2016

Taking on Purdue Pharma

Alex Hogan/STAT

After launching the site in late 2015, STAT reporters hit the ground running. Within months, then-STAT reporter David Armstrong filed a motion in a Kentucky court seeking to unseal documents that shed new light on how Purdue Pharma marketed its potent opioid pain pill OxyContin — including what top executives knew about how addictive it was, and when. Those documents were unsealed in 2019, after a years-long legal battle. 

Among the released documents? An email chain from 1997, a year after the drug was launched, showing how Richard Sackler learned about concerns that OxyContin could lead to abuse in chronic pain patients — then proposed executives aggressively push back.

2020-today

Leading the country on Covid coverage

STAT, led by legendary reporter Helen Branswell, was the first U.S. news organization to seize on the novel coronavirus as a potentially catastrophic global health threat. Helen first reported on a “mysterious and growing cluster of unexplained pneumonia cases” in Wuhan, China, on Jan. 4, 2020. Exactly one month later, the late Sharon Begley broke down the possible scenarios predicted by experts if the virus wasn’t contained. Already, “driving it out of existence is looking increasingly unlikely,” she wrote.  

Helen, Sharon, and Andrew Joseph were named Pulitzer Prize finalists for their early coverage. And we’re still writing about the virus to this day. Most recently, it was good news: Liz Cooney reported that Covid-19 has finally fallen out of the country’s top 10 causes of death.

2021

The Aduhelm Files

If you’re a longtime listener of The Readout LOUD, you surely remember the days when a single episode wouldn’t go by without our hosts discussing Aduhelm, the Alzheimer’s drug made by Biogen. In 2021, Adam Feurstein, Matt Herper, and Damian Garde told the story of how the biotech company mounted a secret campaign, code-named “Project Onyx,” to resurrect Aduhelm despite its apparent failure in two clinical trials. Using an unusual back channel to a top FDA official, Biogen managed to convince the agency to green light the drug.

STAT’s explosive report led to a congressional investigation, which concluded in Dec. 2022 that the approval was “rife with irregularities,” Nearly three years later, Biogen walked away from the drug.