Opinion | ‘The Field in General Sucks’: What We Heard This Week

“The field in general sucks.” — Landon Myer, MD, PhD, of the University of Cape Town, on the decades-long dearth of new therapies in multidrug-resistant tuberculosis.

“The answer to what is fueling the rise of many brain diseases may be under our noses.” — Ray Dorsey, MD, of the University of Rochester in New York, commenting on new research linking air pollution with Parkinson’s disease.

“For sure, you would not see xylazine all over the place if it was scheduled.” — Andrew Kolodny, MD, of Brandeis University in Massachusetts, on whether or not federal regulators will deem the veterinary sedative xylazine a controlled substance.

“This information starts with the more medical misinformation spreaders like Robert Malone and Peter McCullough, and then it gets disseminated by the Joe Rogans.” — Katrine Wallace, PhD, of the University of Illinois-Chicago School of Public Health, on how celebrities shaped the public discourse surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic over social media.

“It really is all about choice.” — Diane Havlir, MD, of the University of California San Francisco, commenting on the first head-to-head study of an injectable HIV medication compared with an oral medication.

“One positive interpretation of the findings is that they may suggest that there is better identification of skin diseases in people of color over the study period.” — Emily Petherick, PhD, of Loughborough University in England, on the varying uptick in eczema prevalence across racial and ethnic groups over the past 20 years.

“Our understanding of this is evolving, but clearly infection with SARS-CoV-2 can affect the brain.” — Ziyad Al-Aly, MD, of the VA St. Louis Health Care System, discussing structural and connectivity brain changes in long COVID.