by Apoorva Mandavilli, New York Times, December 18, 2024
In a stark acknowledgment of the increasing seriousness of bird flu’s spread, Gov. Gavin Newsom of California declared on Wednesday that the outbreak of infections among the state’s dairy cattle constituted an emergency.
In December, California declared a state of emergency as 645 herds had positive cases of bird flu (H5N1 avian influenza). Since then, bird flu has infected 900 herds in the U.S. Birds, cats, and humans have all been infected by H5N1, although, as of this writing, the virus has not mutated in such a way that it is spread through human-to-human contact. Avian influenza was first detected in wild birds in 2022 and has since infected more than 136 million birds, resulting in higher egg prices (“‘A Dangerous Virus’: Bird Flu Enters a New Phase”).
A Vanity Fair investigation outlined the inadequate response by the USDA when bird flu was first detected in cattle in Texas in March 2024. According to sources and documents obtained by journalists, the USDA enacted a gag order on its employees in an attempt to preserve the billion-dollar agriculture industry (“Inside the Bungled Bird Flu Response, Where Profits Collide with Public Health”).
by Maria Cheng and Angie Wang, Associated Press, October 15, 2024
As Canada pushes to expand euthanasia and more countries move to legalize it, health care workers here are grappling with requests from people whose pain might be alleviated by money, adequate housing or social connections.
by Alexander Raikin The New Atlantis, November 11, 2024
For years, there have been clear signals that euthanasia providers in Canada may be breaking the law and getting away with it. That is the finding of the officials who are responsible for monitoring euthanasia deaths to ensure compliance in the province of Ontario.
An Associated Press article based on leaked documents containing private forum discussions on providing euthanasia for people who are not terminally ill shows that some people requested assisted suicide for financial and social support reasons, citing the paltry government subsistence for disability as a factor. Additionally, many doctors questioned providing euthanasia for people who are suffering largely because they are homeless, grieving, or unwilling to be dependent on someone.
The New Atlantis had a sweeping article about the under-reporting of illegal euthanasia cases in Canada. Based on documents shared with TNA, there have been hundreds of cases of euthanasia with questionable legality and some that are blatant violations of the law. None of these are shared with the public and none have led to a criminal charge.
Additionally, The National Post and The New York Times had articles about Ellen Wiebe, who provides assisted dying in British Columbia, Canada (“The Interview: The Doctor Who Helped Me Understand My Mom’s Choice to Die” and “This Doctor Has Helped more Than 400 Patients Die. How Many Assisted Deaths Are too Many?”). Wiebe has been a vocal advocate for Canada’s medical assistance in dying laws and has helped hundreds of people die.
On the global front, in September Swiss police detained several people in connection with a suicide device, called a “Sarco” capsule, that was used to help a 64-year-old American woman commit suicide by asphyxiation. The device was funded and developed by Exit International and was made using 3D printing (“Swiss Police Detain Several People in Connection with Suspected Death in ‘Suicide Capsule’”).
The second half of 2024 had some good examples of how investigative journalism can serve the public. STAT News, ProPublica, Wall Street Journal, and in June The New York Times have all reported on the ways insurance companies and pharmacy benefits managers put profits ahead of patients in ways that are harmful and, at times, illegal.
by Bob Herman, Tara Bannow, Casey Ross, and Lizzy Lawrence, STAT News, July 25, 2024
A STAT investigation reveals the untold story of how the company has gobbled up multiple pieces of the health care industry and exploited its growing power to milk the system for profit. UnitedHealth’s tactics have transformed medicine in communities across the country into an assembly line that treats millions of patients as products to monetized.
by T. Christian Miller, Patrick Rucker, and David Armstrong, ProPublica, October 23, 2024
The biggest player is a company called EviCore by Evernorth, which is hired by major American insurance companies and provides coverage to 100 million consumers—about 1 in 3 insured people. It is owned by the insurance giant Cigna. A ProPublica and Capitol Forum investigation found that EviCore uses an algorithm backed by artificial intelligence, which some insiders call ‘the dial,’ that it can adjust to lead to higher denials.
STAT News looked at UnitedHeath Group’s profit-seeking practices in its series “Health Care’s Colossus” (subscriber only). UnitedHealth, the largest health insurer in the U.S., is a billion-dollar corporation and the fourth-largest company in the U.S. by revenue (the top three are Walmart, Amazon, and Apple).
ProPublica has several investigations into healthcare denials, including a report on EviCore, which uses algorithms to vet prior authorization requests for approval. EviCore is contracted with some of the largest insurance companies, including UnitedHealth and Aetna. The algorithms used by EviCore are proprietary, but insiders told ProPublica that the algorithm can be dialed up or dialed back to approve fewer requests for the purposes of saving the insurance company money. Furthermore, several oncologists have said that the algorithm uses outdated guidelines that are harmful to patients.
Another ProPublica investigation showed that UnitedHealth repurposed an algorithm system, originally designed to flag suicidal patients, to limit and deny mental health coverage. Providers were often harassed by the insurance company to justify why they would see a patient more than once per week or why they saw patients outside of business hours. Several states have sued UnitedHealth for violating the Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act.
by Liz Essley Whyte, Wall Street Journal, July 23, 2024
The drug middlemen that promise to control costs have instead steered patients toward higher-priced medicines and affiliated pharmacies—steps that increase spending and reduce patient choice, a House investigation found.
