Concerns are sweeping across Russia and the world after a laboratory technician reportedly died from pneumonic plague in Siberia. Many more people are now being quarantined. But health officials in the United States say there is no reason to worry about a global outbreak, at least for the time being.

What happened in Russia?

A 28-year-old researcher at the Irkutsk Antiplague Research Institute of Siberia in the town of Shelekhov died last week after being infected with pneumonia of “unknown” origin, according to Russia’s public health agency, Rospotrebnadzor. The disease is now possibly believed to be pneumonic plague, an illness “caused by bacteria, Yersinia pestis, famous for causing the Black Death, that remains with us today mostly in animals across parts of Asia, Africa and the Americas,” Simon Clarke, a professor of cellular microbiology at the U.K.’s University of Reading, said in a statement.

The disease is deadly but “generally treatable with antibiotics if identified quickly,” said Clarke. After the researcher’s death, “dozens of people were reported to be in isolation,” even as Russia claimed “no microorganisms associated with the employee’s professional duties were detected in samples taken from the patient,” said CNN. The head of Rospotrebnadzor later arrived in Shelekhov to hold an emergency meeting about a “particularly dangerous infection,” said Russian news outlet IRK. It was originally reported that the worker who died caught the disease from a broken test tube, which Russia has denied.

What next?

Given the similarities to the alleged coronavirus lab leak cover-up, some people have “likened the reports coming out of Russia to those that circulated in the early days of the Covid-19 outbreak in early 2020,” said Time. But for now, experts are saying a similar pandemic is unlikely. It is “important to remember that pneumonic plague is a very different disease,” Clarke said. U.S. officials say they will continue to watch for updates.

The State Department has also sent a letter to Moscow warning that its “failure to disclose details about the death of a lab worker from a plague research center in Siberia runs counter to its international health obligations,” said The Wall Street Journal. The U.S. is “monitoring it closely,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters. “I don't think it's cause for alarm, but it is cause for focus.”

Gambling is putting people in the hospital, according to a new study. The increase in online sports betting has worsened mental health problems in younger men, leading to more hospital visits as a result.

Mind games

Online gambling is “associated with a doubling of the rates of severe cases of gambling disorders, with increases occurring only in young men,” said a study published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine. More young men are showing up at emergency rooms with “major depression and suicidality,” as well as “other mental health or substance abuse diagnoses” exacerbated by gambling, said Time.

The uptick in these health issues is “particularly concerning given the rapid growth and promotion of online sports betting, which targets this demographic,” said study author Ryan Forrest, a doctoral student at the University of Toronto, in a news release. And the “consequences of rising gambling involve not just harm to people who are gambling but wider effects on families and communities.”

Underscored

While the study centered on Ontario, Canada, the U.S. has a similar spike in gambling. Since 2018, several states have legalized online sports betting.

“It’s just not a regulated environment out there,” said Cynthia Grant, the vice president of clinical for Birches Health, the largest U.S. provider specializing in treating gambling disorders, to Time. “People’s lives are being ruined, their relationships are being destroyed,” and “their retirement accounts are gone.”

This data “likely represents only a small fraction of the overall harms associated with gambling in the population,” said the study. Unfortunately, “most people experiencing gambling problems will never seek care,” said senior study author Daniel Myran in the release. But increased ER visits may be “revealing much larger increases in gambling-related harm.”

With artificial intelligence permeating nearly every aspect of our lives, therapists are seeing more people expressing anxiety about the technology. And that number is likely to rise exponentially in the coming years.

‘Techistential dread’

Rapid technological advancement can “induce a sense of overarching anxiety,” said therapist Mark Wilkes at Deseret News. Think of it as “techistential dread,” or the “vertigo of wondering if a new advancement will help or hurt, increase opportunities or threaten human thriving.”

For Silicon Valley therapist Candice Thompson, “discussing fears and worries about AI has now become a regular part of her workday,” said The New York Times. During her “clinical lifetime,” she has “never seen an existential threat like this,” said Thompson to the outlet. No one is immune, “even my clients who are not working in tech.”

Fears about AI are becoming increasingly common among therapy clients, as the technology “reshapes the workplace, gobbles up natural resources” and raises concerns about “privacy and security.” For those who “already have a diagnosed disorder,” such as generalized anxiety, the “distress over AI may feel even more intense.”

