Stop The World…

Some news highlights from this week:

“US vs Them”?

With the US now set to lose its WHO membership, what does that mean for Americans? For most, the consequences will be indirect:

• the nation’s scientists and institutions will be somewhat “left out in the cold” when it comes to international scientific collaboration in the field of health
• the US will no longer enjoy a position of influence and power within the WHO, which organization’s reports and position statements have a lot of sway over the world’s health practices

Are there any benefits (of leaving the WHO) for Americans? Yes, there is one: the US will no longer be paying into the WHO’s budget, which means:

• the US will save the 0.006% of the Federal budget that it was paying into the WHO annually
• for the average American’s monthly budget, that means (if the saving is passed on) you’ll have an extra dime

However, since US scientific institutions will still need access to international data, likely that access will need to be paid separately, at a higher rate than US membership in WHO cost.

In short: it seems likely to go the way that Brexit did: “saving” on membership fees and then paying more for access to less.

Why is the US leaving again? The stated reasons were mainly twofold:

1. the cost of US membership (the US’s contribution constituted 15% of the the overall WHO budget)
2. holding the US’s disproportionately high COVID death rate (especially compared to countries such as China) to be a case of WHO mismanagement

Read in full: What losing WHO membership means for the U.S.

Related: What Would a Second Trump Presidency Look Like for Health Care? ← this was a speculative post by KFF Health News, last year

Halt, You’re Under A Breast

More seriously, this is about halting the metastasis of cancerous tumors in the breast. It is reasonable to expect the same principle and thus treatment may apply to other cancers too, but this is where the research is at for now (breast cancer research gets a lot of funding).

And, what principle and treatment is this, you ask? It’s about the foxglove-derived drug digoxin, and how it stops cancerous cells from forming clusters, and even actively dissolves clusters that have already formed. No clusters means no new tumors, which means no metastasis. No metastasis, in turn, means the cancer becomes much more treatable because it’s no longer a game of whack-a-mole; instead of spreading to other places, it’s a much more manageable case of “here’s the tumor, now let’s kill it with something”.

Note: yes, that does mean the tumor still needs killing by some other means—digoxin won’t do that, it “just” stops it from spreading while treatment is undertaken.

Read in full: Proof-of-concept study dissolves clusters of breast cancer cells to prevent metastases

Related: The Hormone Therapy That Reduces Breast Cancer Risk & More

Force Of Habit

“It takes 21 days to make a habit”, says popular lore. Popular is not, however, evidence-based:

❝This systematic review of 20 studies involving 2601 participants challenges the prevailing notion of rapid habit formation, revealing that health-related habits typically require 2–5 months to develop, with substantial individual variability ranging from 4 to 335 days. The meta-analysis demonstrated significant improvements in habit scores across various health behaviours, with key determinants including morning practices, personal choice, and behavioural characteristics❞

So, this is not a lottery, “maybe it will take until Tuesday, maybe it will take nearly a year”, so much as “there are important factors that seriously change how long a habit takes to become engrained, and here is what those factors are”.

Read in full: Study reveals healthy habits take longer than 21 days to set in

Related: How To Really Pick Up (And Keep!) Those Habits