Patients in China will be able to purchase the blockbuster weight-loss drug Wegovy for 1,400 yuan, or about $193, just a fraction of the US list price of $1,349, according to mediareports.
The price in China is in line with pricing elsewhere outside of the US. As Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) noted in a September Senate hearing, Wegovy, made by Novo Nordisk, is sold for $265 in Canada, $186 in Denmark, $137 in Germany, and just $92 in the United Kingdom. In the hearing, Sanders and other senators grilled Novo Nordisk CEO Lars Jørgensen on the "outrageously high prices" in the US of Wegovy and the company's other popular GLP-1 drug, Ozempic, used for diabetes.
"What we are dealing with today is not just an issue of economics, it is not just an issue of corporate greed. It is a profound moral issue," Sanders said in opening remarks about the prices of the highly effective drugs.
It's no secret that scientists—and the science generally—took a hit during the health crisis. Public confidence in scientists fell from 87 percent in April 2000 to a low of 73 percent in October 2023, according to survey data from the Pew Research Center. And the latest Pew data released last week suggests it will be an uphill battle to regain what was lost, with confidence in scientists only rebounding three percentage points, to 76 percent in a poll from October.
Building trust
The new study in Nature Human Behavior may guide the way forward, though. The study encompasses five smaller studies probing the perceptions of scientists' trustworthiness, which previous research has linked to willingness to follow research-based recommendations.
Public health experts, physicians, and scientists responded with fury and disgust to the news that President-elect Donald Trump will nominate anti-vaccine activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to be the secretary of health and human services. If Kennedy—who has also promoted dangerous and ludicrous ideas about fluoride, 5G technology, and the causes of HIV/AIDS, among innumerable other pseudoscientific claims—assumes the position, “the damage he could do is near infinite,” warns Dr. Andrea Love, an immunologist and microbiologist.
“He will do great harm—generational harm.”
The scope of the federal Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is immense: It sits over 13 other agencies, including the Food and Drug Administration, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Institutes of Health, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, and the Indian Health Service.
Kennedy, an environmental attorney by training with no background or credentials in medical or public health, is the founder of the anti-vaccine organization Children’s Health Defense. He became one of the loudest voices in the anti-vaccine movement when he began falsely claiming nearly 20 years ago that the shots are tied to autism.
Kennedy’s nomination didn’t come as a surprise. After Kennedy abandoned his own independent presidential campaign, he promptly endorsed Trump’s. As they campaigned together, Trump pledged to let him “go wild on health” in a new administration, as he phrased it, as part of Kennedy’s so-called “Make America Healthy Again” agenda—proposals that amount to dismantling and defunding the government health agencies Kennedy has long railed against.
Having Kennedy in such a powerful role, according to University of Alberta law and public health professor Timothy Caulfield, is “horrifying. A genuine catastrophe.”
“This is a person who has spread deadly lies and conspiracy theories,” Caulfield, the author of several books on pseudoscience’s impact on public health, added. “He ignores evidence. He ignores experts. I have no doubt that he will do great harm—generational harm—to public health, trust in science, and biomedical research. Moreover, at the international level, he will platform, normalize, and legitimize pseudoscience and health misinformation, making it more ubiquitous and difficult to fact check.”
Dr. Peter Hotez, a recognized expert on vaccines and dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine, is also deeply concerned. He told Mother Jones that he’s preparing a paper on “what could happen to our vaccine ecosystem,” he said.
“It could collapse and we could see polio in the wastewater and the return of regular measles and pertussis outbreaks,” he said. “And, of course, preparedness for H5N1 and other pandemic threats could suffer.”
Love, who tracks health misinformation online and recently faced vitriol from people aligned with the MAHA movement, sees a laundry list of threats to public health under a Kennedy-run department. “Honestly,” Love said, “if you look at the purview of HHS secretary, the damage he could do is near infinite. And none of his long history gives any indication he will actually do anything to improve health, especially for those of lower socioeconomic status.”
“I can honestly say it has never been this bad.”
He could “skew, redirect, and reallocate grant and research funding” toward “fringe research,” Love warns, “cut funding for education and public health initiatives like vaccine campaigns or other public health interventions like fluoridation,” and slow or halt regulatory approval “for vaccines, biologics, immunotherapies, and other critical medical interventions.” Because Kennedy has wrongly demonized Covid vaccines as “gene therapy,” Love suspects that he will be hostile to genuine applications of that science—“the leading edge of our research in cancer, autoimmunity, genetic disease, and latent viral infections. The hit to biotech is sure to be substantial.”
