In a Washington Post story about the Trump administration using various means to reduce or halt funding that has made America’s medical research enterprise the envy of the world since World War II, Bita Moghaddam, Ph.D., says, “Things aren’t going to get slowed down for six months — they may get slowed down for years. It’s not like you’re working on a car and you can stop working on the car and return to it. Science is a process. Experiments are a process. If you halt it, you cannot just start and resume.”

Justin Merritt, Ph.D., weighs in on a genetically engineered dental rinse might permanently ward off cavities and the challenges around bringing it to consumers. Merritt says, “This is a perfect example of science progressing faster than regulation.”

Nima Nabavizadeh, M.D., and Tom Beer, M.D., provide insights for a Nature article on multi-cancer early detection (MCED) tests. Nabavizadeh says, “I know cancer patients who now have an early-stage cancer diagnosis that they wouldn’t have known about otherwise.”

Maureen Baldwin, M.D., discusses research on new drug delivery system showing promise for treating a rare, aggressive form of cancer affecting pregnant women and new mothers. Baldwin says, “Because choriocarcinoma occurs in people who were recently pregnant, they often have young families, so we need to make getting diagnosis and treatment easier and faster for them.”

Lisa Bayer, M.D., highlights the challenges of managing IUD pain, citing the complexity of pelvic innervation, the absence of standardized national guidelines and the evolving demographic of IUD users.

Medscape reports on a new case study highlighting the safe use of more recent innovations in period products, such as menstrual cups, disks, and reusable period underwear. Bethany Samuelson Bannow, M.D., says, “One thing all physicians and women would benefit from is understanding the female anatomy a little more intricately. Helping people understand that anatomy and where it’s supposed to go and how [a menstrual cup] is supposed to fit is going to go a long way.”

In a Precision Medicine story about a new clinical trial organized by the company founded by CRISPR pioneer Jennifer Doudna, Ahmad Masri, M.D., says the new therapy currently being tested in a multisite clinical trial could be especially useful as a one-time treatment: “It’s an exciting technique.”

Dawn Nolt, M.D., shares insight with Huff Post about different birth choices popularized on social media, including water births. Nolt says, “It’s important to share information and give evidence to show that this is not all rainbows and sunshine. There are risks to some of these things.”

Continued media coverage on a team of OHSU researchers led by Jared Fischer, Ph.D., and Jose Montoya Mira, Ph.D., who have developed a new blood test that identifies hard-to-detect pancreatic cancer with 85% accuracy. Montoya says, “The big difference with this test is the cost: It takes only 8 microliters of blood and 45 minutes to run the test at a cost of less than a penny per sample. This could easily be used in rural and underserved settings, where traditional tests are not or cannot be used.”

Paula Amato, M.D., advocates for a bill that could make fertility treatments more accessible by requiring health insurance plans to cover certain procedures. Amato says, "A vision of reproductive health that truly supports reproductive justice must embrace the full spectrum of reproductive care, including access to infertility services.”