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Today — 31 October 2024Main stream

Idaho health district abandons COVID shots amid flood of anti-vaccine nonsense

By: Beth Mole
31 October 2024 at 20:42

Residents in the Southwest District Health in Idaho are no longer able to get COVID-19 vaccines from public health clinics after the district's board of directors voted 4–3 recently to stop administering the shot.

The vote came during a hearing swamped by misinformation and conspiracy theories about the lifesaving vaccines. It's a chilling reminder of how dangerous anti-vaccine sentiment and misinformation have infested communities nationwide, causing vaccination rates to slip across the country and making way for deadly outbreaks of preventable diseases.

Safety net

In a hearing last week, Perry Jansen, the health district’s medical director, gave the only presentation that favored keeping COVID-19 vaccines available through district clinics. He echoed the points that all health experts and major health organizations, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, have pointed out for years: that COVID-19 vaccines have proven to be safe, lifesaving immunizations that are recommended for everyone ages 6 months and up.

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© Getty | Markus Scholz

Which Vaccines Will RFK Jr. Come For?

31 October 2024 at 18:41

If Donald Trump becomes president again, it looks like Robert F. Kennedy Jr. will have his say over who gets which vaccines: Trump said at a rally last weekend that he would let RFK Jr. “go wild” on health should he win the White House. RFK Jr. said Trump promised him control of the Department of Health and Human Services, where the CDC and FDA are housed; Trump’s campaign seemed to suggest that wasn’t set in stone.

A world where an anti-vax advocate would play a large role in shaping vaccine policy is kind of terrifying. While RFK Jr. does make extremely off-the-cuff comments, including about Covid-19 vaccines, some of Kennedy’s specific claims about vaccines may not be apparent unless you go looking for them.

Well, I went looking for them. Here are some of RFK Jr.’s claims about various childhood vaccines throughout the decades, most of which are usually required if you go to public schools. What’s perhaps the most disturbing underlying factor of all his vaccine conspiracy theories is the suggestion that a dead child—vaccines save a lot of lives—is better than an autistic or chronically ill one, conditions he claims vaccines cause.

Measles, Mumps, and Rubella 

In a 2005 Rolling Stone article, RFK Jr. suggests that a rise in childhood vaccines was tied to an increase in kids being diagnosed with autism.

Before 1989, American preschoolers received 11 vaccinations—for polio, diphtheria-tetanus-pertussis and measles-mumps-rubella. A decade later, thanks to federal recommendations, children were receiving a total of 22 immunizations by the time they reached first grade. As the number of vaccines increased, the rate of autism among children exploded.

RFK Jr. was not the first person to suggest a link between the MMR vaccine and autism. Andrew Wakefield’s retracted Lancet study linking the two, which was total nonsense, should take a lot of the blame. But RFK Jr. still promoted the conspiracy theory that the measles vaccine was linked to autism in a 2021 Fox News interview, and in his 2023 co-written book Vax Unvax, Kennedy also suggests that the measles vaccine is linked to Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis.

Diphtheria-Tetanus-Pertussis (and Haemophilus Influenzae B)

In the same Rolling Stone piece, RFK Jr. essentially claimed that Americans had been poisoning their kids with vaccines that contained thimerosal, which is no longer in routine childhood vaccines, except some versions of the flu vaccine.

Tragically, that same year, the CDC recommended that infants be injected with a series of mercury-laced vaccines. Newborns would be vaccinated for hepatitis B within 24 hours of birth, and 2-month-old infants would be immunized for haemophilus influenzae B and diphtheria-tetanus-pertussis.

The FDA says that the thimerosal in vaccines has “significantly declined due to reformulation and development of new vaccines—not that the tiny amount of it in vaccines was linked to autism or other health issues. Kennedy also claimed that receiving multiple DTP vaccines raised infant mortality (the 2004 study which Kennedy and Brian Hooker, his cowriter, cite has not been replicated).

Hepatitis B

In a 2017 interview with Stat News, RFK Jr. said that the Hepatitis B vaccine hadn’t received enough testing. He seemed to find a new argument as to why the treatment wasn’t when thimerosal was removed:

The hepatitis B vaccines that are currently approved had fewer than five days of safety testing. That means that if the child has a seizure on the sixth day, it’s never seen.

Also, people can report an adverse event at any point.

Rotavirus

Back to the infamous 2005 Rolling Stone piece: RFK Jr. seems to suggest that people should not trust the rotavirus vaccine because of financial conflicts of interest in its advocacy.

The House Government Reform Committee discovered that four of the eight CDC advisors who approved guidelines for a rotavirus vaccine “had financial ties to the pharmaceutical companies that were developing different versions of the vaccine.” Offit, who shares a patent on one of the vaccines, acknowledged to me that he “would make money” if his vote eventually leads to a marketable product. But he dismissed my suggestion that a scientist’s direct financial stake in CDC approval might bias his judgment. “It provides no conflict for me,” he insists. “I have simply been informed by the process, not corrupted by it.”

In a 2023 Substack post, Paul Offit, the doctor RFK Jr. referred to in that excerpt, debunked both Kennedy’s claims about himself, and the shoddy science he relied on.

Polio

Type I diabetes is a serious illness—one that Kennedy stokes fears of in his book Vax Unvax. The book claims that Type I diabetes appears in about 21 of 100,000 kids vaccinated against polio, more than double the rate for those who were not vaccinated, according to research performed between 1990 and 2000. Kennedy and Hooker cite a single study to support their claim that the typical polio vaccine given until the year 2000 was dangerous. But most other research refutes this claim. Vax Unvax claims to want to “let the science speak,” per its subtitle, but doesn’t mention how polio can lead to permanent paralysis.

Influenza

As you can probably tell by now, Kennedy likes picking single studies to back his narrative. In Vax Unvax, Kennedy and Hooker point to one study that claims that kids who have gotten the seasonal flu vaccine are almost four times more likely to be hospitalized.

Kennedy’s strategy on childhood vaccines is to instill fear backed by lone studies, claiming they can make kids sicker, in opposition to decades of research that show that childhood vaccines stop kids from getting sicker—and let them avoid preventable long-term health effects.

Slivered onions are likely cause of McDonald’s E. coli outbreak, CDC says

By: Beth Mole
30 October 2024 at 21:40

Slivered onions are the likely source of the multi-state E. coli outbreak linked to McDonald's Quarter Pounder burgers that continues to grow, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced Wednesday.

Onions were one of two primary suspects when the CDC announced the outbreak on October 22, with the other being the beef patties used on the burgers. But onions quickly became the leading suspect. The day after the CDC's announcement, McDonald's onion supplier, Taylor Farms, recalled peeled and diced yellow onion products, and several other fast food chains took onions off the menu as a precaution. (No other restaurants have been linked to the outbreak to date.)

According to the CDC, traceback information and epidemiological data collected since then have all pointed to the onions, and, according to McDonald's, state and federal testing of the beef patties has all come back negative.

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© Getty | Scott Olson

Person accidentally poisoned 46 coworkers with toxin-loaded homemade lunch

By: Beth Mole
30 October 2024 at 20:52

For some, microwaving fish in the employee lunch room is the ultimate work faux pas. But for one (likely mortified) employee of a seafood distribution plant in Maryland, it's probably causing a mass poisoning with the homemade noodle dish they brought to share for lunch. The dish sickened 46 employees, spurring their employer to hastily release a statement assuring customers that it wasn't the company's food that caused the illnesses.

On October 21, first responders and paramedics arrived at the NAFCO Wholesale Fish Distribution Facility in Jessup, where dozens of employees had abruptly fallen ill about three hours after lunch. Helicopter footage of the event captured images of workers around picnic tables outside the plant, some doubled over and with their heads down.

Ultimately, 46 people were sickened, and at least 26 were treated at an area hospital with symptoms of food poisoning, according to The Baltimore Banner. They all recovered.

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© Getty | Joshua Quillo

Yesterday — 30 October 2024Main stream

Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s “Make America Healthy Again” Draws Wellness Influencers to MAGA

30 October 2024 at 13:27

“Don’t you want a president who’s going to make America healthy again?” Robert F. Kennedy Jr. asked a roaring crowd, during Sunday’s triumphal rally in support of Trump at Madison Square Garden. 

When Kennedy, the country’s most famous anti-vaccine activist, suspended his campaign to endorse Donald Trump, it not only represented the death of his presidential aspirations, but the dawn of something new: the so-called “Make America Healthy Again” movement, a tidy bit of sloganeering designed to highlight where Trump and Kennedy’s agendas overlap.

“How can you claim this is going to make people healthy?”

The concept is meant to convince skeptical Kennedy supporters to back Trump. But so far it’s mainly illustrated the various ways Kennedy is on board with Trump’s radical deregulation agenda, which would see the agencies responsible for policing food, environmental and medication safety defunded.