“Conversely, he could also loosen regulatory requirements for less-robust wellness interventions like his ‘peptides’ and ‘chelating’ therapies to get those through regulatory and give them an appearance of legitimacy,” she explained.
“This role would give him a global platform to spread misinformation…He can lie, spread falsehoods, and undermine scientific evidence beyond what he’s already done,” Love says. “I would expect he would spread more lies about causes of cancer, the ‘chronic disease’ epidemic, ‘toxic chemicals,’ and more. He can also delay or withhold communicating actual factual information” during public health crises like epidemics.
In charge of HHS, Kennedy could appoint what Love called “unqualified and ideological individuals” within the department and the agencies it oversees, who could “erode and erase these critical agencies from within. He could replace qualified advisory board members with unqualified people, further dismantling these agencies.”
Not everyone responded negatively to Kennedy’s nomination. Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), himself a physician and former member of a fringe medical group that promoted vaccine suspicion, cheered the news, writing on Twitter/X: “Finally, someone to detox the place after the Fauci era. Get ready for health care freedom and MAHA!” Democratic Colorado Gov. Jared Polis also posted a welcoming message, saying Kennedy “helped us defeat vaccine mandates in Colorado in 2019 and will help make America healthy again by shaking up HHS and FDA.” (A Polis spokesperson later released a statement saying the governor remained “opposed to RFK’s positions on a host of issues, including vaccines and banning fluoridation.”)
Even before Trump tapped him, Kennedy signaled a radical vision to reshape some of the US’ public health agencies to his liking. At an entrepreneurship conference last week, he laid out plans to fire and replace 600 workers at the National Institutes of Health. The NIH declined to comment on the plan, but the Office of Personnel Management, which oversees civil service workers, provided a statement: “OPM and the Biden-Harris Administration have a deep appreciation and respect for our country’s civil servants and the importance of a nonpartisan, merit-based civil service. We cannot comment on the actions of future administrations.”
Caulfield, the University of Alberta professor, summed up what many medical and public health professionals seem to be feeling as they look toward the prospect of Kennedy taking the job. “As someone who has worked in this space for decades,” he said, “I can honestly say it has never been this bad. It feels like we are stepping toward a new Dark Age.”
Public health experts, physicians, and scientists responded with fury and disgust to the news that President-elect Donald Trump will nominate anti-vaccine activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to be the secretary of health and human services. If Kennedy—who has also promoted dangerous and ludicrous ideas about fluoride, 5G technology, and the causes of HIV/AIDS, among innumerable other pseudoscientific claims—assumes the position, “the damage he could do is near infinite,” warns Dr. Andrea Love, an immunologist and microbiologist.
“He will do great harm—generational harm.”
The scope of the federal Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is immense: It sits over 13 other agencies, including the Food and Drug Administration, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Institutes of Health, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, and the Indian Health Service.
Kennedy, an environmental attorney by training with no background or credentials in medical or public health, is the founder of the anti-vaccine organization Children’s Health Defense. He became one of the loudest voices in the anti-vaccine movement when he began falsely claiming nearly 20 years ago that the shots are tied to autism.
Kennedy’s nomination didn’t come as a surprise. After Kennedy abandoned his own independent presidential campaign, he promptly endorsed Trump’s. As they campaigned together, Trump pledged to let him “go wild on health” in a new administration, as he phrased it, as part of Kennedy’s so-called “Make America Healthy Again” agenda—proposals that amount to dismantling and defunding the government health agencies Kennedy has long railed against.
Having Kennedy in such a powerful role, according to University of Alberta law and public health professor Timothy Caulfield, is “horrifying. A genuine catastrophe.”
“This is a person who has spread deadly lies and conspiracy theories,” Caulfield, the author of several books on pseudoscience’s impact on public health, added. “He ignores evidence. He ignores experts. I have no doubt that he will do great harm—generational harm—to public health, trust in science, and biomedical research. Moreover, at the international level, he will platform, normalize, and legitimize pseudoscience and health misinformation, making it more ubiquitous and difficult to fact check.”
Dr. Peter Hotez, a recognized expert on vaccines and dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine, is also deeply concerned. He told Mother Jones that he’s preparing a paper on “what could happen to our vaccine ecosystem,” he said.
“It could collapse and we could see polio in the wastewater and the return of regular measles and pertussis outbreaks,” he said. “And, of course, preparedness for H5N1 and other pandemic threats could suffer.”
