To what end though? I'm not conspiratorially asking "what was their real angle?", but the much more simple "why did they think it was newsworthy for a non-doctor audience?"
I've seen the NYT run articles on a regulated industry I happen to work in. I'm no doctor, but I can see parallels because everything is slow moving and presumably based on expert opinion. Coverage of subtle points is surrounded by laughably bad analysis that drops a line of facts that lead the reader into conclusions they don't include in the print. Because if they printed it, the counterargument would be swift and damning. But without them explicitly saying it I'm "conspiratorial" if I say they're implying it. They then go on to make a wide-ranging hamfisted policy prescription that don't make sense for the subtle issue we started with and I'm 110% on board for fixing, but do make sense if you believe the unstated intermediary conclusion.