There is a “parallel” between this and “depression over climate change,” sociologist Sherry Turkle, the author of “Artificial Intimacy: Who We Become When We Talk to Machines,” said to the Times. “You feel that things are ‘deeply amiss.’” But action may feel “futile, so the depression becomes diffuse.”

‘No simple answers’

For people anxious about AI, there are “no simple answers,” but experts recommend “doing what you can to move the needle in your own life or in public life,” said the Times. The “existential dread” that some express often stems from a “sense of having lost control and any sense of meaning,” said psychologist Yuxin Sun to the Times. It may help to ask: “What are the things I am not going to outsource to AI?”

For therapists, one place to begin is to “distinguish between goals and values,” said Psychology Today. It seems “plausible” that some clients’ “medium-term goals” will be “usurped by machines.” So goals, at least “certain kinds of professional goals,” will arguably “no longer be as central to clients’ self-conceptions as they have traditionally been.”

What is kratom?

Derived from the leaves of the kratom tree, the legal high is sold in convenience stores, smoke shops, and service stations across the U.S. with the pitch that it can ease pain and boost energy. As use has increased—some 5 million Americans have tried kratom, turning the drug into a billion- dollar industry—so have its harms. More than 5,200 people fatally overdosed on kratom between 2020 and 2024, according to the CDC, and kratom-related hospitalizations and poisonings have rocketed nearly 1,300% over the past decade, with nearly 3,500 people severely sickened last year. Authorities found packages of the drug while investigating the mysterious deaths of two University of Mississippi undergrads, ages 18 and 20, in separate incidents recently. Responding to growing concern, the Drug Enforcement Administration this summer temporarily classified three kratom derivatives as federally illegal Schedule 1 substances, a category that includes heroin and LSD. But the Department of Health and Human Services emphasized the change was “not intended to regulate natural leaf kratom,” only synthetics and concentrates of its psychoactive compounds. Many experts call that insufficient—and suggest ties between Trump Cabinet members and kratom firms could be influencing regulations. “It’s looking like we have a coin-operated drug policy,” said former White House adviser Dr. Kevin Sabet.

What effect does kratom have on users?

Low doses have a stimulant effect; people in Southeast Asia, where the tree is native, have for centuries chewed leaves as a pick-me-up. But in higher doses, kratom acts as a narcotic, because two psychoactive compounds— mitragynine and 7-hydroxymitragynine (7-OH)—bind to the same receptors as opioids. “If you take two pills it’s like a cup of coffee,” podcaster Joe Rogan said in 2019. “I took eight and I was f---ed up.” Kratom leaves are typically imported from Indonesia and processed stateside into capsules, gummies, and other products. While natural kratom contains only trace amounts of 7-OH, some companies sell concentrated or synthetic forms of the compound under brand names such as Magic 7OH and 7 O’Heaven for as little as $4 a pop. Those concentrates can be up to 13 times stronger than morphine, and users risk addiction, liver damage, and seizures— or worse. Weston Walker, a health- conscious Florida attorney, collapsed and died in 2021 after taking a lethal amount of kratom extract. “You just never imagine your 37-year old, healthy-as-a-horse brother is going to pass away,” said his sister, Whitney Briggs.

Why do people take the drug?

Many take it purely recreationally, enjoying a mild alcohol-free buzz from the kratom- infused drinks and cocktails served at hundreds of kratom lounges and bars across the U.S. Some long-haul truckers use it to stay awake on the road. But kratom’s most vocal defenders say it helps them manage pain and chronic conditions, and a Johns Hopkins survey last year found that over a quarter of kratom users take it as an opioid replacement. But while some users say it helped wean them off opioids, others find themselves trading one addiction for another. “Anyone who says kratom is not addictive has never tried it,” a former opioid and kratom user named Jack told Aeon. “I probably spent over $120 a day on kratom, way more than I had spent on oxies.”

How has the government responded?

A 2016 attempt at banning kratom’s main compounds failed after intense pushback from the American Kratom Association and other lobbying groups. The DEA’s order this summer on three kratom derivatives also bans substances that contain more than 0.05% of 7-OH, a level that excludes raw kratom leaves. But Brandeis University opioid researcher Dr. Andrew Kolodny notes that the majority of patients he has treated for 7-OH addiction started with natural kratom, and that there’s no clear line marking one form as dangerous and the other safe. “The DEA should control kratom in all its forms,” he said.

Why hasn’t it?

