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The Next Top Doc

Jul 14, 2009

President Obama has named Regina Benjamin to be the surgeon general. Benjamin opened a rural health clinic in a small shrimping village on the Gulf Coast of Alabama; the clinic was subsequently destroyed by Hurricane Katrina, rebuilt, and then burned down the day before it was to re-open, says the New York Times. Benjamin was also one of the 2008 recipients of the MacArthur Foundation's $500,000 genius awards. The Wall Street Journal Health Blog points out that the role of the surgeon general is mainly symbolic.

Breaking News
The Scan

Gone, But Now Reconstructed SARS-CoV-2 Genomes

In a preprint, a researcher describes his recovery of viral sequences that had been removed from a common database.

Rare Heart Inflammation Warning

The Food and Drug Administration is adding a warning about links between a rare inflammatory heart condition and two SARS-CoV-2 vaccines, Reuters reports.

Sandwich Sampling

The New York Times sent tuna sandwiches for PCR analysis.

Nature Papers Describe Gut Viruses, New Format for Storing Quantitative Genomic Data, More

In Nature this week: catalog of DNA viruses of the human gut microbiome, new dense depth data dump format to store quantitative genomic data, and more.