An oral version of semaglutide, the active ingredient in blockbuster drugs Ozempic and Wegovy, failed to slow the progression of Alzheimer’s disease in closely watched trials, Novo Nordisk said Monday.In two Phase 3 trials of more than 3,800 adults receiving standard care for Alzheimer’s, the company evaluated whether an older pill form of semaglutide worked better than a placebo. The drug was shown to be safe and led to improvements in Alzheimer’s-related biomarkers, the company said, but the treatment did not delay disease progression.Novo had long treated Alzheimer’s as a long-shot bet for the popular GLP-1 drugs. Use of these drugs for diabetes and weight loss has exploded in recent years, and they have shown benefits for a wide range of additional health conditions, such as protecting the heart and kidneys, reducing sleep apnea and potentially helping with addiction.Smaller trials and animal studies had suggested GLP-1s might help slow cognitive decline or reduce neuro-inflammation but larger trials like Novo’s were needed to confirm whether patients saw actual benefits.”Based on the significant unmet need in Alzheimer’s disease as well as a number of indicative data points, we felt we had a responsibility to explore semaglutide’s potential, despite a low likelihood of success,” said Martin Holst Lange, chief scientific officer and executive vice president of Research and Development at Novo Nordisk said in a statement on Monday that thanked trial participants.A one-year extension of the trials will be discontinued, Novo said. Results from the trials have not yet been peer-reviewed or published but will be presented at upcoming scientific conferences.Novo has been facing increased competition in the weight loss market and recently announced lowered prices for some cash-paying patients using Ozempic and Wegovy. Novo shares fell Monday after the Alzheimer’s trial announcement.
CNN —
An oral version of semaglutide, the active ingredient in blockbuster drugs Ozempic and Wegovy, failed to slow the progression of Alzheimer’s disease in closely watched trials, Novo Nordisk said Monday.
In two Phase 3 trials of more than 3,800 adults receiving standard care for Alzheimer’s, the company evaluated whether an older pill form of semaglutide worked better than a placebo. The drug was shown to be safe and led to improvements in Alzheimer’s-related biomarkers, the company said, but the treatment did not delay disease progression.
Novo had long treated Alzheimer’s as a long-shot bet for the popular GLP-1 drugs. Use of these drugs for diabetes and weight loss has exploded in recent years, and they have shown benefits for a wide range of additional health conditions, such as protecting the heart and kidneys, reducing sleep apnea and potentially helping with addiction.
Smaller trials and animal studies had suggested GLP-1s might help slow cognitive decline or reduce neuro-inflammation but larger trials like Novo’s were needed to confirm whether patients saw actual benefits.
“Based on the significant unmet need in Alzheimer’s disease as well as a number of indicative data points, we felt we had a responsibility to explore semaglutide’s potential, despite a low likelihood of success,” said Martin Holst Lange, chief scientific officer and executive vice president of Research and Development at Novo Nordisk said in a statement on Monday that thanked trial participants.
A one-year extension of the trials will be discontinued, Novo said. Results from the trials have not yet been peer-reviewed or published but will be presented at upcoming scientific conferences.
Novo has been facing increased competition in the weight loss market and recently announced lowered prices for some cash-paying patients using Ozempic and Wegovy. Novo shares fell Monday after the Alzheimer’s trial announcement.
Morgan Geyser, one of the girls convicted in the 2014 Slender Man stabbing, cut off her GPS monitoring bracelet and left her group home Saturday night, according to Madison police.Geyser was last seen at 8 p.m. with an adult acquaintance. Police were notified of her disappearance Sunday morning. Anyone with information is urged to contact 911.In 2014, Geyser and Anissa Weier nearly killed their classmate by stabbing her 19 times as part of a plot involving the fictional character Slender Man. Both girls were found not guilty because of a mental defect or disease in 2017 and were sentenced to mental institutions. Geyser was released from the Winnebago Mental Health Institute earlier in 2025 and placed in a group home after being granted a conditional release from the Winnebago Mental Health Institute.Payton Leutner and her family of aware of the most recent situation regarding Morgan Geyser,” a spokesperson for the Leutner family said in a statement to WISN 12 News. “Payton and her family are safe and are working closely with local law enforcement to ensure their continued safety. The family would like to thank all of the law enforcement entities involved in the efforts to apprehend Morgan. The Leutner family also wish to thank the outpouring of support from family, friends, and well-wishers who have contacted them during this difficult time.”Sunday afternoon, Geyser’s attorney, Tony Cotton, posted a video on Instagram after hearing the news of her disappearance.In the video, Cotton calls for Geyser to turn herself in immediately.”We don’t know any of the facts about what happened, or who might have assisted her, but certainly if there is somebody who has assisted her, that person will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law,” Cotton said in the video.Cotton also called for anyone who has been in communication with Geyser to contact police as soon as possible.
Morgan Geyser, one of the girls convicted in the 2014 Slender Man stabbing, cut off her GPS monitoring bracelet and left her group home Saturday night, according to Madison police.
Geyser was last seen at 8 p.m. with an adult acquaintance. Police were notified of her disappearance Sunday morning. Anyone with information is urged to contact 911.
In 2014, Geyser and Anissa Weier nearly killed their classmate by stabbing her 19 times as part of a plot involving the fictional character Slender Man.
Both girls were found not guilty because of a mental defect or disease in 2017 and were sentenced to mental institutions.
Payton Leutner and her family of aware of the most recent situation regarding Morgan Geyser,” a spokesperson for the Leutner family said in a statement to WISN 12 News. “Payton and her family are safe and are working closely with local law enforcement to ensure their continued safety. The family would like to thank all of the law enforcement entities involved in the efforts to apprehend Morgan. The Leutner family also wish to thank the outpouring of support from family, friends, and well-wishers who have contacted them during this difficult time.”
Sunday afternoon, Geyser’s attorney, Tony Cotton, posted a video on Instagram after hearing the news of her disappearance.
In the video, Cotton calls for Geyser to turn herself in immediately.
“We don’t know any of the facts about what happened, or who might have assisted her, but certainly if there is somebody who has assisted her, that person will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law,” Cotton said in the video.
Cotton also called for anyone who has been in communication with Geyser to contact police as soon as possible.
Morgan Geyser, one of the girls convicted in the 2014 Slender Man stabbing, cut off her GPS monitoring bracelet and left her group home Saturday night, according to Madison police.Geyser was last seen at 8 p.m. with an adult acquaintance. Police were notified of her disappearance Sunday morning. Anyone with information is urged to contact 911.In 2014, Geyser and Anissa Weier nearly killed their classmate by stabbing her 19 times as part of a plot involving the fictional character Slender Man. Both girls were found not guilty because of a mental defect or disease in 2017 and were sentenced to mental institutions. Geyser was released from the Winnebago Mental Health Institute earlier in 2025 and placed in a group home.
Morgan Geyser, one of the girls convicted in the 2014 Slender Man stabbing, cut off her GPS monitoring bracelet and left her group home Saturday night, according to Madison police.
Geyser was last seen at 8 p.m. with an adult acquaintance. Police were notified of her disappearance Sunday morning. Anyone with information is urged to contact 911.
In 2014, Geyser and Anissa Weier nearly killed their classmate by stabbing her 19 times as part of a plot involving the fictional character Slender Man.
Both girls were found not guilty because of a mental defect or disease in 2017 and were sentenced to mental institutions.
Geyser was released from the Winnebago Mental Health Institute earlier in 2025 and placed in a group home.
Civil rights leader Rev. Jesse Jackson remains hospitalized and is receiving care to stabilize his blood pressure, a source close to Jackson’s family told CNN on Sunday.In a statement released late Sunday afternoon, the family said he is breathing on his own without the assistance of machines and not on life support. The source added he is receiving medication to raise his blood pressure, which is a form of life support.In the last 24 hours, Jackson’s condition has improved and he has been able to maintain a stable blood pressure without the assistance of medication.Jackson, 84, a protégé of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., has been under observation for progressive supranuclear palsy (PSP), the Rainbow PUSH Coalition said Wednesday evening.Further details about his condition have not been released.The family source says Jackson has had brief moments of energy due to a medication he has been on for two days. Jackson had a significant drop in blood pressure Saturday night, but a medical team responded to him immediately, the source added.Even while under treatment, he has shown brief but meaningful signs of responsiveness, the source said.Video below: Rev. Jesse Jackson encourages young voters to cast ballotsIn the Sunday afternoon statement, his son Yusef said: “In fact, today he called for 2,000 churches to prepare 2,000 baskets of food to prevent malnutrition during the holiday season.”Last week, there had been “significant improvement” in the civil rights leader’s condition under medical care, his son Jesse Jackson Jr. said Thursday in a segment during his weekday radio show.PSP is “a rare neurological disorder that affects body movements, walking and balance, and eye movements,” according to the US National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke.The disease typically begins in a person’s 60s and has some symptoms similar to Parkinson’s disease, it adds. Most people with PSP develop severe disability within three to five years.Jackson “has been managing this neurodegenerative condition for more than a decade,” the organization previously said in a statement. “He was originally diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease; however, last April, his PSP condition was confirmed.”Jackson rose to national prominence in the 1960s as a close aide to King. After King’s assassination in 1968, Jackson became one of the most transformative civil rights leaders in America.In 1971, he founded Operation PUSH as a way to improve Black communities’ economic conditions across the US. Jackson later launched the National Rainbow Coalition in 1984, with the goal of obtaining equal rights for all Americans, according to the Rainbow PUSH Coalition.Twelve years later, the two organizations merged to form Rainbow PUSH Coalition.One of Jackson’s signature phrases has been “Keep hope alive,” and was a force for social justice over three eras: the Jim Crow period, the civil rights era and the post-civil rights era, culminating with the election of Barack Obama and the Black Lives Matter movement.This story has been updated with additional information.CNN’s Amanda Musa contributed to this report.
CNN —
Civil rights leader Rev. Jesse Jackson remains hospitalized and is receiving care to stabilize his blood pressure, a source close to Jackson’s family told CNN on Sunday.
In a statement released late Sunday afternoon, the family said he is breathing on his own without the assistance of machines and not on life support. The source added he is receiving medication to raise his blood pressure, which is a form of life support.
In the last 24 hours, Jackson’s condition has improved and he has been able to maintain a stable blood pressure without the assistance of medication.
Jackson, 84, a protégé of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., has been under observation for progressive supranuclear palsy (PSP), the Rainbow PUSH Coalition said Wednesday evening.
Further details about his condition have not been released.
The family source says Jackson has had brief moments of energy due to a medication he has been on for two days. Jackson had a significant drop in blood pressure Saturday night, but a medical team responded to him immediately, the source added.
Even while under treatment, he has shown brief but meaningful signs of responsiveness, the source said.
Video below: Rev. Jesse Jackson encourages young voters to cast ballots
In the Sunday afternoon statement, his son Yusef said: “In fact, today he called for 2,000 churches to prepare 2,000 baskets of food to prevent malnutrition during the holiday season.”
Last week, there had been “significant improvement” in the civil rights leader’s condition under medical care, his son Jesse Jackson Jr. said Thursday in a segment during his weekday radio show.
The disease typically begins in a person’s 60s and has some symptoms similar to Parkinson’s disease, it adds. Most people with PSP develop severe disability within three to five years.
Jackson “has been managing this neurodegenerative condition for more than a decade,” the organization previously said in a statement. “He was originally diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease; however, last April, his PSP condition was confirmed.”
Jackson rose to national prominence in the 1960s as a close aide to King. After King’s assassination in 1968, Jackson became one of the most transformative civil rights leaders in America.
In 1971, he founded Operation PUSH as a way to improve Black communities’ economic conditions across the US. Jackson later launched the National Rainbow Coalition in 1984, with the goal of obtaining equal rights for all Americans, according to the Rainbow PUSH Coalition.
Twelve years later, the two organizations merged to form Rainbow PUSH Coalition.
One of Jackson’s signature phrases has been “Keep hope alive,” and was a force for social justice over three eras: the Jim Crow period, the civil rights era and the post-civil rights era, culminating with the election of Barack Obama and the Black Lives Matter movement.
This story has been updated with additional information.
