Kim Bellard – Page 7 – The Health Care Blog

Fighting the Wrong (Culture) War

Jan 20, 2023

By KIM BELLARD

News flash from the culture wars: they’re coming to take our gas stoves!

Well, actually, “they” are not, but the kind of people who got alarmed about it are a threat to our health, and to theirs.

The gas stove furor started with a Bloomberg News interview that Richard Trumka, Jr, a Consumer Product Safety Commission commissioner. “This is a hidden hazard,” he said. “Any option is on the table. Products that can’t be made safe can be banned.”

He was referring to the well known but little acknowledged fact that gas stoves emit various pollutants, especially nitrogen dioxide. Last year the AMA adopted resolutions about the risks of gas stoves, and urged migration efforts to electric stoves. Shelly Miller, a University of Colorado, Boulder, environmental engineer has said:

Cooking is the No. 1 way you’re polluting your home. It is causing respiratory and cardiovascular health problems; it can exacerbate flu and asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease in children…you’re basically living in this toxic soup.

So one can see why the CPSC might be concerned. But the outcry about Mr. Trumka’s comments were immediate and vociferous. “I’ll NEVER give up my gas stove. If the maniacs in the White House come for my stove, they can pry it from my cold dead hands. COME AND TAKE IT!!” Rep. Ronny Jackson (R-TX) tweeted. The Atlantic further reported:

Governor Ron DeSantis tweeted a cartoon of two autographed—yes autographed—gas stoves. Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio declared simply, “God. Guns. Gas stoves.” Naturally, Tucker Carlson got involved. “I would counsel mass disobedience in the face of tyranny in this case,” he told a guest on his Fox News show.

Almost as immediately, Mr. Trumka clarified: “To be clear, CPSC isn’t coming for anyone’s gas stoves. Regulations apply to new products.” CPSC Chair Alexander Hoehn-Saric issued a statement making it clear that, while “emissions from gas stoves can be hazardous…I am not looking to ban gas stoves and the CPSC has no proceeding to do so.” The White House issued its own denial. Case closed, right?

Healthcare, Meet Southwest

Jan 3, 2023

BY KIM BELLARD

Customers experiencing long, often inexplicable delays, their experiences turning from hopeful to angry to afraid they’ll never get back home. Staff overworked and overwhelmed. IT systems failing at the times they’re most needed. To most people, that all probably sounds like Southwest Airline’s debacle last week, but, to me, it just sounds like every day in our healthcare system.

Southwest had a bad week. All the airlines were hit by a huge swath of bad weather the weekend before Christmas, but most airlines recovered relatively quickly. Southwest passengers were not so lucky; the airline’s delays and cancellations numbered in the thousands and stretched into days. Overnight, it seemed, Southwest went from being one of the most admired airlines – loyal customers, on-time service, happy employees, consistent profitability – to one with “its reputation in tatters.”

CEO Bob Jordan has had to do his mea culpas, and he’s not done.

Some pointed to Southwest’s reliance on point-to-point flight schedules, in contrast to other airlines’ use of hub-and-spoke models, but most seem to agree that the root problem was that its IT infrastructure was not up to task – particularly its employee scheduling system, which told its employees who needed to be where when and how to accomplish that. Casey A. Murray, president of the Southwest Airlines Pilots Association, told The New York Times: “Once one card falls, the whole house falls here at Southwest. That’s our problem. We couldn’t keep up with the cascading events.”

Our Plants Should Be Plants

Nov 15, 2022

BY KIM BELLARD

It seems like most of my healthcare Twitter buddies are enjoying themselves at HLTH2022, so I don’t suppose it much matters what I write about, because they’ll all be too busy to read it anyway. That’s too bad, because I was sparked by an article on one of my favorite topics: synthetic biology.

Elliot Hershberg, a Ph.D. geneticist who describes his mission as “to accelerate the Century of Biology,” has a great article on his Substack: Atoms are local. The key insight for me was his point that, while we’ve been recognizing the power of biology, we’ve been going about it the wrong way. Instead of the industrialization of biology, he thinks, we should be seeking the biologization of industry.

His point:

Many people default to a mindset of industrialization. But, why naively inherit a metaphor that dominated 19th century Britain? Biology is the ultimate distributed manufacturing platform. We are keen to explore and make true future biotechnologies that enable people to more directly and freely make whatever they need where-ever they are.