ReportWire

Tag: public health

  • Republicans Have a MAHA Problem. Democrats See an Opportunity

    Zen Honeycutt and droves of other supporters of the “Make America Healthy Again” movement cast their votes for President Donald Trump last year after hearing the promises that he and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., now the U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services, made about cracking down on pesticides and chemicals in food. 

    “Many people voted for Trump because he talked about pesticides and chronic diseases in the same sentence on the campaign trail,” says Honeycutt, the founder and executive director of Moms Across America, a group linked to the MAHA movement. “It was historic. Millions of mothers and fathers heard that and we cheered and cried. We thought, ‘They’re actually going to do something about pesticides in the food supply.’” 

    But as the Administration has floundered in making real progress on these issues—and some Republicans in Congress push back against their agenda—MAHA supporters are voicing their frustration, and with it, a threat to take their votes elsewhere.

    “We will not ‘Make America Healthy Again’ if we don’t get toxins out of the food supply,” says Honeycutt, a close ally of Kennedy’s. “I am adamant, and I am speaking up. At this point, I do not care if it ruffles feathers.” 

    Honeycutt and other “MAHA moms” were disappointed by the MAHA commission report released in September that they say lacked meaningful regulatory action on pesticides and ultra-processed foods and watered down earlier proposals to overhaul the food system. 

    They say they are also dismayed by the Trump Administration’s moves to speed up pesticide approvals and Republicans’ support for a new proposal that they say would protect pesticide 

    companies from consumer lawsuits. 

    Kelly Ryerson, a MAHA supporter and advocate for pesticide regulation, says she has been surprised that more Republican lawmakers haven’t embraced MAHA’s food-related priorities. “They haven’t woken up to the fact that this is a really important issue to a lot of Republican voters. It’s going to be a big problem for them in the midterms,” she says.

    A fight over pesticide legislation

    A majority of American voters said in an August poll that they were aware of MAHA. Among Republican respondents aware of MAHA, most viewed the movement favorably, and some 90% said the movement reflected their values about food and agriculture. 

    But issues related to food-system reform have exposed potential incompatibilities between MAHA and leaders of the Republican Party, which has long been aligned with the food and agricultural industries, food-policy experts say. Some Democrats say they see this as an opportunity for their party to engage with the MAHA movement on issues that have historically been the domain of the left. 

    “It’s a convergence of ideas,” says Rep. Chellie Pingree, a Democrat from Maine. “I’ve been talking to many of my colleagues about this. Don’t miss this opportunity. Let’s find areas where we can find a win, like healthy food or [pesticides].”

    Pingree, an organic farmer, led a recent push in the House to strike a provision from a government spending bill that critics say would shield pesticide manufacturers from liability.

    The pesticide rider, which Republicans tucked inside the House version of a spending bill that would fund the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the U.S. Interior Department for the next fiscal year, would bar the EPA from approving language on pesticide warning labels that are inconsistent with the agency’s own human health assessments. 

    Critics say this is potentially dangerous because the EPA’s assessments are outdated and the provision would effectively block state and local governments—many of whom have included more stringent standards and warnings on pesticide labels than what the EPA requires—from being able to adequately regulate pesticides in their own jurisdictions. 

    The provision would also make it harder for people to sue pesticide manufacturers over alleged health harms, critics say, as such lawsuits often rely on evidence that the companies didn’t sufficiently warn consumers about the potential risks of their products. If limits are placed on what can be included on pesticide warning labels, courts could conclude that pesticide manufacturers aren’t to blame for failing to warn consumers, critics say.

    Read More: Is Beef Tallow Actually Good for You?

    The EPA, for instance, doesn’t classify glyphosate, a widely-used herbicide sold under the brand name Roundup, as a carcinogen. The World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer concluded in 2015 that the herbicide was “probably carcinogenic”. A study published in June found that rats exposed to low doses of glyphosate and glyphosate-based herbicides were more likely to develop different kinds of cancer than rats that weren’t. 

    As an environmental lawyer, Kennedy in 2018 helped a former school groundskeeper who had developed non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma to successfully sue Monsanto, the maker of Roundup, for failing to warn consumers about the possible health risks from glyphosate exposure. Chemical giant Bayer merged with Monsanto that same year. Bayer has since agreed to pay out more than $12 billion to resolve tens of thousands of lawsuits alleging health harms from Roundup exposure.

    The spending bill rider would protect the company from these types of lawsuits, says David Murphy, a former fundraiser for Kennedy’s presidential campaign and an advocate for pesticide regulation. Bayer has lobbied hard for similar provisions both at the federal and state levels, the New York Times reported. “Bayer is desperate,” Murphy says. 

    Bayer said in a statement to TIME that it stands behind the safety of its glyphosate-based products. “We agree that no company should have blanket immunity and, to be clear, the language in [the spending bill] would not prevent anyone from suing pesticide manufacturers,” a Bayer spokesperson said. “Legislation at a federal level is needed to ensure that states and courts do not take a position or action regarding product labels at odds with congressional intent, federal law and established scientific research and federal authority.”

    Roundup products for sale at a store in San Rafael, California, on July 9, 2018. AFP/Getty Images—Josh Edelson

    Pingree’s effort to remove the provision from the spending bill met with support from most Democrats in the House Committee on Appropriations, but no Republican in the committee backed the amendment. The provision remains in the bill. 

    Speaking in support of the rider, Rep. Mike Simpson, a Republican from Idaho, told the committee that members of the MAHA movement had been vocal in their opposition to the provision but said they were confused about what it actually does. 

    “I know the MAHA moms have been calling,” Simpson said during a committee meeting in July. “I think we ought to make America healthy again, I’m glad they’re taking an active role in this but they’re getting so much misinformation about what this does.”

    Simpson says the provision would have very limited impact. His office said in a statement that the purpose of the rider is to “prevent a patchwork of state labeling standards by requiring the standard be a federal standard, so it’s to prevent a single state from setting labeling standards for the rest of the country.”

    Vani Hari, a prominent MAHA influencer known by her online moniker “Food Babe,” says Simpson should be concerned about the future of his House seat.

    “The entire MAHA movement is very aligned in making sure that this pesticide liability [rider] doesn’t happen. Republicans or Democrats who vote for it are going to have a rude awakening in 2026,” she says.

    Republicans are expected to include similar language as the spending bill rider to the new Farm Bill. The language would also limit pesticide injury lawsuits, the New Lede reported.

    Read More: Seed Oils Don’t Deserve Their Bad Reputation

    Honeycutt of Moms Across America says she and other MAHA supporters were in D.C. in mid-September to urge members of Congress to reject the pesticide rider and any similar legislation that would protect pesticide makers from liability. Democratic lawmakers were more receptive across the board to their message, Honeycutt says, while the offices of many Republican lawmakers echoed talking points pushed by the pesticide manufacturers.

    Honeycutt says she and other MAHA supporters are actively looking for a Republican cosponsor for the Pesticide Injury Accountability Act, a bill introduced in July by Sen. Cory Booker, a Democrat from New Jersey, that would protect consumers’ ability to sue companies in federal court for harms caused by agricultural chemicals.

    “Nobody has stepped up yet. We are looking for leadership,” Honeycutt says. “We want to be able to continue to have the MAHA movement be bipartisan.”

    In the press release announcing the pesticide bill, Booker’s office quoted several people and organizations affiliated with Kennedy and MAHA who support the legislation. They included Honeycutt, Ryerson, and Children’s Health Defense, an antivaccine group founded by Kennedy.

    “This is a big opportunity for Democrats to bring MAHA groups into existing coalitions,” says a longtime Democratic aide who asked to speak anonymously to discuss a politically sensitive issue. 

    As for Republicans, “it’s a losing issue for them to lock onto the pesticide industry’s talking points,” says Murphy, the former Kennedy fundraiser.

    Unhappiness with MAHA’s action plan

    Murphy, who founded the food-system reform organization United We Eat, says he was disappointed by the recent MAHA commission strategy report, which he says pulled punches on core MAHA issues including pesticides and ultra-processed foods. Unlike the commission’s first report released in May, which linked exposure to agricultural chemicals like glyphosate to health harms including cancer and developmental disorders such as autism, the new report didn’t mention glyphosate by name, nor did it suggest any action to restrict pesticide and herbicide use. 

    On Sep. 22, Trump, flanked by Kennedy and other federal health officials, announced at a White House briefing that his Administration was launching an effort to address the “horrible, horrible crisis” of autism. Kennedy and other officials laid out their plan to probe possible causes, including vaccines. (Decades of research does not support a link.) Pesticides, some of which have in preliminary studies been associated with autism, weren’t mentioned during the briefing.

    Honeycutt says MAHA supporters were thrilled that the Administration addressed “some of the causes of autism” and says they “expect pesticides to be addressed in the future.”

    Read More: A Battle Is Brewing Over Whole Milk

    “There are mountains of evidence already showing a connection to autism with glyphosate exposure. Whether this Administration acknowledges this factor, and takes action, could mean a difference between millions of children being harmed, or not,” Honeycutt says.

    The MAHA strategy report didn’t recommend stricter regulation of pesticides. Instead, it endorsed the government’s existing pesticide review process, calling it “robust”—echoing language that the pesticide industry had itself recommended to the commission. The report also said that the EPA would “work to reform the approval process” for pesticides, though it didn’t specify what that would entail. Lee Zeldin, the head of the EPA, has said the agency—which has come under scrutiny for hiring three chemical industry lobbyists to critical roles in its chemicals office—is expediting the review process for pesticides. In recent months, the EPA has approved four pesticide ingredients that the Center for Biological Diversity says are PFAS, or perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances—“forever chemicals” that could threaten peoples’ health. “It’s just a sign of how powerful the pesticide industry is,” Murphy says. 

    Food and agriculture sectors relieved 

    Lobbyists for the food and agricultural industries say they pushed hard for changes in the second MAHA report. 

    Senior White House officials were taken aback by the anger expressed by farmers and others in the agricultural sector after the first report was released, according to lobbyists who worked with companies and groups involved in some of these discussions and who spoke on the condition of anonymity. The officials encouraged the report’s lead authors including Calley Means, a top aide of Kennedy’s, to take a different approach for the second report and to engage with farmers and others in the food industry, the lobbyists say. Means did not respond to requests for comment.

    Over the summer, the White House invited dozens of groups and companies from the food industry to discuss the first MAHA report. 

    “Farm groups were very, very mad after the first report. They felt betrayed. I give the Administration a ton of credit. They realized they made a mistake and opened the door,” says the head of a leading agricultural trade association. “During the second process, they flipped.” 

    A narrow shot at real food-system reform

    Given the apparent influence of industry on the second MAHA report, Marion Nestle, a professor emerita of nutrition, food studies, and public health at New York University, says she isn’t hopeful that Kennedy and his supporters will accomplish meaningful food-system reform.  

    “MAHA cannot achieve what it says it wants to achieve because it will go against industry interest. We’ve already seen RFK Jr. back off on agricultural chemicals and ultra-processed foods. There’s nothing new there,” Nestle says. “Think about Michelle Obama’s ‘Get Moving’ campaign. It doesn’t look at all different from this. It made the same kinds of recommendations, and it was greeted with total opposition.” 

    Many of Kennedy’s supporters remain optimistic, however. They say Kennedy’s efforts to make real change to the food industry have been hamstrung by others in the Administration, but that he should be congratulated for kickstarting a national conversation about these issues.

    “I have never seen this type of awakening within our country ever before,” says Hari, the MAHA influencer. “These issues used to be seen as Democratic issues or hippie issues, but the other side of the country has awakened to this idea that our food is being poisoned with chemicals.”