Civil rights leader Rev. Jesse Jackson remains hospitalized and is now receiving a form of life support to stabilize his blood pressure, a source close to Jackson’s family told CNN on Sunday.Jackson, 84, a protégé of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., has been under observation for progressive supranuclear palsy (PSP), the Rainbow PUSH Coalition said Wednesday evening.Further details about his condition have not been released.The family source says Jackson has had moments of brief energy due to a medication he has been on it for two days. Jackson had a significant drop in blood pressure Saturday night, but a medical team responded to him immediately, the source added.Even while under treatment, he has shown brief, but meaningful signs of responsiveness, the source said.Last week, there had been “significant improvement” in the civil rights leader’s condition under medical care, his son Jesse Jackson Jr. said Thursday in a segment during his weekday radio show.PSP is “a rare neurological disorder that affects body movements, walking and balance, and eye movements,” according to the US National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke.The disease typically begins in a person’s 60s and has some symptoms similar to Parkinson’s disease, it adds. Most people with PSP develop severe disability within three to five years.Jackson “has been managing this neurodegenerative condition for more than a decade,” the organization previously said in a statement. “He was originally diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease; however, last April his PSP condition was confirmed.”Jackson first rose to national prominence in the 1960s as a close aide to the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. After King’s assassination in 1968, Jackson became one of the most transformative civil rights leaders in America.In 1971, he founded Operation PUSH as a way to improve Black communities’ economic conditions across the US. Jackson later launched the National Rainbow Coalition, in 1984, with the goal of obtaining equal rights for all Americans, according to the Rainbow PUSH Coalition.Some 12 years later, the two organizations merged to form Rainbow PUSH Coalition.One of Jackson’s signature phrases was “Keep hope alive,” and was a force for social justice over three eras: the Jim Crow period, the civil rights era and the post-civil rights era, culminating with the election of Barack Obama and the Black Lives Matter movement.This story has been updated with additional information.CNN’s Amanda Musa contributed to this report.
CNN —
Civil rights leader Rev. Jesse Jackson remains hospitalized and is now receiving a form of life support to stabilize his blood pressure, a source close to Jackson’s family told CNN on Sunday.
Jackson, 84, a protégé of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., has been under observation for progressive supranuclear palsy (PSP), the Rainbow PUSH Coalition said Wednesday evening.
Further details about his condition have not been released.
The family source says Jackson has had moments of brief energy due to a medication he has been on it for two days. Jackson had a significant drop in blood pressure Saturday night, but a medical team responded to him immediately, the source added.
Even while under treatment, he has shown brief, but meaningful signs of responsiveness, the source said.
Last week, there had been “significant improvement” in the civil rights leader’s condition under medical care, his son Jesse Jackson Jr. said Thursday in a segment during his weekday radio show.
The disease typically begins in a person’s 60s and has some symptoms similar to Parkinson’s disease, it adds. Most people with PSP develop severe disability within three to five years.
Jackson “has been managing this neurodegenerative condition for more than a decade,” the organization previously said in a statement. “He was originally diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease; however, last April his PSP condition was confirmed.”
Jackson first rose to national prominence in the 1960s as a close aide to the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. After King’s assassination in 1968, Jackson became one of the most transformative civil rights leaders in America.
In 1971, he founded Operation PUSH as a way to improve Black communities’ economic conditions across the US. Jackson later launched the National Rainbow Coalition, in 1984, with the goal of obtaining equal rights for all Americans, according to the Rainbow PUSH Coalition.
Some 12 years later, the two organizations merged to form Rainbow PUSH Coalition.
One of Jackson’s signature phrases was “Keep hope alive,” and was a force for social justice over three eras: the Jim Crow period, the civil rights era and the post-civil rights era, culminating with the election of Barack Obama and the Black Lives Matter movement.
This story has been updated with additional information.
Trailblazing civil rights leader the Rev. Jesse Jackson was hospitalized in Chicago on Wednesday due to symptoms from the neurodegenerative condition progressive supranuclear palsy.
His hospitalization was confirmed in a statement by the Rainbow PUSH Coalition, a social justice organization founded by Jackson.
The 84-year-old Baptist minister and political figure has been battling the neurodegenerative condition for more than a decade, according to the statement. He was initially diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease, but the PSP diagnosis was confirmed in April.
PSP is an atypical parkinsonian disorder, a group of neurodegenerative disorders that resemble Parkinson’s disease in some motor symptoms but typically have more a rapid progression and severe prognosis.
Thea rare brain disease results from a build-up of tau protein in areas of the brain that control body movement, causing progressively degenerative symptoms including trouble balancing, inability to aim the eyes, slurred speech, loss of walking and challenges swallowing.
The civil rights leader was born in 1941 in segregated Greenville, S.C., and rose to prominence alongside the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in the 1960s.
He advocated for corporations to hire more Black Americans through Operation PUSH and founded the Rainbow Coalition in the 1980s to unite marginalized groups and working-class voters around shared goals of social, economic and political justice as well as greater political representations. He was the first Black presidential candidate to attract major national support, winning 3.5 million votes in 1984 and 7 million in 1988.
Maybe you know you snore like a bear, but you don’t feel much urgency to look into it. Or maybe you have been told to wear a continuous positive airway pressure, or CPAP, machine for sleep apnea, but it is just so cumbersome.A new study shows that it is important to take obstructive sleep apnea seriously now –– it could impact your risk of dementia and Alzheimer’s disease later.Moderate to severe obstructive sleep apnea is associated with a greater risk for new microbleeds in the brain, according to the study.”Cerebral microbleeds are a common finding in the aging brain,” said Dr. Jonathan Graff-Radford, professor of neurology at Mayo Clinic College of Medicine in Rochester, Minnesota. He was not involved in the research.Microbleeds increase with age, and people who have them have a slightly higher risk of future strokes and faster cognitive decline, Graff-Radford said. “Anything that increases microbleeds is relevant to brain aging,” he added.More evidence you need to treat sleep apneaObstructive sleep apnea is a condition in which a blockage of airways by weak, heavy or relaxed soft tissues disrupts breathing during sleep. The condition is different from central sleep apnea, in which the brain occasionally skips telling the body to breathe.There are a few ways to treat obstructive sleep apnea, including relying on oral devices that keep the throat open during sleep, regularly using a CPAP or similar machine, and having surgeries.The study has a strong methodology and should stress the importance of screening for sleep apnea to clinicians and treatment to patients, said Dr. Rudy Tanzi, professor of neurology at Harvard Medical School and director of the Genetics and Aging Research Unit at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. He was not involved in the research.”Don’t ignore it. Do something about it,” he said. “It’s not just the immediate risk for down the road for bleeds, but also later down the road for Alzheimer’s disease as well.”Not addressing obstructive sleep apnea is a double whammy, Tanzi said. Not getting enough good-quality sleep –– which can be hard to do when your breathing is impaired during the night –– has been associated with brain aging, but the microbleeds that could result may increase the risk for dementia down the line.The study, which was published in the journal JAMA Network Open Tuesday, is observational, which means that it can only establish that obstructive sleep apnea and microbleeds are associated, not that one definitively causes the other. Further studies will need to examine if treating sleep apnea can prevent microbleeds.Know the signsWhen is it time to ask your doctor about obstructive sleep apnea?Loud, frequent snoring is a good indicator, Tanzi said. If your partner notices pauses in your breathing while you sleep or gasping and choking, that’s another sign you should look into sleep apnea.Problems during the day can be a good indicator, too. Sleepiness, trouble concentrating, irritability and increased hunger are signs you may not be getting quality sleep and that it may be time to get assessed for sleep apnea.Night sweats might also be a sign of sleep apnea, as research has shown that about 30% of people with obstructive sleep apnea have reported night sweats.Waking up at least two times in the night, teeth grinding, and morning headaches might also indicate a problem.The latest study “urges (people) to take it more seriously, because the damage that can come from obstructive sleep apnea can definitely be more severe than you think,” Tanzi said.
CNN —
Maybe you know you snore like a bear, but you don’t feel much urgency to look into it. Or maybe you have been told to wear a continuous positive airway pressure, or CPAP, machine for sleep apnea, but it is just so cumbersome.
A new study shows that it is important to take obstructive sleep apnea seriously now –– it could impact your risk of dementia and Alzheimer’s disease later.
Moderate to severe obstructive sleep apnea is associated with a greater risk for new microbleeds in the brain, according to the study.
“Cerebral microbleeds are a common finding in the aging brain,” said Dr. Jonathan Graff-Radford, professor of neurology at Mayo Clinic College of Medicine in Rochester, Minnesota. He was not involved in the research.
Microbleeds increase with age, and people who have them have a slightly higher risk of future strokes and faster cognitive decline, Graff-Radford said. “Anything that increases microbleeds is relevant to brain aging,” he added.
More evidence you need to treat sleep apnea
Obstructive sleep apnea is a condition in which a blockage of airways by weak, heavy or relaxed soft tissues disrupts breathing during sleep. The condition is different from central sleep apnea, in which the brain occasionally skips telling the body to breathe.
There are a few ways to treat obstructive sleep apnea, including relying on oral devices that keep the throat open during sleep, regularly using a CPAP or similar machine, and havingsurgeries.
The study has a strong methodology and should stress the importance of screening for sleep apnea to clinicians and treatment to patients, said Dr. Rudy Tanzi, professor of neurology at Harvard Medical School and director of the Genetics and Aging Research Unit at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. He was not involved in the research.
“Don’t ignore it. Do something about it,” he said. “It’s not just the immediate risk for down the road for bleeds, but also later down the road for Alzheimer’s disease as well.”
Not addressing obstructive sleep apnea is a double whammy, Tanzi said. Not getting enough good-quality sleep –– which can be hard to do when your breathing is impaired during the night –– has been associated with brain aging, but the microbleeds that could result may increase the risk for dementia down the line.
The study, which was published in the journal JAMA Network Open Tuesday, is observational, which means that it can only establish that obstructive sleep apnea and microbleeds are associated, not that one definitively causes the other. Further studies will need to examine if treating sleep apnea can prevent microbleeds.
Know the signs
When is it time to ask your doctor about obstructive sleep apnea?
Loud, frequent snoring is a good indicator, Tanzi said. If your partner notices pauses in your breathing while you sleep or gasping and choking, that’s another sign you should look into sleep apnea.
Problems during the day can be a good indicator, too. Sleepiness, trouble concentrating, irritability and increased hunger are signs you may not be getting quality sleep and that it may be time to get assessed for sleep apnea.
Night sweats might also be a sign of sleep apnea, as research has shown that about 30% of people with obstructive sleep apnea have reported night sweats.
The latest study “urges (people) to take it more seriously, because the damage that can come from obstructive sleep apnea can definitely be more severe than you think,” Tanzi said.
More than 130 unvaccinated students at two schools in South Carolina are being quarantined after they were exposed to measles, amid an ongoing outbreak in the state—a sign, public health experts warn, that cases could continue to rise this school year.
On Tuesday, the South Carolina Department of Public Health confirmed the 16th case of measles in the state so far this year. Last week, public health officials said in a media briefing that more than 100 unvaccinated students at Global Academy and Fairforest Elementary School were exposed to measles and would be excluded from school for 21 days, which is when the period of potential disease transmission has ended.
Of the 16 cases in the state, five are people who were exposed in school settings and have been quarantining at home over the past few days, according to South Carolina health officials.
Dr. Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, says the fact that the students in South Carolina were exposed to measles demonstrates why people should be worried about rising cases as children return to the classroom.
“We’ve had a growing population of susceptible children whose parents have chosen not to vaccinate them,” Offit says. “This is the most contagious human infection, and it’s not surprising that as kids go back to school, and we enter the winter and early spring months, that you see this virus once again surging.”
The outbreak in South Carolina comes amid surging measles cases across the country. This summer, measles cases in the U.S. reached a 33-year record high, causing public health experts to warn that other diseases could experience a similar resurgence. Minnesota is also in the midst of an outbreak; as of last week, there are 20 confirmed or probable cases in the state so far this year.
Public health officials have stressed that the best way to protect against measles is to get vaccinated with the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine, which is typically administered in childhood in two doses. Experts have said that a successful vaccination program was a large part of the reason that measles was declared eliminated from the country more than two decades ago. But vaccination rates have plummeted in recent years, and measles cases have soared.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), when more than 95% of people in a community are vaccinated against measles, mumps, and rubella, “most people are protected through community immunity.” But the CDC’s data show that only 92.7% of kindergarteners were vaccinated during the 2023-2024 school year. That number has dropped to about 90% in some parts of South Carolina, according to state public health officials.