Some experts point to financial links between Trump Cabinet officials and the kratom industry. In 2023, the Justice Department sued one of the country’s largest kratom firms, Oklahoma-based Botanic Tonics, alleging its kratom- infused Feel Free drink was an unsafe “new dietary ingredient.” The DOJ dropped the case last December, saying it was not “a prudent use of government resources,” and over the following months, Botanic Tonics donated $1 million to MAHA PAC, which is associated with Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and $443,000 to the Republican National Committee. Asked about the donation, Kennedy said, “I don’t make decisions for the Justice Department.” Markwayne Mullin, the former Oklahoma senator who in March became Homeland Security secretary, has invested up to $1 million in Botanic Tonics. The New York Times reported that Mullin has asked the FDA to soften its warnings on kratom while publicly promoting bans on 7-OH, whose makers compete with Botanic Tonics’ “natural” products. The Department of Homeland Security said Mullin “follows all ethics and conflict-of- interest standards.”

Can states take action?

Over a dozen have enacted bans on kratom, 7-OH, or both, though enforcement is spotty. Not all experts support blanket prohibition: Johns Hopkins psychiatrist Kirsten Smith warns that a “moral panic freakout” could stifle research into whether kratom can indeed offer an off-ramp from opiates. But most agree kratom companies should not be left to self- regulate. Many in the industry, meanwhile, dismiss health harms from their product. Mac Haddow of the American Kratom Association has applauded the DEA’s 7-OH ban but has also blamed irresponsible consumers for any deaths caused by natural kratom use. “Can we regulate stupid?” he asked. “I can’t do that—no one can.”

For Americans in rural communities, getting adequate health treatment has often been an uphill battle. Now, new research shows just how dire the state of healthcare is in these areas, particularly because of a dearth of surgeons in places across the United States.

How bad is the surgeon shortage?

Currently, 1,180 out of 3,144 counties in the United States — more than a third — have no general surgeon, and at least 951 of them “have no surgeon in any of 12 surgical specialties,” said a recent report from the American College of Surgeons (ACS). These shortages represent “15.1 million people lacking access to surgical care.” At least 434 rural hospitals are also in counties “with no identified full-time surgeon.”

Surgeon supply across all specialties is significantly varied and “12 times higher in some regions than others,” said the ACS. And the paucity is likely to increase during the coming years. The U.S. is “projected to be short nearly 28,000 surgeons by 2038, with the workforce meeting just 84.3% of national need,” said a separate ACS study. The greatest gaps are expected to be in “vascular surgery, ophthalmology, thoracic surgery and plastic surgery.”

What has the shortage’s effect been?

Rural communities can be harmed in various ways. While many people “assume that surgeons primarily perform elective procedures, many surgeons in rural communities serve multiple roles,” study co-author Dr. Thomas Tsai, the medical director for health policy research at the ACS, said to Time. “Access to surgeons is the keystone for the broader rural healthcare ecosystem.” Part of the problem is that “training isn’t keeping pace with demand, especially as the country ages and needs more medical procedures.”

Bringing in more surgeons is crucial because the “average American may undergo as many as 20 diagnostic and therapeutic procedures over the course of their life, factoring in minor procedures such as endoscopies to major operations,” Tsai told the industry outlet Fierce Healthcare. The “ability to provide innovative surgical care is a feature and not a flaw of the U.S. healthcare system,” and Americans “need the resources to both expand the supply of surgeons in the U.S. and to sustain viable surgical practices” in rural areas.

A new study suggests a worrying link between frequent marijuana use and care-intensive seizures in people with ‘hard-to-treat’ epilepsy. While it’s too early to prove causation, researchers believe the connection warrants further study.

‘Unsettling trend’

Adults with “hard-to-treat epilepsy” who used cannabis most days had “more than twice as many convulsive seizures” per year and “more rapidly became resistant to antiseizure medications” compared with nonusers, according to new research from Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, published in the journal Epilepsia, a press release said.

The researchers reviewed the medical records of 64 adults with drug-resistant epilepsy who were admitted to an inpatient unit where “doctors monitored their seizures in real time,” said U.S. News & World Report. Twenty-two of them “reported using marijuana at least 20 days a month.” The difference between the two groups “was significant.” In total, “91% of frequent users experienced convulsive seizures compared with 57% of nonusers.”

An FDA-approved cannabis-derived epilepsy treatment exists, Epidiolex, but it is “only made from cannabidiol (CBD),” said Gizmodo. The team suspects THC, the other active compound in cannabis, “could be the primary culprit behind this unsettling trend.”