    US-POLITICS-HEALTH-DYE
    MAHA influencer Vani Hari speaks at a press conference on the Food and Drug Administration’s intention to phase out the use of petroleum-based synthetic dyes in the nation’s food supply, at the Department of Health and Human Services in Washington, D.C., on April 22, 2025. AFP/Getty Images—Oliver Contreras

    Both MAHA reports were revolutionary in their attempts to tackle food-system reform on a national scale, supporters say. Ryerson, the pesticide-regulation activist, says that even though pesticides weren’t as explicitly called out in the second report as she would have liked, it was alluded to “between the lines” in sections about soil health, for example. She sees Kennedy’s fingerprints all over the report. 

    Ryerson, who has a large social-media following as the Glyphosate Girl, says she has been heartened by steps taken by HHS to encourage the food industry to voluntarily stop using synthetic food dyes. She is also hopeful that Kennedy will be successful in reforming the “generally recognized as safe” (GRAS) loophole, which has allowed food manufacturers to introduce new additives without U.S. Food and Drug Administration approval.

    Kennedy’s moves related to vaccines have also kept many MAHA supporters happy. “The MAHA movement is mostly fueled by parents who are motivated to create medical freedom and also access to nontoxic, nutrient-dense food,” Honeycutt says, adding that she hopes Kennedy and the Trump Administration will not just focus on food-system reform but will also make vaccine mandates illegal.

    Read More: Why It’s So Hard to Make School Lunches Healthier

    As the head of HHS—which oversees the FDA, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the U.S. National Institutes of Health—Kennedy has more authority over vaccine research and policymaking than over food and agriculture, which also fall under the purview of other agencies, food-policy experts say. 

    But Kennedy still could have an impact on food. The FDA could set a standard for how much of a certain additive or chemical, including pesticides, are contained in foods, says Nestle, the former NYU professor. “They could declare foods that have any of these things as adulterated, and they would be removed from the market immediately. That could happen today.” 

    The FDA could also require complete transparency on food labels or warning labels on food like those required in Mexico and Chile, which flag products that contain high levels of sugar, sodium, and saturated fat, Nestle says. The NIH could earmark funding for studies on nutrition and the risks of exposure to pesticides, additives, and other chemicals.

    Regardless of what Kennedy himself achieves, the MAHA movement has laid bare a fundamental bipartisan shift in how people now think about health and food, supporters of the movement say. 

    “It is definitely an issue that has reached a tipping point,” says Ryerson. “Democrats have arrogantly assumed this was their issue. Now Republicans are going to be called to step up.”

    Dominique Mosbergen

    Source link

  • We’re Even Less Prepared For the Next Pandemic After COVID-19, Expert Warns

    As a leading expert on the viruses, bacteria, fungi, and parasites that make us sick, Michael Osterholm knows what happens when humans underestimate infectious diseases. Osterholm, who is director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy (CIDRAP) at the University of Minnesota, was a leading voice during the COVID-19 pandemic.

    Now, he’s watching the dismantling of the U.S.’s public-health infrastructure with a sense of informed alarm. Osterholm’s new book, The Big One, assesses the response to COVID-19 and highlights the urgent lessons we need to, but haven’t, learned to better handle the next inevitable pandemic.

    He talks to TIME about why the world, and the U.S. in particular, may be even less prepared for a pandemic now than we were before COVID-19.

    This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.

    You’ve written other books about the dangers of infectious diseases. Why did you feel the need to write this one about COVID-19?

    We have never done a hotwash of any kind on what happened with COVID-19, and to me we’re missing an incredible opportunity to learn what went right and what went wrong, in a nonpartisan, no-finger-pointing way. What could we do better for the next pandemic? 

    Right now everything is about finger pointing. We’re hung up on the issue of what was the source of COVID-19—a lab leak or a spillover? We will never know the answer. We are never going to know that.

    Read More: A Brief History of Donald Trump’s False and Questionable Claims About Health and Science

    Since I’ve had the opportunity to be very involved in the COVID-19 response—I wasn’t just a distant bystander—I tried to summarize lessons we should have learned and haven’t.

    What are some of the lessons we have not learned?

    Given what is happening in the current Administration with vaccines, I think we are in free fall. We are in worse shape now than we were literally before the COVID pandemic. No one in the White House is in charge of leading the country through the potential next hit from an infectious agent, which could be more deadly than if somebody launched a physical war against us on our own shores.

    You have some specific proposals for how we might avoid things like universal lockdowns, border closings, and mask mandates—which, in retrospect, turned out not to be very effective in controlling COVID-19. What are some of those strategies?

    The No. 1 way to save lives if we don’t have a vaccine is to ensure that our health care system is not overrun. When hospitals are operating at 130% capacity, some people won’t get care, and those who do won’t get care that is sufficient to save their lives.

    Read More: The Big Budget Bill Could Make Your ER a Mess

    That’s where snow days come in. Imagine if we set up a system where every day, you knew the hospital census for the hospitals in your community. Once that capacity reached, let’s say, 85% or 95%, then the community could take action and say we need to shut down for a couple of days here and change what we’re doing to reduce the number of infections, and the number of people likely to need hospital care. This is all knowing that people will still get infected, but some will get infected in the first six months, others in the second six months, and others in the third six months. If the infections are spaced out enough, you can basically keep the health care system operational.

    Communities would have to make a decision that their hospitals are overrun right now, so they need to back off. During such snow days, you don’t shut the entire system down, but some people may take a few extra days off work, or work from home, or schools may be canceled for a few days. These are all things that could beat down the virus and put the health care system in the best place to help people.

    You also propose a more comprehensive monitoring system, including medical IDs, to keep track of infectious diseases.

    It would take a federal effort. The idea of a medical ID is to help track your information so health officials can tell where and which populations are hard hit by an infectious disease. That would be helpful to know, so officials would know that they need to scale back on what people are doing every day to lessen the number of new infections and therefore give hospitals an opportunity to catch up.

    There is a lot of opposition from people who automatically say they don’t want the government to have more information on them, but they don’t realize that the government already has a great deal of information on us, including through our Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid numbers.

    Government health agencies now have differing vaccine recommendations from some professional medical groups like the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP). How should the public make sense of the conflicting advice?

    I’ve been asked how to interpret the AAP not following the recommendations of the ACIP [the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, which makes recommendations to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)]. I say you are asking the wrong question. The question is, how did the ACIP get to the point where it is scientifically inconsistent with all the rest of the scientific world? The question should be, ‘What happened to the ACIP?’ Not ‘what happened to the AAP?’

    Who can the public trust when it comes to health information now?

    The bottom line is that we cannot trust the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and CDC right now. It’s a terribly hard thing for me to say. The CDC is such a very important voice. There are still very talented and highly trained professionals at the CDC, but what is happening to the leadership—specifically, Secretary Kennedy and his colleagues—has brought it to the point where it can’t be trusted.

    What does that mean for the health of Americans?

    I have never seen [so many] dangerous and potentially catastrophic decisions being made by HHS as I have in the last 10 weeks. We need mRNA technology for our influenza vaccines to have any hope of having enough vaccines available for the first year to year and half of the next possible flu pandemic. Now, we can make enough vaccine for a quarter of the world’s population during the first 15-18 months of a pandemic, with the chicken-egg culture we use today. That is an example of a very dangerous situation that we could basically take off the table if we have research and development invested in mRNA technology.

    My point is that we can’t stop a pandemic. Once a virus takes off, nothing really can be done. When a spillover happens from animals to humans in any part of the world, when people travel, that virus can quickly spread. That’s why we have to prepare for that and minimize the impact of that spread with vaccines that we develop as quickly as possible to that specific virus. We need to make lots of it and to get it out, and mRNA is an important part of being able to do that.

    During and after the pandemic, there was a lot of criticism of the World Health Organization (WHO) and how it responded. How can the response of organizations like WHO be improved?

    The WHO is absolutely important, and it’s absolutely critical that we have a strong WHO for these kinds of events. The challenge is that during COVID-19, the WHO was one of the real obstacles to getting good recommendations to the public about respiratory protection. To me, that says that just because there are official government health bodies, it doesn’t mean they get it right.

    To address that, we need to have discussions about the response. The WHO used to do a hotwash of its response. Why did it take almost two months to declare a pandemic? I put out a document through CIDRAP on Jan. 20 saying that this is a pandemic situation, and the world needs to deal with it. Why were they so slow off the block?

    We all did good things, and we all did some challenging things. What’s important now is to ask, ‘What happened?’ and use that information to improve in the future.

    What are some of the biggest lessons learned from COVID-19 and actions that shouldn’t be repeated in the next pandemic?

    We need to come together and not finger-point. We don’t have to agree about what happened in Wuhan…but what we need to do is prevent something similar from happening in the future. If it does happen, how do we respond? In answering these questions, none of it should be partisan. It should all just be about what science tells us.

    And we need to stop doing border closings. They are useless. We have no evidence that border closing materially affects any emerging pathogen that shows up, but it’s often politically what people think should be done. And to oppose them makes it look like we don’t care, which is not true at all.

    What we have to do [a better job of] in public health is understand that we are not the only answer that will be on the table. There will also be social and political issues to consider.  

    Are we now in a better position to meet the next “big one”?

    No. I would have to say that we are in worse shape. We don’t have the opportunity now to use tools like mRNA in a meaningful way. If a pandemic begins to emerge, we will divide up into camps to go at each other. We would right now have major challenges bringing people together, and if there were ever a time when we needed to bring people together against a common enemy—i.e. a virus—it’s during a pandemic. 

    We need to do that. But we have nothing at this point to support that. We should deal with all of this now, game the situation, and work out what we would do.

    Alice Park

    Source link

  • 58M Pounds of Corn Dogs and Sausage-On-A-Stick Products Recalled Because Wood Pieces May Be Inside

    NEW YORK (AP) — About 58 million pounds of corn dogs and other sausage-on-a-stick products are being recalled across the U.S. because pieces of wood may be embedded in the batter, with several consumers reporting injuries to date.

    According to a Saturday notice published by the Agriculture Department’s Food Safety and Inspection Service, the recall covers select “State Fair Corn Dogs on a Stick” and “Jimmy Dean Pancakes & Sausage on a Stick” products from Texas-based Hillshire Brands, which is a subsidiary of Tyson Foods.

    The contamination problem was discovered after Hillshire received multiple consumer complaints, the service notes, five of which involved injuries. The company later determined that a “limited number” of these products included “extraneous pieces of wooden stick within the batter,” Tyson said in a corresponding announcement — adding that it opted to initiate a recall “out of an abundance of caution.”

    The recalled corn dogs and sausage-on-a-stick goods were produced between March 17 and as recently Friday, per Saturday’s recall notices. Tyson, which is headquartered in Arkansas, says the issue was isolated to one facility located in Haltom City, Texas.

    FSIS is worried that some of these recalled products may be in consumers’ refrigerators and freezers in households across the U.S. — as well as some schools and other institutions. In addition to being sold online and to retailers nationwide, the agency noted Saturday, these products were also sold to school districts and Defense Department facilities.

    Consumers in possession of the now recalled “State Fair Corn Dogs on a Stick” and “Jimmy Dean Pancakes & Sausage on a Stick” are urged to throw them away or return them to their place of purchase.

    To determine which corn dogs and other sausage goods are subject to this recall, consumers should check the product’s name, use by dates and other identifying information published online by the FSIS and Tyson. The products being recalled should also have an establishment number of “EST-582” or “P-894” printed on the packaging.

    It’s unclear if consumers who purchased these now-recalled products will be eligible for a refund. The Associated Press reached out to contacts for Hillshire Brands and Tyson for further information Sunday.

    Foreign object contamination is one of the top reasons for food recalls in the U.S. Beyond plastic, metal fragments, bits of bugs and more “extraneous” materials have prompted recalls by making their way into packaged goods.

    Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

    Photos You Should See – Sept. 2025

    Associated Press

    Source link

  • Why Syphilis Cases in Newborns Are Rising

    The number of babies being born with syphilis in the U.S. kept increasing last year, even as the number of cases of sexually transmitted infections (STIs) in the country dropped, according to new government data.