As of last week, the CDC has confirmed 1,563 cases of measles so far this year. Many of those cases are from an outbreak in Texas that began in late January, which sickened more than 700 people and killed two unvaccinated children in Texas and an unvaccinated adult in New Mexico.
In August, Texas health officials declared that the outbreak was over, but they cautioned that the threat posed by the disease was not. At the time, Offit said that while the Texas outbreak had subsided, he feared that case numbers would surge again in a matter of months.
“Not only do I think this is getting worse, I think we’re not going to know about it because the surveillance capacity has been so diminished by our Secretary of Health and Human Services,” Offit says.
EXPLAINS. WE’VE COLLECTED BLOOD SAMPLES, URINE SAMPLES, TOENAIL SAMPLES, AND WE’VE COLLECTED MANY OF THESE SAMPLES REPEATEDLY OVER TIME. THE NUMBER CATALOGED HERE IS IN THE MILLIONS SINCE 1976, MORE THAN 280,000 NURSES OF DIFFERENT AGES AND BACKGROUNDS DONATING THEIR OWN BIOLOGICAL SPECIMENS. THEN RECORDING DETAILED INFORMATION ABOUT THEIR HEALTH, LIFESTYLE AND MEDICATIONS FOR RESEARCHERS LIKE DOCTOR WALTER WILLETT. WE HAVE DOZENS OF BIG NITROGEN FREEZERS THAT ALMOST AS TALL AS I AM, LOADED WITH THOUSANDS OF SAMPLES, AND THAT TAKES ACTUALLY ABOUT $300,000 A YEAR JUST TO PROVIDE THE LIQUID NITROGEN TO KEEP THOSE SAMPLES COLD. BUT THEN LAST SPRING, THE FUNDING STOPPED. ESSENTIALLY, THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT, TRUMP DECIDED TO ATTACK HARVARD BASICALLY ON THE BASIS OF BEING ANTI-SEMITIC, TERMINATED ALL RESEARCH, ALL FUNDING TO HARVARD. AND THAT INCLUDED OUR STUDIES. SINCE THEN, THIS SMALL TEAM HAS BEEN SCRAMBLING FOR NEW SOURCES OF SUPPORT JUST TO KEEP THESE FREEZERS FROZEN. REALLY? REMARKABLY, A NUMBER OF OUR PARTICIPANTS THEMSELVES HAVE SENT CHECKS. I THINK THEY UNDERSTAND THIS IS A GENERATIONAL TRANSFER OF KNOWLEDGE AND INFORMATION THAT CAN HELP THEIR KIDS, THEIR GRANDCHILDREN, AND EVERYBODY AROUND THE WORLD. IN THE PAST YEAR ALONE, RESEARCHERS HAVE USED THIS DATA TO TEST THEORIES ABOUT PARKINSON’S DISEASE, TYPE TWO DIABETES, BREAST CANCER, AND DEMENTIA. SOON, IT WILL BE HOW PEOPLE CAN LIVE TO 100 WITH GOOD PHYSICAL AND MENTAL HEALTH. PARTICIPANTS ARE REACHING THAT PERIOD OF THEIR LIFE AND WILL HAVE THE BEST INFORMATION ANYWHERE ON THAT, BECAUSE WE KNOW WHAT THEY’VE BEEN EATING, WHAT THEY’VE BEEN DOING AND WHAT MEDICINES THEY’VE BEEN TAKING OVER THE LAST 50 YEARS. REPORTER BUT FOR NOW, THE ONLY QUESTION THAT RESEARCHERS WANT ANSWERED CAN THIS COLLECTION STAY COLD AND ACCESSIBLE FOR ANOTHER 50 YEARS? I REGARD MYSELF AS SORT OF A CUSTODIAN. I THINK THE DATA THAT WE’RE PROVIDING REALLY DOES HELP EVERYBODY, WHETHER YOU’RE LIVING IN A RED STATE OR A BLUE STATE, BUT ALL OF A SUDDEN IT’S BECOME DIVISIVE. FOR NOW, THE LAB IS OPTIMISTIC IT CAN KEEP THE FREEZERS ON THROUGH THE END OF THE YEAR. IT’S ALSO CURRENTLY RECRUITING A THIRD COHORT OF NURSES TO JOIN THE STUDY. BUT IF FEDERAL FUNDING IS NOT RESTORED OR THERE’S NO NEW SOURCE OF MONEY, THE LAB AND ALL OF ITS DATA WILL LIKELY DISA
After funding halt, Harvard nurses health study scrambles to save 50 years of samples
The key to living a long and happy life hasn’t been found yet.But some researchers believe it could be hiding inside the Harvard Chan School of Public Health.See the story in the video aboveThat’s where nearly 50 years of data from the Nurses’ Health Study is stored.”We’ve collected blood samples, urine samples, toenail samples,” said Dr. Walter Willett, a professor of epidemiology and nutrition. “And we’ve collected many of these samples repeatedly over time.”The number catalogued at the school’s biorepository is in the millions.Since 1976, more than 280,000 nurses of different ages and backgrounds have donated their own biological specimens and provided detailed information about their health, lifestyle, and medications for researchers like Willett to study.”We have dozens of big nitrogen freezers that are almost as tall as I am,” Willett said. “It takes about $300,000 a year just to provide liquid nitrogen to keep those samples cold.”But then last spring, the funding stopped.”Essentially, the federal government — Trump — decided to attack Harvard,” Willett said. “And basically, on the basis of being antisemitic, (it) terminated all research, all funding to Harvard, and that included our studies.”Since then, a small team has been scrambling for new sources of support, just to keep these freezers frozen.”Really remarkably, a number of our participants themselves have sent checks,” Willett said. “I think they understand this is a generational transfer of knowledge and information that can help their kids, their grandchildren, and everybody around the world.”In the past year alone, researchers have used the collection to test theories about Parkinson’s disease, Type 2 diabetes, breast cancer and dementia.Soon, they hope to discover how to live to 100 with good physical and mental health.”We’re just at a point where some of our participants are reaching that period of their life,” Willett said. “We’ll have the best information anywhere on that because we know what they’ve been eating, what they’ve been doing, and what medicines they’ve been taking over the last 50 years.”But for now, the only question that researchers want answered is whether this collection can stay cold — and accessible — for another 50 years.”I regard myself as sort of a custodian,” Willett said. “The data that we’re providing really does help everybody, whether you’re living in a red state or a blue state, but all of a sudden, it’s become divisive.”
The key to living a long and happy life hasn’t been found yet.
But some researchers believe it could be hiding inside the Harvard Chan School of Public Health.
“We’ve collected blood samples, urine samples, toenail samples,” said Dr. Walter Willett, a professor of epidemiology and nutrition. “And we’ve collected many of these samples repeatedly over time.”
The number catalogued at the school’s biorepository is in the millions.
Since 1976, more than 280,000 nurses of different ages and backgrounds have donated their own biological specimens and provided detailed information about their health, lifestyle, and medications for researchers like Willett to study.
“We have dozens of big nitrogen freezers that are almost as tall as I am,” Willett said. “It takes about $300,000 a year just to provide liquid nitrogen to keep those samples cold.” But then last spring, the funding stopped.
“Essentially, the federal government — Trump — decided to attack Harvard,” Willett said. “And basically, on the basis of being antisemitic, (it) terminated all research, all funding to Harvard, and that included our studies.”
Since then, a small team has been scrambling for new sources of support, just to keep these freezers frozen.
“Really remarkably, a number of our participants themselves have sent checks,” Willett said. “I think they understand this is a generational transfer of knowledge and information that can help their kids, their grandchildren, and everybody around the world.”
In the past year alone, researchers have used the collection to test theories about Parkinson’s disease, Type 2 diabetes, breast cancer and dementia.
Soon, they hope to discover how to live to 100 with good physical and mental health.
“We’re just at a point where some of our participants are reaching that period of their life,” Willett said. “We’ll have the best information anywhere on that because we know what they’ve been eating, what they’ve been doing, and what medicines they’ve been taking over the last 50 years.”
But for now, the only question that researchers want answered is whether this collection can stay cold — and accessible — for another 50 years.
“I regard myself as sort of a custodian,” Willett said. “The data that we’re providing really does help everybody, whether you’re living in a red state or a blue state, but all of a sudden, it’s become divisive.”
Gene therapy is becoming a powerful way to treat challenging diseases that don’t respond to traditional treatments, and researchers now report the first success in modifying genes to slow Huntington’s disease.
In a study reported by Uniqure, which developed the experimental gene therapy, scientists found that it slowed progression of Huntington’s disease by 75% over three years. The study has not yet been published in a scientific journal.
“I went into the trial cautiously optimistic but very anxious, as one does when starting a gene-therapy trial,” says Dr. Sarah Tabrizi, director of the University College London Huntington’s Disease Center and a lead investigator on the study. “I was blown away when I saw all of the data and it was very, very clear that the gene therapy worked.”
The study involved 29 patients with Huntington’s disease who were given one of two doses of gene therapy that targeted the huntingtin gene, which is mutated in the disease. The aberrant gene makes a form of the huntingtin protein that clumps into toxic aggregates, which prevent nerves from functioning normally. Eventually, nerve cells—particularly those in the part of the brain that regulates movement and cognitive skills like motivation, habit formation, and decision-making—degrade, leading to physical and cognitive symptoms.
Everyone in the trial was monitored for a number of biological and behavioral measures, including markers for degraded nerve proteins in spinal fluid and their ability to perform normal daily activities, manage their finances, and keep working. The gene therapy involved a 12- to 15-hour brain operation in which surgeons drill through the skill to access a deep part of the brain called the striatum, where nerve cells are most affected by the damaged huntingtin protein. The surgeons injected the gene therapy, which included DNA delivered by an inactivated virus vector, coding for instructions to turn off production of the huntingtin protein.
The 17 people who received the high dose showed a 75% slowing in the progression of their symptoms overall. The 12 people who got the lower dose—which was 10 times less concentrated—showed similar progression as placebo, although some of their symptoms improved.
Because the brain surgery was invasive and risky, the researchers had to find a reliable way to evaluate what effect the gene therapy was having without subjecting some patients to a sham surgery, says Dr. Walid Abi-Saab, Uniqure’s chief medical officer. The participants who received the gene therapy were monitored for several years and compared to a group of about 2,000 untreated Huntington’s patients—because there are currently no treatments for the disease—who were matched to the study patients getting the gene therapy by factors like age and stage of disease.
The 75% slowing in the progression of the disease among those receiving the gene therapy is “huge,” says Tabrizi, who has been studying potential therapies for Huntington’s for two decades. “I have never seen anything that shows that [benefit],” she says. In Huntington’s patients, levels of neurofilament, which is produced by damaged nerve cells, in the spinal fluid increase by 30% to 45% in the early years of the disease, Tabrizi says. People receiving the gene therapy in the study actually showed drops in their levels—below their baseline levels, in some cases. “That tells you that neurons are being saved,” she says.
She says that the encouraging results are inspiring her to think about extending the benefits to people even earlier in their disease, with the hope that they might be able to prevent many of the disease’s worst symptoms from ever appearing. The patients in the trial were at Stage II or III, but, “when people who carry the Huntington’s gene are completely well, we might be able to prevent the disease from ever occurring and prevent the symptoms from ever occurring,” she says. “I personally want to start thinking about how we can get this therapy to people at Stage 0 or I to prevent this disease.”
Matt Kapusta, CEO of Uniqure, says the therapy is “transformational” and that giving patients more time with loved ones, with milder or fewer symptoms, is “priceless.” Uniqure plans to submit a request for the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to grant accelerated approval of the gene therapy to treat Huntington’s in the first part of next year, and, if approved, is prepared to provide it to patients later in 2026.
A school-aged child in Los Angeles County has died from a rare complication of measles after contracting the disease in infancy, the county public health department announced Thursday.
The child — who was not old enough to be vaccinated at the time of infection — died from subacute sclerosing panencephalitis, a fatal progressive brain disorder that strikes roughly one in 10,000 people infected with measles in the U.S. Doctors believe the risk is as high as one in every 600 children who contract measles as a baby.
The disorder typically develops two to 10 years after initial infection, even when — as in this child’s case — the patient recovers fully from measles. The disease begins with seizures, cognitive decline and involuntary muscle spasms, and progresses to dementia, coma and eventually death.
