Opinion | ‘Every Kid Dreams of Walking on the Moon, or Mars’: What We Heard This Week

“Every kid dreams of walking on the moon, or Mars.” — Nathan Jones, MD, of Springfield Memorial Hospital in Illinois, on his motivation to volunteer for NASA’s year-long simulated Mars mission.

“You will be poisoned and you will die.” — Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), on the need for greater awareness about fentanyl’s potency at a recent Senate subcommittee hearing.

“It’s possible that we can get to a very, very high accuracy…but it’s also possible that the technology has a threshold.” — Rajesh Bhayana, MD, of University Medical Imaging Toronto in Canada, speculating about the future use of AI in medicine.

“[Wegovy is] not going to solve the obesity problem, but it’s an important piece to the puzzle in helping to solve it.” — Aaron Kelly, PhD, of the University of Minnesota Medical School in Minneapolis, discussing a trial that showed semaglutide-treated teens dropped their body weight below the obesity threshold.

“It was very, very difficult to change the practices of clinicians.” — Edwin Boudreaux, PhD, of the University of Massachusetts Chan Medical School in Worcester, on a continuous quality improvement program that established new approaches for suicide intervention in the emergency department.

“It’s not a court’s role to come in and second-guess that expertise, and no court has ever done that.” — Sarah Harrington, JD, U.S. Deputy Assistant Attorney General for Civil Appellate, during oral arguments in the ongoing court battle over the FDA approval of the abortion drug mifepristone (Mifeprex).

“It’s outrageous that management suspended us, for speaking up for each other, in the middle of a chronic nurse shortage.” — Tanya Howard, RN, of Clara Maass Medical Center in Belleville, New Jersey, on nurses protesting their colleague’s firing.

“At least in the short term, there is no signal for increased risk and this is quite reassuring.” — Josef Stehlik, MD, MPH, of the University of Utah School of Medicine, commenting on outcomes of patients who received heart transplants from donors who recently recovered from SARS-CoV-2 infection.