    The overall number of reported STI cases fell 9% in 2024 from 2023, the third year in a row that case numbers have declined, provisional data released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) this week shows. But cases of syphilis in newborns, also known as congenital syphilis, increased for the twelfth straight year. Nearly 4,000 cases were reported in 2024—up almost 700% since 2015, when just under 500 were reported.

    The rise in congenital syphilis cases wasn’t as steep in 2024 as it has been in previous years—just under 2% from 2023. Dr. Bradley Stoner, the director of CDC’s Division of STD Prevention, says that it’s promising that the rate of increase is slowing, but that the rising case numbers are still concerning. 

    Only a couple decades ago, cases of congenital syphilis were nearly eliminated from the U.S. Congenital syphilis is preventable; syphilis can be cured with treatment, and if it’s treated during pregnancy, that can protect the fetus from becoming infected.

    But if left untreated, syphilis can be passed on to a fetus during pregnancy or delivery. Syphilis can damage organs such as the heart and brain, and can lead to blindness, deafness, and even death. Congenital syphilis can also lead to miscarriage and stillbirth.

    Stoner says that reductions in STI services at the state and local levels, as well as social and economic conditions such as poverty and lack of health insurance, have likely contributed to rising rates of syphilis, which in turn led to increasing rates of congenital syphilis. 

    Federal funding for STI prevention has seen drastic cuts since the early 2000s. The number of people living in poverty skyrocketed during that period, though it has since declined. And while the percentage of people who are uninsured has fallen since the Affordable Care Act was signed into law in 2010, millions are still uninsured or underinsured. Other complications in accessing quality care could impact people with insurance as well.

    Elizabeth Finley, interim executive director of the National Coalition of STD Directors, says part of the problem is that pregnant people’s access to health care or preventive syphilis care may vary. For instance, some people may not be able to access prenatal care consistently or at all. And some health care providers may be seeing syphilis cases for the first time in their careers.

    “You get this perfect storm of people who aren’t getting enough prenatal care to begin with for many, many reasons, and then you see providers who haven’t had to identify or test for syphilis in the past,” Finley says.

    There have also been intermittent drug shortages that have affected doctors’ ability to quickly treat pregnant people with syphilis, Finley says.

    She points out that the overall STI rates have gone up over the past decade or so as well.

    “Overall over the past 10 years, we’ve seen more cases,” Finley says. “Any time there are more STI cases in a community or more cases of any infection—and in this case, syphilis—in a community, you have an increased likelihood that pregnant women will be exposed to it and then that their infants or their fetuses will be exposed to it.”

    The overall prevalence of STIs in the U.S. is still high, with more than 2.2 million reported cases in 2024—up 13% since 2015, according to the CDC. Finley says that part of the reason for that is because the U.S. has “really divested significantly from prevention efforts.”

    The CDC noted a few areas of progress in addressing the problem: cases of the two most infectious stages of syphilis, known as primary and secondary syphilis, declined nearly 22% for the second year in a row. Stoner says he is hopeful that congenital syphilis will follow. And cases of gonorrhea and chlamydia continued to fall, too. The agency attributed those declines to the impact of public health initiatives, such as increased awareness about STIs and the use of prevention tools. Those tools include self-tests and the antibiotic doxycycline, which can be taken within 72 hours after sex to help reduce the risk of acquiring syphilis, chlamydia, and gonorrhea.

    “The data do suggest that we may be turning the corner on STIs,” Stoner says. “But the fact that congenital syphilis is still a major problem tells us that we have to accelerate progress to stop the STI epidemic and its most tragic consequences. These are preventable infections, and greater awareness and greater early intervention, I think, will help us get these infections under better control.”

    The CDC recommends that people get tested for syphilis three times over the course of their pregnancy. Stoner also encourages people of reproductive age to get tested for syphilis, and to have conversations with their partners about STis.

    Finley says that, while it’s been encouraging to see public health initiatives try to address this issue, there needs to be a “much more coordinated and intentional effort” to bring various government agencies together to tackle congenital syphilis. She adds that funding for STI prevention efforts have dropped significantly in recent years.

    “These syphilis cases in pregnant patients don’t happen in a bubble; they happen in a broader context, and right now that broader context is that our overall STI rates are too high,” Finley says. “This really does need to be a part of a broader effort to reduce STIs in the U.S.”

    Chantelle Lee

    Source link

  • Hillary Clinton slams RFK Jr. and the spread of ‘crackpot ideas,’ saying they are costing lives

    Hillary Clinton on Wednesday slammed Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and accused the Trump administration of turning “the clock back” on public health.

    Clinton expressed alarm about people in the country listening to “crackpot ideas” after a press conference Monday in which the Secretary of Health and Human Services and President Donald Trump made a series of unproven statements about Tylenol, childhood vaccines and autism.

    “I mean, this is so crazy, it’s so wrongheaded, it’s so shortsighted. And it’s going to cause deaths,” she said during an appearance Wednesday on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.” ”These guys want to literally turn the clock back.”

    Clinton, the former secretary of state and Trump’s 2016 Democratic opponent for president, said the statements would lead to confusion.

    “When your president says something, when a Kennedy, who’s the secretary of HHS, says something, what are you supposed to believe?” she asked.

    “You know, people are confused. And too many Americans are listening to this, you know, very destructive anti-science tirade that we’re hearing from this administration. And it’s going to cost lives. It already is costing lives.”

    The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

    Source link

  • Trump Admin to Link Tylenol Use to Autism: Live Updates

    Kennedy has frequently been the subject of criticism for his comments on autism, long before his time in the Trump administration.

    In April, the secretary held a press conference in which he called autism a “preventable disease,” alleging there was an environmental cause for the disorder, which he referred to as an “epidemic.” Kennedy said his department would assemble top scientists to research a cause, setting a September timeline for answers.

    Kennedy was excoriated for his remarks on autistic children when he said autism “destroys families” and painted a bleak picture for the future of children diagnosed with autism. Kennedy ultimately had to walk back his remarks following backlash from the families of autistic children and other advocates.

    “These are kids who will never pay taxes. They’ll never hold a job. They’ll never play baseball. They’ll never write a poem. They’ll never go out on a date,” Kennedy said. “Many of them will never use a toilet unassisted. And we have to recognize we are doing this to our children, and we need to put an end to it.”

    Prior to his time as HHS secretary, Kennedy has cast doubt on the efficacy of vaccines and even promoted theories linking autism rates to vaccine usage.

    Intelligencer Staff

    Source link

  • Alcohol escapes a government crackdown—for now

    Just over a year ago, I wrote about the bureaucratic machinations in the U.S. attempting to import an anti-alcohol agenda into the government’s 2025 Dietary Guidelines. Now, it appears that alcohol has officially escaped the government’s wrath—at least for another half-decade.

    The U.S. dietary guidelines are revised every five years, with the latest revision expected this year. The lead-up to the revision unfolds over several years, and recommendations for safe drinking levels are traditionally included alongside food in the final guidance. For decades, the guidelines have held that men can safely consume up to two alcoholic drinks a day and women one. But myriad sources from inside the federal government were reporting that the new guidelines were planning to include a declaration that “no amount of alcohol is acceptable for a healthy lifestyle.” (This was a standard imported from the World Health Organization, which declared in 2023 that “no amount of alcohol is safe”). 

    This news supercharged a long-simmering debate over whether alcohol is good or bad (or simply medium) for you. Researchers have become increasingly split over this issue, with some sharing evidence that moderate alcohol consumption reduces overall mortality rates, while others point to studies finding a link between alcohol and cancer. Regardless of the science, however, the process through which the government was attempting to arrive at a “no safe level” declaration for alcohol was deeply alarming.

    The dietary guidelines revisions are spearheaded by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), and the Biden-era HHS delegated the alcohol issue to the little-known Interagency Coordinating Committee on the Prevention of Underage Drinking (ICCPUD).

    ICCPUD’s marching orders were to issue a report on the health impacts of drinking, but it turned out ICCPUD had stacked its deck. Reports started coming out that at least half of the six-person research panel not only had well-publicized anti-alcohol stances but also didn’t even reside in the United States. The decision over whether alcohol would be deemed safe or not was being put in the hands of a group of biased international academics who were essentially accountable to no one. (Several commentators have also pointed out that ICCPUD, whose putative focus is supposed to be underage drinking, was being put in charge of determining adult drinking recommendations.)

    A potential “no safe level” declaration was particularly worrisome for the alcohol industry, since perceptions about the health impact of alcohol have already been trending negatively among younger demographics, a trend that would likely accelerate if the U.S. government were to state that no amount of alcohol is safe to drink. Attorney Sean O’Leary noted that such a declaration would also be likely to trigger a wave of Tobacco-style class action lawsuits against the drinks industry.

    Congress—surprisingly—reacted to this backdoor attempt to smuggle a neo-prohibitionist agenda into the American dietary guidelines by playing a decently effective watchdog role. It first tasked the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) to prepare a separate report on the health effects of drinking, which concluded that while moderate drinking raises the risk of certain types of cancer, it reduces all-cause mortality by decreasing the risk of heart disease.

    The remaining elephant in the room, however, was how President Donald Trump’s administration would handle the ICCPUD draft report that it inherited from the Biden administration. All eyes were on the new HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., famously a teetotaler, but he was silent about how the 2025 Dietary Guidelines would address alcohol.

    At long last, in early September, the House Appropriations Committee announced it was planning to defund ICCPUD, followed by news that ICCPUD’s draft report would no longer play a role in the 2025 guidelines revisions. It now appears that the alternative NASEM report will inform the new guidelines, although it’s not even certain that the guidelines will mention alcohol at all anymore (RFK Jr. has previously suggested that the 2025 Guidelines would be a mere 4 pages long, down from 160 pages in 2020).

    In the end, this counts as a narrow escape for the alcohol industry and U.S. drinkers. The science of drinking will likely be debated for years to come, but at the very least, the process should be allowed to play out in public view.

    C. Jarrett Dieterle

    Source link

  • RFK Jr.’s Vaccine Panel Votes Down Its Own Proposal to Require Prescriptions for Covid-19 Shots

    In another vote, advisers recommended adding language on the shot’s risks to the vaccine’s information sheet, which is already required by law.

    The committee’s focus on Covid-19 vaccines reflects Kennedy’s long-held suspicion of them. Since taking office in February, Kennedy has canceled a half-billion dollars in mRNA vaccine research and separately ended a major contract with Moderna, one of the Covid vaccine manufactures, for work on a pandemic bird flu vaccine.

    During Friday’s meeting, CDC scientists presented extensive data on the safety and efficacy of the Covid vaccines. They also explained in detail how the agency tracks Covid hospitalizations and said the agency has a “rigorous and standardized process” to determine whether hospitalizations are classified as being due to Covid-19.

    During the discussion portion of the meeting, committee members made several unfounded claims. Robert Malone, a former mRNA researcher who has spread vaccine misinformation, questioned whether there is actually evidence of disease protection from the Covid shots. “Are there any well-defined, characterized correlates of protection for Covid, yes or no?” he demanded.

    Cody Meissner, a pediatrician at Dartmouth College, responded that there is “a reasonable measurement of neutralizing or binding antibodies that correlate with protection against symptomatic infection in the first few months” after vaccination.

    At one point, Hillary Blackburn, a pharmacist on the committee, questioned whether the Covid vaccine could be connected to her mother’s lung cancer diagnosis, which occurred two years after receiving a Covid vaccine. She said she is aware of four other individuals in her small hometown diagnosed with the same kind of cancer. “Is it related to the vaccine?” she asked.

    In a tense exchange about potential birth defects associated with the Covid vaccines, some ACIP members pressed manufacturer Pfizer about eight birth defects that occurred in a group of pregnant women who received the company’s vaccine and two birth defects that occurred in an unvaccinated group. Alejandra Gurtman, who heads vaccine clinical research and development at Pfizer, replied that those rates are comparable to rates of congenital abnormalities seen in the general population.