“Most pediatricians in the U.S. have never seen a child with SSPE because we’ve been vaccinating kids against measles for decades,” said Dr. Adam Ratner, a New York-based pediatric infectious-disease specialist and author of the book, “Booster Shots: The Urgent Lessons of Measles and the Uncertain Future of Children’s Health.”
The Los Angeles County Department of Public Health could not release further details on the child’s age, gender or location due to patient privacy laws, a spokesperson said.
The department could only confirm that the child acquired measles before becoming eligible for an MMR vaccination.
“This case is a painful reminder of how dangerous measles can be, especially for our most vulnerable community members,” county health officer Dr. Muntu Davis said in a statement. “Infants too young to be vaccinated rely on all of us to help protect them through community immunity.”
Children typically receive their first MMR dose when they are 12 to 15 months old and a second dose between the ages of 4 and 6 years.
An early first dose from the age of 6 to 11 months is recommended for babies traveling internationally or through an international hub. Infants under the age of 6 months are too young to receive the MMR shot, according to guidelines from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Very young babies rely on antibodies acquired during gestation and herd immunity to protect them from measles, which killed roughly 400 children every year in the U.S. before the combined MMR vaccine’s introduction in 1971.
Measles was “eliminated” in the U.S. in 2000, meaning the disease was rare enough and immunity widespread enough to prevent local transmission if an errant case popped up.
For 25 years, parents in the U.S. have been able to trust that herd immunity will keep infants safe from measles until they are old enough to be vaccinated.
This recent death may be a signal that social contract is beginning to break.
Childhood immunization rates have been slowly but steadily falling nationwide, from 95% in the years before the COVID pandemic to below 93% in the 2023-24 school year.
In California, one of five U.S. states that banned all non-medical vaccine exemptions, the vaccination rate that year was 96.2%. California is also one of only 10 states with a kindergarten measles vaccination rate exceeding the 95% threshold experts say is necessary to achieve herd immunity.
But if current vaccination rates hold steady over the coming decades, measles will once again be endemic in the U.S. within 25 years, two Stanford University researchers found in a study published earlier this year.
“Right now we should really be trying to up vaccination rates,” Mathew Kiang, an assistant professor of epidemiology and population health, told the Times in April. “If we just kept them the way they are, bad things are going to happen within about two decades.”
Times staff writer Jenny Gold contributed to this report.
Millions of people around the world are estimated to have Chagas disease, a potentially fatal, parasitic illness that can lie dormant for years after the initial infection.
Some 280,000 people in the U.S. are among them, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), but the disease is not officially considered endemic to the country like it is in 21 others in the Americas. Public health experts argued in a report published in this month’s issue of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) Emerging Infectious Diseases journal that it should be.
“Increasing evidence” of the parasites that cause Chagas disease “challenges that nonendemic label,” the experts wrote, noting that “kissing bugs,” which can transmit the parasite to humans, have been identified in 32 states. The report acknowledged that data were “inadequate” to prove that the presence of the kissing bugs is increasing in the U.S., but said that the bugs are “increasingly recognized because of frequent encounters with humans” and “increased research attention.”
“Labeling the United States as non–Chagas disease–endemic perpetuates low awareness and underreporting,” the experts wrote.
You may never have heard about Chagas disease before. Here’s everything you need to know about it.
How do you get Chagas disease?
Chagas disease is caused by the parasite Trypanosoma cruzi. The parasite can be spread to a person from an insect called the triatomine bug, more colloquially known as the “kissing bug,” according to the Mayo Clinic. If a kissing bug ingests blood from an animal infected with the parasite, then the bug can also become infected with it.
Kissing bugs generally bite people while they sleep, and then defecate. Their feces leave parasites on a person’s skin, and the parasites can go into a person’s body via the eyes, mouth, or an open wound.
Chagas disease doesn’t spread from person to person, but other sources of infection can come from eating uncooked food that has stool from bugs infected with the parasite, getting donor blood or a donor organ from an individual who was infected with the parasite, or being in a place where there are wild animals infected with the parasite.
People with Chagas disease can have acute illness, and may experience relatively mild symptoms that can last for weeks or months, including swelling at the infection site, fever, rash, and body aches, among others, according to the Mayo Clinic. These symptoms generally dissipate over time, but if the infection isn’t treated, the disease can linger in the body and even progress to a chronic phase.
Some people may experience chronic symptoms 10 to 20 years after becoming infected, according to the Mayo Clinic, though the CDC notes that many people don’t experience symptoms even while in the chronic phase. But roughly 20-30% of people who are infected develop severe symptoms, including a range of heart issues—such as heart failure, irregular heartbeat, or even death—and digestive issues—such as an enlarged esophagus or colon, which could cause problems with eating or going to the bathroom.
Where in the U.S. have “kissing bugs” been detected?
Various species of kissing bugs are most commonly found in states in the southern part of the U.S., but have also been identified in several midwestern states.
Autochthonous human cases of Chagas disease, meaning infections that were acquired in the same region where the cases were reported, have been confirmed in at least 8 states: California, Arizona, Texas, Tennessee, Louisiana, Missouri, Mississippi, and Arkansas, according to the report in the Emerging Infectious Diseases journal.
How can you protect yourself?
At the moment, there are no vaccines or drugs that can prevent someone from getting Chagas disease, according to the CDC.
But the Mayo Clinic recommends that people living in high-risk places take a number of steps to protect themselves, including using netting with insecticide over their bed, using insecticides to kill insects inside their home, and using insect repellent on their body. The Mayo Clinic also advises that people avoid sleeping in a mud or thatch house, since kissing bugs thrive in those environments.
Marc Pierrat’s mind once ran as smoothly as the gears on his endurance bike. He was a mechanical engineer by training and a marathoner for fun, a guy who maintained complicated systems at work and a meticulously organized garage at his Westlake Village home.
Three years after his diagnosis of frontotemporal dementia, Marc’s thoughts are a jumble he can’t sort out alone. Once-routine tasks are now incomprehensible; memories swirl and slip away. His wife, Julia Pierrat, 58, shepherds Marc, 59, through meals and naptime, ensures he is clean and comfortable, gently offers names and words he can’t find himself.
It is often impossible for a person to talk about the internal experience of living with FTD, either because they can’t accurately assess their internal state or don’t have the language to describe it. In many cases the disease attacks the brain’s language centers directly. In others, a common symptom is loss of insight, meaning the ability to recognize that anything is wrong.
But minds can unwind in a million different ways. In Marc’s case, the disease has taken a path that for now has preserved his ability to talk about life with what one doctor called “the most difficult of all neurologic diseases.”
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Thousands of people in the U.S. live with FTD. Marc can speak for only one of them, and at times he does so with clarity that breaks his wife’s heart. Occasionally Julia records snippets of conversation with his permission, mementos from a stage of marriage they never saw coming.
“It feels like walking into a closet you haven’t been in in a while, and you’re looking for something that you know is there, but you don’t know where,” Marc said recently, as Julia looked on.
“And then, you know, you just — yeah. You just give up,” he concluded. “It’s the giving up part that’s hard.”
Marc takes a selfie with his wife, Julia before Marc was diagnosed with FTD.
(Pierrat family)
Do you know the name of the disease that you’re living with?
Yes.
What is it called?
Frontotemporal dementia.
Yep, that’s exactly right.
FTD, for short.
How does it affect you?
Well, I guess, processing of inputs tend to, in a normal mind — they get processed efficiently to a decision. Like, if you’re going to catch a ball, you know, you have the ball in the air, [and] you have to raise your arm and your glove, and you catch the ball. And FTD interferes with all of that. So it makes it harder to catch the ball.
More than 6 million people in the U.S. currently live with dementia, an umbrella term for conditions affecting memory, language and other cognitive functions.
Up to 90% of dementia cases are caused by Alzheimer’s disease, the progressive memory disorder, or by strokes and other vascular problems that disrupt blood flow to the brain. The rest arise from a variety of lesser-known but equally devastating conditions. Frontotemporal dementia is one of them.
After putting Marc in bed for an afternoon nap, Julia spends a quiet moment in the kitchen of their home in Westlake.
In FTD, abnormal proteins accumulate in the brain’s frontal or temporal lobes, damaging and eventually destroying those neurons. It’s frequently misdiagnosed, and so the number of current U.S. cases is hard to pin down — estimates place it between 50,000 and 250,000 people.
By far the best-known person living with FTD is the actor Bruce Willis, whose family disclosed his diagnosis in 2023.
Willis has primary progressive aphasia, the second-most common form. In his case, the most damaged tissues are in his brain’s left frontal or left temporal lobes, which play crucial roles in processing and forming language. One of his first noticeable symptoms was a stutter, his wife Emma Heming Willis has said in interviews; he now has minimal language ability.
But FTD is highly heterogeneous, meaning that symptoms vary widely, and it has affected Marc and Willis in very different ways.
The disease has several subtypes based on where the degeneration begins its advance through the brain.
Marc Pierrat dances with activity counselor Rhoda Nino who leads a class at Infinity Adult Day Health Care Center in Westlake Village.
Pierrat has the most common subtype, behavioral variant FTD. His disease has targeted his frontal lobes, which manage social behavior, emotional regulation, impulse control, planning and working memory — essentially, everything a person needs to relate to others.
FTD typically presents between the ages of 45 and 60. Because it shows up so much earlier than other dementias, its initial symptoms are often mistaken for other conditions: depression, perimenopause, Parkinson’s disease, psychosis.
Everything we think and do and say to one another depends on very specific physical locations in our brains functioning correctly. Behavioral variant FTD strikes right at the places that house our personalities.
When an eloquent person suddenly can’t form sentences, it’s typically seen as a medical problem. But when an empathetic person suddenly withholds affection, it’s perceived as an act of unkindness. The truth is that both can be the product of physical deterioration in a previously healthy brain.
If you were to describe to another person what it’s like to live with FTD, how would you describe it?
Oh my God. . . . Well, you can’t assess situations accurately. You see a train coming, and it’s gonna smash into your car, and you’d be, like, ‘Oh. Huh. That train’s gonna hit my car.’ And there’s nothing you can do.
The first sign came in late 2018. Marc, then 52, was in a fender-bender a few blocks from home and called Julia for a ride. When she arrived, he was not just surprised to see her, but angry. Why was she there? Who’d asked her to come?
She was taken aback by his forgetfulness, and more so by his hostility. Marc could be stubborn and confrontational; over the decades, they’d argued as much as any couple. But this outburst was out of character. She chalked it up to nerves.
Marc was a respected project manager in the pharmaceutical industry. He spent weekends on home improvement projects or immersed in his many hobbies: hiking, woodworking, 100-mile bike races.
Marc, Julia (right), and their daughter take a selfie on the Golden Gate Bridge during a bike ride.
(Pierrat family)
Julia was a business manager with Dole Packaged Foods. Their daughter was pursuing a doctorate at UCLA. The couple enjoyed life as empty nesters with shared passions for road trips and camping.
For a year or two after the accident, nothing happened that couldn’t be dismissed as a normal midlife memory lapse or a cranky mood. But by late 2020, something had undeniably changed. The harsh parts of Marc’s personality ballooned to bizarre proportions, smothering his kindness, generosity and curiosity.
He lost a phone charger and accused Julia’s mother of stealing it. He misplaced his binoculars and swore his sister took them. The neighbors asked the Pierrats to trim their gum trees and Marc flew into a rage, ranting about a supposed plot to spy on them.
His work performance and exercise habits appeared unaffected, which only made his outbursts more confusing — and infuriating — to Julia.
“At the beginning of the disease nobody knew he had any issue, other than he seemed like a total jerk,” she recalled.
The Pierrats did not know they were at the start of a chaotic period distinct to sufferers of FTD’s behavioral variant.
Julia laughs as Marc he squeezes by on a narrow bridge at the Foxfield Riding School in Lake Sherwood.
“Everything that can affect relationships is at the center of the presentation of the behavioral variant,” said Dr. Bruce Miller, director of the UC San Francisco Memory and Aging Center. “The first instinct of a spouse or a child or a human resource program or a psychiatrist [is to] assume a psychiatric problem.”
People with the condition start to lash out at loved ones or lose interest in lifelong relationships. They may snarl at strangers or shoplift at the mall. They consume food or alcohol obsessively, touch people inappropriately or squander the family’s savings on weird purchases.