Love, who tracks health misinformation online and recently faced vitriol from people aligned with the MAHA movement, sees a laundry list of threats to public health under a Kennedy-run department. “Honestly,” Love said, “if you look at the purview of HHS secretary, the damage he could do is near infinite. And none of his long history gives any indication he will actually do anything to improve health, especially for those of lower socioeconomic status.”
“I can honestly say it has never been this bad.”
He could “skew, redirect, and reallocate grant and research funding” toward “fringe research,” Love warns, “cut funding for education and public health initiatives like vaccine campaigns or other public health interventions like fluoridation,” and slow or halt regulatory approval “for vaccines, biologics, immunotherapies, and other critical medical interventions.” Because Kennedy has wrongly demonized Covid vaccines as “gene therapy,” Love suspects that he will be hostile to genuine applications of that science—“the leading edge of our research in cancer, autoimmunity, genetic disease, and latent viral infections. The hit to biotech is sure to be substantial.”
“Conversely, he could also loosen regulatory requirements for less-robust wellness interventions like his ‘peptides’ and ‘chelating’ therapies to get those through regulatory and give them an appearance of legitimacy,” she explained.
“This role would give him a global platform to spread misinformation…He can lie, spread falsehoods, and undermine scientific evidence beyond what he’s already done,” Love says. “I would expect he would spread more lies about causes of cancer, the ‘chronic disease’ epidemic, ‘toxic chemicals,’ and more. He can also delay or withhold communicating actual factual information” during public health crises like epidemics.
In charge of HHS, Kennedy could appoint what Love called “unqualified and ideological individuals” within the department and the agencies it oversees, who could “erode and erase these critical agencies from within. He could replace qualified advisory board members with unqualified people, further dismantling these agencies.”
Not everyone responded negatively to Kennedy’s nomination. Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), himself a physician and former member of a fringe medical group that promoted vaccine suspicion, cheered the news, writing on Twitter/X: “Finally, someone to detox the place after the Fauci era. Get ready for health care freedom and MAHA!” Democratic Colorado Gov. Jared Polis also posted a welcoming message, saying Kennedy “helped us defeat vaccine mandates in Colorado in 2019 and will help make America healthy again by shaking up HHS and FDA.” (A Polis spokesperson later released a statement saying the governor remained “opposed to RFK’s positions on a host of issues, including vaccines and banning fluoridation.”)
Even before Trump tapped him, Kennedy signaled a radical vision to reshape some of the US’ public health agencies to his liking. At an entrepreneurship conference last week, he laid out plans to fire and replace 600 workers at the National Institutes of Health. The NIH declined to comment on the plan, but the Office of Personnel Management, which oversees civil service workers, provided a statement: “OPM and the Biden-Harris Administration have a deep appreciation and respect for our country’s civil servants and the importance of a nonpartisan, merit-based civil service. We cannot comment on the actions of future administrations.”
Caulfield, the University of Alberta professor, summed up what many medical and public health professionals seem to be feeling as they look toward the prospect of Kennedy taking the job. “As someone who has worked in this space for decades,” he said, “I can honestly say it has never been this bad. It feels like we are stepping toward a new Dark Age.”
Without question, inactivity is bad for us. Prolonged sitting is consistently linked to higher risks of cardiovascular disease and death. The obvious response to this frightful fate is to not sit— move. Even a few moments of exercise can have benefits, studies suggest. But in our modern times, sitting is hard to avoid, especially at the office. This has led to a range of strategies to get ourselves up, including the rise of standing desks. If you have to be tethered to a desk, at least you can do it while on your feet, the thinking goes.
However, studies on whether standing desks are beneficial have been sparse and sometimes inconclusive. Further, prolonged standing can have its own risks, and data on work-related sitting has also been mixed. While the final verdict on standing desks is still unclear, two studies out this year offer some of the most nuanced evidence yet about the potential benefits and risks of working on your feet.
Take a seat
For years, studies have pointed to standing desks improving markers for cardiovascular and metabolic health, such as lipid levels, insulin resistance, and arterial flow-mediated dilation (the ability of arteries to widen in response to increased blood flow). But it's unclear how significant those improvements are to averting bad health outcomes, such as heart attacks. One 2018 analysis suggested the benefits might be minor.
Trump’s reelection has been described by advocates and experts as a final blow to reproductive rights.
These fears are not unfounded. Trump appointed three of the five conservative Supreme Court justices who overruledRoe v. Wade, ending the constitutional right to abortion and unleashing a health care apocalypse. Vulnerable women found themselves in even greater danger thanks to abortion bans in more than a dozen states that have enabled abusers and left doctors fearful of prosecution if they intervene in pregnancy-related emergencies that require abortion care. ProPublica reported such bans appeared to have led to the deaths of several women in Georgia and Texas who were unable to get necessary abortion care when faced with dire medical complications. Add to this, Project 2025—the 900-plus-page extremist guidebook to a second Trump term—recommends thatvarious federal agencies take sweeping actions to roll back abortion access.