    Carol Hayes, a liaison with the American College of Nurse-Midwives who was present during the meeting, clarified that most birth defects arise during the first trimester of pregnancy, and in the cited study, mothers received the vaccine at 12 to 24 weeks of pregnancy.

    At Friday’s meeting, the committee also reversed a decision it made just a day before. On Thursday, advisers voted to no longer recommend the combined measles, mumps, rubella, and varicella (MMRV) vaccine to children under age 4. Yet puzzlingly, it voted to maintain coverage of that vaccine through the federal Vaccines for Children program, which provides free vaccines to low-income children and those without insurance. On Friday, they voted that the program should not, in fact, cover it.

    On Friday, advisers also voted 11 to one in favor of tabling a decision on whether to delay the birth dose of the hepatitis B vaccine until one month of age. The committee had discussed that vaccine extensively on Thursday, though it’s unclear why the committee was asked to look into the potential change at all, as the hepatitis B vaccine has been given to newborns in the US since 1991.

    Infants get the vaccine before leaving the hospital because the virus can be passed from an infected mother to the baby during birth. Hepatitis B is a serious liver infection that can lead to cirrhosis and cancer. The vaccine is highly effective at preventing infection in newborns.

    Chari Cohen, president of the Hepatitis B Foundation, tells WIRED there is no scientific rationale for delaying the hepatitis B vaccine until one month after birth, and she worries about an increase in hepatitis B infections if the panel eventually recommends delaying the immunization.

    “We will likely see more babies and young children who become infected,” Cohen says. “From a public health infrastructure perspective, we are concerned that this risk-based approach will miss preventing infection to babies born to infected moms.”

    Up to 16 percent of HBV-positive pregnant women don’t get tested for hepatitis B, so screening doesn’t capture all infected mothers.

    “We do not understand the motivation or rationale for this debate,” Cohen says.

    Emily Mullin

    Source link

  • California moves to distance itself from CDC on vaccines, considers creating its own agency

    UPDATES AS THEY COME IN. OTHER NEWS, RIGHT NOW, HEALTH OFFICIALS ARE FOCUSING ON VACCINE DEADLINES. THIS WEEK, A CDC COMMITTEE WILL CONSIDER POSSIBLE CHANGES TO RECOMMENDATIONS TOMORROW. AND NOW THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA IS CONSIDERING DISTANCING ITSELF FROM THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT’S GUIDELINES. THE POTENTIAL CHANGE IN GUIDANCE COMES AS THE RECENTLY FIRED CDC DIRECTOR WARNS THOSE CHANGES MAY NOT BE BASED ON SCIENCE. WE HAVE TEAM COVERAGE FOR YOU OF WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW. ASHLEY ZAVALA HAS THE CHANGE IN STATE VACCINATION GUIDELINES, BUT WE START WITH JACKIE DEFUSCO LIVE ON CAPITOL HILL FOR US WITH A MESSAGE FROM THE FORMER CDC DIRECTOR. YEAH. HEY THERE, ANDREA CURTIS ON CAPITOL HILL TODAY, THE FORMER CDC DIRECTOR, SUSAN MONAREZ, CLAIMED THAT SHE WAS FIRED IN PART FOR ESSENTIALLY REFUSING TO PRE-APPROVE VACCINE RECOMMENDATIONS WITHOUT SEEING THE SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE FIRST. SHE TOLD SENATORS THAT SHE IS NERVOUS ABOUT WHAT’S TO COME. TAKE A LISTEN. BASED ON WHAT I OBSERVED DURING MY TENURE, THERE IS A REAL RISK THAT RECOMMENDATIONS COULD BE MADE RESTRICTING ACCESS TO VACCINES FOR CHILDREN AND OTHERS IN NEED WITHOUT RIGOROUS SCIENTIFIC REVIEW, WITH NO PERMANENT CDC DIRECTOR IN PLACE, THOSE RECOMMENDATIONS COULD BE ADOPTED. HEALTH SECRETARY ROBERT F KENNEDY JR HAS DENIED THAT HE ORDERED MONAREZ TO RUBBER STAMP VACCINE RECOMMENDATIONS. BUT THE DISPUTE COMES AS THE CDC’S INFLUENTIAL ADVISORY PANEL, WHOSE MEMBERS WERE RECENTLY REPLACED BY KENNEDY, IS SET TO CONVENE TOMORROW TO CONSIDER POSSIBLE CHANGES TO GUIDANCE ON COVID 19, CHICKENPOX AND HEPATITIS B SHOTS. TELLING LAWMAKERS THAT SHE HAS NOT SEEN ANY DATA AT THIS POINT TO SUPPORT CHANGING ELIGIBILITY CRITERIA. FORMER CDC CHIEF MEDICAL OFFICER DEBORAH OURY, WHO RECENTLY RESIGNED, ALSO TESTIFIED TODAY. AND SHE SAID THAT ONE OF KENNEDY’S POLITICAL ADVISERS TOLD HER NOT TO INCLUDE INFORMATION THAT COULD SUPPORT MAINTAINING HEPATITIS B SHOTS FOR NEWBORNS TO PREVENT THE DEADLY DISEASE FROM SPREADING FROM THE MOTHER. YOU’RE SUGGESTING THAT THEY WANTED TO MOVE AWAY FROM THE BIRTH DOSE, BUT THEY WERE AFRAID THAT YOUR DATA WOULD SAY THAT THEY SHOULD RETAIN IT. IT. WHAT DO WE DO NOW? IT’S STILL UNCLEAR AT THIS POINT HOW EXACTLY THE ADVISORY PANEL WILL VOTE LATER THIS WEEK, BUT SOME MEMBERS IN THE PAST HAVE QUESTIONED THE NECESSITY OF THE HEPATITIS B SHOT FOR NEWBORNS, AND HAVE ALSO SUGGESTED THAT THERE SHOULD BE A MORE CONSERVATIVE SET OF VACCINE RECOMMENDATIONS FOR THE COVID 19 SHOT, REGARDLESS OF WHAT THAT PANEL RECOMMENDS. ULTIMATELY, THE ACTING CDC DIRECTOR, JIM O’NEILL, WILL NEED TO SIGN OFF BEFORE THEY BECOME OFFICIAL LIVE ON CAPITOL HILL. I’M JACKIE DEFUSCO, KCRA THREE NEWS. JACKIE, THANK YOU. AND CLOSER TO HOME, CALIFORNIA LEADERS TODAY CONTINUE TO DISTANCE THE STATE FROM THE CDC WITH A SERIES OF ANNOUNCEMENTS. KCRA THREE POLITICAL DIRECTOR ASHLEY ZAVALA EXPLAINS THE ACTION GOVERNOR GAVIN NEWSOM TOOK TODAY. WELL, THIS COMES AS THE STATE CONTINUES TO CLASH WITH THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT OVER VACCINES AND SCIENCE. OVERALL. TODAY, NEWSOM, ALONGSIDE THE GOVERNORS OF OREGON, WASHINGTON AND HAWAII, ROLLED OUT THEIR OWN VACCINE RECOMMENDATIONS FOR THE WINTER. THE GROUP IS ALSO NOW KNOWN AS THE WEST COAST HEALTH ALLIANCE. AS OF A COUPLE OF WEEKS AGO, THE RECOMMENDED SHOTS INCLUDE THE COVID 19 SHOT, FLU AND RSV SHOTS. THE GOVERNOR TODAY ALSO SIGNED A NEW STATE LAW THAT ALLOWS CALIFORNIA TO TAKE VACCINE RECOMMENDATIONS FROM MEDICAL GROUPS OUTSIDE OF THE CDC. THIS COMES AFTER ROBERT F KENNEDY JR FIRED ALL 17 MEMBERS OF THE ADVISORY COMMITTEE ON IMMUNIZATION PRACTICES AND REPLACE THEM WITH VACCINE SKEPTICS. THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION LOOSENED RECOMMENDATIONS AROUND THE COVID 19 VACCINE. ALSO IN A STATEMENT, THE WEST COAST GOVERNOR SAID, OUR STATES ARE UNITED IN PUTTING SCIENCE, SAFETY AND TRANSPARENCY FIRST AND IN PROTECTING FAMILIES WITH CLEAR, CREDIBLE VACCINE GUIDANCE. THE WEST COAST HEALTH ALLIANCE STANDS UNITED IN PROTECTING PUBLIC HEALTH AND ALWAYS PUTTING SAFETY BEFORE POLITICS. MEANWHILE, A SPOKESPERSON FOR THE U.S. DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES SAID DEMOCRAT RUN STATES THAT PUSHED UNSCIENTIFIC SCHOOL LOCKDOWNS, TODDLER MASK MANDATES AND DRACONIAN VACCINE PASSPORTS DURING THE COVID ERA COMPLETELY ERODED THE AMERICAN PEOPLE’S TRUST IN PUBLIC HEALTH AGENCIES. ACIP REMAINS THE SCIENTIFIC BODY GUIDING IMMUNIZATION RECOMMENDATIONS IN THIS COUNTRY. AND HHS WILL ENSURE POLICY IS BASED ON RIGOROUS EVIDENCE AND GOLD STANDARD SCIENCE, NOT THE FAILED POLITICS OF THE PANDEMIC. END QUOTE. NOW, SEPARATELY FROM THE GOVERNOR’S ANNOUNCEMENT TODAY, SOME DEMOCRATIC STATE LAWMAKERS AND LABOR GROUPS LAUNCHED AN EFFORT THAT WOULD ESSENTIALLY CREATE CALIFORNIA’S OWN CDC AND FOUNDATION FOUNDATION TO FUND MEDICAL RESEARCH. THIS WOULD FIRST NEED TO PASS AT THE STATE CAPITOL, THOUGH, BEFORE GOING TO VOTERS IN A BALLOT MEASURE IN NOVEMBER OF 2026. SO HOW MUCH MONEY ARE THEY EXPECTING TO SPEND ON THIS PROPOSAL? YEAH, ESSENTIALLY THEY’RE GOING TO ASK CALIFORNIA VOTERS TO APPROVE A MEASURE THAT WOULD INVOLVE BORROWING $23 BILLION IN BONDS. WE WILL HAVE A LOT MORE ON THIS AT FIVE. A LOT OF QUESTIONS AROUND THA

    California’s Democratic leaders on Wednesday announced a series of efforts to distance the state from President Donald Trump’s Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as the state and federal government continue to clash over vaccines and science. Gov. Gavin Newsom on Wednesday signed legislation that allows the state to set future immunization guidance on credible, independent medical organizations instead of the CDC. Those organizations could include but are not limited to the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, and the American Academy of Family Physicians. Also on Wednesday, the governor and the California Department of Public Health, along with other West Coast governors, rolled out vaccine recommendations for the upcoming winter, countering advice from the CDC. The recommendations include the COVID-19 shot, flu shot, and RSV vaccine. It comes two weeks after the leaders of California, Oregon, Washington and Hawaii established the West Coast Health Alliance to rebuke the Trump administration’s policies. States typically follow guidance from the CDC, but the Democratic leaders established the alliance after U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. fired all 17 members of the federal panel that advises on immunization practices and replaced them with vaccine skeptics. “Our states are united in putting science, safety, and transparency first — and in protecting families with clear, credible vaccine guidance. The West Coast Health Alliance stands united in protecting public health and always putting safety before politics,” the governors said in a joint statement. Separately from Newsom’s announcement Wednesday, labor groups and some California lawmakers announced an effort to try to establish their own CDC and foundation to fund medical research. The proposal specifically would involve borrowing $23 billion in bonds. The legislation, known as Senate Bill 607, would first need to pass the state Legislature before giving voters the final say on the November ballot in 2026. “In communities across California, families are counting on science to deliver cures, protect our health, and prepare us for the challenges of the future,” said Assemblymember José Luis Solache, D-Lynwood. “Donald Trump’s cuts threaten not just research, but the lives of our loved ones. This measure makes clear that Californians will take control of our future and invest in life-saving research – because our families, our health, and our economy are too important to leave in the hands of Washington politicians playing games with people’s lives.””Democrat-run states that pushed unscientific school lockdowns, toddler mask mandates, and draconian vaccine passports during the COVID era completely eroded the American people’s trust in public health agencies,” a statement from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services read. “ACIP remains the scientific body guiding immunization recommendations in this country, and HHS will ensure policy is based on rigorous evidence and Gold Standard Science, not the failed politics of the pandemic.” See more coverage of top California stories here | Download our app | Subscribe to our morning newsletter | Find us on YouTube here and subscribe to our channel

    SACRAMENTO, Calif. —

    California’s Democratic leaders on Wednesday announced a series of efforts to distance the state from President Donald Trump’s Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as the state and federal government continue to clash over vaccines and science.