And at first, just like in the Pierrats’ case, nobody understands why.
“When someone is not who they were, think neurology before psychology,” said Sharon Hall, whose husband Rod — a devoted spouse who delighted in planning romantic surprises — was diagnosed in 2015 after he started drinking heavily and sending explicit texts to other women.
At Julia’s insistence Marc visited his doctor in July 2021, who referred him to a neurologist. He would spend the next year making his way through a battery of appointments, scans and cognitive testing.
In the meantime, his life disintegrated.
Marc and Julia with their family dogs prior to his diagnosis with FTD.
(Pierrat family)
Just a few years earlier, bosses and colleagues praised Marc as a superlative manager. In January 2022 he was put on notice for a host of causes: combative emails, obnoxious behavior, failures of organization.
At home he botched routine fix-it jobs, missed crucial appointments and got lost on familiar routes. He stopped showering and called Julia appalling names. She went to therapy and contemplated divorce.
Finally, on July 18, 2022, the couple sat across from a neurologist who delivered the diagnosis with all the delicacy of an uppercut.
There was no cure, he told them, and few treatment options. He handed them a pamphlet. Marc showed no emotion.
In the car Julia sobbed inconsolably as Marc sat silent in the passenger seat. Eventually she caught her breath and pulled out from the parking lot.
Do you like being married?
Yes, I do.
Why?
It makes me a better person.
That’s so sweet. How do you think it makes you a better person?
Being able to talk to you and, you know, resolve through different problems together. I mean, it’s good to have an extra mind.
They left the neurologist with nothing: no instructions, no care plan, not even the stupid pamphlet, which was about memory problems in general. “It was diagnose and adios,” Julia said. “I hit the internet immediately.”
Julia now had three different roles: her paid job, Marc’s 24-hour care, and a part-time occupation finding support, services and answers.
Marc tries to figure out what he would like for lunch as Julia offers suggestions at the Joi Cafe in Westlake.
She insisted Marc fill the neurologist’s prescription for an anti-anxiety medication that diminished his irritability and agitation without zonking him out.
She found an eldercare attorney, and together she and Marc organized their legal and financial affairs while he was still well enough to understand what he was signing. Through Facebook she found her most valuable lifeline, a twice-weekly Zoom support group for caregivers.
She went on clinicaltrials.gov, a database of studies run by the U.S. National Institutes of Health, and FTDregistry.org, which lists trials specific to the disease, and signed the two of them up for every study they qualified for.
Marc was accepted into AllFTD, a longitudinal study that is the largest ever conducted for this disease. The couple travels yearly to the University of Pennsylvania’s FTD Center for tests that track changes in his symptoms and biomarkers, with the goal of contributing to future therapies and preventive treatments.
Marc paints a bird house during an art class at Infinity Adult Day Health Care Center in Westlake Village.
She found the website of the nonprofit Assn. for Frontotemporal Degeneration. Eventually she became a volunteer AFTD ambassador, speaking and advocating for families affected by the disease. In August, she posed for a group photograph at the state capitol with Emma Heming Willis and other FTD advocates who traveled to Sacramento to meet with state lawmakers.
All of it is a way of finding purpose in pain. FTD has dulled Marc’s emotional reactions, leaving Julia to carry the full weight of their grief.
“He grasps the impact, but somehow the emotion is buffered,” she said. “I lose it sometimes. I cry my eyes out, for sure. I feel the full emotional impact of it, in slow motion. . . . There’s no blunting it for me.”
Julia helps Marc up from a couch on the back patio of their home in Westlake.
These days the Pierrats rise around 6 a.m., eat the breakfast Julia prepares, and then Marc takes his first nap of the day (fatigue is a common FTD symptom). When he wakes around 9 a.m. Julia makes sure he uses the bathroom, and then drives him to a nearby adult daycare program where he does crafts and games until lunch. He sleeps for another few hours at home, spends two hours in the afternoon with a paid caregiver so that Julia can do errands or exercise, and then the couple eats dinner together before Marc beds down by 8 p.m.
When they are awake together, they go for walks around the neighborhood or to familiar cafes or parks. The hostility of the early disease has passed. They speak tenderly to one another.
At each sleep, Julia walks him upstairs to the bedroom they used to share. She tucks him in and gives him a kiss. At night she retires to a downstairs guestroom, because if they share a bed Marc will pat her constantly throughout the night to make sure she’s still there.
My clock’s ticking. I could die any day.
Do you feel like you’re going to die any day? Or do you feel healthy?
I feel kind of healthy, but I’m still worried. Because I have something that I can’t control inside of me.
About two years ago, Julia and Marc were on one of their daily walks when she realized they had already had their last conversation as the couple they once were, with both of them in full possession of their faculties. In one crucial sense, Marc was already gone.
Julia makes sure Marc is comfortable for his afternoon nap at their home in Westlake.
But in other ways, their connection remains.
“The love that we have is still completely there,” she said recently in the couple’s backyard, while Marc napped upstairs.
“When you’re married to someone and you’ve been with someone for so long, you almost have your own language between you. He and I still have that.”
She looked out over the potted succulents and winding stone pathways they had spent so many weekends tending together.
“A lot of our relationship is preserved in spite of it, which is just so interesting, [and] also makes it more heartbreaking,” she continued. “Because you know that if the disease plays out like it is expected to, you will just continue to slowly lose pieces.”
The average life expectancy for people with Marc’s type of FTD is five to seven years after diagnosis. Some go much sooner, and others live several years longer.
At the moment, all FTD variants lead to a similar end. Cognition and memory decline until language and self-care are no longer possible. The brain’s ability to regulate bodily functions, like swallowing and continence, erodes. Immobility sets in, and eventually, the heart beats for the last time.
But until then, people keep living. They find reasons to keep going and ways to love one another. The Pierrats do, anyway.
Marc and Julia visit horses at the Foxfield Riding School in Lake Sherwood.
On a recent morning, the couple strolled through a nearby equestrian school where their daughter once took lessons. Julia brought a baggie of rainbow carrot coins she’d sliced at home. She showed Marc how to feed the horses, as she does at every visit.
“Hold your hand completely flat, like I’m doing,” she said gently.
“I don’t want to lose a finger,” Marc said as a chestnut horse nuzzled his palm.
“You’re not going to lose a finger,” Julia assured him. “I won’t let that happen to you.”
Marc and Julia walk hand-in-hand after visiting horses at the Foxfield Riding School in Lake Sherwood.
If you are concerned about a loved one with dementia or need support after a diagnosis, contact the Assn. for Frontotemporal Dementia helpline at theaftd.org/aftd-helpline or (866) 507-7222 Monday through Friday from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. EST.
U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., facing pointed bipartisan questioning at a rancorous three-hour Senate committee hearing on Thursday, tried to defend his efforts to pull back COVID-19 vaccine recommendations and explain the turmoil he has created at federal health agencies.Kennedy said the fired CDC director was untrustworthy, stood by his past anti-vaccine rhetoric, and disputed reports of people saying they have had difficulty getting COVID-19 shots.A longtime leader in the anti-vaccine movement, Kennedy has made sweeping changes to agencies tasked with public health policy and scientific research by laying off thousands of workers, firing science advisers and remaking vaccine guidelines. The moves — some of which contradict assurances he made during his confirmation hearings — have rattled medical groups and officials in several Democratic-led states, which have responded with their own vaccine advice.Medical groups and several Democrats in Congress have called for Kennedy to be fired, and his exchanges with Democratic senators on the panel repeatedly devolved into shouting, from both sides.But some Republican senators also expressed unease with his changes to COVID-19 policies.The GOP senators noted that Kennedy said President Donald Trump deserved a Nobel Prize for the 2020 Operation Warp Speed initiative to quickly develop mRNA COVID-19 vaccines — and that he also had attacked the safety and continued use of those very shots.”I can’t tell where you are on Operation Warp Speed,” said Republican North Carolina Sen. Thom Tillis.Tillis and others asked him why the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was fired last week, less than a month into her tenure.Kennedy said she was dishonest, and that CDC leaders who left the agency last week in support of her deserved to be fired.He also criticized CDC recommendations during the COVID-19 pandemic tied to lockdowns and masking policies, and claimed — wrongly — that they “failed to do anything about the disease itself.””The people at CDC who oversaw that process, who put masks on our children, who closed our schools, are the people who will be leaving,” Kennedy said. He later said they deserved to be fired for not doing enough to control chronic disease.Democrats express hostility from the startThe Senate Finance Committee had called Kennedy to a hearing about his plans to “Make America Healthy Again,” but Democratic senators pressed Kennedy on his actions around vaccines.At the start of the hearing, Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon tried to have Kennedy formally sworn in as a witness, saying the HHS secretary has a history of lying to the committee. The committee’s chair, Sen. Mike Crapo of Idaho, denied the Democrat’s request, saying “the bottom line is we will let the secretary make his own case.”Wyden went on to attack Kennedy, saying he had “stacked the deck” of a vaccines advisory committee by replacing scientists with “skeptics and conspiracy theorists.”Last week, the Trump administration fired the CDC’s director — a Trump appointee who was confirmed by the Senate — less than a month into her tenure. Several top CDC leaders resigned in protest, leaving the agency in turmoil.The ousted director, Susan Monarez, wrote in The Wall Street Journal on Thursday that Kennedy was trying to weaken public health protections.”I was told to preapprove the recommendations of a vaccine advisory panel newly filled with people who have publicly expressed antivaccine rhetoric,” Monarez wrote. “It is imperative that the panel’s recommendations aren’t rubber-stamped but instead are rigorously and scientifically reviewed before being accepted or rejected.”Kennedy told senators he didn’t make such an ultimatum, though he did concede that he had ordered Monarez to fire career CDC scientists. Monarez’s attorneys later responded that she stood by the op-ed and “would repeat it all under oath.”Kennedy pushed back on concerns raised by multiple Republican senators, including Tillis and Sens. John Barrasso of Wyoming and Bill Cassidy of Louisiana. Both Barrasso and Cassidy are physicians.Shouting matches and hot comebacksThe health secretary had animated comebacks as Democratic senators pressed him on the effects of his words and actions.When Sen. Raphael Warnock, of Georgia, questioned Kennedy about his disparaging rhetoric about CDC employees before a deadly shooting at the agency this summer, Kennedy shot back: “Are you complicit in the assassination attempts on President Trump?”Kennedy called Sen. Ben Ray Lujan of New Mexico “ridiculous,” said he was “talking gibberish” and accused him of “not understanding how the world works” when Lujan asked Kennedy to pledge to share protocols of any research Kennedy was commissioning into autism and vaccines.He also engaged in a heated, loud exchanges with Sens. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Tina Smith of Minnesota.”I didn’t even hear your question,” Kennedy replied to Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto as the Nevada Democrat repeatedly asked what the agency was doing to lower drug costs for seniors.He also told Sen. Bernie Sanders that the Vermont independent was not “making any sense.”Some senators had their own choice words.”You’re interrupting me, and sir, you’re a charlatan. That’s what you are, ” said Sen. Maria Cantwell, a Washington Democrat. “The history on vaccines is very clear.”As the hearing neared its end, Kennedy pulled his cellphone from his pocket and then tapped and scrolled as Wyden asked about mifepristone, a drug used for medication abortion.Kennedy disputes COVID-19 dataIn May, Kennedy announced COVID-19 vaccines would no longer be recommended for healthy children and pregnant women, a move opposed by medical and public health groups.In June, he abruptly fired a panel of experts that had been advising the government on vaccine policy. He replaced them with a handpicked group that included several vaccine skeptics, and then shut the door to several doctors groups that had long helped form the committee’s recommendations.Kennedy has voiced distrust of research that showed the COVID-19 vaccines saved lives, and at Thursday’s hearing even cast doubt on statistics about how people died during the pandemic and on estimates about how many deaths were averted — statistics produced by the agencies he oversees.He said federal health policy would be based on gold standard science, but confessed that he wouldn’t necessarily wait for studies to be completed before taking action against, for example, potential causes of chronic illness.”We are not waiting for everything to come in. We are starting now,” he said.A number of medical groups say Kennedy can’t be counted on to make decisions based on robust medical evidence. In a statement Wednesday, the Infectious Diseases Society of America and 20 other medical and public health organizations issued a joint statement calling on him to resign.”Our country needs leadership that will promote open, honest dialogue, not disregard decades of lifesaving science, spread misinformation, reverse medical progress and decimate programs that keep us safe,” the statement said.Many of the nation’s leading public health and medical societies, including the American Medical Association, American Public Health Association and the American Academy of Pediatrics have decried Kennedy’s policies and warn they will drive up rates of vaccine-preventable diseases.___Stobbe reported from New York. Associated Press writer Mary Clare Jalonick contributed to this report.___The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
WASHINGTON —
U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., facing pointed bipartisan questioning at a rancorous three-hour Senate committee hearing on Thursday, tried to defend his efforts to pull back COVID-19 vaccine recommendations and explain the turmoil he has created at federal health agencies.
