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China has become the world’s largest producer and exporter of “active pharmaceutical ingredients,” the base components drug companies use to manufacture most of the medications we rely on. China’s dominance puts both the health of Americans and our national security at risk. According to the findings of a new report from the U.S.-China Economic Security Review Commission, which was established by Congress in 2000, China’s pharmaceutical industry “is not effectively regulated by the Chinese government” and has been responsible for a number of drug safety scandals. (Henry I. Miller and John J. Cohrssen, 12/10)

Civil servant Steffen Thewes of Hamburg, Germany, learned that his daughter, desperately ill with a rare spinal condition, would be dead by Christmas. Her only hope was a $330,000 operation at a specialized clinic in Colorado. Yet Thewes’s health insurance refused to cover it. An online fundraising campaign failed. Desperate — and possibly imitating “John Q.,” the title character of a 2002 film in which Denzel Washington takes hostages and demands a heart transplant for his son that insurance had refused to cover — Thewes hatched an elaborate extortion scheme to pay for the operation. Alas, he killed someone as part of the crime and ended up under arrest. (Charles Lane, 12/9)

A proposed rule by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) that allegedly aims to strengthen transparency in regulatory science suggests that science is broken. It isn’t. We know it works because we can see the life-saving transplant technologies, hurricane forecasts, new medications, pest-resistant crops, and countless other breakthroughs that exist because of science. This discipline isn’t perfect, but it is the best tool available to safeguard the planet and its people. (Lenny Teytelman, William Gunn and Joanne Kamens, 12/9)

Volunteers in the New Zealand city of Rotorua are in the process of sending two dozen handcrafted, infant-size coffins to the Pacific island of Samoa, which is currently in the midst of a deadly measles outbreak. The coffins are gifts to Samoan families who can’t afford them but suddenly need them. The smallest are decorated with felt flowers and butterflies. That is one form of Samoa’s contact with the world. Another is anti-vaccination propaganda, much of it generated in the United States, that arrives through social media and discourages Samoan parents from vaccinating their children. This type of import has helped turn Samoa into a case study of “anti-vax” success — and increased the demand for tiny coffins decorated with flowers and butterflies. (Michael Gerson, 12/9)

This is the time of year when many of us travel, reconnect, and exchange gifts with those we love most. It is also the time when we help take care of family concerns: Grandma’s eyesight is getting worse, our favorite aunt has food in her fridge more than two years out of date, the old family home is in need of some serious repairs. One concern that often goes unaddressed is what’s in the medicine cabinet or the kitchen cupboard. Not so long ago, it was common for physicians to write a prescription for a 30-day supply of pain medication. It was also common for pharmacies to fill them even though only a day or two of treatment was needed to address the pain. That practice left a ticking time bomb in many of our medicine cabinets — even Grandma’s. (Blake Fagan and Anne Seaman, 12/9)

Sixteen-year-old Carlos Gregorio Hernandez Vasquez died horribly and needlessly. The Trump administration’s policy of deliberate, punishing cruelty toward Latin American migrants killed him. That is the only conclusion to be drawn from a shocking report by the nonprofit newsroom ProPublica about Hernandez’s death in May at a U.S. Border Patrol station in Texas. I assume the agents and health-care workers who should have given Hernandez lifesaving attention are decent human beings, not monsters. But they work within an intentionally monstrous system that assigned no value to a young Guatemalan boy’s life. (Eugene Robinson, 12/9)

As I returned home from this year’s Women in Statistics and Data Science Conference, one word rang loudly in my ears: patriarchy. In a presentation on the impact of gender on women’s careers, Carnegie Mellon statistician Dalene Stangl boldly claimed that although the term may be out of favor, patriarchy is “alive and well” and that “it happened to me.” (Emma Thomas, 12/10)

People are confined to county jails for all kinds of reasons, including alleged crimes that haven’t yet been proven or convictions for minor offenses. But whatever the reason, there are — or should be — basic standards of reasonable daily hygiene available: shampoo, soap, feminine hygiene products and the like. These aren’t luxuries but necessities. Denying them to inmates (including those not yet convicted of anything) isn’t something that should ever happen in 21st Century America.Yet in Missouri, it does. Unlike the majority of U.S. states, Missouri has no statewide minimum jail standards, including any uniform rules regarding what personal supplies must be available to county jail inmates. (12/10)