Trump’s convictions on abortion have been flexible throughout his career. During the presidential campaign, he tried to distance himself from Project 2025 and claimed he would leave abortion policy “to the states.” Immediately after the election, however, his acolytes admitted that “Project 2025 is the agenda.”
Given all this, reproductive rights experts and advocates agree that the future of abortion access is bleak. But there are several actions President Biden and his administration could take before Inauguration Day that could make it harder for the next administration to enact their absolutistanti-abortion agenda. “Some of [the ideas] are just throwing monkey wrenches into the gears,” says David Cohen, a law professor at Drexel University whose scholarly work focuses on abortion access, “and maybe with the chaotic Trump administration that helps delay some of the harm.”
“Some of [the ideas] are just throwing monkey wrenches into the gears, and maybe with the chaotic Trump administration, that helps delay some of the harm.”
While Vice President Kamala Harris campaigned on “restoring reproductive freedom,” it’s unclear if the Biden administration will prioritize these requests before the transition. The White House did not respond on the record to the specific proposals mentioned in this story, but pointed to the administration’s record of defending and expanding reproductive rights. But some say there’s more they can, and should, do. “If the administration was hesitant or holding off, now is the time, I think, to not hesitate,” Rachel Rebouché, reproductive rights legal scholar and dean of Temple Law School, says.
Here’s a look at some of what the administration could do to stymie the Trump administration’s anti-abortion agenda before he’s back in the White House.
Preemptively Pardon Providers of Abortion Pills
The Comstock Act isa 19th-century anti-obscenity law still on the books that anti-abortion Republicans argue should be used to “enforce federal law against providers and distributors of [abortion] pills.” In December 2022, Biden’s DOJ issued a memo arguing that the law cannot be used to prosecute abortion pill providers. Earlier this year, Democrats in Congress introduced legislation to repeal parts of the bill lawmakers say could be most relevant to abortion, but the measure has languished in House and the Senate committees.
Given that Project 2025 advises Trump’s DOJ to invoke the Comstock Act to prosecute providers of abortion pills, some advocates suggest that Biden preemptively pardon anyone who could be implicated for doing so. Cohen, from Drexel, notes that a preemptive pardon “would make it so that the people who have been mailing [abortion] pills, or mailing procedural instruments or supplies, are not at risk of being prosecuted.”
Jodi Jacobson, founder and executive director of the initiative Healthcare Across Borders, described the proposal as “a proactive thing that the Biden administration can do to automatically protect people over the five-year statute of limitations” for federal offenses. Jacobson oversees a coalition that comprises several reproductive health advocacy organizations that plan to ask the Biden administration to issue the blanket preemptive pardon. “This is a no-brainer—there is no reason not to do this,” she says, adding that it would “take off the table the immediate criminalization of folks who have been trying to save lives.”
Trump’s Food and Drug Administration, though, could still revoke its approval of abortion pills, as Project 2025 recommends—but the preemptive pardon would protect providers who could otherwise face prosecution. Experts concede that while there would likely be legal challenges, “pardon power is pretty plenary to the president,” Cohen says. President Gerald Ford preemptively pardoned his predecessor, President Richard Nixon, for instance, which allowed Nixon to avoid Watergate-related charges (but ignited a national outcry). The Department of Justice did not respond to questions about the proposal from Mother Jones.
Push to Fill Vacancies in the Federal Judiciary
Biden cannot shift the balance of the Supreme Court’s conservative supermajority before he leaves office, but the president and Senate Democrats do have the power to attempt to fill the 47 vacancies for open seats in the federal judiciary, mostly in federal district courts.
“We know the federal courts will continue to be central in the fight for reproductive freedom; the administration and Congress must be vigilant now in safeguarding our rights as much as possible,” Karen Stone, vice president of public policy and government relations at Planned Parenthood Action Fund, said in a statement provided to Mother Jones.
“We know the federal courts will continue to be central in the fight for reproductive freedom; the administration and Congress must be vigilant now in safeguarding our rights as much as possible.”
The significance of these lifetime appointments for the future of reproductive rights becomes apparent when you consider Matthew Kacsmaryk. He’s a Trump-appointed federal judge in Texas who issued an anti-science ruling last year that paved the way for anti-abortion activists to bring a case to the Supreme Court challenging the FDA’s approval of mifepristone, one of the two drugs used in a medication abortion. (The justices ultimately struck down the case, ruling that the anti-abortion plaintiffs lacked standing to bring the suit, as my colleague Nina Martin reported.)
