--:-- Sean Rameswaram: America, America has a problem. It's a drug problem. It's mostly an opioid problem.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The situation right now with the drug supply in America is that fentanyl is showing up in just about everything you can imagine.
--:-- Julie Wernau: The opioid problem is so bad users might be taking them when they're trying to take other drugs. And so people are overdosing of fentanyl who are taking meth, who are taking cocaine, who were taking pills, who were just out for a party night on the weekend.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And if you don't know you're taking opioids, it gets a lot easier to overdose.
--:-- Julie Wernau: Over 100,000 people have died from drug overdoses in the past 12 months. The vast majority from opiates, including synthetic drugs like fentanyl.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But there is a quick and easy drug that can reverse an opioid overdose. It's about to be available over the counter.
--:-- Julie Wernau: It's ahead on Today Explained.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Support for Today Explained comes from Saks Fifth Avenue. Fall is here. Might be time to find some nice new pieces you can wear again and again.
--:-- Julie Wernau: With Saks Fifth Avenue, it can be a breeze to shop for your personal style, like maybe a relaxed Prada blazer or Gucci loafers that are great for both work and the weekend.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: This is very Sean. This is very Sean-coded. Gucci loafers.
--:-- Julie Wernau: Saks says Saks makes shopping feel totally customized to you, whether that's from an in-store stylist or a visit to Saks.com, where they can show you just what you want to see.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: They say they'll even let you know when arrivals from your favorite designers are in or when something you've been eyeing is back in stock.
--:-- Julie Wernau: You can find inspiration for your personal style every day at Saks Fifth Avenue.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Having a night out with your friends is awesome. Dealing with hangovers sucks.
--:-- Julie Wernau: Meet Senorita, the THC-infused margarita that lets you skip the booze but keep the vibe.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Made with real fruit, organic agave, and Himalayan pink salt, Every sip is like a mini getaway.
--:-- Julie Wernau: No fillers, no hangovers, just full flavor and a better buzz.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Find your flavor at senoritadrinks.com. Use code VOX20 for 20% off. Must be 21 and over.
--:-- Julie Wernau: This product may cause intoxication. This product has not been evaluated or approved by the FDA. This product may contain up to 0.3% THC.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I'm Julie Wernow. I'm a health and medicine reporter at The Wall Street Journal.
--:-- Julie Wernow: Tell us, Julie, what is up with Narcan?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So last week, the FDA approved this medication that people use to reverse an overdose for over-the-counter use, which means that pretty soon you can walk into a retail pharmacy and just pick up this medication along with like your vitamins and Tylenol and any other number of things you might grab at the pharmacy.
--:-- Julie Wernow: And that's a big deal?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It's a big deal. It's something that people have been advocating for for years.
--:-- Julie Wernow: We have a pretty serious opioid crisis out there.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: New numbers out today from the CDC show how drug overdoses have surged during the pandemic.
--:-- Julie Wernow: More than 107,000 Americans died of drug overdoses in 2021. That's the highest annual death toll ever recorded and a 15 percent increase from the year before.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Deaths involving fentanyl, meth and cocaine rose sharply.
--:-- Julie Wernow: So they were asking that this medication, which is in some ways kind of a miracle drug. I mean, it literally just takes someone who is not breathing, who is not responsive and pulls them out of that state.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You can see it through police body cams.
--:-- Julie Wernow: This woman in the back of a Salt Lake City PD squad car isn't breathing. The officer sprays naloxone up her nose with a device called Narcan.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Stay with me. Watch it take effect.
--:-- Julie Wernow: There you go. There you go. There you go.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And so we have got approval for that for the first time ever in decades of the opioid crisis.
--:-- Julie Wernow: And people have been asking for it for years.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Why did this just get approved, you know, a few days ago?
--:-- Julie Wernow: Well, that's a great question. And the answer might not be what you would expect.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The FDA actually kept pushing and pushing and pushing the pharmaceutical companies to go ahead and apply for these drugs to be over the counter.
--:-- Julie Wernow: And nobody was showing up for years.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And so little by little, the FDA made it almost impossible for them not to apply.
--:-- Julie Wernow: For example, a couple of years ago, they said, here, here's what the packaging could look like if you want to apply and actually made a mock-up of a potential over-the-counter version of Narcan.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: They don't do that kind of thing that often.
