| | | | |  | | By Ruth Reader, Evan Peng, Carmen Paun, Daniel Payne and Erin Schumaker | PROGRAMMING NOTE: We’ll be off for Thanksgiving this Thursday and Friday but back to our normal schedule on Monday, Nov. 27.
| | |  Haugen's congressional testimony against her former employer, Meta, gave credence to concerns about social media's effects on teens. | Pool photo by Drew Angerer | Frances Haugen, Meta’s first whistleblower and former product manager, said that Instagram was hurting teen mental health back in 2021. Earlier this month, Congress heard from a second Meta whistleblower who shared evidence that the company was aware its photo-sharing site could harm teens. In his testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Arturo Bejar, Meta’s former director of engineering, spoke about how he tried to address Instagram’s negative impacts on youth, but company leaders wouldn’t let him proceed. Haugen talked with Ruth about what Bejar’s testimony could mean for Meta and other social media companies. This interview has been edited for length and clarity. What does Arturo Bejar’s testimony add to what you already have said? Arturo testified in front of the [Senate] Judiciary Committee, and I testified in front of the [Commerce Committee’s] Consumer Protection Committee. That is a difference — not trivial. When it came to Purdue Pharma, [which marketed its opioids to doctors knowing they were unsafe], what did them in was that they had executives testify before Congress who said, “Oh, we could have never known [opioid addiction] was a problem.” And, in fact, they had doctors writing to them, and the DEA had proof that people had tried to tell them they had a problem, and yet they said something different in Congress. Meta says it has taken steps to fix the aspects of its platforms that can harm mental health. But this latest testimony seems to show the company hasn’t taken the necessary steps. The Massachusetts [lawsuit against Meta, recently unsealed] is pretty damning. That disclosure makes clear even Nick Clegg [Meta’s head of global affairs] was like, “Hey, we have a problem. We are telling the public, we’re trying really hard on kids’ stuff, and we are not investing anywhere near enough resources. If we want to actually be aligned with our public messaging, we have to spend more on children's safety.’ And the CFO was like, ‘Sorry, we’re not doing that.’ A federal judge recently allowed a lawsuit against social media companies for allegedly harming teens to proceed. There’s a focus on negligence or whether a company knew its product was harmful and didn’t disclose it to the public. Do you think the new revelations could impact these cases? Now that Arturo has come forward and … made sure that the paper trail and the interaction trail took place and was documented, the chance that those cases are going to be successful is much, much higher.
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São Miguel Island, Portugal. | Erin Schumaker/POLITICO | This is where we explore the ideas and innovators shaping health care. Neuroscientists are starting to understand why a gentle touch from a parent can calm children when they’re upset or help them sleep: “Turns out, our skin contains nerves especially equipped to detect a gentle, stroking caress,” NPR reports. These nerves are part of a system that triggers the warm, peaceful feeling people experience when they’re with someone who loves them. Share any thoughts, news, tips and feedback with Carmen Paun at cpaun@politico.com, Daniel Payne at dpayne@politico.com, Evan Peng at epeng@politico.com, Ruth Reader at rreader@politico.com or Erin Schumaker at eschumaker@politico.com. Send tips securely through SecureDrop, Signal, Telegram or WhatsApp. Today on our Pulse Check podcast, host Ben Leonard talks with POLITICO health care reporter Ashleigh Furlong, who explains the Lancet Countdown's report that warns of the dire consequences of rising temperatures and increasing energy emission — and the potential catastrophic threats climate change poses to human health.
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This isn't one of the new AI-enabled stethoscopes. | Adam Berry/Getty Images | Artificial intelligence is making inroads in cardiovascular care and holds promise for improving heart health, researchers at the American Heart Association’s annual Scientific Sessions conference said. They presented preliminary, non-peer-reviewed research on AI applications, such as: — An app that detects voice changes in people with heart failure. Using AI, the app predicted around 75 percent of hospitalizations about three weeks before they happened. The study consisted of more than 400 adults living in Israel diagnosed with heart failure who recorded five sentences daily on the app. The smartphone app predicted heart failure by detecting changes in speech over time, analyzing the changes for increases in lung fluid, a sign of worsening heart failure. — Electrocardiograms of heart attack patients read by AI. The EKGs decreased the time to diagnose patients and send them to treatment by nearly 10 minutes. EKG testing shows the heart’s electrical activity and is used to determine the medical response to a cardiac episode. The quicker a patient receives care the better. The study involved more than 43,000 patients at a hospital in Taiwan. AI helped read half of the EKGs. For patients with AI-aided EKG readings, treatment waiting time for patients who’d had a serious heart attack dropped from 52 minutes to 43 minutes. — AI-enabled digital stethoscopes. The stethoscopes might help detect peripartum cardiomyopathy — a rare disorder in which a pregnant person’s heart weakens — at twice the rate of current methods. The study enrolled about 1,200 pregnant or recently pregnant women in Nigeria. In half the group, an AI-supported digital stethoscope that recorded electrical activity and sound from the heart was used alongside an EKG, leading to an improved diagnosis.
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Flooding from cyclones has led to cholera outbreaks in Mozambique. | Emidio Josine/AFP via Getty Images | The United States is part of a dozen countries supporting a voluntary declaration on climate and health to be presented at this year’s U.N. climate summit in Dubai, which starts on Nov. 30. The countries, including Brazil, Malawi, Kenya, India and Germany, are expected to commit to addressing the environmental factors impacting health and to “promote steps” to curb pollution and waste from their health sectors, among other objectives outlined in the declaration obtained by POLITICO’s Zia Weise and Carlo Martuscelli. The declaration, sent to the 200 governments participating in the talks, also addresses the need for financing for climate and health from domestic budgets, development banks, climate funds and philanthropies. Endorsing the declaration is voluntary since the United Arab Emirates health ministry drafted it outside of the usual U.N. process, which typically involves lengthy negotiations and compromise before governments reach agreement. The UAE plans to launch the declaration on Dec. 2 ahead of a day dedicated to the health impacts of climate change at the summit. Why it matters: Talks about curbing greenhouse gas emissions and slowing climate change have typically not been considered health topics. But the effects have become apparent. A cyclone hit Mozambique twice this year, an unusual occurrence that triggered a cholera outbreak and ravaged health facilities in the country, for example. Worldwide, heat waves are causing more deaths, mosquito-borne diseases such as dengue and malaria are spreading to new areas and extreme weather events threaten to destroy health infrastructure. | | | | Follow us on Twitter | | | | Follow us | | | | |
