health

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Judge orders Trump admin. to restore CDC and FDA webpages by midnight

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“Irrational removal”

In his opinion, Bates cited the declarations from Stephanie Liou, a physician who works with low-income immigrant families and an underserved high school in Chicago, and Reshma Ramachandran, a primary care provider who relies on CDC guidance on contraceptives and sexually transmitted diseases in her practice. Both are board members of Doctors for America.

Liou testified that the removal of resources from the CDC’s website hindered her response to a chlamydia outbreak at the high school where she worked. Ramachandran, meanwhile, testified that she was left scrambling to find alternative resources for patients during time-limited appointments. Doctors for America also provided declarations from other doctors (who were not members of Doctors for America) who spoke of being “severely impacted” by the sudden loss of CDC and FDA public resources.

With those examples, Bates agreed that the removal of the information caused the doctors “irreparable harm,” in legal terms.

“As these groups attest, the lost materials are more than ‘academic references’—they are vital for real-time clinical decision-making in hospitals, clinics and emergency departments across the country,” Bates wrote. “Without them, health care providers and researchers are left ‘without up-to-date recommendations on managing infectious diseases, public health threats, essential preventive care and chronic conditions.’ … Finally, it bears emphasizing who ultimately bears the harm of defendants’ actions: everyday Americans, and most acutely, underprivileged Americans, seeking healthcare.”

Bates further noted that it would be of “minimal burden” for the Trump administration to restore the data and information, much of which has been publicly available for many years.

In a press statement after the ruling, Doctors for America and Public Citizen celebrated the restoration.

“The judge’s order today is an important victory for doctors, patients, and the public health of the whole country,” Zach Shelley, a Public Citizen Litigation Group attorney and lead counsel on the case, said in the release. “This order puts a stop, at least temporarily, to the irrational removal of vital health information from public access.”

Judge orders Trump admin. to restore CDC and FDA webpages by midnight Read More »

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Bird flu strain that just jumped to cows infects dairy worker in Nevada

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However, the new Nevada case is notable because it marks the first time D1.1 is known to have jumped from birds to cows to a person. Moreover, D1.1 has proven dangerous. The genotype is behind the country’s only severe and ultimately fatal case of H5N1 so far in the outbreak. The death in the Louisiana case linked to wild and backyard birds was reported last month. The CDC’s statement added that the person had “prolonged, unprotected” exposure to the birds. The D1.1. genotype was also behind a severe H5N1 infection that put a Canadian teenager in intensive care late last year.

In a February 7 analysis, the USDA reported finding that the D1.1 strain infecting cows in Nevada has a notable mutation known to help the bird-adapted virus replicate in mammals more efficiently (PB2 D701N). To date, this mutation has not been seen in D1.1 strains spreading in wild birds nor has it been seen in the B3.13 genotype circulating in dairy cows. However, it was seen before in a 2023 human case in Chile. The CDC said it has confirmed that the strain of D1.1 infecting the person in Nevada also contains the PB2 D701N mutation.

The USDA and CDC both reported that no other concerning mutations were found, including one that has been consistently identified in the B3.13 strain in cows. The CDC said it does not expect any changes to how the virus will interact with human immune responses or to antivirals.

Most importantly, to date, there has been no evidence of human-to-human transmission, which would mark a dangerous turn for the virus’s ability to spark an outbreak. For all these reasons, the CDC considers the risk to the public low, though people with exposure to poultry, dairy cows, and birds are at higher risk and should take precautions.

To date, 967 herds across 16 states have been infected with H5N1 bird flu, and nearly 158 million commercial birds have been affected since 2022.

Bird flu strain that just jumped to cows infects dairy worker in Nevada Read More »

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Measles outbreak erupts in one of Texas’ least vaccinated counties

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Still, the county-wide number obscures pockets of yet lower vaccination rates. That includes the independent public school district in Loop, in the northeast corner of Gaines, which had a vaccination rate of 46 percent in the 2023–2024 school year.