--:-- Julie Wernow: They also then came out with a statement that essentially said, if we see scientific evidence that there's no reason that this drug shouldn't be over the counter, anyone who continues to sell it as a prescription only drug will be doing something against the law.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And that, little by little, pushed the pharmaceutical companies to start the process of applying for these medications to go over the counter.
--:-- Julie Wernow: So in all this time where people have been advocating to make it easier to get Narcan and the sort of move to make it easier has been punted down the road, has it been really hard to get this drug?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Well, what's interesting is originally, right, I mean, this is a prescription-only medication, and so it would be the kind of thing that you'd have to go to a doctor, the doctor would have to give you a prescription, then you go to your pharmacy, you get it filled, et cetera.
--:-- Julie Wernow: Because there was no over-the-counter version of this, states, advocacy groups, anyone you can think of that works with drug dealers, health advocates, figured out all these workarounds and at the state level made it possible to get this drug a little bit easier.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So for instance, if you walk into your pharmacy right now and you don't have a prescription, you ask for it, they'll give you this medication.
--:-- Julie Wernow: And the reason is they have this, what they call statewide standing orders.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Think of this as a prescription for everyone in the state, whether it's a police department, a fire department, or even an individual, to go and obtain this drug so that they can start saving lives.
--:-- Julie Wernow: Also, you have insurers will pay for it.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: They've tried so many ways to make this medication accessible and work around the fact that we didn't have an over-the-counter version of it.
--:-- Julie Wernow: Interesting. OK, so though this is a major change and it's a big deal, essentially a bunch of states had figured out a way to get this to people even without this change.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: They figured out ways.
--:-- Julie Wernow: In fact in some states you know depending how liberal they been with those standing orders they got it in free vending machines
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: What Once you gain access to a locker it pops open
--:-- Julie Wernow: You reach inside and you'll find a bag with two doses of Narcan, gloves, a face shield, and a visual aid on how to administer the life-saving doses.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You can go into the city center somewhere and you'll see, you know, you punch in a code and out comes your little kit with naloxone in it.
--:-- Julie Wernow: Okay. So depending where you live, it's difficult to extremely easy to get Narcan right now.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: That's right.
--:-- Julie Wernow: Part of the problem has been, though, that that's not the same everywhere, right?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Because ultimately, you still have, for the most part, these pharmacists are like the gatekeeper for whether or not you get this prescription.
--:-- Julie Wernow: And so there are some people who will not sell it to you on like ethical grounds, essentially.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: There's also the fact that a lot of the sort of free Narcan that's out there is in the hands of big harm reduction groups that work with drug users.
--:-- Julie Wernow: So if you're sort of a recreational drug user or you just want to have this stuff on hand, you probably aren't really that, you're not in the know about who those groups are and where to go to get it.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It might be, you know, something that ends up being on your to-do list, you know, for three years and it doesn't happen versus, oh, I'm in here and I'm buying my shampoo.
--:-- Julie Wernow: That's right. I'm going to grab my Narcan.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So maybe this change then to make Narcan over the counter is just making it more consistent across the country.
--:-- Julie Wernow: Is that what we're going to see?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Yes, that's right.
--:-- Julie Wernow: Also, I think it's a very important symbolic move for the country.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Essentially the country is policy-wise trying to move away from this idea that the only way to deal with drug use is abstinence that you know we need to eradicate drug use in America versus that there are really obvious tools that we can use that help reduce the harm to the people who are using drugs particularly in this case, death.
--:-- Julie Wernow: It's in some ways, you know, the lowest hanging fruit, right?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Can we keep people alive?
--:-- Julie Wernow: Does that mean that they're going to stop using drugs? Not necessarily.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Does it keep them alive so that they can go to treatment if they want to?
--:-- Julie Wernow: It does.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So that's a little bit where we're starting right now in terms of thinking in this country about reducing harm to drug users.
--:-- Julie Wernow: So are there any drawbacks to making this drug easier to get?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So I would say the people who are really not in favor of just widespread adoption of Narcan are folks who think that this is enabling drug use.
--:-- Julie Wernow: There are many drug users who are overdosing multiple times a week.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It's 50 times more powerful than heroin and 100 times more powerful than morphine.
--:-- Julie Wernow: I've talked to drug users who are overdosing multiple times a day.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It is the deadliest drug threat our country has ever faced.
--:-- Julie Wernow: Because fentanyl is so unpredictable in our supply and is so powerful.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Drug dealers found that mixing a little bit of illicit fentanyl into heroin could make their product much more potent.