After all, the ex-president has done it before: Trump came into office pledging to make huge cuts to scientific and medical research. Under his administration, the FDA took fewer enforcement actions against companies suspected of marketing dangerous, unsafe, or ineffective products, and cuts to public health agencies may have harmed the country’s readiness to respond to COVID. 

There are signs that another Trump administration will be even worse for public health: Project 2025, an agenda for his second administration prepared by his allies, calls for the CDC to be broken up, slamming it as “perhaps the most incompetent and arrogant agency in the federal government.” It also demonizes the National Institutes of Health, claiming the agency has an “incestuous relationship” with vaccine manufacturers and is in the grip of “woke gender ideology.”  

Despite his governing record, Trump has adopted some MAHA talking points, promising to end the “chronic illness epidemic” in America, which, like Kennedy, he has previously blamed partly on vaccines. Trump, who already installed Kennedy on his presidential transition team, also publicly promised to put him on a panel to study what he called “the decades-long increase in chronic health problems, including autoimmune disorders, autism, obesity, infertility, and many more.” 

The main overlap between Trump and Kennedy—and the driving force behind the MAHA movement—is a their shared conviction that the institutions responsible for policing the safety of food and drugs should be defunded and their employees investigated and possibly jailed.

On Monday, Kennedy told a group of MAHA supporters that Trump had “promised me…control of the public health agencies,” including HHS, the CDC, FDA, NIH, USDA, “and a few others.” Kennedy recently tweeted that the FDA’s “war on public health is about to end” under a new Trump administration, before listing an array that encompassed pseudoscientific practices and products: “This includes its aggressive suppression of psychedelics, peptides, stem cells, raw milk, hyperbaric therapies, chelating compounds, ivermectin, hydroxychloroquine, vitamins, clean foods, sunshine, exercise, nutraceuticals and anything else that advances human health and can’t be patented by Pharma.” He added, “If you work for the FDA and are part of this corrupt system, I have two messages for you: 1. Preserve your records, and 2. Pack your bags.” 

At the Madison Square Garden rally, Kennedy accused Democrats of “giving us the sickest children in the world,” called the chronic disease crisis “existential for our country,” and said he was focused on “ending the corruption” at agencies including the NIH, the CDC, and the FDA, all which he lumped in with the CIA as being in dire need of top-to-bottom reform.  

According to researcher and author Matthew Remski, Kennedy’s recent appearances have seen him deemphasize attacks on vaccines to instead focus on a much broader set of purported issues around health.

“It’s probably the most successful rebrand that he’s managed since his anti-vax turn back in 2005,” says Remski, a co-host of Conspirituality, a podcast examining the alignment between New Age and right wing spheres. “MAHA represents his organizational capacity to bring the full spectrum of anti-vax-adjacent issues and concerns and grievances together under one umbrella.”

And could be a profitable one. The brand has given rise to the MAHA Alliance—a new conservative super PAC led by Del Bigtree, an anti-vaccine personality and Kennedy’s former campaign communications director. Bigtree says the group has already raised nearly $8 million, including a recent $3 million donation from Elon Musk.

Kennedy’s new role in GOP politics has opened doors to him and those in his circles—including some with a track record of promoting harmful or scientifically unsupported health claims. In September, Kennedy and a number of close allies and MAHA boosters took part in a Capitol Hill event on nutrition hosted by Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wisc.), a longtime friend of the anti-vaccine movement. Billed as “a nonpartisan panel discussion about the industries that impact national health,” in his opening remarks, Kennedy accused the FDA, the USDA, and the CDC of being “sock puppets for the industry they’re supposed to regulate.” 

Other panelists included Calley Means, a self-styled “healthcare reform” advocate who had been involved in Kennedy’s campaign, men’s rights activist and pop psychologist Jordan Peterson (as well as his daughter Mikhaila, who promotes an all-meat regimen she’s dubbed “the Lion Diet”), and Vani Hari, a wellness influencer who uses the moniker Food Babe, who’s previously been accused of making unscientific claims in her quest to pressure food makers to drop certain ingredients.

Given “his distorted views,” Kennedy makes a poor figurehead for a movement purportedly centered on health.

During her panel remarks, Hari pushed a new campaign against Kellogg’s cereals’ use of food dyes as part of a larger agenda against foods with “synthetic preservatives and pesticides.” The science demonstrating danger from the synthetic food dyes Kellogg’s uses in the U.S. is far from settled; according to a 2014 NPR profile, a previous campaign Hari mounted against supposedly-questionable beer additives actually targeted products derived from algae and fish.

Dr. Andrea Love, an immunologist and microbiologist who combats health misinformation, told Mother Jones the panel gave participants like Hari “a huge megaphone.” Love has pointed out that some of the Kellogg’s ingredients that Hari has claimed are “banned” in other countries legally appear there under different names. When Love later criticized a video actress Eva Mendes made praising Hari’s campaign and calling Kellogg’s dyes “harmful for children,” Calley Means baselessly accused Love of “advertising for Monsanto.” Peterson called her “a liar” as well as “incompetent, deceitful, resentful and arrogant.”

Danielle Shine—an Australian registered dietitian and nutritionist who studies nutrition misinformation also drew fire from Means and Peterson after commenting on Mendes’ video—says Kennedy makes a poor figurehead for a movement purportedly centered on health, given “his distorted views.”

“It’s perplexing that someone who seems to lack an understanding of basic science and promotes misinformation about vaccinations, food, and health would be positioned to lead a public health initiative,” she says. “His rhetoric repeatedly demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding of food and nutrition science.”

Kennedy’s demonization of public health agencies, as he foregrounds influencers who make unsubstantiated claims about science and health, illustrates, Love argues, that the efforts of the so-called Make America Healthy Again circle are entirely misdirected.

“They’re pushing towards an ecosystem where there’s less protection, safety, oversight and regulation,” she says. “They’re not talking about the things that do matter, like getting more Americans insured… They say they’re going to take on a company like Kellogg’s, an entity that has no impact on health outcomes, while also pushing to take all authority, oversight, and funding away from federal entities who do that.”

“How,” she adds, with a measure of disbelief, “can you claim this is going to make people healthy?”

Before yesterdayMain stream

A candy engineer explains the science behind the Snickers bar

It’s Halloween. You’ve just finished trick-or-treating and it’s time to assess the haul. You likely have a favorite, whether it’s chocolate bars, peanut butter cups, those gummy clusters with Nerds on them, or something else.

For some people, including me, one piece stands out—the Snickers bar, especially if it’s full-size. The combination of nougat, caramel, and peanuts coated in milk chocolate makes Snickers a popular candy treat.

As a food engineer studying candy and ice cream at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, I now look at candy in a whole different way than I did as a kid. Back then, it was all about shoveling it in as fast as I could.

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© NurPhoto via Getty

Trump’s Surgeon General: Please Don’t Let RFK Jr. “Go Wild on Health”

28 October 2024 at 21:12

At a Sunday campaign rally, former President Donald Trump promised, if re-elected, to let anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist and failed presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. “go wild on health.” Kennedy has previously signaled his desire to join a second Trump administration, after dropping out of the race and endorsing Trump—who himself has wild ideas about health—in August.

Trump tonight on RFK Jr:

“I'm gonna let him go wild on health. I'm gonna let him go wild on the food. I'm gonna let him go wild on the medicines." pic.twitter.com/tBVXrou1YQ

— Dan Diamond (@ddiamond) October 28, 2024

Trump’s pledge alarmed public health professionals, including Dr. Jerome Adams, his own surgeon general. Unlike many other top officials appointed by Trump, Adams was actually qualified: he was praised by colleagues for successfully limiting an HIV outbreak in Indiana by establishing a needle exchange program, among other public health successes.

On Monday, Adams spoke at a conference of the American Public Health Association—which endorsed his 2017 nomination as Surgeon General—on his concerns about Kennedy, especially his anti-vaccine stances, as New York Times reporter Sheryl Gay Stolberg wrote on X.

Trump's surgeon general, @JeromeAdamsMD warns RFK would hurt America's health:

"If RFK has a significant influence on the next administration, that could further erode people's willingness to get up to date with recommended vaccines, and I am worried about the impact that…

— Sheryl Gay Stolberg (@SherylNYT) October 28, 2024

Adams has been a strong supporter of the development and distribution of Covid vaccines, and others, including by testifying at a 2021 House hearing on how to encourage Covid vaccine uptake. Kennedy, on the other hand, has promoted the debunked, dangerous theory that vaccines cause autism. It definitely does not—but polio and measles do cause people to develop disabilities.

As my colleague David Corn wrote for Mother Jones in July, Kennedy’s anti-vaccine activism could potentially be linked to the deaths of children in Samoa who contracted measles. (Kennedy denied fault.)

