The ideas and innovators shaping health care
| | | | |  | | By Erin Schumaker, Ruth Reader and Daniel Payne | | | | |  California judges says it's hard to say what's harmful content online. | AP | Legislation aimed at protecting kids’ mental health online is on rocky ground following a federal appeals court decision last week that said a key section of a 2022 California law likely violated the First Amendment. That law requires tech giants to vet their social media sites for dangers to kids and take steps to mitigate them. A panel of judges from the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco said forcing companies to decide what constitutes harmful content was tantamount to censorship, our Jeremy B. White and Josh Gerstein report. “A disclosure regime that requires the forced creation and disclosure of highly subjective opinions about content-related harms to children is unnecessary for fostering a proactive environment in which companies, the State, and the general public work to protect children’s safety online,” Judge Milan Smith wrote in an opinion. Why it matters: Since California enacted its law, Maryland has also enacted a so-called age-appropriate design code, and the U.S. Senate passed a bill last month creating a similar “duty of care” for social media companies to protect kids. The House is now considering it. What’s next? Judge Smith has sent the case back to the district court in San Jose. Though he agreed that parts of the law were likely unconstitutional, Smith wrote that the lower court’s injunction blocking the California law was overbroad. He said that some provisions, such as those restricting methods the sites use to collect data about kids, might pass constitutional muster, and he directed the district court to reconsider those elements and determine whether some parts of the law may take effect.
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Bergen, Norway | Shawn Zeller/POLITICO | This is where we explore the ideas and innovators shaping health care. So-called digital switching, like swiping through TikTok to ward off boredom, makes people more bored, research suggests. Share any thoughts, news, tips and feedback with Carmen Paun at cpaun@politico.com, Daniel Payne at dpayne@politico.com, Ruth Reader at rreader@politico.com, or Erin Schumaker at eschumaker@politico.com. Send tips securely through SecureDrop, Signal, Telegram or WhatsApp.
| | |  Scientists are making strides in understanding Lyme disease. | Centers for Disease Control and Prevention via AP | Biologists have mapped the genetic makeup of 47 strains of Lyme disease — which could help researchers develop more effective treatments against the disease. The NIH-backed research, published this month in the journal mBio, brought together scientists from more than a dozen research institutions who sequenced the full genome for 23 known species of Lyme disease bacteria, including strains associated with human infections and those not associated with disease. Better understanding those strains could help scientists develop more accurate tests and treatments targeting specific Lyme bacteria, including vaccines. Researchers also reconstructed Lyme disease bacteria’s evolutionary history, which goes back millions of years. They hypothesize that Lyme disease bacteria existed before the supercontinent Pangea broke up, creating the modern continents, which would explain why the bacteria is found worldwide. Why it matters: Lyme disease is the most common insect-borne disease in the U.S., according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, with 476,000 people diagnosed annually. Symptoms include skin rash, fever, headache and fatigue. Infections, if left untreated, can spread to the joints, heart and nervous system and can sometimes be debilitating or life-threatening. Up next: The researchers want to expand their analysis to include more strains from understudied regions, especially as climate change expands Lyme disease-carrying ticks’ territories. They’ve also built BorreliaBase, a tool scientists can use to compare genomes for Borrelia burgdorferi sensu lato, the group of bacteria that causes Lyme disease.
| | |  AI could help diagnose autism, a study found. | AFP via Getty Images | Machine learning models are generally accurate at diagnosing autism in toddlers, a finding that could have significant implications for the disorder, which is often diagnosed later in life, our Sophie Gardner reports. In a study published yesterday in JAMA Network Open, researchers analyzed medical data from more than 30,000 toddlers and found that a machine learning model could usually diagnose autism spectrum disorder. The machine learning model had an AUROC score — a metric used to determine the success of a test in differentiating between individuals with a condition versus those without — of 0.895, meaning there’s nearly a 90 percent chance that the machine accurately diagnosed the toddlers. Scores above 0.80 are generally considered clinically useful. | | | | Follow us on Twitter | | | | Follow us | | | | |
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