Daily Rounds: Patients Change Biotech; Prenatal Paternity Tests; Sick Docs At Work; Eye And Ear Park

Patients driving direction of new drug research (The Boston Globe) - "Patients and their families are taking an increasingly larger role in drug development, inspiring new treatments, working closely with pharmaceutical companies, and matching patients with clinical trials, paying for research, and lobbying to speed drug development. In doing so, patients are pushing their diseases into the limelight and fundamentally changing the way the biotechnology and pharmaceutical industries, as well as the government, approach drug creation and approval, and patient care."

Before birth, dad's ID (The New York Times) - "It is an uncomfortable question that, in today’s world, is often asked by expectant mothers who had more than one male partner at the time they became pregnant. Who is the father? With more than half of births to women under 30 now out of wedlock, it is a question that may arise more often. Now blood tests are becoming available that can determine paternity as early as the eighth or ninth week of pregnancy, without an invasive procedure that could cause a miscarriage."

Shocker: Doctors work when they're sick (NPR - Shots) - "How do doctors work around so many ill people without getting sick? Well, they don't. Even if they scrub their hands like crazy,which certainly helps, they succumb to germs every once in a while, just like the rest of us. And also like lots of the rest of us, they'll go to work sick, a survey of medical residents finds."Mass. eye paving way to Storrow park project (Boston Herald) - "The Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary has drafted an ambitious plan to expand its Charles Street property and make parkland out of parking spaces along Storrow Drive. The hospital’s $343 million project would transform surface lots bisected by Storrow and two Charles Circle ramps into a green space with a four-story, 1,065-space underground parking garage. A building addition would extend over Charles Street."