health tech

Google’s clinical director on AI and mental health

Google

In the wake of a lawsuit alleging a man was driven by Google’s Gemini chatbot to take his own life, the company recently announced updates to ensure its app more prominently features connections to crisis hotlines when it detects a person may be at risk of self harm. The stakes are clearly high, but Google clinical director Megan Jones Bell (pictured above) told STAT’s Mario Aguilar she welcomes the challenge of making AI helpful to people with a mental health crisis.

“It can seem sometimes like shutting something down is a way of preventing harm,” she said, but “psychologically, it could do more harm than good.” Instead, the company is working to better detect and respond to indirect signals that somebody is struggling with their mental health, she said. Read the conversation for specific examples of how Google is working to make the Gemini app safer in crisis situations.

If you or someone you know may be considering suicide, contact the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline: call or text 988 or chat 988lifeline.org. For TTY users: Use your preferred relay service or dial 711 then 988.

reproductive health

Early results on a potential preeclampsia treatment

Preeclampsia, which affects about 4% of pregnancies in the U.S., causes high blood pressure in a pregnant person, leading to life-threatening risks for them and their baby. While aspirin can mediate some of that risk, the only way to really “cure” the condition is to deliver the baby, sometimes prematurely. A team out of Cedars-Sinai working on a way to safely extend pregnancy for those with the earliest, most severe form of the condition published positive results yesterday in Nature Medicine from a small pilot trial.

The treatment is sort of similar to kidney dialysis, according to the researchers. They focus on a protein produced by the placenta called sFIt-1. By engineering an immune protein that binds to it and using a blood-filtering device, they were able to remove excess sFIt-1 from patients’ blood. Among 16 patients, pregnancy was extended for an average of 10 days. Larger clinical trials are needed, but the researchers (some of whom, it should be noted, have a financial interest in the work) found the results promising.

the start of something new

A rare opportunity on a serious health challenge

Earlier this month, the EPA proposed a rule that would formally flag microplastics and pharmaceuticals in drinking water as threats that deserve federal attention. It’s perhaps the biggest MAHA win on an environmental issue to date, but there’s a lot more to do before legally binding limits could be implemented.

“This could be the start of serious action on microplastics,” a former congressman writes with a policymaker and adviser in a new First Opinion essay. “Or it could end up as a headline — designed to woo MAHA voters — with little behind it.” But as the MAHA coalition continues to push on environmental concerns about plastic, a rare cross-partisan consensus is emerging. Read more on how the authors believe that politicians should take advantage of this opportunity.

(On another environmental health front, the Supreme Court seemed divided yesterday over whether to block thousands of lawsuits alleging the company that makes the weedkiller Roundup failed to adequately warn people that it could cause cancer. The AP has more on that case.)