In between studio guests, Dr. Anthony Alessi brings new information to earlier conversations about messenger RNA and how it’s showing promise in treating pancreatic cancer, a study further debunking the Trump Administration’s assertions about the safety of Tylenol, and whether reasonable solutions to physician licensing challenges could improve access to care.

Listen now:

Submit questions for “Healthy Rounds” to healthyrounds@uchc.edu.

Jan. 27, 2026, with DPH Commissioner Manisha Juthani 

Jan. 13, 2026: with Dr. Andy Agwunobi, UConn Health CEO

Feb. 24, 2026: with DSS Commissioner Andrea Barton Reeves

Support comes from UConn Health Orthopedics and Sports Medicine and Coverys.

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Transcript

Dr. Alessi: Welcome to the Healthy Rounds Podcast, where we provide you with up-to-date, timely medical information brought to you from national and international leaders in their fields. This podcast is brought to you by UConn Health, with support from the Department of Orthopaedic Surgery and a grant from Coverys.

It is not designed to direct your personal healthcare, which should only be done by your physician. I am your host, Dr. Anthony Alessi, and this week we’re going to chat a little bit about some topics that, some of which we’ve talked about in the past, but now we have new information on, and I think it’s information that we need to provide you, our listeners to provide best healthcare overall, and really pay attention to what’s going on that is publicized and how it affects all of you. And there are three specific topics I want to touch on.

The first is pancreatic cancer. I also want to talk a little bit about a exciting study that was just published in The Lancet on Tylenol use in pregnancy, and then we’re going to talk about physician licensing in the United States. So with that, let’s get started.

This week at the National Oncology meetings, they presented new data on the treatment of pancreatic cancer. Now, for those of you unfamiliar with pancreatic cancer, it is one of, if not the most deadliest cancer, and the reason being that typically by the time you find evidence for the tumor, it has already metastasized, it is already spread to vital organs. So with that, it’s very difficult to treat. In the studies published, one in particular I want to talk about, they use messenger RNA as the vehicle for treatment.

Now, I know I’ve talked about this before, but it bears repeating messenger. RNA is just that, it’s a messenger, and we chatted with Dr. Juthani about this. It does not alter your DNA in any way, shape or form. So the best analogy I could come up with was, it’s a messenger. So if you get a delivery, right, to your house, whether it be from Amazon or GrubHub, a messenger comes and delivers a package, then they leave. That’s exactly how messenger RNA works. So when the messenger comes to your house, they don’t go in your house and start rearranging your furniture, right? And I think that’s the misunderstanding here is they think the messenger RNA goes in the cell and starts mixing things up. That’s not the case.

But what it does do, it brings a message that trains your immune system to fight the cancer with your own body. Your own T cells are now redirected to fight the tumor. So in the case of pancreatic cancer, what they do is they go in, a surgeon goes in, removes the tumor. They take the tumor and use material from the tumor to create your own personal vaccine through messenger, RNA, which is injected by infusion. And the cases that were presented, it’s typically eight infusions.

And the results have been fairly astounding. Now it’s a small, early study and only 16 people were studied, but eight of those had a positive response. The first patient has actually lived six years beyond the diagnosis, which is astounding for pancreatic cancer. For two people, their tumors actually returned and they worsened, and the other six had no benefit. So it’s interesting to look at this, but we also have to bear in mind that the federal government has stopped all research on Messenger RNA, because the person in charge of Health and Human Services, Bobby Kennedy, he is against messenger, RNA, because it’s a vaccine. Even if it’s a vaccine to kill cancer, he’s against it. So the research being done is being privately funded.

Our government has walked away from this, what has become one of the greatest hopes we have in the treatment of cancer, and it just, it makes me personally upset. Because these cancers have affected my family, as many of you who listen to this podcast. So we need to stay on this and really follow this along, and it’s just so hopeful.

The next topic is one to revisit, and this is a recent article published in Lancet Obstetrics and Gynecology, where again, there has been misinformation out there regarding the use of acetaminophen, where they are out there saying that during pregnancy, if you use acetaminophen, it increases the risk for autism and other neurodevelopmental conditions.

So again, this comes directly from the president of the United States, who says, don’t take acetaminophenm and again, our esteemed director of Health and Human Services, who is a non-physician, non-scientist, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. And I wanna stress the “Junior” because he’s far from his father.