Holbrooks noted that the county has a large religious community with private religious schools. These may have yet lower vaccination rates. Holbrooks said that, so far, the measles cases being seen and traced in the outbreak are linked to those private schools.

Public health response

To try to prevent disease transmission, Holbrooks and other state and local officials are getting the word out about the outbreak and running vaccination clinics. About 30 children were vaccinated in a mobile vaccination drive yesterday, he reported.

“We’re trying to get out the message about how important vaccination is,” he said.

He’s also emphasizing that, while children with measles symptoms—very high fever, cough, runny nose, red/watery eyes, and of course, the tell-tale rash—should see a health care provider, parents need to call the office in advance so a child potentially infected with measles doesn’t end up sitting in a waiting room among other potentially vulnerable children.

“Measles is highly communicable,” he notes. The viral illness is one of the most highly infectious diseases on the planet, and about 90 percent of unvaccinated people who are exposed to it will end up falling ill. The virus spreads through the air and can linger in the airspace of a room for up to two hours after an infected person has left.

In addition to a generally miserable illness, measles can cause complications: 1 in 5 unvaccinated people with measles in the US end up hospitalized. About 1 in 10 develop ear infections and/or diarrhea, and 1 in 20 develop pneumonia. Between 1 to 3 in 1,000 die of the infection. In rare cases, it can cause a fatal disease of the central nervous system called Subacute sclerosing panencephalitis, which typically develops 7 to 10 years after an infection. Measles can also devastate immune responses to other infections (immune amnesia), making people who recover from the illness vulnerable to other infectious diseases.

Health officials have generally raised concerns about outbreaks of measles and other vaccine-preventable diseases as vaccination rates have slipped nationwide and vaccine exemptions have hit record highs. Anxiety over the risks has only heightened as Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is poised to become the country’s top health official. Kennedy is a prominent anti-vaccine advocate who has spent decades spreading misinformation about vaccines.

Measles outbreak erupts in one of Texas’ least vaccinated counties Read More »

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Protection from COVID reinfections plummeted from 80% to 5% with omicron

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“The short-lived immunity leads to repeated waves of infection, mirroring patterns observed with common cold coronaviruses and influenza,” Hiam Chemaitelly, first author of the study and assistant professor of population health sciences at Weill Cornell Medicine-Qatar, said in a statement. “This virus is here to stay and will continue to reinfect us, much like other common cold coronaviruses. Regular vaccine updates are critical for renewing immunity and protecting vulnerable populations, particularly the elderly and those with underlying health conditions.”

Chemaitelly and colleagues speculate that the shift in the pandemic came from shifts in evolutionary pressures that the virus faced. In early stages of the global crisis, the virus evolved and spread by increasing its transmissibility. Then, as the virus lapped the globe and populations began building up immunity, the virus faced pressure to evade that immunity.

However, the fact that researchers did not find such diminished protection against severe, deadly COVID-19 suggests that the evasion is likely targeting only certain components of our immune system. Generally, neutralizing antibodies, which can block viral entry into cells, are the primary protection against non-severe infection. On the other hand, immunity against severe disease is through cellular mechanisms, such as memory T cells, which appear unaffected by the pandemic shift, the researchers write.

Overall, the study “highlights the dynamic interplay between viral evolution and host immunity, necessitating continued monitoring of the virus and its evolution, as well as periodic updates of SARS-CoV-2 vaccines to restore immunity and counter continuing viral immune evasion,” Chemaitelly and colleagues conclude.

In the US, the future of annual vaccine updates may be in question, however. Prominent anti-vaccine advocate and conspiracy theorist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is poised to become the country’s top health official, pending Senate confirmation next week. In 2021, as omicron was rampaging through the country for the first time, Kennedy filed a petition with the Food and Drug Administration to revoke access and block approval of all current and future COVID-19 vaccines.