The Wall Street Journal reported on the results of a 32-month House of Representatives investigation into pharmacy benefits managers (PBMs). These companies, often overseen by healthcare companies, serve as middlemen between pharmacies, drug manufacturers, wholesalers, and insurance companies. Their stated purpose is to save patients money, but the effect is often to drive patients toward more expensive drugs, while the PBMs profit from selling discounted drugs at a higher cost.
by Alyssa Lukpat, Julie Wernau, and Anna Wilde Mathews, Wall Street Journal, December 4, 2024
The chief executive of UnitedHealth’s insurance arm was fatally shot outside a hotel in New York City Wednesday [December 4] in a targeted attack, police said.
by Kris Maher, Alyssa Lukpat, and James Fanelli, Wall Street Journal, December 10, 2025
New York prosecutors charged a former tech worker on Monday night with murder in the killing of UnitedHealth executive Brian Thompson with a ghost gun outside a Midtown Manhattan hotel. Police arrested 26-year-old Luigi Mangione, an Ivy League graduate, at a Pennsylvania McDonald’s after a frenzied manhunt.
In December, a gunman, later identified as Luigi Mangione, shot the CEO of UnitedHealth Group’s insurance arm while the CEO was attending a conference in New York City. The words “delay,” “deny,” and “depose” appeared on bullet casings. The words are a rallying cry for those who are angry at claims denials. Mangione has garnered a surprising amount of sympathy from people who are frustrated over insurance companies’ ever-increasing sway as to who receives care and who does not.
by Berkeley Lovelace Jr. and Mustafa Fattah, NBC News, October 3, 2024
Hospitals across the U.S. are taking steps to conserve their supplies of IV fluids after Hurricane Helene struck a critical manufacturing plant belonging to the country’s biggest supplier.
Hurricane Helene was the deadliest hurricane in the twenty-first century, partly because of how quickly it intensified in the Gulf of Mexico. Two hundred and thirty people died and the hurricane caused billions of dollars in damage. Among the places that were affected by Helene was North Cove, North Carolina, where Baxter International, the largest maker of IV fluids in the United States, was located. Baxter had to halt manufacturing for a time, and several major hospitals had to conserve their IV fluids or reschedule procedures.
by Carl Zimmer New York Times, August 14, 2024
Teams of neurologists at six research centers asked 241 unresponsive patients to spend several minutes at a time doing complex cognitive tasks, such as imagining themselves playing tennis. Twenty-five percent of them responded with the same patterns of brain activity seen in healthy people, suggesting that they were able to think and were at least somewhat aware.
A study that did not receive as much press, yet has implications for bioethics issues, showed that 25% of the people who were thought to be in a so-called vegetative or minimally conscious state demonstrated brain activity that was similar to healthy people when asked to think about certain activities. This means there could be as many as 100,000 patients in the U.S. thought to be in this minimally conscious state who may have some level of consciousness after all. The researchers hope their studies will help doctors determine if patients have some consciousness and that advances in brain-computer interfaces could possibly help these people communicate.
by David Cox and Maria Isabel Barros Guinle, NPR, December 12, 2024
The emerging data surrounding lenacapavir is so astonishing that the drug’s development has been heralded as the 2024 Breakthrough of the Year by the journal Science, which described it as representing “a pivotal step toward diminishing HIV/AIDS as a global health crisis.”
Two studies showed that lenacapavir, a twice-yearly injection, was effective in preventing new cases of HIV between sexual partners. PURPOSE 1, a study of 5,300 women in South Africa and Uganda, indicated a 100% efficacy over three years. In other words, not a single woman who was given lenacapavir contracted HIV. Similarly, the PURPOSE 2 study showed 96% effectiveness in preventing HIV in more than 3,200 men cross Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, Peru, South Africa, Thailand, and the U.S. (The study also included people who identify as transgender men and transgender women.) This is compared to the PrEP retroviral pills that have an infection rate of 2% when taken daily.
by Sherry Turkle and Pat Pataranutaporn, Wall Street Journal, November 8, 2024
Sewell Setzer III, a 14-year-old boy in Orlando, Fla., was smitten with a fantasy woman. The object of his attachment was Daenerys Targaryen, a chatbot seductress named for a character in Game of Thrones, who reassured him that he was her hero.
Character.AI allows users to create characters who they can chat and have relationships with. Sewell Setzer had ADHD, was diagnosed with mild Asperger’s, and was bullied at school. He used Character.AI to create a female chatbot character that he formed a relationship with. As the relationship intensified, he mentioned wanting to kill himself. Although the chatbot responded by asking questions to deter him, it did not “remember” the interaction the next time they talked. When he mentioned being with her forever, she responded that she would like that. After talking to the bot, Setzer shot himself. Many people point out that relationships with chatbots are becoming more common as people deal with loneliness, but, as Turkle and Pataranutaporn say in their article, “It is like offering a photograph of water to quench thirst.” His mother, Megan L. Garcia, is suing the company.
Heather Zeiger, "Bioethics News Stories (July–December 2024)," Dignitas 31, no. 3-4 (2024): 27–30, www.cbhd.org/dignitas-articles/bioethics-news-stories-july-december-2024.