Healthcare

It’s difficult to overstate the importance of the Supreme Court’s decision to uphold the Affordable Care Act, which – experts have argued – may move economic markets, sway the upcoming presidential election and even impact hiring trends.
 
But what about its influence on the delivery of health “care”?

Former Senate Majority Leader Dr. Bill Frist’s July 10 CongressBlog article “Personalized Medicine”  explains how the emerging field of personalized medicine will use an individual’s DNA—one’s genetic blueprint—to disruptively transform medicine by promoting efficient, cost-effective treatments, perhaps even helping to stem the tide of our obesity epidemic.

When VCRs were replaced with DVD players, most companies that manufactured the old technology just switched to the new. They didn’t claim that outdated VCRs were the way of the future. So why can’t some laboratory officials and researchers admit that outdated and unnecessary experiments they conduct are no longer necessary—and switch to more modern research methods?

It seems like the book on the president’s healthcare law has closed, but the Court’s decision in June was just another chapter in a very long saga of a very bad bill.

Wednesday’s vote in the House to repeal the entire Affordable Care Act is not the only path being taken to trample on women's rights.


A new bill from Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.) and Rep. Diane Black (R-Tenn.) seeks to allow employers to discriminate against their employees in new and far-reaching ways. HR 6097 would mean that any employer that, for a religious or moral reason, refuses to comply with the law requiring insurance coverage of preventive services and medicines, including contraception, with no additional out-of-pocket cost would be exempted from all taxes and penalties. In short, company owners could impose their own religious beliefs on their employees and get away with it.

Last month, the Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act by defining the individual mandate as a tax. The ruling focused on a technical explanation of the individual mandate, with Chief Justice Roberts noting in his opinion: “…it is reasonable to construe what Congress has done as increasing taxes on those who have a certain amount of income, but choose to go without health insurance. Such legislation is within Congress's power to tax."

In his June 12, 2012 article, Rep. Roscoe Bartlett (R-Md.) argues that ending experimentation on chimpanzees is the right choice. While Rep. Bartlett is entitled to his views, we believe strongly that the passage of S. 810/H.R. 1513, the Great Ape Protection and Cost Savings Act (GAPCSA), which he introduced, would have a devastating impact upon the advancement of medicine and human health.
 
Contrary to Rep. Bartlett’s claim that the recent Institute of Medicine (IOM) study is proof that chimpanzee research is no longer necessary, the IOM study found that pre-clinical testing of some monoclonal antibody drugs requires chimpanzees.  And, half of the study panel and numerous other scientists and physicians believe chimpanzees are necessary for evaluating candidate hepatitis C vaccines.  The IOM report also recognized that “a new, emerging, or re-emerging disease or disorder” may require chimpanzee research and that “comparative genomics research may be necessary for understanding human development, disease mechanisms, and susceptibility.”
 
Rep. Bartlett’s article contains several other inaccuracies.  First, he says that: “ . . . the Modular IMune In vitro Construct (MIMIC) System uses human cells to replicate the human immune response for quick and accurate therapeutics and vaccine development.  MIMIC can be used in every stage of drug and vaccine development and is both a more reliable and less expensive method than using chimpanzees.”
 
Although MIMIC and other in vitro methods may eventually be viable alternatives to some research with chimpanzees, there is presently no reasonable alternative to chimpanzee research to develop medical solutions for several devastating diseases.  In fact, not a single vaccine or drug has ever been developed and marketed using the MIMIC System in place of animal models.
 
Rep. Bartlett also incorrectly argues that chimpanzee research involving HIV/AIDS and hepatitis C has not been effective.  
 
In fact, the HIV vaccine experiments with chimpanzees were highly informative in disproving the efficacy of candidate vaccines, which could not practically or timely be accomplished with humans due to the number of vaccines and human subjects required. Chimpanzee research paved the way for entirely new strategies for HIV vaccine development which are currently being implemented. Moreover, while it is true that not all new hepatitis C drugs were tested in chimpanzees, development of these drugs depended heavily on prior research with chimpanzees.

What devastation the affliction of Alzheimer’s can cause — it can take one’s life, to be sure, but even more insidious, it can remove a lifetime of memories and destroy the very essence of self. On Nov. 5, 1994, former President Reagan announced that he had Alzheimer’s. “I now begin the journey that will lead me into the sunset of my life,” he said in the letter. At that time, four million Americans suffered from the disease. Today, more than five million Americans live with Alzheimer’s, and this year alone, $200 billion will be spent caring for those with the disease.

A 500-calorie bagel with cream cheese on your way to work. A 700-calorie sandwich for lunch, plus an extra 150 calories if you get chips instead of carrots on the side. A 400-calorie afternoon coffee drink. A 350-calorie margarita after work. And a 1,500-calorie chicken quesadilla with friends for dinner.

It’s time to think of health in a disruptive way. Policy must set the enabling landscape, but the truly dramatic and the transformative will come from the exploding but still very young field of personalized medicine.