Next steps

The researchers emphasized that the “current data demonstrate an observational association rather than direct causation,” said Neuroscience News. Moving forward, the team is designing a “prospective, multisite study” incorporating blood tests rather than “self-reported usage.”

The primary takeaway is to “not ignore cannabis use in epilepsy or to assume it is beneficial,” said senior study author Aaron Struck to Gizmodo. It is worthwhile to “discuss with a treating physician” if “stopping or reducing THC may be beneficial to your care.”

Dementia research has reached a major milestone: Alzheimer’s disease is no longer untreatable, according to a landmark global report. The growing range of treatment options marks a shift from seeking a cure to focusing on avoiding the disease entirely.

‘Era of unprecedented activity’

The Alzheimer’s research field is “witnessing a period of remarkable scientific momentum,” said the 2026 World Alzheimer Report, which is coauthored by Alzheimer’s Disease International and health journalist Paul Gallagher. The ADI is a global federation of dementia associations affiliated with the World Health Organization.

After years of being considered an “inevitable consequence of old age and neurodegeneration,” dementia research has entered an “era of unprecedented activity.” Experts are hopeful.

Hundreds of clinical trials are investigating “medicines, diagnostics, lifestyle interventions, digital technologies, rehabilitation programs” and new care models for the disease, said the report. The disease is now seen as a condition for which “earlier diagnosis, better understanding of disease biology, and a wider range of interventions may collectively improve outcomes.”

During the past five years alone, novel drugs such as donanemab (brand name Kisunla) and lecanemab (brand name Leqembi) have been shown to “modestly slow decline in early Alzheimer’s,” while growing evidence suggests “some dementia cases could potentially be delayed or prevented through risk reduction,” said Science Alert.

What’s next?

There are drugs that “millions of people are taking right now for other reasons” that might also be able to help with Alzheimer’s disease, said Vox. GLP-1s “in particular are the big ones.”

It’s still “sort of theoretical,” but the Alzheimer’s Association is “putting $100 million behind some research projects” to investigate this possible link, said Vox. Years from now, when “millions of people are now on these GLP-1 drugs,” we may “start to see Alzheimer’s less often.” This would be “another reason to be optimistic” that the “future for this disease is looking brighter.”

Six Flags Magic Mountain is one of the most popular amusement parks in the United States, but its flagship attraction and most popular ride, the X2 roller coaster, has come under fire for possibly causing more than eight dozen severe brain injuries in the past two years. Now, a series of lawsuits has put the future of the ride in jeopardy.

What are these lawsuits about?

The three lawsuits represent more than 100 clients who reportedly received brain injuries while riding Magic Mountain’s X2. The ride, which has been operating since 2002 at the Los Angeles County amusement park, has “seats that rotate independently as the train travels along the track, spinning riders as much as 360 degrees,” said The New York Times, sending “riders through dives, flips and twists.” The 200-foot-high attraction can reach speeds of up to 76 miles per hour.

The lawsuits accuse Six Flags and Magic Mountain of knowingly operating a “defectively designed ride and failing to adequately warn passengers about the risk of serious brain injuries,” said the Times. The allegations come less than a month after a CNN investigation documented numerous instances of injuries on the ride. Two of the lawsuits represent people featured in the investigation, including a pair of riders who “both fell unconscious after getting off the roller coaster and underwent emergency brain surgery for severe traumatic brain injuries,” said CNN.

Attorneys are “actively investigating these incidents and representing individuals who allege they suffered traumatic brain injuries after riding X2,” Dordick Law Corporation, which filed the three lawsuits, said in a statement. The lawsuit also references a 22-year-old man who “died from a traumatic brain injury after riding X2 four years ago,” said CNN, with Six Flags later reaching a settlement with his family. The outlet also claims it heard from people who “had injuries that were not brain-related or did not have proof of medical treatment.”

What comes next?

X2 has supposedly been closed since July 12, which was “nearly a full day after the latest injury there, and park officials have remained silent about what necessitated the closure,” said CNN. Six Flags’ website still lists the ride as closed, with no timeline listed for its reopening. The company has denied that it was negligent; in court filings related to a different X2 case, Six Flags “said testing showed that the ride operated within accepted acceleration limits and argued that the rider’s injury, a brain bleed, was instead caused by a preexisting condition,” said the Times.