Protection from COVID reinfections plummeted from 80% to 5% with omicron Read More »

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H5N1 bird flu spills over again; Nevada cows hit with different, deadly strain

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The spread of H5N1 bird flu in dairy cows is unprecedented; the US outbreak is the first of its kind in cows. Virologists and infectious disease experts fear that the continued spread of the virus in domestic mammals like cows, which have close interactions with people, will provide the virus countless opportunities to spill over and adapt to humans.

So far, the US has tallied 67 human cases of H5N1 since the start of 2024. Of those, 40 have been in dairy workers, while 23 were in poultry workers, one was the Louisiana case who had contact with wild and backyard birds, and three were cases that had no clear exposure.

Whether the D1.1 genotype will pose a yet greater risk for dairy workers remains unclear for now. Generally, H5N1 infections in humans have been rare but dangerous. According to data collected by the World Health Organization, 954 H5N1 human cases have been documented globally since 2003. Of those, 464 were fatal, for a fatality rate among documented cases of 49 percent. But, so far, nearly all of the human infections in the US have been relatively mild, and experts don’t know why. There are various possible factors, including transmission route, past immunity of workers, use of antivirals, or something about the B3.13 genotype specifically.

For now, the USDA says that the detection of the D1.1 genotype in cows doesn’t change their eradication strategy. It further touted the finding as a “testament to the strength of our National Milk Testing Strategy.”

H5N1 bird flu spills over again; Nevada cows hit with different, deadly strain Read More »

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Sick right now? Flu is resurging to yet a higher peak this season.

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Currently, flu activity is categorized as “very high” in 29 states, and “high” in 15. States in the South are ablaze with flu. Louisiana, Tennessee, and South Carolina are at the highest “very high” level. But parts of the Northeast corridor are also seeing extremely high activity, including Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, and New York City.

Credit: CDC

As often is the case in flu seasons, the age group hardest hit this year are children ages 0 to 4. The CDC recorded 16 pediatric deaths linked to flu in week 4 of the season, bringing the season’s total pediatric deaths to 47.

Overall hospitalizations are up. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that there have been at least 20 million illnesses, 250,000 hospitalizations, and 11,000 deaths from flu so far this season. About 44 percent of US adults have gotten their flu shot, far below the public health goal of 70 percent.

Laboratory surveillance of influenza cases in week 4 indicates that nearly all of the cases are from influenza A viruses, about an even split between H1N1 and H3N2, which has been the case over the course of the season. Around 2 percent of cases were the influenza B Victoria lineage.

Sick right now? Flu is resurging to yet a higher peak this season. Read More »

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Top 10 moments of RFK Jr.’s reality-bending confirmation hearings

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There were a lot of doozies as RFK Jr. tried to convince lawmakers he’s pro-vaccine.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., US President Donald Trump’s nominee for Secretary of Health and Human Services testifies during his Senate Finance Committee confirmation hearing at the Dirksen Senate Office Building on January 29, 2025 in Washington, DC. In addition to meeting with the Senate Finance Committee, Kennedy also met with the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee Thursday. Credit: Getty | Win McNamee

In hearings Wednesday and Thursday, senators questioned President Trump’s nominee for Secretary of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., over his fitness to be the country’s top health official and control the mammoth $1.7 trillion agency.

Kennedy would come to the role not with a background in medicine, public health, or science but as a former environmental lawyer who has become one of the most prominent and influential anti-vaccine advocates in the country. For decades, Kennedy has spread misinformation about lifesaving vaccines, sowed doubt about their safety, and peddled various conspiracy theories.

That includes his unwavering false claim—despite decades of research to the contrary and countless debunkings—that vaccines are linked to autism (they are not). Kennedy has also made the bizarre false claim that Lyme disease, a bacterial infection spread by tick bites, is “highly likely” to be a military bioweapon (it is not). When asked about this by Senator Michael Bennet (D-Colo.) in the Senate Finance Committee hearing Wednesday, Kennedy admitted, “I probably did say that.” In the hearing Thursday, held by the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP), Kennedy did not deny falsely claiming that AIDS is a different disease in Africa than it is in the US.