During the stretch in which the vaccination coverage was dropping in Samoa, Kennedy visited the nation in June 2019 and gave a boost to anti-vaxxers there who had used the death of those two infants to help cause the drop in vaccination rates…Public health experts complained Kennedy’s visit to Samoa helped amplifly anti-vax voices.

During his speech, Adams also directly appealed to Republicans, asking them to not play a role in “allowing vaccine confidence to continue to be eroded, and for us to go backwards on one of the number-one public health achievements made in the last 50 to 75 years in this country.”

Pizza place accidentally spiked dough with THC, sickening dozens

By: Beth Mole
28 October 2024 at 19:15

Dozens of people in Wisconsin have been sickened and at least five needed emergency medical services after inadvertently eating pizza tainted with Delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the principal psychoactive compound in cannabis, officials of Public Health Madison & Dane County reported late Friday.

The contamination, which health officials called "unintentional," occurred at Famous Yeti’s Pizza in Stoughton between October 22 and October 24. In a news release, the local health department advised customers to throw away any pizza they had from the restaurant during that time period.

"We want to be sure anyone who has this pizza on hand throws it away so they don't get sick," Bonnie Armstrong, director of Environmental Health at Public Health Madison & Dane County, said in the release. "If you ate the pizza and are experiencing THC-related symptoms, please contact your health care provider or call 911 if your symptoms worsen."

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© Getty | Eric Savage

Just About Everything Related to Climate Hinges on the Election Outcome

26 October 2024 at 10:00

This story was originally published by Grist and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

Helene and Milton, the two massive hurricanes that just swept into the country—killing hundreds of people, and leaving both devastation and rumblings of political upheaval in seven states—amounted to their own October surprise. Not that the storms led to some irredeemable gaffe or unveiled some salacious scandal. The surprise, really, may be that not even the hurricanes have pushed concerns about climate change more toward the center of the presidential campaign.  

With early voting already underway and two weeks before Election Day, when voters will decide between Vice President Kamala Harris, who has called climate change an “existential threat,” and former President Donald Trump, who has called climate change a “hoax,” Grist’s editorial staff presents a climate-focused voter’s guide—a package of analyses and predictions about what the next four years may bring from the White House, depending on who wins. 

The next administration will be decisive for the country’s progress on critical climate goals. By 2030, just a year after the next president would leave office, the US has committed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 50 to 52 percent below 2005 levels, and expects to supply up to 13 million electric vehicles annually. A little further down the line, though no less critical, the country’s climate goals include reaching 100 percent carbon-free electricity by 2035 and achieving a net-zero emissions economy by 2050.

As you gear up to vote, here are 15 ways that Harris’ and Trump’s climate- and environment-related policies could affect your life—along with some information to help inform your vote. 

Robert Nickelsberg/ Getty Images/Grist

Energy
Over the last year or so, utility companies across the country have woken up to a new reality: After two decades of flat growth, electricity demand is about to spike, due to the combined pressures of new data centers, cryptocurrency mining, a manufacturing boom, and the electrification of buildings and transportation.

While the next president will not directly decide how the states supply power to their new and varied customers, he or she will oversee the massive system of incentives, subsidies, and loans by which the federal government influences how much utilities meet electricity demand by burning fossil fuels—the crucial question for the climate. 

Trump’s answer to that question can perhaps be summed up in the three-word catchphrase he’s deployed on the campaign trail: “Drill, baby, drill.” He is an avowed friend of the fossil fuel industry, from whom he reportedly demanded $1 billion in campaign funds at a fundraising dinner last spring, promising in exchange to gut environmental regulations. 

Vice President Harris is not exactly running on a platform of decarbonization, either. In an effort to win swing votes in the shale-boom heartland of Pennsylvania, she has reversed course on her past opposition to fracking, and she has proudly touted the record levels of oil and gas production seen under the current administration. Despite the risk of nuclear waste, the Biden administration has also championed nuclear power as a carbon-free solution and sought to incentivize the construction of new reactors through subsidies and loans. Although Harris says her administration would not be a continuation of Biden’s, it’s reasonable to expect continuity with Biden’s overall approach of leaning more heavily on incentives for low-emissions energy than restrictions on fossil fuels to further a climate agenda. —Gautama Mehta, environmental justice reporting fellow

Home improvements
In 2022, the Biden administration handed the American people a great big carrot to incentivize them to decarbonize: the Inflation Reduction Act. The IRA provides thousands of dollars in the form of rebates and tax credits for a consumer to get an EV and electrify their home with solar panels, a heat pump, and an induction stove. (Though the funding available for renters is slim, it is also out there.) In 2023, 3.4 million Americans got $8.4 billion in tax credits for home energy improvements thanks to the IRA.

If elected, Trump has pledged to rescind the remaining funding, which would require the support of Congress. By contrast, Harris has praised the law (which, as vice president, she famously cast the tie-breaking vote to pass) and would almost certainly veto any attempts by Congress to repeal it. As a presidential candidate, she has not said whether she would expand the law, though many expect she would focus on more efficient implementation.  

But while repealing the IRA might slow the steady pace of American households decarbonizing, it can’t stop what’s already in motion. “There are fundamental forces here at work,” said Gernot Wagner, a climate economist at Columbia Business School. “At the end of the day, there’s very little that Trump can do to stand in the way.” 

For one, the feds provide guidance to states on how to distribute the money made available through the IRA. More climate-ambitious states are already layering on their own monetary incentives to decarbonize. So even if that IRA money disappeared, states could pick up the slack. 

And two, even before the IRA passed, market forces were setting clean energy on a path to replace fossil fuels. The price of solar power dropped by 90 percent between 2010 and 2020. And like any technology, electric appliances will only get cheaper and better. It might take longer without further support from the federal government, but the American home of tomorrow is, inevitably, fully electric—no matter the next administration. —Matt Simon, senior staff writer focusing on climate solutions

Insurance premiums
Whether they know it or not, many Americans are already confronting the costs of a warming world in their monthly bills: In recent years, home insurance premiums have risen in almost every state, as insurance companies face the fallout of larger and more damaging hurricanes, wildfires, and hailstorms. In some states, like Florida and California, many prominent companies have fled the market altogether. While some Democrats have proposed legislation that would create a federal backstop for these failing insurance markets—with the goal of ensuring that coverage remains available for most homeowners—these proposals have yet to make much headway in a divided Congress. For the moment, it’s state governments, rather than the president or any other national politicians, that have real jurisdiction over homeowner’s insurance prices.

Near the end of the presidential debate in September, when both candidates were asked about what they’d do to “fight climate change,” Harris began her response by referring to “anyone who lives in a state who has experienced these extreme weather occurrences, who now is either being denied home insurance or is being jacked up” as a way to counter Trump’s denials of climate change. 

Traditional homeowner policies don’t include flood insurance, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency runs a flood insurance program that serves 5 million homeowners in the US, mostly along the East Coast. Homeowners in the most flood-prone areas are required to buy this policy, but uptake has been lagging in some particularly vulnerable inland communities—including those that were recently devastated by Hurricane HeleneProject 2025, which many experts believe will serve as the blueprint to a second Trump term (though his campaign disavows any connection to it), imagines FEMA winding down the program altogether, throwing flood coverage to the private market. This would likely make it cheaper to live in risky areas—but it would leave homeowners without financial support after floods, all but ensuring only the rich could rebuild. —Jake Bittle, staff writer focusing on climate impacts and adaptation

Marli Miller/UCG/Universal Images Group via Getty Images/Grist

Transporation
The appetite for infrastructure spending is so bipartisan that the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, signed in 2021, has become more widely known as the bipartisan infrastructure law. But don’t be fooled. A wide gulf separates how Harris and Trump approach transportation, with potentially profound climate implications.

Harris hasn’t offered many specifics, but she has committed to advancing the rollout out of the Biden administration’s infrastructure agenda. That includes traditional efforts like building roads and bridges, mixed with Democratic priorities including union labor and an eye toward climate-resilience. The infrastructure law and the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act include billions in spending to promote the adoption of electric vehicles, produce them domestically, and add 500,000 charging stations by 2030. They also include greener transportation efforts aimed at, among other things, electrifying buses, enhancing passenger rail, and expanding mass transit.

That said, Harris has not called for the eventual elimination of internal combustion vehicles, despite such plans in 12 states. Trump has also been sparse on details about transportation—his website doesn’t address the issue except to decry Chinese ownership. During his first term and 2020 campaign, he championed (though never produced) a $1 trillion infrastructure plan. It focused on building “gleaming” roads, highways, and bridges, and reducing the environmental review and government oversight of such projects. He has favored flipping the federal-first funding model to shift much of the cost onto states, municipalities, and the private sector.