--:-- Julie Wernow: The white powder could be pressed into counterfeit pain pills that look like Vicodin or Xanax.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The white powder is measured in milligrams, and it only takes a few grains for someone to overdose.
--:-- Julie Wernow: And so the folks who, you know, are against this saturating the entire market are saying, well, like, if you overdose once, you know, which doesn't always kill you, and it's horrific, and you end up in the hospital, maybe that would be your path to drug treatment, and you wouldn't do drugs anymore, right?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: That was the thinking on it.
--:-- Julie Wernow: And of course, on the other side, people say, well, also, there's a very strong chance you'll just die.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So it's a difficult conversation that a lot of public health officials are having about, you know, How do we make sure that people aren't dying, but at the same time, like, what's the pathway here to treatment?
--:-- Julie Wernow: So, right. Greater availability could encourage people to use opioids, fentanyl, whatever.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But we're currently in a situation where people are just using them anyway without as easy access to Narcan.
--:-- Julie Wernow: It's sort of like the helmet effect argument.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I don't know if you've heard of this.
--:-- Julie Wernow: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So it's this idea that like people end up getting injured because they have this idea that they have this safety lever of the helmet or the padding and end up like going harder and more hardcore.
--:-- Julie Wernow: Right.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So there's this idea with drugs.
--:-- Julie Wernow: It sounds like the issue we're talking about broadly here is just the stigma associated with drug use, especially opioid use, which is way scarier than, say, pot use where there's already stigma.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Should I say pot?
--:-- Julie Wernow: People laughing when I say pot.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I don't know why I say pot.
--:-- Julie Wernow: I know.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: What are the kids calling it these days?
--:-- Julie Wernow: I don't know.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: There's pot, weed, marijuana, what have you.
--:-- Julie Wernow: Delta 8.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: How do you do, fellow kids?
--:-- Julie Wernow: What?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So what are we to do? Address the issue and provide these kinds of drugs that can revive people and save lives or make them hard to get so that people might be, in theory, more careful?
--:-- Julie Wernow: But it doesn't necessarily seem that way when we have over 100,000 overdose deaths a year.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I think one of the things that's changing the conversation a little bit right now, which is why you're seeing more conversations that allow more Narcan or fentanyl test strips, etc., is that we came out of the pandemic and faced a totally new drug market.
--:-- Julie Wernow: If it weren't for the COVID pandemic, this would be the epidemic that Americans are talking about.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: This is now killing more than 100,000 people a year.
--:-- Julie Wernow: In that drug market, fentanyl is in a lot more things than heroin, dope, what you're expecting.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It's showing up in cocaine.
--:-- Julie Wernow: It's showing up in these fake pills that look so good.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: They look better than the real pills.
--:-- Julie Wernow: So people are at parties who are not hardened, you know, heroin users and are encountering fentanyl.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: These are people who maybe don't need drug treatment because they might do like a little coke every, you know, six months or something like that.
--:-- Julie Wernow: And so I think that's changed things because people are turning up dead around the country who grabbed a Xanax from a friend at a party.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It feels a little too random to people right now, I think.
--:-- Julie Wernow: And that is changing the conversation.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And you know one thing that I always like to point out is that unlike the COVID pandemic that largely hit older Americans this crisis is really hitting young people which has a devastating impact on communities on economies
--:-- Julie Wernow: And there's also no end in sight.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Unlike COVID, which we're slowly putting behind us, this seems to just keep getting worse.
--:-- Julie Wernow: Fentanyl users are pretty accustomed to fentanyl. They're actually very smart about how to use it.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: They have learned, you know, how to stay safer.
--:-- Julie Wernow: If you are completely ignorant about opioids and never use them and it just shows up, that's a different story.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: That's scary.
--:-- Julie Wernow: Support for today explained comes from built rewards these days it seems like everybody has a rewards program.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But with your rent, frequently you just pay month after month.
--:-- Julie Wernow: You never get anything from it other than that roof over your head.
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--:-- Julie Wernow: Built Rewards says it lets you earn points on your rent.
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--:-- Julie Wernow: Your home isn't just where you sleep, it's your community and Bilt wants you to go out and do things in the community.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You can eat at your favorite local restaurants, then earn more points.
--:-- Julie Wernow: You can get VIP treatment at certain fitness studios.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You can enjoy exclusive experiences just for Bilt members every month.