Earlier this year, the Supreme Court sent the case on emergency abortion care back to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals—a federal court in California with 10 Trump-appointed judges and jurisdiction over more than a dozen district courts in nine states. “The power of lower court federal judges is immense,” Cohen says, “because the Supreme Court only deals with such a limited number of cases.”
Once Biden makes a nomination, the Senate Judiciary Committee, currently chaired by Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.),recommends whether to send nominees to a full floor vote, which is required for their confirmation. A spokesperson for Durbin’s office said that, as of Wednesday morning, there were 16 nominees ready for a floor vote, and eight more who have had committee hearings and are waiting for a committee vote. The spokesperson added that Durbin “aims to confirm every possible nominee before the end of this Congress.” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said in a statement, “We are going to get as many done as we can.”
But that won’t necessarily be easy. Trump said in a social media post this weekend that “no Judges should be approved during this period of time because the Democrats are looking to ram through their Judges as the Republicans fight over Leadership.” Indeed, for Senate Democrats, time is of the essence. The next session of Congress begins January 3, just over two weeks before Trump takes office—so Biden’s nominees would need to be approved by after the New Year to make it onto the bench. Sen. Joe Manchin (I-W.Va.), whose vote is crucial in the tight Senate, may once again undermine Democrats’ plans. He toldPolitico in March he would not support any Biden-nominated judge unless they have at least one Republican supporter.
Still, several advocates say they hope Senate Democrats make the necessary effort to get as many Biden-nominated judges approved as possible, considering the influence they’ll likely have on the future of reproductive rights. “If [getting judges approved] means working over Thanksgiving, working over Christmas, working over New Year’s—do it,” Cohen says. “This is not something that should be gifted to Trump.” One way they could speed circumvent Republican opposition is by dispensing with a tradition known as “blue slips,” in which senators weigh in on whether or not they support the federal court nominees for their state. There is precedent for this: Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), former chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, abandoned the tradition—to the ire of Democrats—to get two Trump-nominated judges confirmed despite opposition from their home states’ Democratic senators. With only two months until the next Congress, Senate Democrats may not want to buck this tradition, though; they may want to keep “blue slips” as a weapon in their own arsenal as they anticipate Trump’s nominees to the federal judiciary.
Finalize Pending Reproductive Health-Related Rules for Federal Agencies
The Biden administration made headlines last month when it announced a proposedrule to allow 52 million women with private health insurance to obtain over-the-counter contraception for free under the Affordable Care Act. (Trump, on the other hand, has said he wants to “replace” Obamacare. And while he claims he would not restrict contraception access, it will face myriad threats in his administration, as my colleague Madison Pauly recently reported.)
But the contraception rule has yet to be finalized, and its pathway to becoming a reality is less straightforward than the optimistic White House press release suggests. After the public comment period—which has, so far, only attracted 2 people—ends on December 27, officials will analyze the comments and then write the final rule, which could then not even take effect for another 30 days.
Unlike executive orders, which can be wiped out with the stroke of a pen, rules approved for federal agencies are typically harder to undo. That’s thanks to the Administrative Procedure Act, which outlines the process of how a proposed rule becomes a finalized regulation, and requires that federal agencies do not act in a way that is “arbitrary, capricious, [or] an abuse of discretion.” Rebouché, from Temple Law School, says the administration needs to aim to get the contraception rule—and any other similar ones—finalized as soon as possible. “Any rule that’s already in process, push forward,” she says.
Katie O’Connor, senior director of federal abortion policy at the National Women’s Law Center, would like to see the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s promise to launch a rule focused on ensuring “modern-day digital data brokers are not misusing or abusing our sensitive data” come to pass. An investigation by the office of Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) earlier this year found that a data broker tracked visits by individuals to 600 Planned Parenthood locations across the country and then sold the data for an anti-abortion ad campaign. Even though the rule was promisedlast year, a CFPB spokesperson says they did not have any update.
Even if the agency tried to ram it through, though, any rules that get finalized at this late stage of the administration are at risk of being overturned in the next session of the GOP-controlled Congress, thanks to the Congressional Review Act, notes Steven Balla, associate professor of political science at George Washington University and co-director of the school’s Regulatory Studies Center. During Trump’s first term, Congress used the legislation to overturn 16 rules issued at the end of the preceding Obama administration—the most of any administration, ever, Balla explains.