The hearings were predictably contentious, at times raucous and emotional, and filled with staggering, reality-bending comments and moments. Here are our top 10:

1. “I am pro-vaccine,” Kennedy tried to claim.

For much of the two hearings, Kennedy tried to walk back his decadeslong history of attacking and undermining vaccines, claiming that he is not anti-vaccine but rather in favor of following the science and ensuring safety. But, his statements in and out of the hearings were conflicting. For instance, in the hearing, he touted that all of his children were vaccinated. But in previous public statements, he has said that he would “do anything, pay anything” to go back in time and not vaccinate his children.

At numerous times, senators tried to pin Kennedy down on his stance on vaccines overall, as well as on specific vaccines. Generally, Kennedy responded that if the senators personally showed him data indicating that a vaccine is safe, he would change his views and even “publicly apologize” for being wrong. (A pledge he couldn’t make if he thought they were safe now.) He refused to say that vaccines do not cause autism.

Some of the senators tried to show him data, referencing the deep scientific literature supporting the safety and efficacy of vaccines, including the Measles, Mumps, and Rubella Vaccine (MMR) and the HPV vaccine. Some even held up stacks of studies. “The evidence IS there,” Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) said forcefully. But Kennedy always raised quibbles with whatever studies senators presented and said he would discuss individual studies with senators after the hearing.

At the conclusion of the HELP hearing Thursday, Senator Bill Cassidy (R-La.), a former gastroenterologist, confronted Kennedy with a high-quality meta-analysis finding no link between autism and vaccines. But Kennedy again dismissed it and referred Cassidy to an article published online by an anti-vaccine advocate.

Cassidy then looked up the study while another senator questioned Kennedy and raised the issue in his closing remarks. “I looked at the article by Dr. Mawson and it seems to… have some issues,” Cassidy said. “I’ll just put that to the side.

“And that is why I’ve been struggling with your nomination,” he continued. Cassidy noted that he agreed with Kennedy’s comments on topics such as chronic health issues and obesity, but “as someone who had discussed immunizations with thousands of people… I have approached it using the preponderance of evidence to reassure, and you have approached it using selective evidence to cast doubt.”

Cassidy wondered aloud: “Does a 71-year-old man who has spent decades criticizing vaccines and is financially invested in finding faults with vaccines, can he change his attitudes and approach now that he’ll have the most important position influencing vaccine policy in the United States?… Will you overturn a new leaf?”

2. “A perfect metaphor”

Senator Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) raised concern that Kennedy not only cast doubt on vaccine safety, but had said that the people who run the country’s vaccine program should be in jail, likening them to Nazis and pedophiles. Murphy quoted Kennedy saying in 2013, “To me this is like Nazi death camps. Look at what it does to the families who participate in the vaccine program. I can’t tell why someone would do something like that, I can’t tell you why ordinary Germans participated in the Holocaust. I can’t tell you what was going on in their minds.”

Murphy also noted that Kennedy called the Catholic church’s sexual abuse cases a “perfect metaphor” for the vaccine program in the US.

In his response to Murphy, Kennedy only doubled down on the claims, arguing that certain members of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s vaccine program had, like members of the Catholic church, “written off a generation of kids” due to “misplaced institutional loyalty to the CDC and because of entanglements with the drug companies.”

“You said it was a perfect metaphor,” Murphy pressed, still alarmed by the comparison of immunization to child sex abuse.

“Well, if you have 1 in 36 kids with neurological injuries and if that is linked, then that’s something we should study,” Kennedy replied, referring to the rate of autism (again falsely linking the condition to vaccines).

3. “She’s not going to be a pincushion”

Despite the slips, Kennedy kept trying to convince senators that he was not anti-vaccine. Other senators, meanwhile, seemed to celebrate Kennedy’s track record.