    Gov. Gavin Newsom on Wednesday signed legislation that allows the state to set future immunization guidance on credible, independent medical organizations instead of the CDC. Those organizations could include but are not limited to the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, and the American Academy of Family Physicians.

    Also on Wednesday, the governor and the California Department of Public Health, along with other West Coast governors, rolled out vaccine recommendations for the upcoming winter, countering advice from the CDC. The recommendations include the COVID-19 shot, flu shot, and RSV vaccine.

    It comes two weeks after the leaders of California, Oregon, Washington and Hawaii established the West Coast Health Alliance to rebuke the Trump administration’s policies. States typically follow guidance from the CDC, but the Democratic leaders established the alliance after U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. fired all 17 members of the federal panel that advises on immunization practices and replaced them with vaccine skeptics.

    “Our states are united in putting science, safety, and transparency first — and in protecting families with clear, credible vaccine guidance. The West Coast Health Alliance stands united in protecting public health and always putting safety before politics,” the governors said in a joint statement.

    Separately from Newsom’s announcement Wednesday, labor groups and some California lawmakers announced an effort to try to establish their own CDC and foundation to fund medical research. The proposal specifically would involve borrowing $23 billion in bonds.

    The legislation, known as Senate Bill 607, would first need to pass the state Legislature before giving voters the final say on the November ballot in 2026.

    “In communities across California, families are counting on science to deliver cures, protect our health, and prepare us for the challenges of the future,” said Assemblymember José Luis Solache, D-Lynwood. “Donald Trump’s cuts threaten not just research, but the lives of our loved ones. This measure makes clear that Californians will take control of our future and invest in life-saving research – because our families, our health, and our economy are too important to leave in the hands of Washington politicians playing games with people’s lives.”

    “Democrat-run states that pushed unscientific school lockdowns, toddler mask mandates, and draconian vaccine passports during the COVID era completely eroded the American people’s trust in public health agencies,” a statement from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services read. “ACIP remains the scientific body guiding immunization recommendations in this country, and HHS will ensure policy is based on rigorous evidence and Gold Standard Science, not the failed politics of the pandemic.”

    See more coverage of top California stories here | Download our app | Subscribe to our morning newsletter | Find us on YouTube here and subscribe to our channel

    Source link

  • Fired CDC Director Says RFK Jr. Pressured Her to Blindly Approve Vaccine Changes

    Debra Houry, former chief medical officer and deputy director for program and science at CDC, who was one of several agency officials to resign in the wake of Monarez’s firing, also testified during Wednesday’s hearing.

    “I resigned because CDC leaders were reduced to rubber stamps, supporting policies not based in science, and putting American lives at risk. Secretary Kennedy censored CDC’s science, politicized its processes, and stripped leaders of independence. I could not and in good conscience, remain under those conditions,” Houry said.

    She also accused Kennedy of halting flu campaigns despite the severity of the 2024-2025 flu season, as well as spreading misinformation and promoting unproven treatments for measles.

    Houry said she learned that Kennedy had changed the CDC’s Covid-19 vaccine guidance from a social media post on X. “CDC scientists have still not seen the scientific data or justification for this change. That is not gold-standard science,” Houry said, referring to a statement in May that HHS will no longer recommend the vaccine for healthy children and pregnant women

    Monarez said Secretary Kennedy had not communicated his plans to change the childhood vaccination schedule to her until their meeting on August 25. Monarez said she told Kennedy that she would be open to changing the childhood vaccine schedule if the evidence or science supported those changes. Kennedy responded that there was no existing science or evidence and elaborated that CDC had never collected that data, according to Monarez.

    Monarez said she could not agree to approving ACIP recommendations before knowing what they were. “I have built a career on scientific integrity, and my worst fear was that I would then be in a position of approving something that would reduce access to life-saving vaccines to children and others who need them,” she said.

    This Thursday, ACIP is set to discuss the hepatitis B vaccine, which has been recommended for newborns within 24 hours of birth since 1991. But the committee is expected to vote on removing that recommendation and delaying the birth dose of the hepatitis B vaccine until age 4.

    Each year in the US, an estimated 25,000 infants are born to women diagnosed with the hepatitis B virus, or HBV, a serious liver infection that can lead to cirrhosis and cancer. Before the vaccine was introduced, nearly 20,000 babies and children were infected with HBV each year in the US. Now, fewer than 20 get the disease from their mothers.

    “Now that we’ve controlled it, do we let the genie out of the bottle? If the recommendation goes away, and a parent does want the vaccine, insurance will no longer cover it free of charge. She’ll be forced to pay out of pocket,” Senator Cassidy said at the conclusion of the hearing. Vaccine coverage is typically tied to ACIP recommendations.

    Cassidy was initially hesitant about Kennedy’s nomination as HHS secretary, given his prior statements about vaccines, but he supported him after, he has said, Kennedy promised to maintain vaccine availability and not undermine public trust in them.

    ACIP is slated to discuss Covid-19 vaccines on Friday.

    Emily Mullin

    Source link

  • Susan Monarez Testifies About ‘Tense’ Exchanges With RFK Jr.

    Susan Monarez, former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), addressed the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions on Wednesday to testify on the recent turmoil at the public health agency. Monarez told Senators that before she was fired last month, Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. demanded two things of her that she said were “inconsistent with [her] oath of office.”

    “He directed me to commit in advance to approving every [Advisory Committee for Immunization Practices] recommendation, regardless of the scientific evidence. He also directed me to dismiss career officials responsible for vaccine policy without cause,” Monarez claimed. “He said, if I was unwilling to do both, I should resign. I responded that I could not pre-approve recommendations without reviewing the evidence, and I had no basis to fire scientific experts.”

    “Vaccine policy must be guided by credible data—not predetermined outcomes,” she continued.

    Monarez told the committee that Kennedy was “very upset” when she said she wouldn’t pre-emptively approve vaccine recommendations from an advisory panel.

    “He was very upset. The entire meeting was very tense. He was very upset throughout the entirety of our discussion, and it was not a productive exchange of information,” said Monarez.

    Kennedy has yet to publicly respond to Monarez’s testimony. TIME has reached out to HHS for comment.

    Read More: CDC Director Susan Monarez Refuses to Leave as White House Seeks to Oust Her Weeks Into Job

    Last month, the Trump Administration said it had fired Monarez, who had only been at the helm of the agency for about a month. Her firing prompted several top CDC officials to resign, including then-Chief Medical Officer Debra Houry, an emergency physician who also appeared before the Senate on Wednesday. 

    Monarez’s attorneys said she was “targeted” after she “refused to rubber-stamp unscientific, reckless directives and fire dedicated health experts.” A few days later, nine former CDC leaders wrote a piece for the New York Times, accusing Kennedy of endangering Americans’ health.

    Sen. Bernie Sanders, an Independent from Vermont, said during Wednesday’s hearing that Monarez “stood up for protecting the well-being of the American people, and for that reason, she was fired.”

    Sanders went on to emphasize that the hearing was about far more than just Monarez’s firing. “The issue is deeper than that. It is about Secretary Kennedy’s dangerous war on science, public health, and the truth itself,” Sanders argued. “Unacceptably, we now have an HHS secretary who does not believe in established science, and who listens to conspiracy theorists and ideologues rather than doctors and medical professionals. It is absurd to have to say this in the year 2025, but vaccines are safe and effective.”

    Monarez echoed that sentiment during her own testimony. 

    “Today should not be about me. Today should be about the future of trust in public health,” she said. “I could have stayed silent, agreed to the demands, and no one would have known. What the public would have seen were scientists dismissed without cause, and vaccine protections quietly eroded, all under the authority of a Senate confirmed director with unimpeachable credentials. I could have kept the office, the title, but I would have lost the one thing that cannot be replaced: my integrity.”

    “Some may question my motives or mischaracterize my words; that is part of public life. But I am not here as a politician; I’m here as a scientist, a public servant, and a parent committed to protecting the health of future generations.”

    Since Kennedy, a prominent vaccine skeptic, was confirmed to run HHS earlier this year, he has overseen several changes to the country’s vaccination policy.

    In May, Kennedy said the CDC would no longer recommend COVID-19 vaccines for pregnant women and healthy children. Several respected medical organizations, including the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, released their own guidance, diverging from Kennedy’s recommendations.

    A month later, Kennedy removed all the members of a committee that offers recommendations on vaccines to the CDC. He replaced them with new members, some of whom appeared to share his vaccine skeptic views. In August, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) said that this year’s COVID-19 shots would only be approved for people ages 65 and older, or people who have a higher risk of developing serious illness—a considerable shift from previous guidance, which stated that the shots were recommended for everyone older than 6 months. The change has left many people uncertain about if they will be able to get their COVID-19 boosters this year. Amid the uncertainty, several states—including Massachusetts, California, Oregon, and Washington—launched their own initiatives to protect vaccine access.

    Read More: RFK Jr. Doubles Down on Vaccine Skepticism in Contentious Hearing

    Hundreds of public health workers signed an open letter in late August that urged Kennedy to “stop spreading inaccurate health information” and commit to protecting staffers, in the wake of a shooting at the CDC headquarters in Atlanta just weeks before. The public health workers said the attack “came amid growing mistrust in public institutions, driven by politicized rhetoric that has turned public health professionals from trusted experts into targets of villainization—and now, violence.”

    Kennedy faced heated questioning from lawmakers during a Senate hearing earlier this month, including over his firing of Monarez and his recent changes to the country’s immunization policy.

    During the hearing, Sen. Tina Smith, a Democrat from Minnesota, questioned Kennedy over his remarks on a podcast, when he cast doubt on the safety of vaccines.

    “When were you lying, Sir, when you told this committee that you were not anti-vax, or when you told Americans that there’s no safe and effective vaccine?” Smith asked Kennedy.

    “Both are true,” Kennedy responded.

    Chantelle Lee

    Source link

  • New Yorkers question U.S. readiness for health crises | Long Island Business News

    THE BLUEPRINT:

    • 44% of New Yorkers say the U.S. is unprepared for future health crises.

    • 77% are concerned about infectious diseases such as measles, while 75% worry about bird flu.

    • 67% worry about affording healthcare for themselves and their families.

    • 61% trust government vaccine decisions; fewer trust chronic disease guidance.

    New Yorkers worry about the next public health crisis, with 44 percent saying they don’t believe the U.S. is prepared. That’s according to the latest Mount Sinai South Nassau “Truth in Medicine” public health poll, which was released Tuesday.

    Among those surveyed, 40 percent said the nation is prepared.

    Still, a large majority worry about infectious diseases, with 77 percent citing measles, 75 percent bird flu and 65 percent the new COVID-19 variants.

    “It’s not surprising that confidence in whether we are prepared for the next public health crisis has eroded,” Dr. Aaron Glatt, chair of the Department of Medicine and Chief of Infectious Diseases at Mount Sinai South Nassau, said in a news release about the poll’s findings.