Kennedy said the fired CDC director was untrustworthy, stood by his past anti-vaccine rhetoric, and disputed reports of people saying they have had difficulty getting COVID-19 shots.
A longtime leader in the anti-vaccine movement, Kennedy has made sweeping changes to agencies tasked with public health policy and scientific research by laying off thousands of workers, firing science advisers and remaking vaccine guidelines. The moves — some of which contradict assurances he made during his confirmation hearings — have rattled medical groups and officials in several Democratic-led states, which have responded with their own vaccine advice.
Medical groups and several Democrats in Congress have called for Kennedy to be fired, and his exchanges with Democratic senators on the panel repeatedly devolved into shouting, from both sides.
But some Republican senators also expressed unease with his changes to COVID-19 policies.
The GOP senators noted that Kennedy said President Donald Trump deserved a Nobel Prize for the 2020 Operation Warp Speed initiative to quickly develop mRNA COVID-19 vaccines — and that he also had attacked the safety and continued use of those very shots.
“I can’t tell where you are on Operation Warp Speed,” said Republican North Carolina Sen. Thom Tillis.
Tillis and others asked him why the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was fired last week, less than a month into her tenure.
Kennedy said she was dishonest, and that CDC leaders who left the agency last week in support of her deserved to be fired.
He also criticized CDC recommendations during the COVID-19 pandemic tied to lockdowns and masking policies, and claimed — wrongly — that they “failed to do anything about the disease itself.”
“The people at CDC who oversaw that process, who put masks on our children, who closed our schools, are the people who will be leaving,” Kennedy said. He later said they deserved to be fired for not doing enough to control chronic disease.
Democrats express hostility from the start
The Senate Finance Committee had called Kennedy to a hearing about his plans to “Make America Healthy Again,” but Democratic senators pressed Kennedy on his actions around vaccines.
At the start of the hearing, Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon tried to have Kennedy formally sworn in as a witness, saying the HHS secretary has a history of lying to the committee. The committee’s chair, Sen. Mike Crapo of Idaho, denied the Democrat’s request, saying “the bottom line is we will let the secretary make his own case.”
Wyden went on to attack Kennedy, saying he had “stacked the deck” of a vaccines advisory committee by replacing scientists with “skeptics and conspiracy theorists.”
Last week, the Trump administration fired the CDC’s director — a Trump appointee who was confirmed by the Senate — less than a month into her tenure. Several top CDC leaders resigned in protest, leaving the agency in turmoil.
The ousted director, Susan Monarez, wrote in The Wall Street Journal on Thursday that Kennedy was trying to weaken public health protections.
“I was told to preapprove the recommendations of a vaccine advisory panel newly filled with people who have publicly expressed antivaccine rhetoric,” Monarez wrote. “It is imperative that the panel’s recommendations aren’t rubber-stamped but instead are rigorously and scientifically reviewed before being accepted or rejected.”
Kennedy told senators he didn’t make such an ultimatum, though he did concede that he had ordered Monarez to fire career CDC scientists. Monarez’s attorneys later responded that she stood by the op-ed and “would repeat it all under oath.”
Kennedy pushed back on concerns raised by multiple Republican senators, including Tillis and Sens. John Barrasso of Wyoming and Bill Cassidy of Louisiana. Both Barrasso and Cassidy are physicians.
Shouting matches and hot comebacks
The health secretary had animated comebacks as Democratic senators pressed him on the effects of his words and actions.
When Sen. Raphael Warnock, of Georgia, questioned Kennedy about his disparaging rhetoric about CDC employees before a deadly shooting at the agency this summer, Kennedy shot back: “Are you complicit in the assassination attempts on President Trump?”
Kennedy called Sen. Ben Ray Lujan of New Mexico “ridiculous,” said he was “talking gibberish” and accused him of “not understanding how the world works” when Lujan asked Kennedy to pledge to share protocols of any research Kennedy was commissioning into autism and vaccines.
He also engaged in a heated, loud exchanges with Sens. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Tina Smith of Minnesota.
“I didn’t even hear your question,” Kennedy replied to Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto as the Nevada Democrat repeatedly asked what the agency was doing to lower drug costs for seniors.
He also told Sen. Bernie Sanders that the Vermont independent was not “making any sense.”
Some senators had their own choice words.
“You’re interrupting me, and sir, you’re a charlatan. That’s what you are, ” said Sen. Maria Cantwell, a Washington Democrat. “The history on vaccines is very clear.”
As the hearing neared its end, Kennedy pulled his cellphone from his pocket and then tapped and scrolled as Wyden asked about mifepristone, a drug used for medication abortion.
Kennedy disputes COVID-19 data
In May, Kennedy announced COVID-19 vaccines would no longer be recommended for healthy children and pregnant women, a move opposed by medical and public health groups.
In June, he abruptly fired a panel of experts that had been advising the government on vaccine policy. He replaced them with a handpicked group that included several vaccine skeptics, and then shut the door to several doctors groups that had long helped form the committee’s recommendations.
Kennedy has voiced distrust of research that showed the COVID-19 vaccines saved lives, and at Thursday’s hearing even cast doubt on statistics about how people died during the pandemic and on estimates about how many deaths were averted — statistics produced by the agencies he oversees.
He said federal health policy would be based on gold standard science, but confessed that he wouldn’t necessarily wait for studies to be completed before taking action against, for example, potential causes of chronic illness.
“We are not waiting for everything to come in. We are starting now,” he said.
A number of medical groups say Kennedy can’t be counted on to make decisions based on robust medical evidence. In a statement Wednesday, the Infectious Diseases Society of America and 20 other medical and public health organizations issued a joint statement calling on him to resign.
“Our country needs leadership that will promote open, honest dialogue, not disregard decades of lifesaving science, spread misinformation, reverse medical progress and decimate programs that keep us safe,” the statement said.
Many of the nation’s leading public health and medical societies, including the American Medical Association, American Public Health Association and the American Academy of Pediatrics have decried Kennedy’s policies and warn they will drive up rates of vaccine-preventable diseases.
___
Stobbe reported from New York. Associated Press writer Mary Clare Jalonick contributed to this report.
___
The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
The U.S. has confirmed a rarehuman case of New World screwworm, a flesh-eating parasite that typically infects livestock but can be deadly to people too.
A Maryland resident suffered an infestation of the screwworm after traveling to El Salvador, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) told TIME in an email. Reuters first reported the news. Central America is currently grappling with outbreaks of the destructive pest, which have been threatening livestock and infecting people. The U.S. embassy in Nicaragua said in July that more than 120 human cases of screwworm infestation had been reported in the last year.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) confirmed the Maryland case on Aug. 4 after reviewing images of the insect causing the infestation, HHS said.
“This is the first human case of travel-associated New World screwworm [infestation] from an outbreak-affected country identified in the United States,” the agency said. “Currently, the risk to public health in the United States from this introduction is very low.”
New World screwworm is a type of fly that lays eggs in the open wounds or mucous membranes, such as nasal passages, of mammals and birds. When the eggs hatch, maggots emerge, which then feast on healthy tissue, according to the CDC. The name “screwworm” refers to the way the maggots burrow into flesh with their sharp mouth hooks.
The screwworms can cause extensive tissue damage and bacterial superinfection, the CDC says. Infestations are very painful and can be deadly if not treated promptly. There is no approved human treatment for screwworm infestations. Maggots, which can number in the hundreds, have to be removed manually by a medical provider.
Limited information has been made public about the Maryland resident who suffered the screwworm infestation, but state health officials said the person has recovered, The Herald-Mail reported. A Maryland health department spokesman told the outlet that there was no indication that the person’s infestation had spread to other people or animals.
News of the Maryland case comes just days after the U.S. government announced steps to prevent screwworm outbreaks and protect the U.S. cattle and livestock industry from the pest. These measures include allowing the emergency use of veterinary drugs to treat or prevent infestations in animals and the building of a sterile fly facility in Texas. New World screwworm was eradicated from the U.S. in the 1960s after the release of swarms of sterilized male screwworm flies that mated with wild female screwworms, which then produced infertile eggs.
The same technique was used to control a small screwworm outbreak in Florida in 2017.
Though screwworm infections in people are rare in the U.S., there have been a handful of cases in recent years involving travelers returning to the country from areas where the pest is endemic. In 2023, a traveler with a surgical wound returned to Arkansas with a screwworm infestation after visiting Argentina and Brazil, according to the CDC. Last year, a traveler returned to Florida with an infestation they had acquired on vacation in the Dominican Republic.
A person in California recently tested positive for plague, according to El Dorado County health officials. The individual has been treated and is recovering at home.
About seven people get infected by the bacterium responsible for plague, Yersinia pestis, each year, says the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Most U.S. cases occur in western states including Arizona, California, Colorado, New Mexico, and Nevada; in July, an Arizona man died from plague.
Here’s what to know about plague in the U.S.
How do people get plague?
People can contract plague after being bitten by infected fleas or touching infected animals like rats, mice, squirrels, chipmunks, prairie dogs, rabbits, mountain lions, ferrets, and even dogs and cats.
El Dorado County health officials said in a statement that the person was likely infected by a flea while camping. “Plague is naturally present in many parts of California, including higher elevation areas of El Dorado County,” said the county’s acting director of public health, Kyle Fliflet, in the statement.
What are the symptoms of plague?
There are three types of plague: bubonic, which caused widespread death throughout the world in the 14th century; septicemic, which occurs when the infection spreads to the blood; and pneumonic, when the infection burrows into the lungs. All forms cause fever and weakness, and more than 80% of plague cases in the U.S. have been the bubonic form.
Dr. Scott Roberts, medical director of infection prevention at Yale New Haven Health System and assistant professor of infectious diseases at Yale School of Medicine, says that bubonic plague is centered in the lymph nodes; the bacteria travel to the closest lymph nodes in the body from where an infection-trigging bite occurs, which leads to an inflammatory reaction including swelling of the nodes. Plague can then progress into the blood, in which case it becomes septicemic. Finally, from the bloodstream, the bacteria can spread to the lungs, leading to pneumonic plague, which can cause shortness of breath and chest pain.
Is plague contagious?
Only pneumonic plague can be spread from one infected person to another, since the bacteria can be transmitted in droplets that are released when a person sneezes or coughs. This can cause disease in as little as a day after transmission.
Therefore, it’s “not a hard-and-fast rule” that plague progresses from bubonic to septicemic to pneumonic forms, says Roberts. For example, a health care worker in close contact with someone with pneumonic plague could inhale infectious particles from the patient; those particles could then travel directly to their lungs and result in pneumonic plague.
He says that it’s not entirely clear why some people will recover from bubonic plague, while others continue to progress to more severe disease. Some of the usual factors—such as weaker immune systems in the very young and the elderly—are likely responsible, but the driving factors aren’t well known.
What is the treatment for plague?
Because it’s caused by a bacterial infection, plague can be treated with antibiotics. But it’s important to start treatment as early as possible; left untreated, plague can be fatal.
Do animals infected with plague get sick?
Some species do get sick from the bacterial infection, but others appear to be able to manage low-level, mild infections, which makes them reservoirs for the bacterium. Cats in particular seem to be susceptible to infection, making them potential transmitters to people.
In some regions of the world where the bacteria are more common, Yersinia pestis can cause large numbers of animals to die off, which can make people in the area even more vulnerable. “When the animals die off in an outbreak, the fleas try to find warm-blooded hosts, and those are likely human hosts,” says Roberts. “So sometimes animal die-offs in a region can precede human cases.”
How can I protect myself from plague?
Health officials urge people to avoid feeding wild animals, especially rodents and squirrels, and to never touch sick animals. Using insect repellent when outdoors, especially while camping or hiking, can also reduce the risk of being bitten by infected fleas. For dogs and cats, it’s important to protect them by using flea-control products and ensure they aren’t exploring rodent burrows.
