General Medical News
In this section, The Reproductive Times offers opinions about medical news not necessarily connected to reproductive medicine, - but with potential relevance to the field. Since - like outside opinions - the CHR’s positions on issues can be biased, it is important to reemphasize that we are fully cognizant that “expert”- opinions in medicine are considered the lowest level of evidence and should be viewed as such by our readers. Unable to offer, therefore, consistent “truth” (assuming that something like that really exists in science), The Reproductive Times strives to come in its selection of topics and in its content as close as possible to the most likely “truth of the moment.” We, therefore, welcome from our readers especially opposing opinions.
And a word on prescription pricing
Based on media reports, only three Pharmacy Benefits Managers, all controlled by pharma companies, control over 90% of all prescription pricing in the U.S. In other words, Big Pharma sets its own prices and the public, therefore, pays astronomical prices through Medicare (i.e., taxes. Deservedly, a recent posting on X called it “a racket” (1). Here is an example they offered: Initial purchase price for the cancer medication Imatinib is allegedly $7. Their cost to get the medicine out the door is $10, which adds up to $17. Guess how much Medicare pays for it?
The answer is $2,400! Supposedly, the drug was filled 250,000 times in a year, costing Medicare $ 600 million!
Reference
Wall Street Apes. February 21, 2025. https://x.com/wallstreetapes/status/1892827602068426965?s=43&t=P_VvfV3w57FT4uz9jK43Q
The business of medical publishing has become political
Many, if not most, medical journals, in their basic settings, already not very positive against conservative concepts, for very obvious reasons, are not very happy with the Trump administration. Consequently, the editorial team of the JAMA Network found it necessary to “reaffirm the JAMA Network’s commitment to the health of patients and the public” (1). In short, lots of clichés and no really new information.
One is left wondering how one, as the official publishing arm of the American Medical Association (AMA), can be politically so uncritically biased. And we are not even referring to the consistent bias expressed against Trump administration policies, as in the referenced article. The discrimination goes much further because, wherever controversy exists, one uniformly finds only one side of controversial issues being given the opportunity of representation.
And the JAMA Network is, of course, not alone in those biases. We elsewhere in this issue pointed already out many of the biases by even the most prominent and respected journals (like, for example, the Nature journals). It, indeed, is practically almost impossible to find medical journals where one could get the impression of biases towards the other side. In other words, politics has successfully infiltrated the medical and scientific publishing business, and we are, of course, not the only ones to have noticed. The government seems to have noticed, too.
Recent media reports, indeed, indicate that a federal prosecutor has been sending probing letters to a so-far small number of medical journals accusing them of political bias. Understandably, the response from the medical publishing industry was not very positive. For example, National Public Radio (NPR, just defunded by the Trump administration) interpreted these letters as causing concern that the administration was “trying to restrict free speech among scientists” (2). Among journals that allegedly received such a letter, not surprisingly, was the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine (3).
The projection behind this “fear’ is, however, becoming just as obvious as it has become obvious in daily U.S. politics: Whatever one side accuses the other of doing, one can expect the accusing side to have done for quite some time. That a medical journal like the New England Journal of Medicine would (according to NPR) be concerned about getting censored by the government is absurd, considering the biased article selection that has, of course, been going on at The Journal for decades.
And the JAMA Network appears to follow in the New England Journal’s footsteps and, indeed, to a rather amazing degree when in above cited paper condemning alleged U.S. federal censorship as an attack on science (1). And in another JAMA article Rochelle Walensky, MD, who served under President Biden as the 19th director of the U. S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), offered - with her husband as co-author (a pediatric oncologist at Harvard), a not too friendly Viewpoint article claiming that the Trump administration is putting U.S. science in peril (4).
Rochelle Walensky, MD
Among the layoffs at the CDC, based on decisions made by the Department of Government Efficiency, was, apparently, the entire IVF team responsible for managing the CDC registry and its annual reports.5 Whether this layoff is final is unclear at the time of this writing. Several Democrat senators, indeed, wrote a letter to the Trump administration demanding a reversal of the decision.
And while we agree that firing of the whole IVF crew, likely, was not necessarily a very smart move, things – as they often are – in reality end up being more complex than on first impression: After all, the U.S. currently has two IVF reporting systems in parallel, - the Congress-mandated CDC reporting system and a system administered by SART. But do we really need two systems (the work for IVF clinics is considerable because both systems at time request different information. Moreover, even though the CDC system is mandated by law, participation is incomplete (going unenforced for decades). Though both systems in a large majority receive information from the same clinics, the data are similar but not completely congruent because, with different clinics in the pool, differences in data analyses are obviously expected.
But it is truly amazing how completely the medical publishing industry, whether privately owned by big publishing companies (i.e., Nature, by Nature-Springer, a German concern) or by not-for-profit, usually professional societies (JAMA by AMA, New England Journal of Medicine by the local Massachusetts Medical Society, Fertility & Sterility by ASRM) have uniformly embraced a leftish outlook on the world, while actively preventing publications that would oppose such an opposing view.
And somewhat related, Nature magazine recently published an interesting news item titled “Journal snatchers buy publications and turn them rogue.” What this means is that business interests purchase established journals with the obvious primary intent of improving profitability, and suddenly, previously credible journals begin doing unexpected things, such as accepting poorer-quality papers and, of course, hiking acceptance fees. According to the article, dozens of formerly credible journals have unfortunately already gone down this route.
Reference
Bibbins-Domingo, et al. JAMA 2025;333(13):1121-1122
Chang A. NPR. May 2, 2025. https://www.npr.org/transcripts/nx-s1-5374993#:~:text=A%20federal%20prosecutor%20has%20been,restrict%20free%20speech%20among%20scientists.
Rosenbluth T. New York Times; April 25, 2025. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/25/health/nejm-prosecutor-letter.html
Walensky R, Walensky LD. JAMA 2025;333(11):933-934
McGrath M. Forbes. April 3, 2025. https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbestv/2025/04/03/hhs-job-cuts-entire-cdc-team-focused-on-infertility-and-ivf-is-gone/
Singh Chawla D. Nature 2025;461;15-16