America on Dialysis

Science Talk

Scientific American

Science

4.2 • 644 Ratings

🗓️ 14 December 2020

⏱️ 41 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Kidney disease affects millions of Americans, but corporate capture of dialysis, along with disparities in treatment and transplant access, mean that not everyone's journey is the same. On this Science Talk podcast, we speak with Carrie Arnold, lead reporter in an ambitious, year-long reporting project into the current state of chronic kidney disease treatment in the U.S., from diagnosis to dialysis, and from maintenance treatment to transplant (for those who are lucky). You can read the first part in the series here. It's a story of technological and procedural advance, but also one that has seen just two large, for-profit enterprises come to dominate the market for dialysis delivery. It's a story of expanding access, but also one still marked by racial and ethnic disparities. And it's a tale of medical innovation and adaptation, but also one beset by conflicts of interest and an inability to adapt to holistic modes of care that other disease specialities, from cardiology to oncology, have long ago embraced. For the 37 million Americans navigating the corridors of kidney disease, these are likely familiar issues. But for the third of Americans at risk for renal disease — and for anyone who cares about how the nation's health care dollars are spent — this five-part collaboration between Undark Magazine and Scientific American pulls back the curtain and provides an unflinching look at what's working, and what's not. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:27.8	slash UK slash AI for people. Welcome to a very special episode of Science Talk.
0:40.4	I'm Jeff Delvisio, Senior Multimedia Editor to Scientific American.
0:44.7	For months, Undark Magazine has been working on an incredibly ambitious five-part series on chronic kidney disease.
0:51.6	It's called Profit and Loss, America on dialysis. Scientific American partnered
0:55.8	with Undark to tell this vital set of stories, which goes live today, Monday, December 14th, on both
1:01.9	Undark and Scientific American. A new piece will run every day this week, so check it out on
1:07.5	undark.org or Scientificamerican.com.
1:15.7	Today we're going to talk through how the project came to be and why the subject is so very underreported with the lead reporter for the series, Carrie Arnold.
1:20.2	Carrie Arnold is a Virginia-based freelance science journalist.
1:22.8	You can find her work at Undark, Nature, Scientific American, National Geographic, and a slew of other
1:29.2	very excellent publications. Thanks for joining us, Carrie. Thanks for having me. So let's jump
1:34.9	right in. Let's give her listeners some grounding, Carrie. Let's talk about the reason for the series.
1:39.8	How did you build it out and what are the different pieces about? Sure. So I first became interested in kidney disease in America after my mother-in-law was diagnosed
1:53.8	with kidney disease probably about a year and a half ago. And I just started looking into the topic out of curiosity
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