By
STAT
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We pored through hundreds of nominations in search of the researchers and doctors blazing new trails in medicine.
Meet our 2017 STAT Wunderkinds.
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By
Erin Mershon
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Eric Kruszewski for STAT
WASHINGTON — If House Speaker Paul Ryan comes down with the flu this winter, he and his security detail won’t be screeching off toward the closest CVS for his Tamiflu.
Instead, he can just walk downstairs and pick up the pills, part of a little-known perk open to every member of Congress, from Ryan and Majority Leader Mitch McConnell down to the newest freshman Democrat.
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Charles Piller
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Biz Herman for STAT
MENLO PARK, Calif. — The anarchist grew animated as he explained his plan to subvert a pillar of global capitalism by teaching the poor to make their own medicines — pharmaceutical industry patents be damned.
Then he took another sip from a flute of Taittinger Champagne.
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Andrew Joseph
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Chantal Heijnen for STAT
NEW YORK — The tip came from the doctors. Patients on painkillers were becoming addicted to opioids, even though they said they were taking them as prescribed.
To Paul Hanly, it had the makings of his next big case. On the hunt for patients, his law firm started advertising, and in 2003, it filed its first suits against Purdue Pharma, the maker of OxyContin.
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By
Bob Tedeschi
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Maria Fabrizio for STAT
In the winter of 2010, 90-year-old Helen Budzinski described what she saw, which no one else could see.
A blond girl, age 5 or so, at the foot of her bed. Then twin girls. Then a pair of boys named Michael and David.
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Meghana Keshavan
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Wendy Maeda/The Boston Globe
Gene therapy has the potential to be a one-shot treatment that could reverse blindness, restore blood-clotting function to hemophiliacs, or even cure rare diseases outright. But what kind of price tag comes with that promise — and who will pay for
it?
The question is no longer academic: On Thursday, Spark Therapeutics
won unanimous support from a Food and Drug Administration advisory panel for its gene therapy drug, Luxturna. It seems likely to win FDA approval in the coming months. But the cost will be hefty: Analysts estimate that Luxturna, which has been shown to
restore vision in children with an inherited form of blindness, could cost $1 million per patient.
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By
Megan Thielking
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Spencer Platt/Getty Images
Research grounded in genetics is booming: Therapies are in the works to treat a number of rare, inherited disorders, from blindness to nerve disease. But there’s a shortage of doctors trained to diagnose and treat such illnesses.
During match season for medical trainees this year, just 30 of the 55 spots for
medical genetics residencies in the U.S. were filled.
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