Ultimately, Trump seems to have little interest in a transition to low-carbon transportation—the 2024 official Republican platform calls for rolling back EV mandates—and he remains a vocal supporter of fossil fuel production.  —Tik Root, senior staff writer focusing on the clean energy transition

Health
Rising global temperatures and worsening extreme weather are changing the distribution and prevalence of tick- and mosquito-borne diseases, fungal pathogens, and water-borne bacteria across the US. State and local health departments rely heavily on data and recommendations on these climate-fueled illnesses from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)—whose director is appointed by the president and can be influenced by the White House

In his first term, Trump tried to divorce many federal agencies’ research functions from their rulemaking capacities, and there are concerns that, if he wins again in November, Trump would continue that effort. Project 2025, a sweeping blueprint developed by right-wing conservative groups with the aim of influencing a second Trump term, proposes separating the CDC’s disease surveillance efforts from its policy recommendation work, meaning the agency would be able to track the effects of climate change on human health, like the spreading of infectious diseases, but it wouldn’t be able to tell states how to manage them or inform the public about how to stay safe from them. 

Harris is expected to leave the CDC intact, but she hasn’t given many signals on how she’d approach climate and health initiatives. Her campaign website says she aims to protect public health, but provides no further clarification or policy position on that subject, or specifically climate change’s influence on it.

Over the past four years, the Biden administration has made strides in protecting Americans from extreme heat, the leading cause of weather-related deaths in the US. It proposed new heat protections for indoor and outdoor workers, and it made more than $1 billion in grant funding available to nonprofits, tribes, cities, and states for cooling initiatives, such as planting trees in urban areas, that reduce the risk of heat illness.

It’s reasonable to expect that a future Harris administration would continue Biden’s work in this area. Harris cast the tie-breaking vote on the IRA, which includes emissions-cutting policies that will lead to less global warming in the long term, benefiting human health not just in the US but worldwide. 

But there’s more to be done. Biden established the Office of Climate Change and Health Equity in the first year of his term, but it still hasn’t been funded by Congress. Harris has not said whether she will push for more funding for that office. —Zoya Teirstein, staff writer covering politics and the intersection between climate change and health

Food prices
Inflation has cooled significantly since 2022, but high prices—especially high food prices—remain a concern for many Americans. Both candidates have promised to tackle the issue; Harris went so far as to propose a federal price-gouging ban to lower the cost of groceries. Such a ban could help smaller producers and suppliers, but economists fear it could also lead to further supply shortages and reduced product quality.

Meanwhile, Trump has said he will tax imported goods to lower food prices, though analysts have pointed out that the tax would likely do the opposite. Trump-era tariff fights during the US-China trade war led to farmers losing billions of dollars in exports, which the federal government had to make up for with subsidies.

Trump’s immigration agenda could also affect food prices. If reelected, the former president has said he will expel millions of undocumented immigrants, many of whom work for low pay on farms and in other parts of the food sector, playing a vital role in food harvesting and processing. Their mass deportation and the resulting labor shortage could drive up prices at the grocery store. Meanwhile, Harris promises to uphold and strengthen the H-2A visa system—the national program that enables agricultural producers to hire foreign-born workers for seasonal work. 

In the short term, it must be emphasized that neither candidate’s economic plans will have much of an effect on the ways extreme weather and climate disasters are already driving up the cost of groceries. Severe droughts are one of the factors that have destabilized the global crop market in recent years, translating to higher US grocery store prices. Warming has led to reduced agricultural productivity and diminished crop yields, while major disasters throttle the supply chain. Even a forecast of extreme weather can send food prices higher. These climate trends are likely to continue over the next four years, no matter who becomes president. 

But the winner of the 2024 election can determine how badly climate change batters the food supply in the long run—primarily by controlling greenhouse gas emissions. —Frida Garza, staff writer focusing on the impact of climate change on food and agriculture & Ayurella Horn-Muller, staff writer focusing on the impact of climate change on food and agriculture

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Drinking water
“I want absolutely immaculate, clean water,” Trump said in June during the first presidential debate this election season. But if a second Trump presidency is anything like the first, there is good reason to worry about the protection of public drinking water. 

During his first term in office, the Trump administration repealed the Clean Water Rule, a critical part of the Clean Water Act that limited the amount of pollutants companies could discharge near streams, wetlands, and other sources of water used for public consumption. “It was ready to protect the drinking water of 117 million Americans and then, within a few months of being in office, Donald Trump and [former EPA administrator] Scott Pruitt threw it into the trash bin to appease their polluter allies,” former Sierra Club Executive Director Michael Brune said in a press release

While in office, Trump also secured a conservative majority on the Supreme Court, which last year tipped the court in favor of a decision to vastly limit the Environmental Protection Agency’s power to regulate pollution in certain wetlands, forcing the agency to weaken its own clean water rules. 

A Harris administration would likely carry forward the work of several Biden EPA measures to safeguard the public’s drinking water from toxic heavy metals and other contaminants. For example, in April, the EPA passed the nation’s first-ever national drinking water standard to protect an estimated 100 million people from a category of synthetic chemicals known as PFAS, or “forever chemicals,” which have been linked to cancer, high blood pressure, and immune system deficiencies. Enforcing the new standard will require the agency to examine test results from thousands of water systems across the country and follow up to ensure their compliance—an effort that will take place during the next White House administration. 

“As president,” Harris’ website says, “she will unite Americans to tackle the climate crisis as she builds on this historic work, advances environmental justice, protects public lands and public health, increases resilience to climate disasters, lowers household energy costs, creates millions of new jobs, and continues to hold polluters accountable to secure clean air and water for all.” Project 2025, the policy plan drawn up by former Trump staffers to guide a second Trump administration’s policies, indicates that a future Trump administration would eliminate safeguards like the PFAS rule that place limits on industrial emissions and discharges. 

Just this month, the EPA issued a groundbreaking rule requiring water utilities to replace virtually every lead pipe in the country within 10 years. With funds from Biden’s bipartisan infrastructure law, the agency will also invest $2.6 billion for drinking water upgrades and lead pipe replacements. Harris has previously spoken out about the dangers of lead pipes, stating at a press conference in 2022 that lead exposure is “an issue that we as a nation should commit to ending.” 

The success of these and other measures will rely on a well-staffed EPA enforcement division, which may end up being one of the most insidious stakes of this election for environmental policies. Budget cuts and staff departures during the first Trump administration gutted the EPA’s enforcement capacity — a problem that the agency has spent the past four years trying to mend. Project 2025 “would essentially eviscerate the EPA,” said Stan Meiburg, who served as acting deputy administrator for the EPA from 2014 to 2017.  —Lylla Younes, senior staff writer covering chemical pollution, regulation, and frontline communities

Clean air
President Biden’s clean air policy has been characterized by a spate of new rules to curb toxic air pollution from a variety of facilities, including petroleum coke ovens, synthetic manufacturing facilities, and steel mills. While environmental advocates have decried some of these regulations as insufficiently protective, certain provisions—such as mandatory air monitoring—were hailed as milestones in the history of the agency’s air pollution policy. Former EPA staffer and air pollution expert Scott Throwe told Grist that a Harris- and Democratic-led EPA would continue to build on the work of the past four years by  enforcing these new rules, which will require federal oversight of state environmental agencies’ inspection protocols and monitoring data. 

Project 2025 proposes a major reorganization of the EPA, which would include the reduction of full-time staff positions and the elimination of departments deemed “superfluous.” It also promotes the rollback of a range of air quality regulations, from ambient air standards for toxic pollutants to greenhouse gas emissions from coal-fired power plants. 

What’s more, a growing body of research has found that poor air quality is often concentrated in communities of color, which are disproportionately close to fossil fuel infrastructure. Conservative state governments havepushedback against the Biden EPA’s efforts to address “environmental justice” through agency channels and in court—efforts that will likely enjoy more executive support under a second Trump administration. —Lylla Younes

Public lands
Under the Antiquities Act of 1906, a national monument can be created by presidential decree. The act can be a useful tool to protect important landscapes from industries like oil, gas, and even green energy enterprises. Tribal nations have asked numerous presidents to use this executive power to protect tribal homelands that might fall within federal jurisdiction. During his first term, Trump argued that the act also gives the president the implicit power to dissolve a national monument.

In 2017, Trump drastically shrunk two Obama-era designations, Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante in Utah, in what amounted to the biggest slash of federal land protections in the history of the United States. At the time, Trump said that “bureaucrats in Washington” should not control what happens to land in Utah. While giving back local control was Trump’s stated rationale, tribes in the area, like the Diné, Ute, Hopi, and Zuni, had been working for years to protect the two iconic and culturally significant sites. Meanwhile, his decision opened up the land for oil and gas development. While not all tribal nations are opposed to oil and gas production, tribal environmental advocates are worried that a second Trump term will erode federal environmental regulations and commitments to progress in the fight against climate change. 

Since 2021, the Biden administration has put more than 42 million acres of land into conservation by creating and expanding national monuments. This includes the Baaj Nwaavjo I’tah Kukveni, a new monument spanning a million acres near the Grand Canyon—the kind of protection that tribal activists for years had worked to prevent industrial uranium mining. And just this month, Biden announced the creation of the Chumash Heritage National Marine Sanctuary—a 4,500-square-mile national marine sanctuary to be “managed with tribal, Indigenous community involvement.” 