Complete Investigations Into Hospitals Accusedof Violating Federal Law on Emergency Abortion Care
Earlier this year, the Supreme Court heard a case on whether hospitals must provide abortions to people whose lives or health are at risk, even in states with abortion bans, under the federal Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act, known as EMTALA. In a 6–3 decision—with Thomas, Alito, and Gorsuch dissenting—the court sent the case back to a lower court, refusing to rule on the merits of the Biden administration’s argument that EMTALA requires hospitals to provide emergency abortion care in states with post-Dobbs abortion bans that lack exceptions for a patient’s health. Project 2025 proposes an alternative approach: The guidebook says that “EMTALA requires no abortions” and that HHS should stop investigating hospitals that have failed to comply with its interpretation of the law.
Abortion rights advocates say Biden’s HHS should complete as many investigations as possible into hospitals that may have violated their interpretation of EMTALA by not providing stabilizing abortion care when needed. Otherwise, the Trump administration would inheritthem, a spokesperson for the Center for Reproductive Rights points out.
That spokesperson added that the organization has also submitted three recent complaints to HHS, focused on hospitals in Texas and Arizona that allegedly violated EMTALA by failing to provide medically necessary abortions to women in need. A spokesperson for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services at HHS said the agency does not comment on ongoing investigations.
But even if these investigations were undertaken and completed before the transition, reports suggest they would be unlikely to face penalties from the Biden administration. Investigations recently published by the Associated Press found that more than 100 pregnant women were turned away from emergency rooms while they were in medical distress over the past two years, and that none of those hospitals were fined. Last year, HHS announced it was investigating two unnamed hospitals for allegedly violating the law by failing to offer a woman with a nonviable pregnancy the abortion care she needed. The National Women’s Law Center said it filed the complaint on behalf of Mylissa Farmer and identified the hospitals as Freeman Hospital West in Joplin, Missouri, and the University of Kansas Health System in Kansas City, Kansas. A spokesperson for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services told Mother Jones Wednesday, “Both hospitals are back in compliance,” but did not clarify whether they had faced monetary penalties.
One thing that both advocates and officials agree on? Elections have consequences, and there’s a limit to what Biden administration can actually do to mitigate the decades-long damage the Trump administration could do to reproductive rights once he takes office. “The electorate was confused or didn’t really care about abortion,” Cohen says, “and we’re reaping the reality of it.”
A British Columbia teen who contracted Canada's first known human case of H5 bird flu has deteriorated swiftly in recent days and is now in critical condition, health officials reported Tuesday.
The teen's case was announced Saturday by provincial health officials, who noted that the teen had no obvious exposure to animals that could explain an infection with the highly pathogenic avian influenza. The teen tested positive for H5 bird flu at BC's public health laboratory, and the result is currently being confirmed by the National Microbiology Laboratory in Winnipeg.
The teen's case reportedly began with conjunctivitis, echoing the H5N1 human case reports in the US. The case then progressed to fever and cough, and the teen was admitted to BC's Children's hospital late Friday. The teen's condition varied throughout the weekend but had taken a turn for the worse by Tuesday, according to BC provincial health officer Bonnie Henry.
The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) announced Tuesday that “Queer Eye” star Antoni Porowski has been named as its newest Goodwill Ambassador. “Experiencing different cultures has always been a deep passion of mine – both as a source of inspiration, and a vital part of my work. The more places I have had the […]
If you need any inspiration for cutting loose and relaxing this weekend, look no further than a free-wheeling troop of monkeys that broke out of their South Carolina research facility Wednesday and, as of noon Friday, were still "playfully exploring" with their newfound freedom.
In an update Friday, the police department of Yemassee, SC said that the 43 young, female rhesus macaque monkeys are still staying around the perimeter of the Alpha Genesis Primate Research Facility. "The primates are exhibiting calm and playful behavior, which is a positive indication," the department noted.
The fun-loving furballs got free after a caretaker "failed to secure doors" at the facility.
In a long-sought move, the Food and Drug Administration on Thursday formally began the process of abandoning oral doses of a common over-the-counter decongestant, which the agency concluded last year is not effective at relieving stuffy noses.
Specifically, the FDA issued a proposed order to remove oral phenylephrine from the list of drugs that drugmakers can include in over-the-counter products—also known as the OTC monograph. Once removed, drug makers will no longer be able to include phenylephrine in products for the temporary relief of nasal congestion.
"It is the FDA’s role to ensure that drugs are safe and effective," Patrizia Cavazzoni, director of the FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, said in a statement. "Based on our review of available data and consistent with the advice of the advisory committee, we are taking this next step in the process to propose removing oral phenylephrine because it is not effective as a nasal decongestant."