    “Science has become politicized and the divisions we see across the country have an impact,” Glatt added. “However, healthcare providers and researchers remain committed to evidence-based study and reporting.”

    The poll surveyed 600 adults on Long Island and New York City. Sponsored by FourLeaf Federal Credit Union, the poll was conducted from July 13-20 over landlines and cell phones.

    Vaccine safety, accessible mental health services and care, addressing childhood obesity, treatment for substance abuse, and reducing reliance on processed foods all play key roles in improving the population’s overall health and wellness, respondents said. The poll also looked at access to and affording health insurance coverage.

    Vaccine safety

    “Immunization is key to primary health care and paramount to the prevention and control of infectious disease outbreaks,” Glatt said.

    “Vaccines have proven that they are worth the investment to make them and the health insurance costs to cover them, as they are the safest, most effective way to protect the public from many preventable life-threatening diseases,” Glatt added. “I strongly encourage everyone to follow up with their physicians to get the recommended vaccines at the recommended times.”

    Meanwhile, 61 percent said they trust government agencies to make important decisions about vaccines, and 45 percent said they trust government to make important decisions about medical research. Just 38 percent said they trust government recommendations to prevent chronic diseases.

    According to the World Health Organization, vaccines can prevent more than 30 life-threatening diseases and infections, and 3.5 million to 5 million deaths every year, from diseases like diphtheria, tetanus, pertussis (whooping cough), influenza and measles.

    Health insurance

    The poll also looked at access to health insurance.

    The findings come at a time when New York is preparing major changes to its Essential Plan due to $7.5 billion in federal cuts. To preserve coverage for 1.3 million residents, the state said it will overhaul the plan and tighten income eligibility, removing about 450,000 people. The changes are expected to take effect in mid-2026.

    In the poll, 67 percent expressed concern about affording health care for themselves and their family. And 65 percent said they believe government should play a role in ensuring that everyone has access to affordable healthcare.

    Affordable, accessible health insurance is vital to primary care and crisis preparedness, experts say. The American Hospital Association links insurance to lower death rates, better outcomes and higher productivity.

    Just 8 percent of poll respondents were uninsured. Meanwhile, 36 percent had private coverage, 17 percent were insured through the Affordable Care Act and 25 percent had Medicare, Medicaid or both.

    Overall satisfaction is high among insured respondents, with 80 percent satisfied with their coverage and 76 percent satisfied with prescription drug costs.

    Among those without health insurance, 49 percent said it is too expensive, 26 percent said their employer does not offer it, 15 percent said they don’t need it, and 6 percent didn’t know how to get it.

    Affordability of health insurance concerns 67 percent of respondents, many of whom worry about covering healthcare costs for themselves and their families. As a result, 65 percent support government involvement to ensure access to affordable health insurance.

    “No one is immune to injuries or illnesses,” Dr. Adhi Sharma, president of Mount Sinai South Nassau, said in the news release. “Health insurance provides security and peace of mind in the event of a serious illness. It also plays an important role in preventive care.”

    Those needing help with health coverage are encouraged to contact the New York State Department of Health.

     

     


    Adina Genn

    Source link

  • Ex-CDC director set to tell senators that RFK Jr. required political sign-off on decisions, called for firings without cause

    (CNN) — Dr. Susan Monarez, former director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, is expected to say in a Senate committee hearing this week that US Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. put politics before public health when he required that all CDC policy and personnel decisions be cleared by political staff, according to her prepared testimony.

    Monarez is set to appear before the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions in a hearing Wednesday.

    She was ousted last month, just 29 days into her tenure as CDC director, amid clashes with Kennedy over vaccine policies. She will be joined at the hearing by Dr. Debra Houry, who stepped down from her role as the CDC’s chief medical officer in protest after Monarez’s ouster.

    “I was fired for holding the line on scientific integrity,” Monarez says in her prepared testimony. “I had refused to commit to approving vaccine recommendations without evidence, fire career officials without cause, or resign.”

    HHS has not responded to CNN’s request for comment on Monarez’s claims.

    In her prepared testimony, Monarez offers new details about her brief tenure as CDC director, including saying Kennedy issued a directive that CDC policy and personnel decisions required prior approval from political staff — a break from the practice of past administrations.

    Bloomberg first reported on the prepared testimony Monday.

    Monarez also says that on August 2, she learned from media reports that Kennedy had removed liaison members of the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, or ACIP — an influential group of outside experts who advise the agency on vaccinations – essentially being blindsided by the news.

    Then, “on the morning of August 25, Secretary Kennedy demanded two things of me that were inconsistent with my oath of office and the ethics required of a public official,” Monarez says. “He directed me to commit in advance to approving every ACIP recommendation regardless of the scientific evidence. He also directed me to dismiss career officials responsible for vaccine policy, without cause. He said if I was unwilling to do both, I should resign.”

    Monarez says she told Kennedy that she could not “pre-approve recommendations without reviewing the evidence” and that she had no basis to fire scientific experts.

    “On August 25, I could have stayed silent, agreed to demands, and no one would have known,” Monarez’s testimony says. “What the public would have seen were scientists dismissed without cause and vaccine protections quietly eroded — all under the authority of a Senate-confirmed Director with ‘unimpeachable credentials.’ I could have kept the office and the title. But I would have lost the one thing that cannot be replaced: my integrity.”

    Kennedy removed all 17 sitting members of ACIP in June. The committee now includes an entirely new group of experts, who are scheduled to meet Thursday and Friday to discuss Covid-19 vaccines as well as immunizations against hepatitis B and measles, mumps, rubella and varicella. Several of the new members have made unproven claims about vaccines, including one who said, without evidence, that Covid shots are causing “unprecedented levels of death and harm in young people.”

    Monarez says the new composition of the committee has “raised concerns from the medical community.”

    “There is real risk that recommendations could be made restricting access to vaccines for children and others in need without rigorous scientific review,” she says. “With no permanent CDC Director in place, those recommendations could be adopted. The stakes are not theoretical. We have already seen the largest measles outbreak in more than 30 years, which claimed the lives of two children. If vaccine protections are weakened, preventable diseases will return.”

    Jacqueline Howard and CNN

    Source link

  • Moderna CEO Responds to RFK Jr.’s Crusade Against the Covid-19 Vaccine

    At the WIRED Health summit on Tuesday, Moderna CEO Stéphane Bancel said the recent changes to Covid-19 vaccine policy made by Health and Human Services secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. are a “step backward.”

    Moderna is one of the manufacturers of mRNA-based Covid-19 vaccines, and last month the company received approval from the Food and Drug Administration for an updated version of the shot. But as part of that approval, the FDA imposed new restrictions on who can receive the vaccine. Previously, Covid vaccines were recommended for anyone 6 months or older. Now, the FDA says they should only be given to individuals at high risk of serious disease, either because they are 65 and older or have other health problems.

    “I think it complicates things for people,” Bancel said. “You might have somebody in your household—a parent, a spouse, a kid—who is at high risk” that you want to protect, he said. Before, healthy individuals could just go to a pharmacy to receive a Covid shot. Now, several states require a prescription to get a Covid shot because of the FDA’s changes.

    Kennedy has been on a crusade against vaccines since he stepped into the role of HHS secretary in February; earlier this week, the Senate Finance Committee grilled him about his actions in office so far.

    In May, Kennedy terminated a $590 million contract with Moderna for the development of an mRNA-based bird flu vaccine candidate. The contract was awarded during the final days of the Biden administration in January, just before President Donald Trump’s second term began. Bird flu is widespread in wild birds and has been causing outbreaks in poultry and US dairy cows since March 2024. It has caused sporadic cases in people, most of them farm workers, but poses a pandemic potential if it develops the ability to spread from person to person.

    That same month, Kennedy announced that HHS would no longer recommend mRNA Covid-19 vaccines for healthy children and pregnant women. In June, the FDA said it would require new labels on mRNA vaccines to include safety information about the risks of myocarditis and pericarditis, rare side effects observed mostly in young men following administration of the shots.

    In August, as a part of a “coordinated wind-down” of mRNA vaccine research, HHS canceled 22 related contracts and investments worth nearly $500 million. Kennedy incorrectly said in a statement these vaccines “fail to protect effectively against upper respiratory infections like Covid and flu.” HHS is instead shifting funding to an older vaccine platform known as “whole-virus” vaccines.

    Despite the administration’s backlash against mRNA vaccines, Bancel said he is “encouraged by the dialog” that the company has had with the FDA. In addition to getting updated Covid shots, albeit with limitations, Moderna also received expanded approval this year for its respiratory syncytial virus, or RSV, vaccine to include adults ages 18 to 59 who are at increased risk of disease. The vaccine was initially approved in May 2024 for adults aged 60 years and older.

    “I think a lot of people back in January, including my own team, were quite worried that we might not get those approvals,” Bancel said.

    The administration’s crackdown on mRNA research so far has not extended to the cancer space, and Moderna is developing several mRNA therapies against cancer, including personalized cancer vaccines. The company has 45 cancer-related programs in the pipeline and has said it expects 10 FDA approvals in the next three years. “We are using exactly the same technology to go from infectious disease to cancer,” Bancel said.

    He also addressed accusations that the Covid vaccines have not been well tested. “I don’t think there’s been a vaccine more studied for efficacy and safety in the history of vaccines,” he said. “In terms of vaccine efficacy and safety, there’s been studies done in literally millions of people in the real world.”

    Emily Mullin

    Source link

  • The New MAHA Report Lacks Teeth, Experts Say

    The first MAHA report, released in May and titled “Make Our Children Healthy Again,” mentioned ultra-processed foods more than 40 times, blaming them for negative health outcomes in children. 

    The just-released follow-up action plan, which outlines the Trump Administration’s strategy for fixing the problems identified by the first report, mentions ultra-processed foods only once, pledging that government agencies would continue to try to develop a definition for them.

    It’s just one way that the MAHA Strategy Report, released on Sept. 9, disappointed many public health advocates—including some MAHA supporters—who had hoped that Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s maverick approach to science might upend decades of slow progress on improving nutrition among American children. 

    “The first MAHA report was revolutionary in a good way,” says Jerold Mande, an adjunct professor of nutrition at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health who was a senior policy official for nutrition in the Bush, Clinton, and Obama administrations. It suggested that the root cause of chronic disease in the U.S. was the food industry, a renegade position for the federal government to take. This action plan backed off significantly from that position. 

    “What this says to me is that the first report was written by MAHA,” he says, “and the second one, the White House let industry lobbyists write it.”

    Read More: Why Ultra-Processed Foods Are So Bad for You

    Trump Administration figures defended the action plan at a press conference on Sept. 9, praising the report and its 128 action points that it says will be achieved through innovative approaches to research, increased public awareness, private-sector collaboration, and realigned incentives.

    “A lot of these 128 recommendations are things that I’ve been dreaming about my whole life,” said Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, at the press conference. “There’s never been an effort like this.” 

    The MAHA Commission—made up of Kennedy and more than a dozen other administration officials, including the USDA secretary and the EPA administrator—met with hundreds of stakeholders, including doctors, teachers, parents, and farmers, Kennedy said, outlining the many complex interests that the Administration had to balance in coming up with the report. 

    But observers still contend that MAHA’s strategy lacks teeth. For example, the first report said that pesticides, microplastics, and dioxins are found “at alarming levels” in the blood and urine of American children. It mentioned that some studies have drawn links between pesticides and adverse health outcomes, and that glyphosate may lead to cancer and liver inflammation. 

    The September report, though, only says that the EPA will ensure that the public has “awareness and confidence in EPA’s robust pesticide review procedures” and that USDA and EPA will launch a partnership with the private sector to use precision technology for pesticides. It does not mention any pesticides by name. 

    Read More: Are Pesticides in Your Food Harmful?