“You brought to light the vaccines over the last couple years,” Senator Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.) said. “I’ve had my first granddaughter here in a couple of weeks and my son and his wife have done their research about vaccines, and she’s not going to be a pin cushion. We’re not going to allow that to happen. But you brought that up… I appreciate you doing that.”

4. “We can’t move forward”

Without question, the most emotional moment of both hearings was during questioning by Senator Maggie Hassan (D-N.H.), who spoke of how the false link between vaccines and autism had affected her and her family. “You may not know that I am the proud mother of a 36-year-old young man with severe cerebral palsy,” she said, her voice cracking. “And a day does not go by when I don’t think about what did I do when I was pregnant with him that might have caused the hydrocephalus that has so impacted his life. So, please do not suggest that anybody in this body of either political party doesn’t want to know what the cause of autism is,” she said, her voice rising.

“Mr. Kennedy, that first autism study rocked my world,” Hassan continued, referring to the deeply flawed, now retracted 1998 study published in the Lancet by Andrew Wakefield, who first claimed to find a connection between the MMR vaccine and autism. “Like every mother I worried about whether in fact the vaccine had done something to my son,” she said. But, the study was small (12 children, only eight with autism), and editors later found “clear evidence of falsification of data.”

“Over time, the scientific community studied and studied and studied and found that it was wrong,” Hassan said. The study was retracted in 2010. “Sometime science is wrong. We make progress, we build on the work, and we become more successful. And when you continue to sow doubt about settled science it makes it impossible for us to move forward. So that’s what the problem is here—it’s the relitigating and rehashing and continuing to sow doubt so we can’t move forward. And it freezes us in place.”

5. “It will cast a shadow”

In addition to stalled progress, many senators expressed deep concern that Kennedy’s confirmation could lead to needless suffering and deaths from vaccine-preventable diseases. But Cassidy took the possibility one step further.

“As a patriotic American, I want President Trump’s policies to succeed,” Cassidy stated. “But if there is someone that is not vaccinated because of policies or attitudes you [Kennedy] bring to the department, and there’s another 18-year-old who dies of a vaccine-preventable disease… it’ll be blown up in the press. The greatest tragedy will be her death. But I can also tell you an associated tragedy: that will cast a shadow over President Trump’s legacy.”

6. “Of the ages”

During Sanders’ questioning Thursday, he drew attention to another vaccine: COVID-19 vaccines. Sanders referenced a study that estimated the vaccines saved more than 3 million lives in the US and prevented more than 18 million hospitalizations. President Trump, meanwhile, once called them “one of the greatest miracles of the ages,” Sanders noted.

However, Sanders pointed out that Kennedy had, during the height of the pandemic, petitioned the Food and Drug Administration to revoke authorization of COVID-19 vaccines and refrain from approving any future COVID-19 vaccines.

Sanders asked Kennedy if the scientists and the president were wrong.

“Senator I filed that lawsuit after CDC recommended the vaccine for 6-year-old children without any evidence that it would benefit them and without testing on 6-year-old children and that was my reason for filing that lawsuit,” Kennedy responded.

This answer was misleading, at best. The 2021 petition Kennedy filed was specifically to revoke existing authorization and block all future COVID-19 vaccines for “all demographic groups,” not just children. It further requested the FDA to prohibit minors from participating in COVID-19 vaccine trials and to refrain from issuing any authorizations for minors under age 16 to get Pfizer’s vaccine or under age 18 to get any other COVID-19 vaccine.

Sanders then pressed Kennedy if the COVID-19 vaccine saved lives.

Kennedy responded: “I don’t know. We don’t have a good surveillance system, unfortunately.”

Sanders: “We don’t know?”

Kennedy: “I don’t think anybody can say that. If you show me science that shows that…”

Sanders: “You know, Bobby, you say ‘If I show you’—you’re applying for the job. I mean, clearly, you should know this. And that is that the scientific community has established that—that [the] COVID vaccine saved millions of lives—and you’re casting doubt. That is really problematic.”