Kids and teens can make some pretty hairbrained choices sometimes. But when a kid's choice is to engage in a TikTok challenge that threatens their life, psychiatrists can struggle to understand if it was just an exasperating poor choice born out of impulsivity and immaturity or something darker—an actual suicide attempt.
In a Viewpoint published today in JAMA Psychiatry, two psychiatrists from the University of Tennessee Health Science Center at Memphis raise the alarm about the dangers and complexities of TikTok challenges. They're an "emerging public health concern" for kids, the psychiatrists write, and they're blurring the lines between unintentional injuries and suicide attempts in children and teens.
The child and adolescent psychiatrists Onomeasike Ataga and Valerie Arnold say that their psychiatry team first saw injuries from TikTok challenges during the COVID-19 pandemic, but the trend has continued since the pandemic eased. Over recent years, they've seen children and teens hospitalized from a variety of challenges, including the "blackout challenge," in which participants attempt to choke themselves until they pass out; the "Benadryl challenge," in which participants ingest a large amount of the allergy medicine to get high and hallucinate; and the "fire challenge," in which participants pour a flammable liquid on their body and light it on fire. In these cases, the psychiatry team is sometimes called in to help assess whether the children and teens had an intent to self-harm. It's often hard to determine—and thus hard to decide on treatment recommendations.
A Massachusetts spa owner has been arrested for what prosecutors describe as a blundering scheme in which she conspicuously smuggled counterfeit Botox and skin fillers into the US, then peddled them to clients by falsely claiming to be a nurse with a degree from "Havard" [sic] and a license from the state's "Estate Board."
Nevertheless, the woman—Rebecca Fadanelli, 38, of Stoughton—allegedly performed over 2,700 illegal injections between 2021 and 2024, raking in over $900,000 with the scam.
According to an affidavit from a special agent with the Food and Drug Administration, Fadanelli was smuggling in counterfeit Botox and fillers from China and Brazil. Between November 2023 and March 2024, Customs and Border Protection (CBP) seized at least six parcels from China addressed to Fadanelli or her employees. The packages included various counterfeit injectable drugs, including products labeled as Botox and skin fillers Sculptra and Juvederm.
The Food and Drug Administration is warning consumers not to use any drugs made by a compounding pharmacy in California after regulators realized the pharmacy was making drugs that need to be sterile—particularly injectable drugs—without using sterile ingredients or any sterilization steps.
The products made by the pharmacy, Fullerton Wellness LLC, in Ontario, California, include semaglutide, which is intended to mimic brand-name weight-loss and diabetes drugs Wegovy and Ozempic. Fullerton also made tirzepatide, which is intended to mimic weight-loss and diabetes drugs Zepbound and Mounjaro.
The FDA became aware of the problem after a patient submitted a complaint to the regulator that a vial of semaglutide from Fullerton Wellness had an unidentified "black particulate" floating in it. Semaglutide, like tirzepatide, is injected under the skin and is intended to be sterile.
On Sunday morning, Donald Trump made something crystal clear: Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is “going to have a big role in the administration” if he wins. And some of RFK Jr.’s wildest ideas—including banning certain vaccines and removing fluoride from drinking water—could be on the table.
Trump made the comments to NBC News reporter Dasha Burns, who said she got ahold of him by phone just 48 hours out from Election Day. This is not the first time Trump has indicated that Kennedy could wield a terrifying amount of power: At a campaign rally last Sunday, Trump said he would let the conspiracy theorist and failed presidential candidate “go wild on health” if he’s reinstalled in the White House. (Kennedy also said recently that Trump promised him control of the Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Agriculture.) But Trump’s latest comments make clear just how far he’d let RFK Jr. go.
When Burns asked Trump on Sunday if he would, in fact, push to remove fluoride from drinking water—as RFK Jr. claimed on Saturday—Trump reportedly replied: “Well, I haven’t talked to him about it yet, but it sounds okay to me. You know it’s possible.”
As the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention points out, fluoride prevents cavities in teeth, and “consistent, low levels of fluoride” are necessary to keep teeth healthy.
And when Burns asked Trump if he’d let RFK Jr. ban certain vaccines, the Republican nominee had this to say: “I’m going to talk to him and talk to other people, and I’ll make a decision, but he’s a very talented guy and has strong views.” As my colleague Julia Métraux reported, RFK Jr. has signaled his opposition to several vaccines, including for Covid-19, Hepatitis B, and the flu.