--:-- Julie Wernow: When you're ready to travel, they say Bilt points can be converted to miles or hotel points all around the world.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You can earn points on rent and around your neighborhood wherever you call home by joining Bilt.com slash Explained.
--:-- Julie Wernow: That's J-O-I-N-B-I-L-T dot com slash explained.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And soccer to culture, the climate, and more.
--:-- Julie Wernow: Read, watch, and listen to The Guardian for free at theguardian.com.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Today is gonna be explained to you.
--:-- Julie Wernow: Julie, I think it's high time I ask you, what is Narcan?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So Narcan is actually a brand name for a drug whose scientific name is naloxone.
--:-- Julie Wernow: Now, what this drug does is actually pretty simple.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: If you have opioids in your system, they like to sit on the opioid receptor, aptly named.
--:-- Julie Wernow: That's what it's called?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Yes, it's a particular opioid receptor that the opioid will just sit on and kind of hang out.
--:-- Julie Wernow: These receptors are found on cells in your brain, spinal cord, and other areas of your body.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Opioids act on these receptors to make you feel less pain.
--:-- Julie Wernow: And what it will do is, if you've had too much, it's going to reduce breathing, respiration, etc.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: This is how people's hearts stop, right?
--:-- Julie Wernow: Soon, lips and hands start to turn blue.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Within just a couple of minutes, without oxygen, brain damage can start to happen.
--:-- Julie Wernow: So, naloxone also has a very strong affinity for this same receptor.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And the opioids don't just like stay on the receptor.
--:-- Julie Wernow: They kind of cycle through and it's a little bit hard to explain, but essentially the naloxone comes in and it replaces the opioid before it can get back on the receptor.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: When naloxone attaches itself to the opioid receptors, it counters the effect of the drug.
--:-- Julie Wernow: Soon it begins to reverse the impact of the overdose and restores breathing, knocks every other, you know, the opioids just like leave your whole system.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: They can't get back on the receptor, which is also why one of the not so fun parts about getting revived with naloxone is that immediately, if you're an opioid user, you're going to go into some pretty bad withdrawal.
--:-- Julie Wernow: Sometimes they can come back in a daze, often mad, scared and aggressive as they're coming down from their high.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But you'll be alive.
--:-- Julie Wernow: What is naloxone, at least in its Narcan form, look like?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: How does it work?
--:-- Julie Wernow: Yeah, so if no one's ever seen this drug, it's actually ridiculously simple.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: What they did is they put naloxone inside this, essentially like a nasal spray type contraption.
--:-- Julie Wernow: The person is passed out. You put it up the person's nose. You hit the spray function and you've delivered the dose.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: That's how it works.
--:-- Julie Wernow: Within two to eight minutes, the person will come out of it.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: They might be a little mad at you because they're going to be in really bad withdrawal.
--:-- Julie Wernow: They might not be, you know, in the most happy state, but they will have their breathing restored and be back to square one.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And for people who are just learning about this drug and this process, like, where is this happening? Where are people using Narcan in this country right now?
--:-- Julie Wernow: So this is a drug that's in a lot of places and growing to more places.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So it's showing up in schools, in churches, with first responders, you know, police officers, EMTs.
--:-- Julie Wernow: It's in hospitals. It might be at your workplace.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And it's in old ladies' purses.
--:-- Julie Wernow: It's very small. You can fit it anywhere.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Old ladies in America are carrying around Narcan in their purses?
--:-- Julie Wernow: Well, I guess that's the hope.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It depends who the old lady is, right?
--:-- Julie Wernow: It's been 84 years.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But I think it's something, you know, if your son, grandchild, cousin, brother, if you know that there's someone who's using drugs and you just want to have this thing around just in case, yeah, a good place for it would be your purse for sure.
--:-- Julie Wernow: I have two doses of it in my purse that I carry all the time.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I hope I never have to use them.
--:-- Julie Wernow: But, you know, it's pretty easy to carry around.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It's also something that people should know is that the place and the people that are most likely to use this drug are actually drug users and people who are with other drug users.
--:-- Julie Wernow: There's been lots of studies that have shown that unlike opioids of the past, fentanyl, illicit fentanyl, which is what is all over the drug supply now and is much more potent than, say, you know, the pills that caused this crisis in the first place.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It just works so fast that if you really want to revive someone you need to be like right there when it happens
--:-- Julie Wernow: And so that a big reason for this push is that it used to be you know you call 911 they show up It could be a while later and you're able to really revive someone.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: In this case, it could happen within a few minutes.