But Harris might not continue that legacy. While she has remained silent about what she would do to protect lands, she has been vocal about continuing the US’s oil and gas production as well as a push for more mining to help with the green transition—like copper from Oak Flat in Arizona and lithium from Thacker Pass in Nevada—both important places to tribal communities in the area. Tribes have been subjected to the adverse effects of the energy crisis before—namely dams that destroyed swaths of homelands and nuclear energy that increased cancer rates of Southwest tribal members—and without specific protections, it’s easy to see green energy as a changing of the guard instead of a game changer. —Taylar Dawn Stagner, Indigenous affairs reporting fellow

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Climate disasters
Congress controls how much money the Federal Emergency Management Agency receives for relief efforts after catastrophic events like hurricanes Helene and Milton, but the president holds significant sway over who receives money and when. A second Trump administration would likely curtail some of the climate-focused resiliency projects FEMA has pursued in recent years, such as cutting back money for infrastructure that would be more resilient against hazards like sea level rises, fires, and earthquakes. Republican firebrands, like Rep. Scott Perry of Pennsylvania, have decried these projects as wasteful and unnecessary.

Under the Stafford Act, which governs federal disaster response, the president has the power to disburse relief to specific parts of the country after any “major disaster”—hurricanes, big floods, fires. In September, Trump suggested that he might make disaster aid contingent on political support if he returns to office, promising to withhold wildfire support from California unless state officials give more irrigation water to Central Valley farmers. Harris has not given an explicit indication of how she would fund climate-resiliency or disaster-response programs, though she has boosted FEMA’s recovery efforts following Helene and Milton. —Jake Bittle, staff writer focusing on climate impacts and adaptation

Climate science
The United States has long been a leader in research essential to understanding—and responding to—a warming world. The government plays a key role in advancing climate science and providing timely meteorological data to the public. Neither Trump nor Harris address this in their platform, but history yields clues to what their presidency might mean for this vital work. 

Trump has consistently dismissed climate change as a “hoax” and downplayed scientific consensus that it is anthropogenic, or driven by human activities. As president, he gutted funding for research, appointed climate skeptics and industry insiders, and eliminated scientific advisory committees from several federal agencies. Thousands of government scientists quit in response. (In fact, still reeling from Trump’s attacks, new union contracts protect scientific integrity to combat such meddling.) His administration censored scientific data on government websites and tried to undermine the findings of the National Climate Assessment, the government’s scientific report on the risks and impacts of climate change. If reelected, Trump would almost certainly adopt a similar strategy, deprioritizing climate science and potentially even restructuring or eliminating federal agencies that advance it.

Harris has long supported climate action; she co-sponsored the Green New Deal as a senator and, as vice president, cast the deciding vote to pass the Inflation Reduction Act, which bolstered funding for agencies that oversee climate research. As part of its “whole of government” approach to the crisis, the Biden administration created the National Climate Task Force, with the EPA, NASA, and others to ensure science informs policy. Although Harris hasn’t said much about climate change as a candidate, climate organizations generally support her campaign and believe her administration will build on the progress made so far. —Sachi Kitajima Mulkey, climate news reporting fellow

Your electric bill
A lot goes into calculating the energy rates you see on your monthly electric bill—construction and maintenance of power plants, fuel costs, and much more. It’s pretty tough to draw a direct line from the president to your bill, so if you’re worried about your energy costs, you’d do well to read up on your local public utility commission, municipal electric authority, or electric membership cooperative board.

What the president can do, though, is appoint people to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission—the board of up to five individuals who regulate the transmission of utilities across the entire country. As the US continues to shift away from fossil fuels, a fundamental problem stands in the way: The country’s aging and fragmented grid lacks the capacity to move all of the electricity being generated from renewable sources. In May, FERC, which currently has a Democratic majority, approved a rule to try to solve that issue; it voted to require that regional utilities identify opportunities for upgrading the capacities of existing transmission infrastructure and that regional grid operators forecast their transmission needs 20 years into the future. These steps will be essential for utility companies to take advantage of the subsidies offered in the IRA and bipartisan infrastructure law. 

The rule is facing legal challenges, which like much else in US courts, appear to be political. So even if Harris wins November’s election, and maintains a commission that prioritizes the transition away from fossil fuels, the oil and gas industry and the politicians who support it will not acquiesce easily. If Trump wins, he’d have the chance to appoint a new FERC chair from among the current commissioners and to appoint a new commissioner in 2026, when the current chair’s term ends. (Or possibly sooner.)

Although FERC’s actions tend to be more insulated from changes in the White House because commissioners serve five-year terms, a commission led by new Trump appointees would most likely deprioritize initiatives that would upgrade the grid to support clean energy adoption. Trump’s appointees supported fossil fuel interests on several fronts during his previous term, for instance by counteracting state subsidies to favor coal and gas plants. —Emily Jones, regional reporter, Georgia, and Izzy Ross, regional reporter, Great Lakes

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Plastic waste
Some 33 billion pounds of plastic waste enter the marine environment globally every year, and the problem is expected to worsen as the fossil fuel and petrochemical industries ramp up plastic production.

Perhaps the most important step the next president could take to curb plastic pollution is to push Congress to ratify and implement the United Nations’ global plastics treaty, which is scheduled to be finalized by the end of this year. The Biden administration recently announced its support for a version of the treaty that limits plastic production, and, though Harris hasn’t made any public comment about it, experts expect that her administration would support it as well. Meanwhile, a former Trump White House official told Politico this April that Trump—who famously withdrew the US from the Paris Agreement in his first term—would take a “hard-nosed look” at any outcome of the plastics negotiations and be “skeptical that the agreement reached was the best agreement that could have been reached.”

The Biden administration has also taken some positive steps to address plastic pollution domestically, including a ban on the federal procurement of single-use plastics. Experts expect that progress to continue under a Harris administration. In 2011, as California’s attorney general, Harris sued plastic bottle companies over misleading claims that their products were recyclable. As a senator, she co-sponsored a Democratic bill to phase out unnecessary single-use plastic products.

Trump, meanwhile, does not have a strong track record on plastic. Although he signed a 2019 law to remove and prevent ocean litter, he has taken personal credit for the construction of new plastic manufacturing facilities and derided the idea of banning single-use plastic straws. And Trump’s “drill, baby, drill” agenda could increase the extraction of fossil fuels used to make plastics. —Joseph Winters, staff writer covering plastics, pollution, and the circular economy

Downballot elections
After decades of failed attempts to tackle the climate crisis, Congress finally passed major legislation two years ago with the Inflation Reduction Act. Not a single Republican voted for it. 

Elections aren’t just important for getting the legislative power needed to enact climate policies—they’re also important for implementing them. The IRA and the bipartisan infrastructure law, another key climate-related law, are entering crucial phases for their implementation, particularly the doling out of billions of dollars for clean energy, environmental justice, and climate resiliency. Trump, having vowed to rescind unspent IRA funds if elected, seems poised to hamper the law’s rollout, slowing efforts to get the country using more clean energy.

But it’s a mistake to imagine that only federal elections matter when it comes to climate change. Eliminating greenhouse gases from energy, buildings, transportation, and food systems requires legislation at every level. In Arizona and Montana, for example, voters this year will elect utility commissioners, the powerful, yet largely ignored officials who play a crucial role in whether—and how quickly—the country moves away from fossil fuels. State legislators can also open the door to efforts to get 100 percent clean electricity, as happened in Michigan and Minnesota after the 2022 election. Even in a state like Washington with Democratic Governor Jay Inslee, who once campaigned for the White House on a climate change platform, votes matter—climate action is literally on the ballot in November, when voters could choose to kill the state’s landmark price on carbon pollution.

Depending on what happens with the presidential and congressional races, state and local action might be the best hope for furthering climate policy anyway.
Kate Yoder, staff writer examining the intersections of climate, language, history, culture, and accountability

International cooperation
During his first term, Trump pulled the US out of the Paris Agreement, a global commitment to reduce the burning of fossil fuels in an effort to curb the worst impacts of climate change. “I was elected to represent the citizens of Pittsburgh, not Paris,” he said from the Rose Garden of the White House in 2017. Trump didn’t entirely abandon global climate discussions; his administration continued to attend global climate conferences, where it endorsed events on fossil fuels.

The Biden administration rejoined the Paris Agreement and pledged billions of dollars to combat climate change both domestically and abroad, but a second Trump administration would likely undo this progress. Trump says that he would pull out of the Paris Agreement again, and reportedly would also consider withdrawing the US from the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, a 1992 treaty that’s the basis for modern global climate talks.