    When a draft of the MAHA strategy report was leaked in mid-August, Moms Across America, a nonprofit that promotes awareness about toxins in the food supply, expressed disappointment. “This MAHA Commission Report’s section on pesticides was clearly influenced by chemical corporations,” the group said in a post on its website. “It is not a depiction of Robert F Kennedy’s commitment; it is a display of many people whose names are on the report, pandering to pesticide company profits and catering to the convenience of agrochemical farmers.”

    Some of the group’s concerns include that the EPA’s pesticide review process does not require long-term animal studies or studies that show multigenerational effects of pesticides. The group has called on the Trump Administration to ban 86 pesticides that have been banned in other countries. 

    When a reporter asked at the press conference why the report was not more critical about pesticides, as some people had expected, the administration defended its position, saying that the government already had a strong pesticide-review process in place.

    “The EPA is arguably the most rigorous, most data backed, the most scientifically backed deep review process in the world,” USDA secretary Brooke Rollins said. “To approve any product that is used by our farmers, it will have gone through years upon years upon years of research.” 

    EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin added that the EPA was “aggressively confronting” the threat of banned pesticides that had been imported or smuggled into the U.S. 

    Another criticism of the leaked report came from Marion Nestle, a renowned nutritionist and professor of food studies at New York University. She lambasted the report for having too few actual plans to change the system, and too many calls for more research. 

    “When it comes to policy, it has one strong, overall message: more research needed. Regulate?  Not a chance,” Nestle wrote, on her website. “Everything else is waffle words: explore, coordinate, partner, prioritize, develop, or work toward.”

    The final strategy plan says it will address the chronic disease crisis “through advancing research,” that it will launch a new vaccine injury research program, that it will “conduct research as appropriate” on prescription patterns for mental health drugs, and will “expand research on dietary patterns,” to name a few. 

    There are, of course, some groups that will be happy with the MAHA strategy report, including those in the food industry who were spared the regulation that the initial report seemed to hint was coming. The strategy report largely eschews industry regulation and instead calls for industry guidelines, which are often determined and developed by companies, not by the government. 

    Rather than regulating the direct marking of food to children, for example, the strategy report says it will explore the development of potential industry guidelines.   

    That approach to industry is not so different from what Michelle Obama did in her Let’s Move campaign, says Mande, of Harvard, who served in the USDA at the time. Obama’s government-wide effort to combat childhood obesity highlighted companies that were making their own efforts to meet the goals she had set in Let’s Move. Though she would name specific companies and hold events with them to celebrate their commitments, a lot of those commitments have fallen by the wayside, he says.

    Read More: Seed Oils Don’t Deserve Their Bad Reputation

    At the press conference, Rollins highlighted companies that had voluntarily agreed to remove petroleum food dyes from their food products, calling them out by name.  

    Some food industry groups also seemed to be pleased with the report, especially those in the dairy industry. 

    They include the National Milk Producers Federation (NMPF), which celebrated a line from the strategy report that suggests that the Trump Administration will push to get whole milk back into schools. For decades, scientific evidence has suggested that because whole milk contains high levels of saturated fat, consumers should favor lower-fat versions. The MAHA report, on the other hand, says it wants to remove restrictions on whole-milk sales in schools. 

    “The MAHA Commission’s Make Our Children Healthy Again Strategy recognizes what the latest science indicates and what we’ve long been saying: that getting whole milk back into schools and boosting dairy in diets helps meet America’s nutritional needs,” said NMPF president and CEO Gregg Doud on the group’s website, “and that it is critical to improving the health of our nation’s children.”

    —With reporting by Connor Greene

    Alana Semuels

    Source link

  • Inside the Chaos at the C.D.C.

    A former senior official and two current employees describe the turmoil at the agency under R.F.K., Jr.,’s stewardship.

    Charles Bethea

    Source link

  • Breast Cancer Awareness 2025: Share your stories, join our campaign

    North of Boston Media Group is preparing to launch its 14th annual Breast Cancer Awareness campaign.

    And we want to share your stories surrounding this far-reaching disease.


    This page requires Javascript.

    Javascript is required for you to be able to read premium content. Please enable it in your browser settings.

    kAm~FC DA64:2= qC62DE r2?46C pH2C6?6DD DFAA=6>6?E 5F6 @FE @? ~4E] `d H:== 9:89=:89E DE@C:6D @7 DFCG:G2=[ 4@FC286[ 56E6C>:?2E:@? 2?5 9@A6]k^Am

    kAmx? 255:E:@?[ :E H:== =@@< 2E E96 C@=6 @7 42C68:G6CD[ @FC =@42= >65:42= 4@>>F?:EJ[ C6D@FC46 286?4:6D 2?5 DFAA@CE ?6EH@CA=6I 5:D62D6 24C@DD @FC }@CE9 @7 q@DE@? 4@>>F?:E:6D]k^Am

    kAms@ J@F 92G6 2 A6CD@?2= DE@CJ E@ D92C6 @C @H D@>6@?6 H9@ 92D H2865 2 4@FC286@FD 32EE=6 282:?DE 3C62DE 42?46Cn s@ J@F @H @7 :?5:G:5F2=D[ @C82?:K2E:@?D @C 286?4:6D E92E 92G6 DE6AA65 FA E@ DFAA@CE A2E:6?ED 2?5 E96:C 72>:=:6D 2D E96J ?2G:82E6 E9C@F89 E96 492==6?86D @7 E96 5:D62D6nk^Am

    kAm(6 9@A6 E@ D9@H42D6 E96D6 DE@C:6D 2?5 >@C6 😕 @FC 2??F2= C6A@CE 2?5[ 😕 5@:?8 D@[ :?DA:C6[ 65F42E6 2?5 C2:D6 2H2C6?6DD 23@FE E96 “!@H6C @7 !:?<” 2?5 E96 @?8@:?8 4@>>:E>6?E E@ E96 7:89E 7@C 2 4FC6]k^Am

    kAm$6?5 J@FC :562D E@ p?? #6:=J 2E k2 9C67lQ>2:=E@i2C6:=Jo?@CE9@73@DE@?]4@>Qm2C6:=Jo?@CE9@73@DE@?]4@>k^2m] %96 5625=:?6 😀 $6AE] `h]k^Am

    Source link

  • Vaccine chaos: Even some vulnerable seniors can’t get COVID shots amid spiking cases

    Seniors in some parts of the country say they are being denied COVID-19 vaccinations amid an ongoing spike in cases, leading to rising frustration over new Trump administration policies that are making it harder to get the shots.

    Matthew D’Amico, 67, of New York City, said a Walgreens declined to administer COVID-19 vaccines to him and his 75-year-old wife on Friday because they didn’t have a prescription. They’re trying to get vaccinated ahead of a trip.

    “I can’t believe we can’t get” the vaccine, D’Amico said in an interview. “I’ve been inoculated a number of times and never had to get a prescription. And it’s just very frustrating that this is where we are.”

    He’s not alone in his exasperation. Under the leadership of the vaccine skeptic Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., federal agencies have effectively made it more difficult to get vaccinated against COVID-19 this year. The Food and Drug Administration has only “approved” COVID-19 vaccines for those age 65 and up, as well as younger people with underlying health conditions.

    That means across the country, people younger than 65 interested in getting the COVID-19 vaccine must now either consult with a healthcare provider or “attest” to a pharmacy that they have an underlying health condition. It’s a potential hurdle that can make getting the vaccine more difficult and, some health experts worry, prompt even more Americans to eschew getting vaccinated.

    As D’Amico can attest, though, being part of a group for whom the COVID vaccine is “approved” doesn’t necessarily guarantee easy access.

    “For me to go to my primary [healthcare provider] now and get a prescription, it’s just kind of ridiculous,” D’Amico said.

    At least some people younger than 65 are encountering pharmacy staff asking probing questions about their medical conditions.

    That happened Friday at a CVS in Orange County, according to 34-year-old Alex Benson, who takes medication that can suppress his immune system.

    Besides just protecting himself, he wanted to get vaccinated as he has family members who are at high risk should they get COVID — his mother is immunocompromised, and his mother-in-law had open-heart surgery on Thursday night.

    Benson said an employee asked why he thought he was eligible for the vaccine.

    “They asked me for either a prescription or they wanted to know … why I felt I needed the vaccination,” Benson said. At one point, a staffer offered to call his doctor to get an authorization for the vaccine.

    Benson said he was alarmed by the questions, and started to “feel kind of some desperation to plead my case to the pharmacist.” Another CVS staffer later came over and said further answers weren’t necessary and simply attesting he was eligible was good enough. He eventually got the vaccine.

    Still, he felt the experience was dismaying.

    “I think easy access should be the policy,” Benson said. “I tend not to get too political, but it seems just rather juxtaposed to me that an anti-regulation administration is using regulation in this way. They’re supposed to be removing barriers to healthcare.”

    The vaccine chaos comes as COVID-19 is either increasing or starting to hit its late summer peak. According to data released Friday, there are now 14 states with “very high” levels of coronavirus detected in their wastewater — California, Texas, Florida, North Carolina, Indiana, South Carolina, Alabama, Louisiana, Connecticut, Utah, Nevada, Idaho, Hawaii and Alaska, as well as the District of Columbia.

    Dr. Elizabeth Hudson, the regional physician chief of infectious diseases for Kaiser Permanente Southern California, said data continue to show an increase in coronavirus cases.

    “Over this past week, we’ve seen an increase in the number of outpatient COVID cases, and even a smattering of inpatient cases,” Hudson said. “It appears that we may be nearing the top of the wave, but it may be another two weeks or so until we truly know if we’re there.”

    The rate at which coronavirus lab tests are confirming infection also continues to rise statewide and in the Los Angeles area. For the week ending Aug. 30, California’s COVID test positivity rate was 12.83%, up from 7.05% for the week ending Aug. 2. In L.A. County, the positive test rate was 14.83%, up from 9.33%.

    Other data, however, suggest some areas may have reached their summer COVID peak.

    In Orange County, the COVID positive test rate was 13.1%. That’s below the prior week’s rate of 18%, but still higher than the rate for the week that ended Aug. 2, which was 10.8%.

    In San Francisco, the test positivity rate has been hovering around 9% for the last week of reliable data available. It’s up from 7% a month earlier.

    In addition, wastewater data in L.A. County show coronavirus levels declined slightly from the prior week.

    “It’s too early to know if this decrease in wastewater viral concentrations is the first sign that COVID-19 activity is peaking or is regular variation typical of this data source,” the L.A. County Department of Public Health said.

    COVID hospital admissions in California are increasing — with the latest rate of 3.93 admissions per 100,000 residents, up from 2.38.

    But they remain relatively low statewide and in L.A. County. The number of L.A. County residents seeking care for COVID-related illness, or who have been hospitalized, “is quite a bit lower than during summer surges in 2023 and 2024,” the public health department said.

    A relatively mild summer wave, however, could mean that the annual fall-and-winter COVID wave might be stronger. In July, the state Department of Public Health said that scientists anticipate California would see either a stronger summer COVID wave or a more significant winter wave.

    The current confusion over federal COVID vaccine policy has been exacerbated by the chaos at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, where Kennedy earlier this year fired everyone on the influential Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, and orchestrated the firing of CDC Director Susan Monarez just 29 days after she was confirmed to the post by the Senate.

    Some of Kennedy’s handpicked replacements on the ACIP have criticized vaccines and spread misinformation, according to the Associated Press. And the new interim CDC director — Jim O’Neill, a Kennedy deputy — is a critic of health regulations and has no training in medicine or healthcare, the AP reported.

    The CDC hasn’t issued its own recommendations on who should get vaccinated, and that inaction has resulted in residents of a number of states needing to get prescriptions from a healthcare provider for at least the next couple of weeks. In some cases, that’s true even for seniors, as D’Amico found out.

    As of Friday, CVS said people need a prescription to get a COVID-19 vaccine, sometimes depending on their age, in Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Maine, North Carolina, New Mexico, New York, Pennsylvania, Utah, Virginia and West Virginia, as well as the District of Columbia.