But lawyers for the alleged injured riders are not backing down. “We want transparency. We want the public to know about the dangers of riding these rollercoasters, and in particular, X2,” attorney Gary Dordick said during a press conference. Magic Mountain “seems to think that it’s okay that if people voluntarily choose to ride a roller coaster, then they’ve assumed the risk.” Ultimately, the “fate of X2 remains unknown, as Six Flags officials remain tight-lipped on the attraction’s future,” said KTLA-5.

Despite the injuries, U.S. amusement parks “typically have high safety standards, with many requiring daily inspections of roller coasters and other attractions before they can operate,” said Entertainment Weekly. Every ride at a Six Flags park “undergoes extensive inspection and maintenance procedures designed to meet or exceed manufacturer requirements and industry standards,” according to the company’s safety statement. They are “designed with sophisticated control systems, advanced restraint technologies, redundant safety features and multiple layers of monitoring.”

‘Advice for parents who want to prevent CTE in youth athletes’

Leana S. Wen at The Washington Post

Nobody “disputed that CTE is a serious issue, but many seemed to think that young athletes today are at lower risk than previous generations because of better safety precautions,” says Leana S. Wen. The “majority of head impacts that can cause brain damage do not result in a concussion diagnosis but can still contribute to CTE.” Most “important is taking repetitive head impacts out of the game for kids, including no bodychecking in ice hockey and no tackling in football.”

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‘What peacemaking loses when women are left out’

Cristal Downing at Time

Wars “exact a heavy toll on women and yet, too often their voices and concerns are pushed to the margins of global peacemaking,” says Cristal Downing. The United Nations “has made halting but real progress in bringing women into peace negotiations and postwar reconstruction from Guatemala to Bangsamoro,” but “now that progress is being reversed.” Finding “space for gender diversity could do more than ensure that women are heard; it could also give peace efforts a better chance of success.”

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‘How private equity is killing public access to hospitals and emergency care’

Heather Prendergast at The Hill

Safety-net hospitals “serve a patient population that is disproportionately low-income, publicly insured and racially and ethnically diverse,” says Heather Prendergast. The “corporatization of the healthcare system by private equity has come with significant costs.” While “private equity’s ownership of hospitals may earn millions for their investors, they have put patients, communities and providers at risk.” It is “worth asking what happens to the remaining safety-net hospitals once their primary funding source shrinks even further.”

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‘Trump abuses his pardon power. Getting rid of it would be a mistake.’

Abdallah Fayyad at The Boston Globe

Donald Trump’s “liberal use of his pardon power — particularly his penchant for pardoning wealthy white-collar fraudsters — has created a lucrative industry of so-called pardon brokers,” says Abdallah Fayyad. But “even though the pardon power has undeniably been misused, we shouldn’t dramatically curtail it or get rid of it.” Pardons are a “crucial component of a well-functioning criminal justice system, allowing presidents to undo wrongs when sentences are unjust or punishments are too harsh.”

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Off-label prescriptions for GLP-1 drugs are on the rise among children under 12, despite a lack of FDA approval in this age group. While most of the kids given the treatment had severe obesity and comorbidities, doctors and parents also seem to be considering weight-loss drugs much earlier. Whether or not it is safe to do so remains unclear.

How common is GLP-1 use among young children?

The American Academy of Pediatrics began recommending GLP-1 therapy for childhood obesity in 2023. Although the number of children under age 12 with obesity being prescribed weight loss drugs like Wegovy and Zepbound remains low compared to the rest of the population, the rise in incidences is striking.

Prescriptions for GLP-1 receptor agonists among children ages 8 to 11 with obesity increased dramatically between 2019 and 2026, according to a study published in the journal Pediatrics. Annual prescriptions rose from 0.03% in 2019 to 9.3% in 2026, a “310-fold increase,” said Forbes.

The study offers the “first national overview in young children” showing “absolute numbers” of children under the age of 12 “receiving GLP-1 treatment,” lead investigator and obesity medicine specialist Babak Orandi said in a statement to NYU Langone. The “careful use of GLP-1s” remains a “valuable tool in confronting the obesity epidemic among young Americans.”

Young children with obesity who lived in upper-income communities were 55% more likely to be prescribed GLP-1 medications than those who did not. Physicians and policymakers have a responsibility to ensure that “all young children with obesity who need these drugs have access to them,” study co-author Allan Massie said.

Is it dangerous for kids to take GLP-1s?