Harris is expected, at least, to continue Biden’s policies. Speaking from COP28 in Dubai last year, an annual United Nations climate gathering, she celebrated America’s progress in tackling the climate crisis and petitioned for much more to be done. “In order to keep our critical 1.5 degree-Celsius goal within reach,” she said, “we must have the ambition to meet this moment, to accelerate our ongoing work, increase our investments, and lead with courage and conviction.” 

But both the Trump and Biden administrations achieved record oil and gas production during their time in office, and Harris opposes a ban on fracking. In order to make a dent in the climate crisis, whoever becomes president would have to reject that status quo and put serious money behind global promises to mitigate climate change. Otherwise, climate change-related losses will just continue to mount—already, they are expected to cost $580 billion globally by 2030. —Anita Hofschneider, senior staff writer focusing on Indigenous affairs

Ars Live: What else can GLP-1 drugs do? Join us today for a discussion.

By: Beth Mole
29 October 2024 at 14:22

News and talk of GLP-1 drugs are everywhere these days—from their smash success in treating Type 2 diabetes and obesity to their astronomical pricing, drug shortages, compounding disputes, and what sometimes seems like an ever-growing list of other conditions the drugs could potentially treat. There are new headlines every day.

Although the drugs have abruptly stolen the spotlight in recent years, researchers have been toiling away at developing and understanding them for decades, stretching back to the 1970s. Despite all the time and effort, the drugs still hold mysteries and unknowns. For instance, researchers thought for years that they worked directly in the gut to decrease blood sugar levels and make people feel full. After all, the drugs mimic an incretin hormone, glucagon-like peptide-1, that does exactly that. But, instead, studies have since found that they work in the brain.

In fact, the molecular receptors for GLP-1 are sprinkled in many places around the body. They're found in the central nervous system, the heart, blood vessels, liver, and kidney. Their presence in the brain even plays a role in inflammation. As such, research on GLP-1 continues to flourish as scientists work to understand the role it could play in treating a range of other chronic conditions.

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Taco Bell, KFC, Pizza Hut, Burger King pull onions amid McDonald’s outbreak

By: Beth Mole
24 October 2024 at 21:21

Big-name fast food chains, including Taco Bell, KFC, Pizza Hut, and Burger King, are reportedly pulling onions off their menus in certain locations amid a deadly, multistate outbreak of E. coli O157:H7 linked to McDonald's Quarter Pounders.

Though the source of the outbreak bacteria has not been confirmed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the leading suspects are the beef patties and the sliced onions used on the popular burger.

On Wednesday, McDonald's onion supplier Taylor Farms recalled peeled and diced yellow onion products, according to a notice from US Foods, a supplier of food service operations.

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Bird flu hit a dead end in Missouri, but it’s running rampant in California

By: Beth Mole
24 October 2024 at 19:23

As H5N1 bird flu continues to spread wildly among California dairy herds and farmworkers, federal health officials on Thursday offered some relatively good news about Missouri: The wily avian influenza virus does not appear to have spread from the state's sole human case, which otherwise remains a mystery.

On September 6, the Missouri Health department announced that a person with underlying health conditions tested positive for bird flu, and later testing indicated that it was an H5N1 strain related to the one currently circulating among US dairy cows. But, state and federal health officials were—and still are—stumped as to how that person became infected. The person had no known contact with infected animals and no contact with any obviously suspect animal products. No dairy herds in Missouri have tested positive, and no poultry farms had reported recent outbreaks, either. To date, all other human cases of H5N1 have been among farmworkers who had contact with H5N1-infected animals.

But aside from the puzzle, attention turned to the possibility that the unexplained Missouri case had passed on the infection to those around them. A household contact had symptoms at the same time as the person—aka the index case—and at least six health care workers developed illnesses after interacting with the person. One of the six had tested negative for bird flu around the time of their illness, but questions remained about the other five.

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McDonald’s deadly Quarter Pounder E. coli outbreak is likely bigger than we know

By: Beth Mole
23 October 2024 at 15:33

One person is dead and 48 others across 10 states have been sickened in an E. coli O157:H7 outbreak that appears to be linked to McDonald's Quarter Pounders and the slivered onions used on the burgers, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

McDonald's has paused distribution of the slivered onions and removed Quarter Pounders from the menus of restaurants in areas known to be affected. As of now, those areas include Colorado, Kansas, Utah, and Wyoming, as well as portions of Idaho, Iowa, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Mexico, and Oklahoma.

However, the CDC was quick to note that the size and span of the outbreak are likely larger than is currently known. "This outbreak may not be limited to the states with known illnesses, and the true number of sick people is likely much higher than the number reported," the agency said in its outbreak notice posted Tuesday afternoon.

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How Donald Trump Caused a Shortage of Lupus Medication

23 October 2024 at 10:00

As Donald Trump campaigns to be a dictator for one day, he’s asking: “Are you better off now than you were when I was president?” Great question! To help answer it, our Trump Files series is delving into consequential events from the 45th president’s time in office that Americans might have forgotten—or wish they had.

Abby Mahler blames Donald Trump and Elon Musk for the challenges faced by people who need hydroxychloroquine for lupus. In the early days of the Covid pandemic, both Trump and Musk promoted the drug as a possible Covid treatment, helping lead to widespread shortages that made it difficult for people like Mahler to obtain the medication she needed. “What Trump did could not have happened without Elon,” Mahler told Mother Jones.

For nearly four years, Mahler, who is based in Los Angeles, has been using TikTok to address misinformation about hydroxychloroquine, which was originally created to prevent and treat malaria, and can be used for a range of autoimmune disorders, including lupus, vasculitis and Sjogren’s syndrome. When they heard that hydroxychloroquine was being prescribed to patients with Covid-19, they were not concerned at first. A drug they already needed and used could also treat Covid-19?

“I remember very vividly joking with my friends,” Mahler said. “Like, ‘Ha ha, I’m going to live forever.'”

On March 16, 2020—just days after Trump declared Covid-19 a nationwide emergency—Musk tweeted a link to a Google Doc which claimed that HCQ, as it’s often known, and a related drug called chloroquine could help fight Covid-19. The Google Doc itself noticeably did not contain any notable statistics. “Maybe worth considering chloroquine for C19,” Musk wrote on Twitter, adding the following day: “Hydroxychloroquine probably better.” (In what turned out to be a darkly accurate bit of foreshadowing, Musk posted another tweet warning that “if we over-allocate medical resources to corona, it will come at expense of treating other illnesses.”)

Days later, a different study was published as a pre-print, meaning it had not yet been peer-reviewed. From a scientific standpoint, the evidence in that study was slim: The paper said that 12 patients benefited from HCQ after seven days, out of the 26 studied (not including the control group), after being diagnosed with Covid-19. The researchers also admitted that five of the patients had to stop taking HCQ after their health symptoms worsened.

Hydroxychloroquine, experts later concluded, wasn’t actually useful for preventing or treating Covid. But as infectious disease specialist Michael Saag wrote in a JAMA Network editorial in November 2020, desperation in the face of an unfolding pandemic had helped create a perfect storm in which the early HCQ research gained traction:

These findings suggestive of possible benefit, along with the desperation of clinicians who were providing care for patients with a potentially fatal disorder for which there was no treatment, undoubtedly contributed to increased use of hydroxychloroquine for patients with COVID-19, despite lack of rigorous evidence for efficacy.

The sudden demand spike for HCQ came alongside a price increase for a key ingredient in the drug. Within a week of Musk’s tweet, Mahler had to try several pharmacies in order to get her HCQ, and had to pay $60, instead of her usual $15. Unlike many other people with lupus, she didn’t have to go without, but she did have to ration over the next few months, occasionally taking a half-dose to cope with the shortage.

Gregory Rigano, an attorney who was one of the authors of the Google Doc Musk promoted, appeared on Laura Ingraham’s Fox News program the very day Musk tweeted it out. Ingraham herself would later to Trump about how great HCQ was for Covid-19 in a private meeting in early April. (Trump’s campaign team and Musk did not respond to recent requests for comment from Mother Jones.) As Saag wrote:

On April 4, the US president, “speaking on gut instinct,” promoted the drug as a potential treatment and authorized the US government to purchase and stockpile 29 million pills of hydroxychloroquine for use by patients with COVID-19. Of note, no health official in the US government endorsed use of hydroxychloroquine owing to the absence of robust data and concern about adverse effects. 

As Stat News reported at the time, Trump even stopped Anthony Fauci, then chief of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, from answering a question on the drug’s efficiency at a White House briefing. In May 2020, Trump proudly announced that he was taking hydroxychloroquine to prevent Covid-19, despite an FDA statement weeks earlier that it should not be used for Covid-19 outside of hospitals or clinical trials.

But in a “twist of irony,” Saag wrote, when Trump really did contract—and was hospitalized for—a serious case of Covid, he “did not receive hydroxychloroquine.”

