'Oh, Wow, There He Goes': What We Heard This Week

— Quotable quotes heard by 's reporters

MedicalToday
A female reporter holding two microphones takes notes on a pad

"We love the fact you just kind of look up in the sky and go, 'Oh, wow, there he goes.'" -- Corinn Darby, wife of John Darby, MD, whose ashes were launched into low-earth orbit.

"The uncertainty is really unfortunate." -- Joshua Sharfstein, MD, former principal deputy commissioner of the FDA, on the future of mifepristone.

"We have this actually quite racist two-tiered system where buprenorphine is an office-based, more flexible option that, at least initially, was marketed mostly to commercially insured white people." -- Sarah Wakeman, MD, of Mass General Brigham in Boston, describing racial disparities in access to opioid addiction treatment.

"Kids are not just little adults." -- Sara Kathryn Smith, MD, medical director for pediatric liver transplantation at Johns Hopkins Children's Center in Baltimore and a liver transplant recipient.

"The information he provided to us was false." -- Clay England of Bay Area Hospital in Coos Bay, Oregon, after finding out a key new employee had a history of criminal convictions .

"There will most certainly be differing opinions across healthcare on this topic." -- Erica Shenoy, MD, PhD, of Mass General Brigham in Boston, discussing universal masking in healthcare.

"Immunologically there is not a difference between a 4-, 5-, and 6-year-old." -- Sarah Long, MD, of St. Christopher's Hospital for Children in Philadelphia, on CDC pediatric COVID-19 vaccine recommendations.

"These findings underscore the call to include racially diverse patients in clinical trials." -- Umut Sarpel, MD, of Mount Sinai Health System in New York City, on racial ancestry and certain tumor types.

"We believe it indicates that pediatricians are rising to the challenge of caring for children with anxiety and depression." -- Talia Lester, MD, of Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, on antidepressant prescribing by primary care pediatricians.