These four stories comprise the health beat for Carol Ostrom at the Seattle Times:
“Wonder cure for gut: FDA allows fecal transplants”: I did this story in the wake of the FDA reversing its stand that a transplant of donor fecal bacteria to a recipient with debilitating complications of C. difficile, a nasty intestinal bug, would have to be done under an experimental protocol; i.e., undergo human subjects review and be approved by the FDA. The story looked at some of the history of this treatment locally, how it had changed, and current research. I was fascinated to find that doctors who first began using fecal transplants for desperate patients many years ago were so stunned by the treatment’s success, it had become essentially an”underground” procedure in the medical world, unlike the usual long process of acceptance of a new treatment. Most recently, its success has spawned do-it-yourself Websites such as thepowerofpoop.com and fecaltransplant.org.
“The dialysis dilemma: urgent need vs. overtaxed system:” Fifty years ago, a medical treatment was invented in Seattle that continues to have profound ethical and financial implications today: kidney dialysis. The story was done for our Sunday magazine, so the challenge was to weave history, personal stories, ethics, financial issues and facts into a forward-moving narrative and to not get tangled up in some of the complex issues facing kidney centers and kidney-failure treatment today. Baby’s birth day can be risky if rushed, hospitals are told (the online version was posted at 9:53 p.m. Dec. 31, but ran in print on Jan. 1, 2013).
“Babies come fast — one every eight seconds in the U.S. — but medical culture changes slowly:” The clash was what I wrote about, following a new campaign to make sure doctors and patients don’t deliver early. We’re not talking about prematurity, rather just a few weeks short of fully cooked — a gestational age that many doctors have long considered to be “full term.” But the latest research, which I used, shows clearly that babies, especially their brains, just aren’t well done if they’re delivered even at 37 or 38 weeks, and statistically are much more likely to have problems.
“A user’s guide: 20 things to know about the Affordable Care Act:”It was part of a very consumer-oriented tab section on the Affordable Care Act. I tried to summarize the background and big picture in a conversational way before getting to the editor-prescribed “20 things.”