That makes good medical sense: Trump’s praise for HCQ never included a disclosure that it can have serious side effects, like cardiac issues and changes to eyesight. Many patients on hydroxychloroquine, including myself, have to be tested regularly for HCQ-related vision issues. It’s hard to know just how widespread complications were in 2020.

“As soon as Trump started talking about, it became very obvious that things were gonna get bad quick,” Mahler said. In mid-May, they also had to argue with their health insurance company to avoid paying more than $100 for the medication, which had previously been quite inexpensive.

A survey by the Lupus Research Alliance found that a third of lupus patients reported difficulties filling HCQ prescriptions between March and May 2020. That can mean severe complications, including hospitalization—a frequent area of Covid transmission. Trump’s claims about hydroxychloroquine weren’t just another case of buffoonery, Mahler says, but a source of real harm in people’s lives.

@babs_zone Time to hold some shills accountable. #HCQRewind #HerStory #CrowdCheers #hydroxychloroquine #DisabilityJustice #lupus #hcq #disabilitytiktok #fyp ♬ Drive Forever – Remix – Sergio Valentino

Even outside the US, HCQ shortages became more common. A February 2021 study found new anxieties among lupus patients in Europe about such shortages during the first year of the pandemic.

I’m now on hydroxychloroquine myself, and though I wasn’t at the time, I remember watching in fear as rumors spread that the anti-inflammatory colchicine, which I was taking, would be Trump’s next proposed Covid treatment. I remember asking my then-rheumatologist if she was concerned that would happen. She told me that there’s no evidence it would help, but there wasn’t much evidence that HCQ would help either. Trump never embraced colchicine, but hydroxychloroquine shortages struck a nerve.

In mid-June 2020, the FDA ended its study on HCQ and Covid—results showed it wasn’t helping. Weeks later, Trump called hydroxychloroquine “a cure for Covid” and a reason not to wear a mask. Trump was very much wrong, and high quality masks do help prevent the ongoing spread of Covid-19.

As Saag, the infectious disease expert, concluded:

The clear, unambiguous, and compelling lesson from the hydroxychloroquine story for the medical community and the public is that science and politics do not mix. Science, by definition, requires diligence and an honest assessment of findings; politics not so much.

Shady drugmaker used code words to sell knockoff weight-loss drug: Lawsuit

By: Beth Mole
22 October 2024 at 22:31

Amid ongoing legal battles over coveted GLP-1 therapies, a drug vendor in Washington state is accused of running an outlandish scheme to sell do-it-yourself kits to make illicit knockoff versions of weight-loss and diabetes drugs, Zepbound and Mounjaro.

For the alleged scheme, vendor Pivotal Peptides has customers buy a set of ingredients they have to mix together to create their own injectable versions of the drugs. Customers don't need a prescription or even a medical consultation to order the kit, even though the brand-name drugs are prescription-only. That may not be surprising, though, since the dubious white powder customers receive is stated to be "a research chemical for lab research and veterinary purposes only." Once purchased, the kit's instructions recommend users disinfect their home work surface before beginning and stress the importance of using the sterile water included in the kit to dissolve the powder to the desired concentration. The instructions then explain how to inject oneself with the homemade mixture using a 30-gauge syringe.

That's all according to a lawsuit filed Monday by pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly, maker of tirzepatide-based Zepbound and Mounjaro, which are sold as ready-to-use medicines in single-dose pens or vials. The lawsuit against Pivotal Peptides is one of three that Lilly filed this week, all accusing questionable drugmakers of unlawfully selling knockoff versions of its tirzepatide drugs that have not been tested or approved. But the one against Pivotal Peptides stands out for the scheme the owners allegedly used to sell their knockoff version.

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Hundreds of Doctors Are Demanding Trump’s Health Records

21 October 2024 at 22:40

After former President Donald Trump’s very weird week, more than 400 doctors and health professionals are questioning his mental and physical fitness to serve, and calling for him to release his medical records.

The development—which Mother Jones is the first to report—comes about a week after the group Doctors for Harris first released the letter, with a little more than half the 448 signatures it has now. Since then, another 200-plus medical professionals have signed on, following a slate of unhinged episodes and nonsensical—even profane—comments from Trump over the past week. As I reported yesterday, highlights included swaying on stage for a half-hour to “Ave Maria,” “Hallelujah,” and “YMCA”; calling himself the “father of IVF”; falsely claiming “nobody died” on January 6 other than Ashli Babbitt and that “there were no guns” among the insurrectionists; and making lewd comments about both his opponent and the late golfer Arnold Palmer’s genitalia.

It’s no wonder, then, that as of Monday afternoon, 448 health professionals have voiced concerns about his fitness for office. “With no recent disclosure of health information from Donald Trump, we are left to extrapolate from public appearances,” their letter states. “And on that front, Trump is falling concerningly short of any standard of fitness for office and displaying alarming characteristics of declining acuity.”

As the letter points out, Trump is 78 years old—though it’s unclear if he realizes that, given that he said he’s “not that close to 80” during a town hall Sunday. His age, the writers argue, makes it all the more necessary he come clean about his state of health. (Biden, after all, is 81.) Trump said in August he would “gladly” release his records, but has yet to do so. The most recent insight we have is a three-paragraph letter he posted to Truth Social in which his personal physician claimed he had lost weight and was in “excellent health.”

“While many older adults are highly functional, age can also come with cognitive changes that affect our ability to function well in complex settings,” the letter says. “We are seeing that from Trump, as he uses his rallies and appearances to ramble, meander, and crudely lash out at his many perceived grievances. He also is notably refusing to give the public the ability to properly vet or scrutinize his capacities.” Earlier this month, Trump dropped out of a scheduled 60 Minutes interview. He has also refused to debate Vice President Kamala Harris a second time.

The doctors portray him as akin to a disgruntled grandpa who says things that embarrass his relatives and needs a check-up: “As we saw in the first presidential debate, Trump is displaying irrationality and irritability. Notably, he ranted about migrants eating people’s cats and dogs. This was widely debunked as untrue.”

“Given his advancing age—if elected again, he would be the oldest president in history by the end of his term—his refusal to disclose even basic health information is a disservice to the American people,” the letter concludes.

The signatories are both Democrats and Republicans and represent 37 states, including several swing states, according to Dr. Alice Chen, a volunteer organizer with Doctors for Harris. The Trump campaign did not respond to a request for comment.

Vice President Kamala Harris released her medical records earlier this month, as my colleague Abby Vesoulis covered. The results were “unremarkable,” the physician said—which is to say, normal. Trump cannot relate.

Update, Oct. 22: This post was updated with more information about the signatories of the letter.

Hundreds of Doctors Are Demanding Trump’s Health Records

21 October 2024 at 22:40

After former President Donald Trump’s very weird week, more than 400 doctors and health professionals are questioning his mental and physical fitness to serve, and calling for him to release his medical records.

The development—which Mother Jones is the first to report—comes about a week after the group Doctors for Harris first released the letter, with a little more than half the 448 signatures it has now. Since then, another 200-plus medical professionals have signed on, following a slate of unhinged episodes and nonsensical—even profane—comments from Trump over the past week. As I reported yesterday, highlights included swaying on stage for a half-hour to “Ave Maria,” “Hallelujah,” and “YMCA”; calling himself the “father of IVF”; falsely claiming “nobody died” on January 6 other than Ashli Babbitt and that “there were no guns” among the insurrectionists; and making lewd comments about both his opponent and the late golfer Arnold Palmer’s genitalia.

It’s no wonder, then, that as of Monday afternoon, 448 health professionals have voiced concerns about his fitness for office. “With no recent disclosure of health information from Donald Trump, we are left to extrapolate from public appearances,” their letter states. “And on that front, Trump is falling concerningly short of any standard of fitness for office and displaying alarming characteristics of declining acuity.”

As the letter points out, Trump is 78 years old—though it’s unclear if he realizes that, given that he said he’s “not that close to 80” during a town hall Sunday. His age, the writers argue, makes it all the more necessary he come clean about his state of health. (Biden, after all, is 81.) Trump said in August he would “gladly” release his records, but has yet to do so. The most recent insight we have is a three-paragraph letter he posted to Truth Social in which his personal physician claimed he had lost weight and was in “excellent health.”

“While many older adults are highly functional, age can also come with cognitive changes that affect our ability to function well in complex settings,” the letter says. “We are seeing that from Trump, as he uses his rallies and appearances to ramble, meander, and crudely lash out at his many perceived grievances. He also is notably refusing to give the public the ability to properly vet or scrutinize his capacities.” Earlier this month, Trump dropped out of a scheduled 60 Minutes interview. He has also refused to debate Vice President Kamala Harris a second time.

The doctors portray him as akin to a disgruntled grandpa who says things that embarrass his relatives and needs a check-up: “As we saw in the first presidential debate, Trump is displaying irrationality and irritability. Notably, he ranted about migrants eating people’s cats and dogs. This was widely debunked as untrue.”