Is there a vaccine for plague?
Older versions exist, but neither the World Health Organization nor U.S. health officials recommend them. The U.S. stopped making the vaccine available in 1999 after safety concerns and studies that questioned its effectiveness. Researchers are, however, exploring ways to develop more effective vaccines.
It makes sense to approach some marketing efforts with skepticism. Scams, artificial intelligence and deceptive social media posts are common, with people you don’t know seeking to profit from your behavior.
But should people extend this same skepticism to pediatricians who advise vaccines for children? Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said financial bonuses are driving such recommendations.
“Doctors are being paid to vaccinate, not to evaluate,” Kennedy said in an Aug. 8 video posted on X. “They’re pressured to follow the money, not the science.”
A close look at the process by which vaccines are administered shows pediatric practices make little profit — and sometimes lose money — on vaccines. Four experienced pediatricians told us evidence-based science and medicine drives pediatricians’ childhood vaccination recommendations. Years of research and vaccine safety data also bolster these recommendations.
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Dr. Christoph Diasio, a pediatrician at Sandhills Pediatrics in North Carolina, said the argument that doctors profit off of vaccines is counterintuitive.
“If it was really about all the money, it would be better for kids to be sick so you’d see more sick children and get to take care of more sick children, right?” he said.
Vials of the MMR measles mumps and rubella virus vaccine sit in a refrigerator with other medicine Tuesday, Feb. 25, 2025, in Lubbock, Texas. (AP)
Is your pediatrician making profits off childhood vaccines?
It costs money to stock, store and administer a vaccine.
Pediatricians sometimes store thousands of dollars worth of vaccines in specialized medical-grade refrigeration units, which can be expensive. They pay to insure vaccines in case anything happens to them. Some practices buy thermostats that monitor vaccines’ temperature and backup generators to run the refrigerators in the event of a power outage. They also pay nursing staff to administer vaccines.
“Vaccines are hugely expensive,” said Dr. Jesse Hackell, a retired general pediatrician and chair of the American Academy of Pediatrics’ committee on pediatric workforce. “We lay out a lot of money up front.”
When a child with private insurance gets a vaccine, the pediatrician is paid for the vaccine product and for its administration, Hackell said.
Many pediatricians also participate in a federal program that provides vaccines for free to eligible children whose parents can’t afford them. Participating in that program isn’t profitable because even though they get the vaccines for free, pediatricians store and insure them, and Medicaid reimbursements often don’t cover the costs. But many choose to participate and provide those vaccines anyway because it’s valuable for patients, Hackell said.
When discussing vaccine recommendations, pediatricians don’t make different recommendations based on how or if a child is insured, he said.
Dr. Jason Terk, a pediatrician at Cook Children’s Health Care System in Texas, said a practice’s ability to make a profit on vaccines depends on its specific situation.
Terk’s practice is part of a larger pediatric health care system, which means it doesn’t lose money on vaccines and makes a small profit, he said. Some small independent practices might not be able to secure terms with insurance companies that adequately pay for vaccines.
Dr. Suzanne Berman, a pediatrician at Plateau Pediatrics, a rural health clinic in Crossville, Tennessee, said that 75% of her practice’s patients have Medicaid and qualify for the Vaccines for Children program, which the practice loses money on. When she factored in private insurance companies’ payments, she estimated her practice roughly breaks even on vaccination.
“The goal is to not lose money on vaccines,” Terk said.
An immunization poster is seen outside of an examination room where Tammy Camp, left, and Summer Davies, both with the Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center, speak to The Associated Press in Lubbock, Texas, Feb. 25, 2025. (AP)
So what’s driving your pediatrician’s vaccine recommendations?
Pediatricians typically recommend parents vaccinate their children following either the American Academy of Pediatrics’ or the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s recommended vaccine schedules.
Diasio said the driving force behind pediatric vaccine recommendations is straightforward: Trained physicians have seen kids die of vaccine-preventable diseases.
“I saw kids who died of invasive pneumococcal disease, which is what the Prevnar vaccine protects against,” Diasio said. “We remember those kids; we wouldn’t wish that on anyone.”
Still, your pediatrician will consider your child’s health holistically before making vaccine recommendations.
For example, a few children — less than 1% of all children — have medical reasons they cannot receive a particular vaccine, Hackell said. This could include children with severe allergies to certain vaccine components or children who are immunosuppressed and could be at higher risk from live virus vaccines such as the measles or chickenpox vaccine.
“When people have questions about whether their kids should get vaccines, they really need to talk to their child’s doctor,” Diasio said. “Don’t get lost down a rabbit hole of the internet or on social media, which is programmed and refined to do whatever it can to keep you online longer.”
We all know that influenza is a common and serious viral infection, but it’s good to be reminded ahead of the upcoming flu season, which typically starts in October.Related video above: How the new at-home flu vaccine worksThere were an estimated 47 million to 82 million flu illnesses in the United States between October 2024 and May 2025, resulting in between 610,000 and 1.3 million hospitalizations, according to preliminary estimated ranges from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.Most fatalities occur in older individuals, but children can also die from the flu. The CDC estimates that flu-related deaths in children have generally ranged from 37 to 199 deaths each flu season.Now, a new study in JAMA has examined a rare but severe complication that can occur in children who contract the flu. This complication, called acute necrotizing encephalopathy, or ANE, carries a mortality rate of 27% despite intensive care and treatment, according to the new research.I wanted to learn more about complications associated with the flu, specifically about ANE, what researchers learned about children with ANE, and how ANE can be prevented. And what should parents and families know ahead of the next flu season?To help with these questions, I spoke with CNN wellness expert Dr. Leana Wen. Wen is an emergency physician and clinical associate professor at George Washington University. She previously was Baltimore’s health commissioner.CNN: What are complications associated with the flu? Who is most at risk?Dr. Leana Wen: Most people who have the flu will recover without complications. They may go through days or even weeks having fever, runny nose, headache and fatigue, but these symptoms generally resolve without long-term consequences.Some people, though, experience complications that could result in severe illness or even death. These complications include pneumonia, sinus and ear infections, brain and neurological conditions, and the worsening of existing medical problems such as heart and kidney disease.People at higher risk for flu complications include people 65 years and older, children younger than 2 and pregnant women. In addition, there are a variety of chronic medical conditions that increase risk, including chronic lung disease, diabetes, heart disease, liver disorders, kidney dysfunction and any condition that makes you immunocompromised.CNN: What exactly is ANE, and how common is it?Wen: ANE is a rare but very serious condition that occurs as a result of influenza infection. It causes inflammation and swelling in the brain, and it can lead to seizures, impaired consciousness, coma, long-term brain damage and death.It’s not known precisely how common this condition is or whether the incidence has been changing in recent years. It can also occur after other viral illnesses, but it has been most closely associated with influenza, and most often in children.CNN: What did researchers in this study find out about children with ANE?Wen: They sought information from U.S. pediatric hospitals and public health agencies regarding cases of pediatric ANE treated between October 2023 and May 2025. In total, they included 41 children with influenza-related ANE.The median age of these children was 5, and about 3 out of 4 were previously healthy. Importantly, just 16% of those for whom vaccination history was available had received the flu vaccine that season.All these patients became very ill, and all developed encephalopathy, or altered brain function. Sixty-eight percent had seizures. Most had abnormalities in their platelet count, liver enzymes and spinal fluid composition.Most patients received a combination of therapies, including steroids and immunoglobulins. Out of 41 patients in the analysis, 11 died. The median period between symptom onset and death was just three days; most of the children who died had such severe brain swelling that the pressure forced the brain downward, crushing vital areas that control breathing and heart function. All but one of the children who died had not received the latest flu vaccine. Among the survivors included in the analysis, 63% had at least moderate disability.The first takeaway for me is that ANE, while rare, is extremely serious, with high morbidity and mortality. It can be deadly within a short period of time, which means prompt diagnosis and treatment are essential. Second, most children with ANE were previously healthy. Third, while some vaccinated children also became ill, most of those with ANE and nearly all of those who died had not received the flu vaccine that season.CNN: How can ANE be prevented?Wen: It is not known why most people who contract flu never develop ANE, but some do. It’s also not known whether there is anything that can be done once someone contracts the flu to prevent ANE.What is known is that getting the flu vaccine reduces the chance of contracting the flu and of becoming severely ill as a result. This JAMA study also suggests that vaccination reduces the likelihood of developing ANE and of dying from it. The article and an accompanying editorial emphasize the importance of everyone being up-to-date with the flu vaccine.CNN: What else should parents and families know ahead of the next flu season?Wen: Influenza is a common illness that can have serious complications, including in previously healthy individuals. Getting the flu vaccine is helpful both for reducing the chance of contracting the flu and for lowering the likelihood of developing complications. The CDC recommends the flu vaccine for virtually everyone 6 months and older. Parents should be sure that their children receive the flu vaccine in the fall and that they and others in the family are vaccinated, too.Of course, flu is not the only contagious respiratory illness that can spread in fall and winter months. It’s important for people who have fever and active respiratory symptoms to stay away from others, especially those most vulnerable to severe illness. Good hand hygiene can lower the risk of spreading contagious diseases, as can taking precautions like masking in indoor crowded settings.
We all know that influenza is a common and serious viral infection, but it’s good to be reminded ahead of the upcoming flu season, which typically starts in October.
Related video above: How the new at-home flu vaccine works
There were an estimated 47 million to 82 million flu illnesses in the United States between October 2024 and May 2025, resulting in between 610,000 and 1.3 million hospitalizations, according to preliminary estimated ranges from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Most fatalities occur in older individuals, but children can also die from the flu. The CDC estimates that flu-related deaths in children have generally ranged from 37 to 199 deaths each flu season.
Now, a new study in JAMA has examined a rare but severe complication that can occur in children who contract the flu. This complication, called acute necrotizing encephalopathy, or ANE, carries a mortality rate of 27% despite intensive care and treatment, according to the new research.
I wanted to learn more about complications associated with the flu, specifically about ANE, what researchers learned about children with ANE, and how ANE can be prevented. And what should parents and families know ahead of the next flu season?
To help with these questions, I spoke with CNN wellness expert Dr. Leana Wen. Wen is an emergency physician and clinical associate professor at George Washington University. She previously was Baltimore’s health commissioner.
CNN:What are complications associated with the flu? Who is most at risk?
Dr. Leana Wen: Most people who have the flu will recover without complications. They may go through days or even weeks having fever, runny nose, headache and fatigue, but these symptoms generally resolve without long-term consequences.
Some people, though, experience complications that could result in severe illness or even death. These complications include pneumonia, sinus and ear infections, brain and neurological conditions, and the worsening of existing medical problems such as heart and kidney disease.
People at higher risk for flu complications include people 65 years and older, children younger than 2 and pregnant women. In addition, there are a variety of chronic medical conditions that increase risk, including chronic lung disease, diabetes, heart disease, liver disorders, kidney dysfunction and any condition that makes you immunocompromised.
CNN: What exactly is ANE, and how common is it?
Wen: ANE is a rare but very serious condition that occurs as a result of influenza infection. It causes inflammation and swelling in the brain, and it can lead to seizures, impaired consciousness, coma, long-term brain damage and death.
It’s not known precisely how common this condition is or whether the incidence has been changing in recent years. It can also occur after other viral illnesses, but it has been most closely associated with influenza, and most often in children.
CNN: What did researchers in this study find out about children with ANE?
Wen:They sought information from U.S. pediatric hospitals and public health agencies regarding cases of pediatric ANE treated between October 2023 and May 2025. In total, they included 41 children with influenza-related ANE.
The median age of these children was 5, and about 3 out of 4 were previously healthy. Importantly, just 16% of those for whom vaccination history was available had received the flu vaccine that season.
All these patients became very ill, and all developed encephalopathy, or altered brain function. Sixty-eight percent had seizures. Most had abnormalities in their platelet count, liver enzymes and spinal fluid composition.
Most patients received a combination of therapies, including steroids and immunoglobulins. Out of 41 patients in the analysis, 11 died. The median period between symptom onset and death was just three days; most of the children who died had such severe brain swelling that the pressure forced the brain downward, crushing vital areas that control breathing and heart function.
