Key takeaways:

• Due to a shortage of hearts, lungs, livers, and kidneys, at least 17 Americans die each day waiting for a transplant.

• 3D bioprinting of organs and extracting organs from genetically modified pigs are two possible solutions.

• The U.S. FDA could also help by speeding up the regulatory process, as it did for COVID-19 vaccines.

Modern medicine has produced many kinds of high-tech miracles, among them gene therapy to correct malfunctioning genes, electrical stimulation devices to restore significant function after traumatic spinal cord injury, and surgery performed by robots.

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President Joe Biden's recent Executive Order 14036 contains initiatives intended to lower drug prices for patients, create more competition to increase wages for workers, promote innovation, and foster economic growth. As part of it, on Sept. 9 Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra proposed additional legislative and administrative actions.

The drug price-reduction legislative proposals are perennials; their inclusion reflects both their popularity and the difficulty in attaining them.

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Genetically engineered (GE) crops, which have been commercially available for 25 years, have been widely misunderstood and under-appreciated, especially by certain news outlets. Arguably, the worst offender among the mainstream media has been the New York Times, whose manifold shortcomings in reportage and commentaries over many years are described here and here.

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"Doctors Join the Climate Lobby" (Review & Outlook, Sept. 8) rightly takes to task the editorial in more than 200 medical journals about the impending apocalypse of global warming. One criticism you miss, however, is that in their screed there is not a single appearance of the word "nuclear," even though nuclear power is the only realistic long-term means of reducing greenhouse-gas emissions.

My diagnosis is that the editors of the medical journals don't know what they don't know, and my prescription is that they should stick to medicine.

Henry I. Miller, M.D.

Redwood City, Calif.

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There is continuing confusion, and even consternation, over what seem to be disparate policies, recommendations and mandates emerging in response to the Delta-driven surge of COVID-19 infections and hospitalizations in much of the country. Masks or no masks? Vaccine mandates versus voluntary vaccination? Proof of vaccination for admission to bars and entertainment venues?

The Zeitgeist is nicely captured by this Saturday Night Live sketch earlier this summer on the CDC's seemingly ever-changing mask policy:

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