Statins Early in my career as a health reporter, nearly every expert I interviewed about cholesterol-lowering statins would repeat some form of this quote: “Statins are so good we should be putting them in the water supply.” Twenty five years later, many experts have changed their tune on statins, choosing to believe patient experience over published research. This story looks at why more doctors have recently cast a more critical eye on these drugs, even as new guidelines have dramatically expanded the pool of people who are eligible to take them. The Race to Save Dr. Brantly–The Inside Story As soon as Dr. Kent Brantly landed at Emory Hospital in Atlanta, I knew I wanted the backstory. How did this missionary physician become the first person to be treated for Ebola in the U.S.? And how did he come to be the first human to take the experimental drug ZMapp? I suspected there had been a well-connected person with a medical background working at a high level at Samaritan’s Purse to save his life. I made dozens of phone calls to board members, focusing on those who had medical backgrounds. No one would call me back. But my research paid off. At an Emory press conference announcing Brantly’s release, I recognized Richard Furman, MD, who was a co-founder of Samaritan’s Purse. He told me about Dr. Lance Plyler, the physician who had overseen Dr. Brantly’s care in Africa.I started trying to make contact. A month after I left messages for him on social media sites, Plyler called me back. In a stunning interview, he revealed details about the pressure to decide whether to use a promising, but untested treatment, the code name they used for Brantly to avoid causing a panic among western health care workers, and the tough decision he had to make to split the dose of the drug. Our entire news and web publishing team worked late on a Friday to rush the story to the site. As a result, we were the first media organization to have Plyler’s account, and we believe we were the first to have a named source describe some of the details about how the Zmapp was administered and the dramatic turnaround in his health after he took it. (CNN had previously published some details of the story that were attributed to an unnamed source.) Fear of Ebola Spreading Fasting than Virus Schools were closing, people who knew people who might possibly have been exposed were being asked to stay home from work. Despite frequent and clear assurances from health authorities that Ebola virus was difficult to catch, Ebola hysteria was out of control. After our editorial team heard some personal stories of lives being upended purely because of fear, we knew we needed a story that would attempt to explain why people were so afraid, without fanning the flames. The Promise and Perils of Brain Training Video games marketed by companies like Lumosity that promise to sharpen mental abilities have become big business. Some, like Pearson’s CogMed program, even promise to treat diseases like ADHD. But do they actually work? And who’s looking out for consumers? Our special report looked at who is selling and buying brain training games. We also talked to consumers who felt mislead and cheated. One family spent $10,000 to try to help their learning disabled daughter, with no results to show for it. When we confronted the company, they basically admitted that their program had done little to help this child.
