an emergency room can be. Still, calling 911 or going to the nearest emergency room is the standard advice any doctor will give to someone in an acute mental health crisis.

In light of the death of Sonya Massey and so many others who have been killed while in need of mental health care, Legha proposes a new medical standard for responding to mental health emergencies – a “fully informed consent” that gives patients a clearer picture of the potential risks of mental health involvement police and going to the emergency room. Writing in one editorial for PLOS Mental Health, she also recommends exploring other options where possible so that people in crisis can stay home with their family watching them and with the support of a healthcare provider.

“As health care providers, we can no longer stand with our hands in the air as yet another death moves in and out of the news cycle,” Legha writes. “We owe the people more than this.”

WHO director on whether MPOX is a public health emergency

Last Monday we learned that researchers are planning a clinical trial to test whether getting an MPox vaccine can protect people exposed to the infection from getting sick or reduce the severity of the disease. The stakes are high, as hundreds of people have died from the disease in the Democratic Republic of Congo this year. The sequencing of the virus now shows that this deadly variant has also spread to Uganda and Kenya, according to reports from ScienceInsider published on Saturday.

“I am considering convening an Emergency Committee on International Health Regulations to advise me on whether the MPox outbreak should be declared a public health emergency of international concern,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in a statement to the newspaper.

This is the first time the agency has made a statement about a possible PHEIC related to this mpox outbreak, STAT’s Helen Branswell told me. Read STATs mpox coverage to get up to speed.

How the lab leak theory is harming science

How did Covid start? The lab leak theory — which posits that the coronavirus was modified or even created in a laboratory in Wuhan and then somehow escaped — has gained a lot of attention among politicians and the general public. But most scientists, especially virologists, think the virus passed from animals to humans.

In a First Opinion essay, microbiologist John P. Moore argues that the laboratory leak hypothesis is turning public sentiment against virological research at a time when it has a vital role to play in the face of pandemic threats. “Viruses are the real threat to humanity, not virologists,” he writes. Read more from Moore about how the lab leak theory threatens real science.

What we read

• Many medical workers in Gaza have been arrested or killed. New York Times

• Since the fall of Roe, the number of self-managed abortions has increased, KFF Health News

• Performance-enhancing drugs or placebos? The myth underlying anti-doping, STAT
• The future of junk food could be healthy food, Bloomberg
• Letters on Sonya Massey’s death, vaccine injuries and more, STAT