“Given his advancing age—if elected again, he would be the oldest president in history by the end of his term—his refusal to disclose even basic health information is a disservice to the American people,” the letter concludes.

The signatories are both Democrats and Republicans and represent 37 states, including several swing states, according to Dr. Alice Chen, a volunteer organizer with Doctors for Harris. The Trump campaign did not respond to a request for comment.

Vice President Kamala Harris released her medical records earlier this month, as my colleague Abby Vesoulis covered. The results were “unremarkable,” the physician said—which is to say, normal. Trump cannot relate.

Update, Oct. 22: This post was updated with more information about the signatories of the letter.

Studies of migraine’s many triggers offer paths to new therapies

For Cherise Irons, chocolate, red wine, and aged cheeses are dangerous. So are certain sounds, perfumes and other strong scents, cold weather, and thunderstorms. Stress and lack of sleep, too.

She suspects all of these things can trigger her migraine attacks, which manifest in a variety of ways: pounding pain in the back of her head, exquisite sensitivity to the slightest sound, even blackouts and partial paralysis.

Irons, 48, of Coral Springs, Florida, once worked as a school assistant principal. Now, she’s on disability due to her migraine. Irons has tried so many migraine medications she’s lost count—but none has helped for long. Even a few of the much-touted new drugs that have quelled episodes for many people with migraine have failed for Irons.

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Ron DeSantis Is Deploying “Asshole Politics” to Stop Florida’s Abortion Referendum

17 October 2024 at 17:16

When the US Supreme Court overturned the federal right to an abortion in its 2022 Dobbs decision, one argument the justices made was that it was not banning abortion across the country, but rather granting states, and their voters, the opportunity to regulate the procedure. Since then, seven states have voted on their local abortion laws through ballot measures. From the liberal paradises of Vermont and California to redder states like Ohio and Kansas, all seven voted to protect abortion. In November, 10 more states are using ballot measures to address the topic, too.

Among them is Florida. Until 2022, the state allowed abortions until the third trimester. But since Dobbs, the state first enacted a ban on abortions after 15- weeks gestation, and subsequently a ban on abortions after six weeks, which took effect in May.

Floridians Protecting Freedom (FPF) is trying to change that with Amendment 4, which the reproductive rights group added to Florida’s November ballots by collecting more than 900,000 signatures. If enough Floridians vote “yes” on the ballot measure (official summary shown below), the referendum will theoretically enshrine in the Florida Constitution the right to abortion access up until fetal viability—which is generally around 23 to 24 weeks. As the referendum states:

No law shall prohibit, penalize, delay, or restrict abortion before viability or when necessary to protect the patient’s health, as determined by the patient’s healthcare provider. This amendment does not change the Legislature’s constitutional authority to require notification to a parent or guardian before a minor has an abortion.

More than half of Florida voters support expanding abortion rights, according to polling by both Florida Atlantic University and the Hill/Emerson College. But whether this support ultimately alters the abortion landscape in the state is a different question.

That’s because Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis is using the power of his administration to threaten the initiative. He’s appointed people to the Financial Impact Estimating Conference—a panel responsible for gauging potential costs of ballot measures—that required the amendment be accompanied by language stating, without evidence, that access to abortion may cost taxpayer dollars. State law enforcement has also been sent to question Floridians who signed the petition for Amendment 4 to appear on the ballot. He’s enlisted a state agency to create a misleading website about abortions in Florida. Local television channels playing an advertisement supporting Amendment 4 have also been threatened with prosecution over the alleged violation of Florida’s sanitary nuisance law, which is generally used to combat health risks like the improper disposal of human waste or dead animals.

On Friday, DeSantis further escalated his intimidation campaign when his state department released a 348-page preliminary report alleging FPF may have committed “widespread petition fraud” to reach the 891,000 signature Florida statute requires to advance ballot measures. In a statement, FPF says its campaign has been “run above board and followed state law at every turn.” Further, the state deadline to challenge amendment signatures has already passed.

Anna Hochkammer, the executive director of the Florida Women’s Freedom Coalition, says the administration is “using the resources of the state to suppress the purest form of democracy, which in this case is necessary because an entrenched unrepresentative cabal of elected officials refuses to legislate in accordance with the overwhelming preferences of the citizens…Despite all of that, we are unbowed and unbroken.”

“An entrenched unrepresentative cabal of elected officials refuses to legislate in accordance with the overwhelming preferences of the citizens…Despite all of that, we are unbowed and unbroken.”

But the report could provide basis for a new, albeit insincere, legal argument against the ballot measure—and it seems it already has. On Wednesday, anti-abortion advocates filed a lawsuit citing the state missive, alleging that, “When all fictitious, forged, illegally obtained, or otherwise invalid signatures are removed from consideration, Amendment 4 failed to reach the constitutionally required number of signatures for ballot placement.” Accordingly, the lawsuit against FPF says, “The invalid petitions must be stricken and Amendment 4 removed from the 2024 General Election.”

DeSantis didn’t personally wage the lawsuit, but he did tee it up for the petitioners who did. Such tactics should not be surprising. Other GOP leaders, such as Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose and state lawmakers in Missouri, respectively tried to thwart similar initiatives through politically motivated lawsuits, exaggerated cost estimates, disinformation, and more.

As my colleague Ari Berman points out in his recent magazine story, this is particularly concerning because ballot measures are the only method in which majority rule by a plurality of a state’s citizens can supersede the minority rule of increasingly and disproportionately powerful GOP state lawmakers who have re-drawn districts to benefit them staying in power.

In hyper-gerrymandered states like Ohio, the only way to ensure that the will of the majority is followed is to override representative democracy and go directly to the people. This strategy has taken on renewed urgency in response to recent US Supreme Court decisions taking away fundamental rights, from the gutting of the Voting Rights Act to the overturning of Roe v. Wade. These initiatives can garner support across party lines in a way that is otherwise impossible in a highly polarized partisan political climate.

The Supreme Court explicitly noted that the solution to abortion access is not—in the majority’s opinion—protected by the US Constitution. Instead, as Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote in his concurring opinion, the 2022 Dobbs decision “properly returns the Court to a position of neutrality and restores the people’s authority to address the issue of abortion through the processes of democratic self-government.”

In other words, the court said, abortion is an issue that should be regulated through voting: either for political candidates whose reproductive rights views align with those of the voters or, even more directly, for ballot measures.

This is also—in theory—the party line of the GOP. In his presidential campaign, former President Donald Trump has emphasized this point. “It’s all about the states, it’s about state rights. States’ rights,” Trump told Time magazine in April. “States are going to make their own determinations.”

Even without DeSantis putting his thumb on the scale, Florida already had a high bar for passing referenda: As of 2006, 60 percent of voters are required to amend the state’s constitution. Among conservative-leaning states—Kansas, Kentucky, Ohio—that have voted on abortion ballot measures, none have had to hit that high a mark. (Kansas was closest, at 59 percent).

Organizers of Amendment 4 say they believe Florida could be the first state to do so, but it’s a harder task when the DeSantis administration is engaging in what Hochkammer calls “asshole politics,” which values “power and posturing over good policy.”

For example, both the proponents and opponents of Amendment 4 have television advertisements in Florida. A pro-Amendment 4 ad depicts a woman describing how a pre-ban abortion saved her life when she found out she had a brain tumor while also pregnant with her second child. “The doctors knew that if I did not end my pregnancy, I would lose my baby. I would lose my life. And my daughter would lose her mom,” the mom says in the 30-second clip. “Florida has now banned abortion even in cases like mine.”

Florida’s Department of Health alleged the advertisement was false in cease-and-desist letters, citing Florida’s “exception” to save the life of a mother. But many physicians, who risk fines and prison time, argue that life-or-death scenarios are extremely complicated and often do not conform to the vague language of abortion-ban exceptions.

In the case of the woman who had a brain tumor, her diagnosis was terminal. According to a lawsuit filed in federal court by Floridians Protecting Freedom on Wednesday, the woman would not have met the requirements for an exception because an abortion only would have “extend[ed]” her life, not saved it. There are post-ban examples, too.

In another case, a 15-week pregnant woman was leaking amniotic fluid for an hour in a Broward County, Florida, hospital waiting room. Her ultrasound showed she had no amniotic fluid around her fetus, a condition that can quickly lead to serious infection and death. She was discharged and miscarried in a public restroom later that day, at which point was rushed to another hospital and put on a ventilator. She stayed in the hospital for six days.

“When you don’t want to talk about the fact that your state has an abortion ban that’s forced rape survivors to go out of state for care, that’s led to women almost losing their lives,” FPF campaign director Lauren Brenzel recently told Mother Jones, “you create distractions because you don’t want to talk about the harmful policy that you’ve implemented.” She added, “It’s not shocking. It’s the national playbook.”

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