All but one of the children who died had not received the latest flu vaccine. Among the survivors included in the analysis, 63% had at least moderate disability.
The first takeaway for me is that ANE, while rare, is extremely serious, with high morbidity and mortality. It can be deadly within a short period of time, which means prompt diagnosis and treatment are essential. Second, most children with ANE were previously healthy. Third, while some vaccinated children also became ill, most of those with ANE and nearly all of those who died had not received the flu vaccine that season.
CNN: How can ANE be prevented?
Wen: It is not known why most people who contract flu never develop ANE, but some do. It’s also not known whether there is anything that can be done once someone contracts the flu to prevent ANE.
What is known is that getting the flu vaccine reduces the chance of contracting the flu and of becoming severely ill as a result. This JAMA study also suggests that vaccination reduces the likelihood of developing ANE and of dying from it. The article and an accompanying editorial emphasize the importance of everyone being up-to-date with the flu vaccine.
CNN: What else should parents and families know ahead of the next flu season?
Wen: Influenza is a common illness that can have serious complications, including in previously healthy individuals. Getting the flu vaccine is helpful both for reducing the chance of contracting the flu and for lowering the likelihood of developing complications. The CDC recommends the flu vaccine for virtually everyone 6 months and older. Parents should be sure that their children receive the flu vaccine in the fall and that they and others in the family are vaccinated, too.
Of course, flu is not the only contagious respiratory illness that can spread in fall and winter months. It’s important for people who have fever and active respiratory symptoms to stay away from others, especially those most vulnerable to severe illness. Good hand hygiene can lower the risk of spreading contagious diseases, as can taking precautions like masking in indoor crowded settings.
Texas health officials declared on Monday that the measles outbreak that has sickened more than 700 people in the state and killed two children is over—though they warned that the threat posed by the disease is not.
It’s been more than 42 days since a new measles case has been reported in the West Texas outbreak that began in late January, according to the Texas Department of State Health Services (DSHS). Public health experts generally consider that to be the marker of the end of a measles outbreak, DSHS said, because 42 days is double the maximum amount of time it can take for a person to show symptoms of measles after being exposed to the virus.
There have been 762 confirmed measles cases in the state this year, as of Monday, according to DSHS. The outbreak began in undervaccinated Mennonite communities in Gaines County, and was later linked to measles cases in other states, including New Mexico and Kansas. Two unvaccinated girls in Texas died of measles-related causes earlier this year.
In announcing the end of the Texas outbreak, DSHS applauded the state’s health care professionals, many of whom had never seen a measles case before this year, for their work. But the department also warned: “The end of this outbreak does not mean the threat of measles is over.”
Measles is highly contagious and can be fatal, though it is vaccine preventable through the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine. The disease was declared eliminated from the U.S. in 2000, an achievement public health experts largely attributed to a successful vaccination program. But MMR vaccination rates have declined in recent years, and measles cases have increased. This year, largely due to the Texas outbreak, the number of measles cases hit a 33-year record high in the U.S.
As of Aug. 5, there have been 1,356 confirmed measles cases across the country this year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Of those, 92% were people who were either unvaccinated or their vaccination status was unknown. In total, there have been three confirmed measles deaths this year: the two unvaccinated children in Texas, and one unvaccinated adult in New Mexico. Before this year, the last time a person was known to have died of measles-related causes in the U.S. was in 2015.
Dr. Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, says that it’s reasonable to say that the current Texas outbreak has subsided based on the available data. But he also expresses concern that the official figures are undercounts. Many people in the Mennonite community typically don’t seek medical care, he says, so it’s possible that some people contracted measles who public health officials weren’t aware of. Offit also criticizes the Trump Administration’s cuts to the CDC, which he worries could have affected the agency’s ability to track cases.
Historically, Offit says, measles cases have peaked in the winter months and abated in the spring and summer months, so he fears that the numbers will increase again in a few months.
“I don’t think this is the end at all,” Offit says. “This should be a warning to parents that, if they haven’t vaccinated their children, that now’s the time.”
Concerns about the potential consequences of declining vaccination rates extend beyond measles, as well. Because measles is one of the most contagious viruses, it’s often the first to experience a resurgence when vaccination rates fall, public health experts have told TIME, cautioning that the rise in cases could be a sign that other diseases may become more prevalent too.
Offit also says that getting measles causes “immune amnesia,” meaning that after being infected with the disease, a person is more susceptible to other pathogens—even ones that the person’s immune system was able to fight off before.
Offit calls the Texas outbreak “a warning shot.” The outbreak, he says, showed that many parents have chosen not to vaccinate their children against measles—and the consequences of that.
“On the one hand it’s fine to say that the fear that we all have now can be relaxed by the fact that the virus doesn’t appear to be spreading now [in Texas],” Offit says. “But really, I think the messaging should be one of: that was a warning shot, and several people, including two little girls, paid the price.”
“We can’t let that happen again,” he continues. “It’s unconscionable to have a child die of something that is entirely preventable.”
Their medical research focuses on potentially lifesaving breakthroughs in cancer treatment, and developing tools to more easily diagnose debilitating diseases. Their studies in mathematics could make online systems more robust and secure.
But as the academic year opens, the work of UCLA’s professors in these and many other fields has been imperiled by the Trump administration’s suspension of $584 million in grant funding, which University of California President James B. Milliken called a “death knell” to its transformative research.
The freeze came after a July 29 U.S. Department of Justice finding that the university had violated the civil rights of Jewish and Israeli students by providing an inadequate response to alleged antisemitism they faced after the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack.
The fight over the funding stoppage intensified Friday after the Trump administration demanded that UCLA pay a $1-billion fine, among other concessions, to resolve the accusations — and California Gov. Gavin Newsom said the state will sue, calling the proposal “extortion.”
Amid heightened tensions in Westwood, thousands of university academics are in limbo. In total, at least 800 grants, mostly from the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health, have been frozen.
UCLA scholars described days of confusion as they struggle to understand how the loss of grants would affect their work and scramble to uncover new funding sources — or roles that would ensure their continued pay, or that of their colleagues. While professors still have jobs and paychecks to draw on, many others, including graduate students, rely on grant funding for their salaries, tuition and healthcare.
At least for the moment, though, several academics told The Times that their work had not yet be interrupted. So far, no layoffs have been announced.
Sydney Campbell, a UCLA cancer researcher whose grant funding has been cut, stands inside the Biomedical Sciences Research building at UCLA.
(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)
Sydney Campbell, a pancreatic cancer researcher and postdoctoral scholar at UCLA’s David Geffen School of Medicine, said her work — which aims to understand how diet affects the disease — is continuing for now. She has an independent fellowship that “hopefully will protect the majority of my salary.” But others, she said, don’t have that luxury.
“It is absolutely going to affect people’s livelihoods. I already know of people … with families who are having to take pay cuts almost immediately,” said Campbell, who works for a lab that has lost two National Institutes of Health grants, including one that funds her research.
Pancreatic cancer is among the most deadly of cancers, but Campbell’s work could lead to a better understanding of it, paving the way for more robust prophylactic programs — and treatment plans — that may ultimately help tame the scourge.
“Understanding how diet can impact cancer development could lead to preventive strategies that we can recommend to patients in the future,” said Campbell, a member of the UAW 4811 academic workers union. “Right now we can’t effectively do that because we don’t have the information about the underlying biology. Our studies will help us actually be able to make recommendations based on science.”
Campbell’s work — and that of many others at UCLA — is potentially groundbreaking. But it could soon be put on hold.
“We have people who don’t know if they’re going to be able to purchase experimental materials for the rest of the month,” she said.
Fears of existential crisis
For some, the cuts have triggered something close to an existential crisis.
After professor Dino Di Carlo, chair of the UCLA Samueli Bioengineering Department, learned that about 20 grants were suspended there — including four in his lab worth about $1 million — he felt a profound sadness. He said he doesn’t know why his grants were frozen, and there may not be money to pay his six researchers.
So Di Carlo, who is researching diagnostics for Lyme and other tick-borne diseases, took to LinkedIn, where he penned a post invoking the Franz Kafka novel “The Trial.” The unsettling tale is about a man named Josef K. who wakes up and finds himself under arrest and then on trial — with no understanding of the situation.
“Like Josef K., the people actually affected — the public, young scientists, patients waiting for better treatments and diagnostic tools — are left asking: What crime did we commit?” wrote Di Carlo. “They are being judged by a system that no longer explains itself.”
The LinkedIn post quickly attracted dozens of comments and more than 1,000 other responses. Di Carlo, who has been working to find jobs for researchers who depend on paychecks that come from now-suspended grants, said he appreciated the support.
But, goodwill has its limits. “It doesn’t pay the rent for a student this month,” he said.
Di Carlo’s research is partly focused on developing an at-home test that would detect Lyme and other tick-borne diseases, which are on the rise. Because no such product is currently approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, he said, people who’ve experienced a tick bite have to wait for lab results to confirm their infection.
“This delay in diagnosis prevents timely treatment, allowing the disease to progress and potentially lead to long-term health issues,” he said. “A rapid, point-of-care test would allow individuals to receive immediate results, enabling early treatment with antibiotics when the disease is most easily addressed, significantly reducing the risk of chronic symptoms and improving health outcomes.”
Di Carlo lamented what he called “a continual assault on the scientific community” by the Trump administration, which has canceled billions of dollars in National Institutes of Health funding for universities across the country.
It “just … hasn’t let up,” Di Carlo said.
Scrambling for funds
Some professors who’ve lost grants have spent long hours scrambling to secure new sources of funding.
Di Carlo said he was in meetings all week to identify which researchers are affected by the cuts, and to try to figure out, “Can we support those students?” He has also sought to determine whether some could be moved to other projects that still have funding, or be given teaching assistant positions, among other options.
He’s not alone in those efforts. Mathematics professor Terence Tao also has lost a grant worth about $750,000. But Tao said that he was more distressed by the freezing of a $25-million grant for UCLA’s Institute for Pure and Applied Mathematics. The funding loss for the institute, where Tao is director of special projects, is “actually quite existential,” he said, because the grant is “needed to fund operations” there.
Tao, who is the James and Carol Collins chair in the College of Letters and Sciences, said the pain goes beyond the loss of funds. “The abruptness — and basically the lack of due process in general — just compounds the damage,” said Tao. “We got no notice.”
A luminary in his field, Tao conducts research that examines, in part, whether a group of numbers are random or structured. His work could lead to advances in cryptography that may eventually make online systems — such as those used for financial transactions — more secure.
“It is important to do this kind of research — if we don’t, it’s possible that an adversary, for example, could actually discover these weaknesses that we are not looking for at all,” Tao said. “So you do need this extra theoretical confirmation that things that you think are working actually do work as intended, [and you need to] also explore the negative space of what doesn’t work.”
Tao said he’s been heartened by donations that the mathematics institute has received from private donors in recent days — about $100,000 so far.
“We are scrambling for short-term funding because we need to just keep the lights on for the next few months,” said Tao.
Rafael Jaime, president of United Auto Workers Local 4811, which represents 48,000 academic workers within the University of California — including about 8,000 at UCLA — said he was not aware of any workers who haven’t been paid so far, but that the issue could come to a head at the end of August.
He said that the UC system “should do everything that it can to ensure that workers aren’t left without pay.”
What comes next?
A major stressor for academics: the uncertainty.
Some researchers whose grants were suspended said they have not received much guidance from UCLA on a path forward. Some of that anxiety was vented on Zoom calls last week, including a UCLA-wide call attended by about 3,000 faculty members.
UCLA administrators said they are exploring stopgap options, including potential emergency “bridge” funding to grantees to pay researchers or keep up labs such as those that use rodents as subjects.
Some UCLA academics worried about a brain drain. Di Carlo said that undergraduate students he advises have begun asking for his advice on relocating to universities abroad for graduate school.
“This has been the first time that I’ve seen undergraduate students that have asked about foreign universities for their graduate studies,” he said. “I hear, ‘What about Switzerland? … What about University of Tokyo?’ This assault on science is making the students think that this is not the place for them.”
But arguably researchers’ most pressing concern is continuing their work.
Campbell explained that she has personally been affected by pancreatic cancer — she lost someone close to her to it. She and her peers do the research “for the families” who’ve also been touched by the disease.
“That the work that’s already in progress has the chance of being stopped in some way is really disappointing,” she said. “Not just for me, but for all those patients I could potentially help.”