But with that, what we have is a situation where they looked at retrospective studies. And they look back at 43 studies, so talk about a waste of time, but here they are. They go back and do a meta-analysis of 43 studies. And once again, when they focused on these studies, they found that there is no evidence that acetaminophen in any way causes ADHD or causes children to be on the autism spectrum. So I’m hoping we could put this aside.

The next topic I wanted to touch on was licensure, physician licensure, and what happens is, in the United States, we don’t have national licensure for physicians. Every other country in the world, when you get a license, you could practice anywhere in that country. But in the United States, you have to have an individual license for every state, and it’s pretty costly. Here in Connecticut, I believe it’s now $575 a year we pay for a license. So in every state you, you pay a fee commensurate with that; some states, I know it’s 600, but you have to reapply.

And and the reason that this becomes a problem is because there’s a shortage of physicians in many rural areas. So a field of telemedicine has developed, especially for neurology and other specialties, where there aren’t enough people in these rural communities, they can be accessed by video and through telecommunication, something we talk about a lot on this program. So what has happened is that even to do telemedicine in another state, you need a license In that state. That wasn’t the case during COVID. That rule was waived, but now they’re back on it. And it’s really sad, from the standpoint that they are in any way inhibiting physicians who are duly licensed and have credentials that have been presented to a state, from practicing in other states.

But here’s what’s happened. So there’s been a push for national licensing, and what they’ve come up with is the Interstate Medical Licensing Compact, and this is the IMLC. This was just approved in March, and it’s basically a system where you can apply with all your credentials, and those credentials can then be shared with other states so that you can more easily get a license in another state.

The one thing these states did not give in on was paying those fees in that state. So again, we come up with the problem of greed versus care, and it’s something we talked about with Dr. Andy Agwunobi and the fact that if we’re going to revise our healthcare system in any way, shape, or form, we have to have everybody having their incentives aligned.

So the idea of a state saying, “Wait a second. I might be able to get more physicians, give the people of my state more access, should be something I want to do,” without trying to make a few hundred bucks off of a doctor who may only be called on to see one patient or two patients a year in that area in your state. But you want access to those doctors. So again, it’s something we really need to rethink.

Apropos to that, commissioner Andrea Barton Reeves and I had a conversation off-mic when she did the podcast with me a few months ago, and that was regarding retired physicians. Many physicians are retiring at a younger age. So when they retire, often they give up the license, they give up their medical license ’cause they don’t want to pay the $575 each year. But many also have the desire to volunteer their time. They’re willing to volunteer to just stay active in medicine without being reimbursed. It’s kind of like paying back the system that supported you all this time.

But clearly if you’re going to go volunteer, it’s not worth paying five or $600 so you can volunteer. So I introduced to her the idea that the state of Connecticut may want to consider that if a physician is willing to volunteer in a qualified health facility. And the one we used as an example was the Homeless Hospitality Center in New London, where homeless patients who are discharged from the hospital can come and get some extended care until they’re able to go live independently. So I know of several physicians who would be willing to volunteer and give their time. But again, there’s this hurdle, actually there are two hurdles: One, getting a license, and two, med malpractice insurance.

Now, fortunately, when you participate in a federally qualified health facility, you are indemnified by the federal government, so there isn’t a need for additional malpractice insurance, but I’m hoping Commissioner Barton Reeves does bring this to the governor and possibly something could be worked out so that physicians who retire and may want to spend some time volunteering and giving back can do so without the encumbrance of having to pay for a license in their state.

Many thanks to all you listeners for getting ideas into us about topics that we’re going to be talking about in some of these future sort of podcasts that we use in between having guests. This has been a lot of fun for me ’cause it’s a chance to really update everybody on topics we have been discussing over the past several months. So if you have questions or ideas for future programs, you can reach out to me at healthyorunds@uchc.edu.

Next week we’re going to resume having guests, and our guest is going to be Dr. Priya Narwal. Dr. Narwal is a neurologist, she’s the chief of the stroke service here at the University of Connecticut, and we’re going to be chatting with her in honor of stroke awareness.

Many thanks to Jennifer Walker, who is the executive producer for the Healthy Rounds Podcast. Chris DeFrancesco is our studio producer here, and Tessa Rickart is in charge of social media for the Healthy Rounds Podcast. Until next time, this is Dr. Anthony Alessi. Please stay healthy.