Willy Chertman

Nov 19, 2024 | ifp.org | Janika Schmitt |Willy Chertman |Alec Stapp

In the wake of the election, the path forward on biosecurity is unclear, and a lot will depend on who ultimately leads the key federal agencies tasked with fighting infectious disease. And there are reasons for concern: For instance, Trump has said he will disband the White House Office of Pandemic Preparedness and Response Policy. In light of ongoing outbreaks like mpox and the spread of H5N1 influenza in American dairy cows, now is not the time to deprioritize pandemic preparedness initiatives.

Aug 15, 2023 | city-journal.org | Willy Chertman

Random Acts of Medicine: The Hidden Forces That Sway Doctors, Impact Patients, and Shape Our Health, by Anupam B. Jena and Christopher Worsham (Doubleday, 320 pp., $30)Random Acts of Medicine, by Anupam Jena and Christopher Worsham, is a breezy tour through the use of natural experiments in medicine. As doctors, the authors occasionally confront questions that are nearly impossible to answer with randomized controlled trials, so they try to find other ways to do so.

Aug 10, 2023 | city-journal.org | Willy Chertman

From Oversight to Overkill: Inside the Broken System That Blocks Medical Breakthroughs—And How We Can Fix It, by Simon Whitney (Rivertown Books, 316 pp., $32.95)Institutional review boards, or IRBs—committees charged with overseeing “Human Subject Research”—have received surprisingly little attention, given their enormous impact on medical research and innovation. In From Oversight to Overkill, Simon Whitney aims to fill that gap.

May 22, 2023 | city-journal.org | Willy Chertman

Doctors have been understandably skeptical of claims that artificial intelligence will transform medicine. Recall the misleading claims that radiologists might soon be obsolete, years of annoying automated pop ups in electronic health records, and the deployment of IBM’s near-useless Watson. But the development of new large-language models may actually live up to the hype.

May 17, 2023 | city-journal.org | Willy Chertman

Randomized controlled trials are the key to medical innovation, but they have become substantially more expensive in recent decades. A series of regulatory changes could bring RCT costs down and deliver more innovation. RCT prices have ballooned in recent years. According to one estimate, for trials conducted between 2015 and 2017, the median cost was $41,413 per patient. And in some trials, the figure gets significantly higher.