7. The basics

Beyond vaccination, Kennedy stumbled through basic explanations of Medicare and Medicaid, which are managed by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) housed within the HHS. On Wednesday, Kennedy described Medicaid as “fully paid for” by the federal government—that is incorrect; it is jointly funded by the federal government and states. He also completely flubbed understanding that CMS has the authority to enforce the Emergency Medical Treatment & Labor Act (EMTALA).

On Thursday, Hassan asked him to define the purpose of Medicare Parts A, B, and C. Kennedy got the answers for all three wrong. He described Medicare Part A as “mainly for primary care or physicians,” when the answer is that it covers inpatient care at hospitals. For Part B, Kennedy said it was “for physicians and doctors,” when the correct description is coverage for outpatient care and home health. And Part C, Kennedy described as “a program where it’s the full menu of all the services: A, B, C, and D.” Part C covers Medicare Advantage, the private insurance option for seniors on Medicare. “It appears you don’t know the basics of this program,” Hassan said.

8. 5G and “other things”

In a quick exchange with Senator Andrew Kim (D-NJ), Kennedy confirmed some of his other concerning beliefs. “In the past you said ‘Wi-Fi radiation does all kinds of bad things, including causing cancer,'” Kim began. “Do you still stand by that statement?”

Kennedy replied, “Yes.”

He has pushed the unproven claim that Wi-Fi “opens up your blood-brain barrier.”

Kim moved on quickly: “And 5G, do you feel the same way?” Kennedy said yes again, clarifying that he was talking about electromagnetic radiation generally, which “changes DNA” and does “other things.”

9. Lucrative position

On Wednesday, Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) highlighted that Kennedy has made a lot of money from being an anti-vaccine advocate. In the past two years, Kennedy earned $2.5 million from working with a law firm encouraging people to sign up to be part of lawsuits against vaccine makers. If they sign up, Kennedy gets paid. If the law firm wins the case, Kennedy gets a 10 percent cut.

Warren asked Kennedy if he would agree that he wouldn’t take personal compensation from any lawsuits against drug companies while being health secretary and for four years afterward. Kennedy would not agree to do that. Instead he argued that Warren was insisting that he not be allowed to sue drug companies. “No I am not,” she protested, noting that she was only asking that what he did as secretary wouldn’t benefit him financially.

“The bottom line is the same: Kennedy can kill off vaccines and make millions of dollars while he does it,” Warren concluded.

“Senator, I support vaccines. I support the childhood schedule. I will do that. The only thing I want is good science,” Kennedy replied.

10. Onesies

The last big moment of the hearings goes to Sanders for having the best visual aids. On Wednesday, in the Finance committee hearing, Sanders brought large posters of baby clothes (onesies) that are currently for sale by Children’s Health Defense (CHD), the anti-vaccine group Kennedy founded and ran between 2015 and 2023.

One of the onesies read “Unvaxxed Unafraid” and the other read “No Vax No Problem.” Both are currently on sale for $26 each.

Sanders asked Kennedy if he would ask CHD to stop selling them. Kennedy didn’t answer the question, only noting he had resigned from CHD to run his political campaigns. Bernie pressed: “Are you supportive of this clothing, which is militantly anti-vaccine?”

“I am supportive of vaccines. I want good science,” Kennedy replied.

“But you will not tell the organization you founded not to continue selling that product,” Bernie concluded.

Photo of Beth Mole

Beth is Ars Technica’s Senior Health Reporter. Beth has a Ph.D. in microbiology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and attended the Science Communication program at the University of California, Santa Cruz. She specializes in covering infectious diseases, public health, and microbes.

Top 10 moments of RFK Jr.’s reality-bending confirmation hearings Read More »

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FDA approves first non-opioid pain medicine in more than 20 years

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The approval “is an important public health milestone in acute pain management,” Jacqueline Corrigan-Curay, J.D., M.D., acting director of the FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, said in a statement. “A new non-opioid analgesic therapeutic class for acute pain offers an opportunity to mitigate certain risks associated with using an opioid for pain and provides patients with another treatment option.”