--:-- Julie Wernow: And by the time 911 gets there, it could be too late.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And so that's why we're seeing this everywhere you can imagine, is they're trying to saturate the United States with overdose reversal medications to hopefully unwind some of the deaths that we're seeing.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Because this might soon lead to a saturation, I have to ask, what if you're someone who doesn't need this drug but takes it?
--:-- Julie Wernow: What if a kid is going through grandma's purse, finds her Narcan, seizes a little nasal spray, and takes a pop?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: That's such a great question because that was my worry is like, well, I don't know.
--:-- Julie Wernow: What if this person's not overdosing and I accidentally give them this drug, right?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It doesn't do anything to you if you are not on opioids.
--:-- Julie Wernow: Yeah.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: In fact, one of the ways that they test for approval with the FDA is they give it to people who are not on opioids and then they like test to see how much of the drug they got in their system.
--:-- Julie Wernow: But the people who are in those clinical trials feel absolutely nothing.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Like they're like, why are you spraying this thing in my nose?
--:-- Julie Wernow: Yeah.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So it's totally innocuous if you're not on opioids.
--:-- Julie Wernow: It would work for anything that is an opioid.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So it could be a prescription pill that's an opioid.
--:-- Julie Wernow: It could be fentanyl.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It could be heroin.
--:-- Julie Wernow: It's all the same to the brain, if that makes sense.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: What it won't work on is other kinds of overdose, like alcohol.
--:-- Julie Wernow: There's a tranquilizer right now that's been making its way into the drug supply that people refer to as tranc.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It's not going to work on that.
--:-- Julie Wernow: It's not going to work on your benzos.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So what health professionals recommend is, like we talked about before, it's not going to hurt them.
--:-- Julie Wernow: Just try it.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Even if you think, you know what, this isn't, they overdosed from, I think, something else.
--:-- Julie Wernow: You never know what people have taken.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: They might not know what they've taken.
--:-- Julie Wernow: So it's worth a try.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Will this decision by FDA be a difference maker?
--:-- Julie Wernow: Do you think we'll see overdose numbers drop?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I hate to say this because everyone says this on every podcast, but time will tell.
--:-- Julie Wernow: One of the reasons that time will tell is we're still waiting on information from retailers and insurers about pricing.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Is this drug going over the counter going to mean that it's actually more affordable or is it actually going to be more expensive, all told?
--:-- Julie Wernow: So right now, I mean, I walk into the CBS pharmacy and get this prescription only supposedly drug right behind the counter and give them my insurance card.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It cost me 10 bucks.
--:-- Julie Wernow: It costs like 125 bucks to the insurer.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So there are a lot of non-prescription drugs you can get your insurance to pay for.
--:-- Julie Wernow: But it's up to them to tell us if they're going to pay for it.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So, you know, if I want to go get my Flonase or something for my allergies, my insurer will actually help cover it, even though it's an over-the-counter drug now.
--:-- Julie Wernow: You can't necessarily do that with everything, but we're waiting to find that out.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: At the same time, you know, the manufacturer could say, we're going to sell this to, you know, the Walgreens and Rite-Aids and CVS pharmacies of the world for, you know, $4.
--:-- Julie Wernow: But those guys could say, well, we want to take a cut and we're going to sell it back to the public for $45.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So we're waiting to find out what the pricing is going to look like, which we might not really know until late summer.
--:-- Julie Wernow: But that ultimately could have an impact on how big of a game changer this is.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It could have an impact on how big of a game changer it is for Narcan.
--:-- Julie Wernow: One thing that people don't realize is that this is just the first drug maker who's going over the counter.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: There are a couple of other drug makers, one of which is a nonprofit pharmaceutical company.
--:-- Julie Wernow: You don't hear about that very often.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: That is specifically set up just to try to create a nearly free version of over-the-counter naloxone.
--:-- Julie Wernow: So when those competitors, you know, get through the FDA process and enter the marketplace, for sure, this is going to be a game changer.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The pricing is going to go down across the board.
--:-- Julie Wernow: And it will be, you know, something you can go grab with your bar of soap.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: That was Julie Wernow. She reports on health and medicine for The Wall Street Journal.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Our show today was produced by Hadi Mawajdeh.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: He had help from Jolie Myers, Paul Robert Mounsey, and Laura Bullard.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I'm Sean Rameswaram for him.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: This is Today Explained.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Thank you.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Support for the show comes from Mercury.
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