    CVS couldn’t even offer the COVID-19 at its pharmacies in Nevada as of Friday; they were only available at the company’s MinuteClinic sites, according to spokesperson Amy Thibault.

    CVS said it expects to offer COVID-19 vaccines without prescriptions at its pharmacies in New Mexico, Nevada, New York and Pennsylvania “soon,” due to recent regulatory changes in each state.

    “Right now, all patients in all states need to attest to being eligible for the vaccine in order to schedule an appointment online,” Thibault said. If an adult says they have no underlying health conditions, but do have a prescription from a healthcare provider for “off-label” use of the vaccine, they can get the shot, Thibault confirmed.

    On Thursday, Hawaii joined California, Washington and Oregon in launching the West Coast Health Alliance: an interstate compact meant to provide science-based immunization guidance as an alternative to the CDC.

    “Together, these states will provide evidence-based immunization guidance rooted in safety, efficacy, and transparency — ensuring residents receive credible information free from political interference,” according to a statement from Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office.

    The statement suggested that the Trump administration was essentially “dismantling” the CDC.

    “The absence of consistent, science-based federal leadership poses a direct threat to our nation’s health security,” the statement said. “To protect the health of our communities, the West Coast Health Alliance will continue to ensure that our public health strategies are based on best available science.”

    It was not immediately clear, however, whether the formation of the West Coast Health Alliance would make it easier for people to get COVID-19 vaccines at the nation’s largest pharmacy retailers, where many people get their shots.

    Mainstream medical groups, such as the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, are also offering their own recommendations to advise individuals and families on what vaccines they should get.

    Rong-Gong Lin II

    Source link

  • Hochul expands COVID vaccine access at NY pharmacies | Long Island Business News

    In Port Washington on Friday, New York State Gov. Kathy Hochul signed an executive order to allow people to get the COVID-19 vaccine at pharmacies without a prescription across the state.

    New Yorkers can “go into a pharmacy, as they’re accustomed to doing, and the pharmacist will now, as a result of this signing, be authorized to administer COVID shots to those who choose to have them,” Hochul told reporters during a visit to Manorhaven Elementary School in Port Washington.

    The executive order was developed to get around newly imposed federal restrictions on vaccine access introduced last week that limited eligibility to those 65 and older, or younger with underlying health conditions.

    On Friday, Hochul said that “we’re going to make sure that everyone who has health insurance has coverage” to get the COVID vaccine, and added that Medicaid covers it.

    “Many of the large insurers have said they’ll cover it anyhow, because if you can prevent an illness, isn’t that a lot less expensive to treat in the long run?” Hochul said. “The insurance companies understand how important these are, but we’re going to work through some of the details.”

    Many of those details “can be settled when we come back with more comprehensive legislation in January,” Hochul said. But, she added, “I can’t wait that long. We are in peak COVID season. It’s starting up now. The cases are going up. People need to be aware of this, and this is the time when people should be thinking about getting their shots for themselves and their families if they choose.”

    She said that people have been “conditioned to be able to walk into a pharmacy, and I want to keep the status quo,” and added that she did not think people would take the time to get to a doctor’s office to get a prescription. “I don’t want there to be barriers to their or their family’s health because of an artificial roadblock.”

    Hochul said she and her team are “working around the clock to ensure that whatever Washington does, that we’re prepared to respond, so there’s no gap in coverage for New Yorkers.”


    Adina Genn

    Source link

  • Exclusive: Inside the CDC Exodus and RFK Jr.’s Anti-Vaccine Crusade

    As head of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has promised to lead with “radical transparency,” follow “gold-standard science,” and maintain vaccine access. But top officials at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) tell TIME that Kennedy has done only the opposite—prompting them to resign in late August from the agency. Their accounts include previously unreported details about the turmoil unfolding at one of the nation’s leading health agencies.

    Kennedy has repeatedly sidelined CDC officials, ignored established research, circumvented scientific protocols, and pushed a vaccine agenda rooted in ideology and not science, say Dr. Debra Houry, CDC’s former chief medical officer; Dr. Demetre Daskalakis, the agency’s ex-vaccine chief; and Dr. Daniel Jernigan, who led the department that oversees vaccine safety.

    Kennedy has stacked a key vaccine-advisory committee with vaccine opponents and granted special status to a vaccine skeptic allowing him unhampered access to part of a sensitive CDC vaccine database, they say. His office has, without explanation, held up a data project that CDC scientists say would make the agency’s data more transparent. And he has made major policy decisions, including changing vaccine recommendations, without consulting top CDC scientists, the former officials say. 

    Houry, Daskalakis, and Jernigan resigned on Aug. 27, the same day the White House fired CDC Director Susan Monarez. Jennifer Layden, another top CDC official, also resigned. The four former officials spoke to TIME this week.

    “You get to the point where if you stay, you’re complicit,” Daskalakis says. “I couldn’t just sit there and not say this is horribly wrong.” In his resignation letter, the former director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases wrote that he could no longer serve “in an environment that treats CDC as a tool to generate policies and materials that do not reflect scientific reality and are designed to hurt rather than to improve the public’s health.”

    Monarez wrote in an op-ed published in the Wall Street Journal on Sept. 4 that she was instructed by Kennedy in a recent meeting to rubber-stamp all recommendations from the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), an independent group that is supposed to advise the CDC director on vaccines, even though the director isn’t required to accept its recommendations. In an unprecedented move, Kennedy fired all ACIP members in June and replaced them with his allies, including several vaccine opponents. 

    Monarez wrote that she was fired because she refused to compromise science.

    “I hit my line when it became clear that Susan was being totally sidelined on the topic of vaccines,” Daskalakis says. “ACIP is being led by ideologues that don’t have regard for science. I know how this story ends. It will limit the ability of people to get vaccines.” 

    Kennedy defended the CDC shakeup during a Senate Finance Committee hearing on Sept. 4, saying that the changes were necessary to “restore the agency to its role as the world’s gold-standard public health agency.” He said Monarez lied about the factors that had led to her firing and that he didn’t have a private meeting with her.

    HHS did not respond to TIME’s request for comment.

    Read More: Xi and Putin Discuss Becoming ‘Immortal.’ Their Countries Are Investing In It

    Monarez had earlier tried to appoint a new designated federal official for ACIP, but had been blocked by Kennedy’s office, Houry says. The official attends committee meetings and ensures members are complying with federal law and the correct protocols. Monarez had wanted to appoint someone with more legal and policy experience to the role given the inexperience of most current ACIP members, Houry says. “The final straw for me was when Susan couldn’t make that change. Any hope I had in scientific integrity was gone.”

    At its first meeting in June, the new ACIP committee heard a presentation on the risks of thimerosal, a preservative that anti-vaccine activists have claimed is linked to autism. CDC scientists prepared a document for the meeting that showed, based on multiple studies, no link between thimerosal in vaccines to autism or other neurodevelopmental disorders. (For more than two decades, thimerosal has not been used in childhood vaccines except for flu vaccines in multi-dose vials. Most flu vaccines in the U.S. are given in single-dose vials that don’t contain thimerosal.) The document was initially posted online but was taken down on the day of the meeting at the behest of Kennedy’s office, Daskalakis says.

    “They were cherrypicking what they wanted the American public to see,” he says. 

    ACIP recommended that thimerosal be removed from all vaccines. HHS said in July that it was adopting the committee’s recommendation.

    A day after their resignation, former CDC officials Dan Jernigan, Deb Houry and Demetre Daskalakis were honored by CDC employees and supporters outside the CDC’s global headquarters on August 28, 2025 in Atlanta, Georgia. Elijah Nouvelage—Getty Images

    One of the key roles of the CDC is to provide scientific data and analyses to the Health Secretary and others, including ACIP, to help guide public-health policy and recommendations. But Daskalakis, Houry, and Jernigan say Kennedy barely engaged with CDC staff and disregarded CDC data that was provided, particularly related to vaccines. 

    Daskalakis and Houry say they offered to brief Kennedy on a variety of public-health issues but were never invited to do so. Jernigan, former director of the National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases, says members of his staff were invited to a single scientific meeting with Kennedy, which took place in August and focused on Lyme disease. Jernigan says HHS staff told his team to avoid discussing the Lyme disease vaccine, which is under development for people.

    Jernigan, Houry, and Daskalakis say they were in a meeting in May with other top CDC officials when they learned, via the social-media platform X, that Kennedy had announced a change to the CDC’s recommended vaccine schedules. 

    “Radical transparency? Well, that’s not how you want to find out about COVID vaccine guidance,” Houry says. 

    Layden, a fourth CDC official who resigned last week, said she left the agency because recent budget and staffing cuts, coupled with a lack of leadership support, had made it impossible for her to do her job. Layden was the director of CDC’s Office of Public Health Data, Surveillance and Technology, which oversees the agency’s data-modernization efforts. She says her group had recently completed a new website that centralizes data of all reportable infectious diseases. The CDC currently has separate websites for each disease, which can be hard to navigate.

    “The idea was to create a one-stop shop,” Layden says. 

    But Kennedy’s office needs to greenlight the website before it can be made public. “We never got the approval to release it,” Layden says. “No reasoning has been given.” 

    Not publishing a website that provides clearer data is “inconsistent with being transparent,” she says.

    Read More: The Clashing Advice Over COVID-19 Shots for Kids

    As of last week, no one at CDC had seen the agenda for the next ACIP meeting, scheduled to take place later this month, Daskalakis says. CDC scientists are usually involved months ahead of such meetings and provide guidance and data to the committee.

    The agenda has since been posted online and lists respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) as one of the issues up for discussion. “No one at CDC has any idea what that topic is about,” Daskalakis says.

    CDC staff are also in the dark about what David Geier, a longtime vaccine opponent who Kennedy tapped earlier this year to conduct vaccine-safety research, is up to, says Jernigan.

    Kennedy has granted Geier special access to part of the CDC’s Vaccine Safety Datalink (VSD), Jernigan says. Scientists use the VSD to monitor vaccine safety and conduct studies about adverse events following vaccination. 

    The VSD is a collaboration between the CDC and about a dozen large health care networks. The CDC only owns VSD data collected before 2000, and that is the data Geier has been given access to, Jernigan says. Unlike other researchers, however, Geier hasn’t been required to provide information to the CDC about what he is using the data for or explain what steps he is taking to protect the private health information contained in the VSD, the former official says. 

    “We asked him to present a study question and protocol. We have never seen those documents,” Jernigan says. “That’s not transparent. That’s not gold-standard science.” 

    Geier is expected to produce a report based on his research soon, Jernigan says. 

    Geier, whose highest credential is a bachelor’s degree in biology, has built his career attempting to show a link between vaccines and autism. Large studies conducted over decades have shown no such link. 

    In the 2000s, Geier, together with his late father and collaborator, Mark Geier, were barred from accessing the VSD at least twice by CDC officials who said they had misused it. Jernigan says he had misgivings about providing VSD access to Geier, but was told by an HHS attorney that Geier had been designated as a direct agent of Kennedy’s. “Our engagement with David was equivalent to engaging with” Kennedy himself, Jernigan says.

    Jernigan, Houry, and Daskalakis say that Kennedy’s vaccine moves are already harming Americans. After changes to federal COVID-19 vaccine guidance were announced, CVS and Walgreens said last week they would restrict access to COVID-19 shots in several states.

    Multi-dose flu vaccines, which contain thimerosal and are cheaper than single-dose versions, will no longer be available. This change will disproportionately affect rural and underserved communities where these vaccines are more commonly used, Daskalakis says. 

    The former CDC vaccine chief says he expects Kennedy, who has long been skeptical of immunization, to continue to push an anti-vaccine agenda as HHS secretary. “Vaccines are the baggage that Kennedy has had for decades. There’s nothing subtle about what he’s doing,” Daskalakis says.

    Dominique Mosbergen

    Source link