The company behind the drug, Vertex, said a 50 mg pill that works for 12 hours will have a wholesale cost of $15.50, making the daily cost $31 and the weekly cost $217. The cost is higher than cheap, generic opioids. But, a report from The Institute for Clinical and Economic Review in December estimated that suzetrigine would be “slightly cost-saving” relative to opioids if the price was set at $420 per week, given the drug’s ability to avert opioid addiction cases.

In a statement, Reshma Kewalramani, the CEO and President of Vertex, trumpeted the approval as a “historic milestone for the 80 million people in America who are prescribed a medicine for moderate-to-severe acute pain each year … [W]e have the opportunity to change the paradigm of acute pain management and establish a new standard of care.”

FDA approves first non-opioid pain medicine in more than 20 years Read More »

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States say they’ve been shut out of Medicaid amid Trump funding freeze

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Amid the Trump administration’s abrupt, wide-scale freeze on federal funding, states are reporting that they’ve lost access to Medicaid, a program jointly funded by the federal government and states to provide comprehensive health coverage and care to tens of millions of low-income adults and children in the US.

The funding freeze was announced in a memo dated January 27 from Matthew Vaeth, the acting director of the Office of Management and Budget, and was first reported Monday evening by independent journalist Marisa Kabas. The freeze is intended to prevent “use of Federal resources to advance Marxist equity, transgenderism, and green new deal social engineering policies,” Vaeth wrote. The memo ordered federal agencies to complete a comprehensive analysis of all federal financial assistance programs to ensure they align with the president’s policies and requirements.

“In the interim, to the extent permissible under applicable law, Federal agencies must temporarily pause all activities related to obligation or disbursement of all Federal financial assistance, and other relevant agency activities that may be implicated by the executive orders…” Vaeth wrote.

Illinois was the first state to report that it had lost access to Medicaid. According to the Chicago Sun-Times, Gov. JB Pritzker’s office expected the freeze to go into effect at 5 pm Eastern Time today but found the state locked out this morning. The Times noted that Medicaid covered about 3.9 million people in Illinois in 2023, including low-income adults, children, pregnant people, and people with disabilities.

In a post Tuesday afternoon on the social media platform Bluesky, Senator Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) reported that all 50 states have since lost access. “My staff has confirmed reports that Medicaid portals are down in all 50 states following last night’s federal funding freeze,” Wyden wrote. “This is a blatant attempt to rip away health care from millions of Americans overnight and will get people killed.”

States say they’ve been shut out of Medicaid amid Trump funding freeze Read More »

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Dead babies, critically ill kids: Pediatricians make moving plea for vaccines

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As federal lawmakers prepare to decide whether anti-vaccine advocate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. should be the next secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, pediatricians from around the country are making emotional pleas to protect and support lifesaving immunizations.

The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) has assembled nearly 200 stories and dozens of testimonials on the horrors of vaccine-preventable deaths and illnesses that pediatricians have encountered over their careers. The testimonials have been shared with two Senate committees that will hold hearings later this week: the Senate Committee on Finance and the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP).

“I remember that baby’s face to this day”

In a statement on Monday, AAP President Susan Kressly noted that the stories come from a wide range of pediatricians—from rural to urban and from small practices to large institutions. Some have recalled stories of patients who became ill with devastating diseases before vaccines were available to prevent them, while others shared more recent experiences as vaccine misinformation spread and vaccination rates slipped.

In one, a pediatrician from Raleigh, North Carolina, spoke of a baby in the 1990s with Streptococcus pneumoniae meningitis, a life-threatening disease. “I remember holding a baby dying of complications of pneumococcal meningitis at that time. I remember that baby’s face to this day—but, thanks to pneumococcal vaccination, have never had to relive that experience since,” the doctor said. The first pneumococcal vaccine for infants was licensed in the US in 2000.