Trump’s comments are a reminder of both the havoc RFK Jr. could wreak if he is installed in a high-ranking federal position, as well as the kinds of people the Republican nominee plans to appoint to key positions should he win. As David Corn has noted, RFK Jr. has spread anti-vaccine misinformation connected to a deadly 2019 measles outbreak in Samoa.
If you think that’s wild, just wait. If Trump wins, there will be RFK-esque figures installed across government, many of whom have ambitious plans to deregulate health in America. As my colleague Anna Merlan has reported, Project 2025—the extremist right-wing guidebook to a second Trump term—calls for the CDC to be broken up and demonizes the National Institutes of Health. In other words: RFK Jr. banning vaccines and fluoride would be just the start.
On Sunday morning, Donald Trump made something crystal clear: Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is “going to have a big role in the administration” if he wins. And some of RFK Jr.’s wildest ideas—including banning certain vaccines and removing fluoride from drinking water—could be on the table.
Trump made the comments to NBC News reporter Dasha Burns, who said she got ahold of him by phone just 48 hours out from Election Day. This is not the first time Trump has indicated that Kennedy could wield a terrifying amount of power: At a campaign rally last Sunday, Trump said he would let the conspiracy theorist and failed presidential candidate “go wild on health” if he’s reinstalled in the White House. (Kennedy also said recently that Trump promised him control of the Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Agriculture.) But Trump’s latest comments make clear just how far he’d let RFK Jr. go.
When Burns asked Trump on Sunday if he would, in fact, push to remove fluoride from drinking water—as RFK Jr. claimed on Saturday—Trump reportedly replied: “Well, I haven’t talked to him about it yet, but it sounds okay to me. You know it’s possible.”
As the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention points out, fluoride prevents cavities in teeth, and “consistent, low levels of fluoride” are necessary to keep teeth healthy.
And when Burns asked Trump if he’d let RFK Jr. ban certain vaccines, the Republican nominee had this to say: “I’m going to talk to him and talk to other people, and I’ll make a decision, but he’s a very talented guy and has strong views.” As my colleague Julia Métraux reported, RFK Jr. has signaled his opposition to several vaccines, including for Covid-19, Hepatitis B, and the flu.
Trump’s comments are a reminder of both the havoc RFK Jr. could wreak if he is installed in a high-ranking federal position, as well as the kinds of people the Republican nominee plans to appoint to key positions should he win. As David Corn has noted, RFK Jr. has spread anti-vaccine misinformation connected to a deadly 2019 measles outbreak in Samoa.
If you think that’s wild, just wait. If Trump wins, there will be RFK-esque figures installed across government, many of whom have ambitious plans to deregulate health in America. As my colleague Anna Merlan has reported, Project 2025—the extremist right-wing guidebook to a second Trump term—calls for the CDC to be broken up and demonizes the National Institutes of Health. In other words: RFK Jr. banning vaccines and fluoride would be just the start.
The western North Carolina plant that makes 60 percent of the country's intravenous fluid supply has restarted its highest-producing manufacturing line after being ravaged by flooding brought by Hurricane Helene last month.
While it's an encouraging sign of recovery as hospitals nationwide struggle with shortages of fluids, supply is still likely to remain tight for the coming weeks.
IV fluid-maker Baxter Inc, which runs the Marion plant inundated by Helene, said Thursday that the restarted production line could produce, at peak, 25 percent of the plant's total production and about 50 percent of the plant's production of one-liter IV solutions, the product most commonly used by hospitals and clinics.
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 retractedLancet 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.
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 avoidpreventable long-term health effects.
Earlier this week, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. used a Zoom call to tell his supporters that Donald Trump had promised him "control" of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), the federal agency that includes the Centers for Disease Control, Food and Drug Administration, National Institutes of Health, as well as the Department of Agriculture. Given Kennedy's support for debunked anti-vaccine nonsense, this represents a potential public health nightmare.
A few days after, Howard Lutnick, a co-chair of Trump's transition team, appeared on CNN to deny that RFK Jr. would be put in charge of HHS. But he followed that with a long rant in which he echoed Kennedy's spurious claims about vaccines. This provides yet another indication of how anti-vaccine activism has become deeply enmeshed with Republican politics, to the point where it may be just as bad even if Kennedy isn't appointed.
Trump as Kennedy’s route to power
Kennedy has a long history of misinformation regarding health, with a special focus on vaccines. This includes the extensively debunked suggestion that there is a correlation between vaccinations and autism incidence, and it extends to a general skepticism about vaccine safety. That's mixed with conspiracy theories regarding collusion between federal regulators and pharmaceutical companies.
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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