A doctor in Portland, Maine, meanwhile, faced the same disease in a patient who was unvaccinated despite the availability of the vaccine. “As a resident, I cared for a young, unvaccinated child admitted to the pediatric intensive care unit with life-threatening Streptococcus pneumoniae meningitis. This devastating illness, once common, has become rare thanks to the widespread use of pneumococcal conjugate vaccines. However, this child was left vulnerable…and [their parents] now faced the anguish of watching their child fight for their life on a ventilator.”

Kressly emphasizes that “One unifying theme of these stories: vaccines allow children to grow up healthy and thrive. As senators consider nominees for federal healthcare agencies, we hope these testimonies will help paint a picture of just how important vaccinations are to children’s long-term health and wellbeing.”

Dead babies, critically ill kids: Pediatricians make moving plea for vaccines Read More »

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WHO starts cutting costs as US withdrawal date set for January 2026

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“Just stupid”

On January 23, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus sent a memo to staff announcing the cost-cutting measures. Reuters obtained a copy of the memo.

“This announcement has made our financial situation more acute,” Tedros wrote, referring to the US withdrawal plans. WHO’s budget mainly comes from dues and voluntary contributions from member states. The dues are a percentage of each member state’s gross domestic product, and the percentage is set by the UN General Assembly. US contributions account for about 18 percent of WHO’s overall funding, and its two-year 2024-2025 budget was $6.8 billion, according to Reuters.

To prepare for the budget cut, WHO is halting recruitment, significantly curtailing travel expenditures, making all meetings virtual, limiting IT equipment updates, and suspending office refurbishment.

“This set of measures is not comprehensive, and more will be announced in due course,” Tedros wrote, adding that the agency would do everything it could to protect and support staff.

The country’s pending withdrawal has been heavily criticized by global health leaders and US experts, who say it will make the world less safe and weaken America. In a CBS/KFF Health News report examining the global health implications of the US withdrawal, Kenneth Bernard, a visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University who served as a top biodefense official during the George W. Bush administration, did not mince words:

“It’s just stupid,” Bernard said. “Withdrawing from the WHO leaves a gap in global health leadership that will be filled by China,” he said, “which is clearly not in America’s best interests.”

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For real, we may be taking blood pressure readings all wrong

blood pressure, cardiovascular disease, death, health, heart failure, lying down, mortality, sitting, stroke / /

For people who had high blood pressure readings only when sitting (normal readings while lying down), there was no statistically significant difference in risk of coronary heart disease, heart failure, or stroke compared to people with normal blood pressure. The only statistically significant differences were a 41 percent higher risk of fatal coronary heart disease (compared to the 78 percent seen in those with high readings lying down) and an 11 percent higher risk of all-cause mortality.

(In this study, high blood pressure readings were defined for both positions as those with systolic readings (the top number) of 130 mm Hg or greater or diastolic readings (the bottom number) of 80 mm Hg or greater.)

The people with the highest risks across the board were those who had high blood pressure readings while both sitting and lying down.

“These findings suggest that measuring supine [lying down] BP may be useful for identifying elevated BP and latent CVD risk,” the researchers conclude.

Strengths and hypotheses

For now, the findings should be considered preliminary. Such an analysis and finding should be repeated with a different group of people to confirm the link. And as to the bigger question of whether using medication to lower supine blood pressure (rather than seated blood pressure) is more effective at reducing risk, it’s likely that clinical trials will be necessary.

Still, the analysis had some notable strengths that make the findings attention-worthy. The study’s size and design are robust. Researchers tapped into data from the Atherosclerosis Risk in Communities (ARIC) study, a study established in 1987 with middle-aged people living in one of four US communities (Forsyth County, North Carolina; Jackson, Mississippi; suburban Minneapolis, Minnesota; and Washington County, Maryland).

For real, we may be taking blood pressure readings all wrong Read More »