It is important to note that “GLP-1 medications aren’t entirely untested in younger children,” with some encouraging evidence available for some drugs, said Forbes. There is “strong data” that daily liraglutide is “safe and effective for children aged 6 to 11 with obesity,” Sarah Armstrong, co-director of the Duke University Center for Childhood Obesity Research, said to Forbes.

Still, the growing trend of children using GLP-1 medications isn’t “completely without its risks,” said Gizmodo. Nearly one in six children and teens who go on a GLP-1 become diagnosed with a nutritional deficiency, according to a recent study published last week in the journal Childhood Obesity. This is only an observational study, meaning that the “researchers can’t conclusively prove that the children’s GLP-1 use contributed to their later deficiencies,” Gizmodo said.

The results suggest doctors should be keeping a closer eye on the nutritional health of kids prescribed these treatments, the researchers said. Nutritional deficiencies are a “meaningful and underrecognized risk among pediatric patients" receiving GLP-1 therapy, the authors said in their paper.

Hopefully the findings bring “much-needed recognition” to the importance of “proactive nutritional management when GLP-1s are prescribed to children,” as opposed to “waiting until a nutritional deficiency is diagnosed,” said Justin Ryder, a study co-author and a surgeon at Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago, in a statement from the hospital. Knowing the risks, “we are in a much better position” to prevent harm to “children treated with GLP-1s during a pivotal period.”

Menopausal women spent years unable to get relief from the potentially deadly but often preventable effects of recurrent urinary tract infections, due to the FDA’s black box warning for estrogen products. Despite growing evidence supporting safety and efficacy, and the lifting of the warning, a lingering stigma is keeping women from life-saving care.

Grave ‘misinterpretation’

Menopause increases the risk of UTIs because “declining estrogen changes the tissue and bacteria of the vagina and urinary tract,” making it “easier for harmful bacteria to grow,” said USA Today. For menopausal women, those infections are also “more likely to spread to the bloodstream,” causing “sepsis, organ failure and death.”

For years, major medical groups have recommended a low dose of vaginal estrogen to help “prevent recurrent infections” in menopausal women, said USA Today. The cream, tablet or ring can “cost as little as a few dollars a month.” Unfortunately, for nearly two decades, access was limited by the government.

A set of Women’s Health Initiative (WHI) trials, launched in 1991, suggested that some forms of hormone therapy that included estrogen and progesterone could “increase the risks of cardiovascular problems, breast cancer, endometrial cancer and possibly dementia,” said Harvard Medical School. A “misinterpretation” in 2002 of that landmark research study prompted the FDA to “slap its strongest warning” on all estrogen products, including “low-dose vaginal estrogen” that was never studied in the associated trial, said USA Today. Shortly after, the FDA implemented a black-box warning, its “strongest available measure short of removing a drug from the market,” on all menopause treatments containing estrogen.

The stringent label “scared doctors” from prescribing medications their “patients desperately needed,” pushed women off treatment and “contributed to decades of missed opportunities” to prevent “serious menopause-related health problems for two generations of women,” said USA Today. Even when groups like the Menopause Society suggested in 2004 that “hormone replacement therapy, including vaginal estrogen, could be used for serious menopause symptoms,” the FDA black-box warning “kept most women from using it.” Many years later, researchers would say the study “overstated the risk of cancer for younger menopausal women,” leading to the FDA removing the black box warning in November 2025.

Deadly UTI’s still plague menopausal women

Nearly a year has passed since the warning was removed from vaginal estrogen and other estrogen products. But the treatment’s “use still isn’t widespread,” likely due to ongoing stigma, said USA Today.

The first Baby Boomers “turned 54 in 2000,” and estrogen use plummeted from “27% of menopausal women in 1999 to 5% in 2020,” according to the National Institutes of Health, said USA Today. During a similar period, between 1999 and 2023, women’s deaths from “sepsis stemming from UTIs” nearly tripled for women 45 to 64, according to a USA Today analysis of CDC data included in the June 2026 edition of the International Journal of Gynecology and Obstetrics.

This was more than “women simply suffering from hot flashes because they weren’t prescribed estrogen,” said Rachel Rubin, a urologist and menopause specialist, to USA Today. “They were dying.”

Vaginal estrogen has been shown to be an effective treatment for menopausal women with frequent UTIs. In a recent study published in the Urology Journal of nearly 2 million women with recurrent UTIs, “women 55 and older who were prescribed vaginal estrogen were about half as likely to be hospitalized with a UTI as those who were not,” said USA Today. Their recorded rates of sepsis and death were “roughly one-fifth as high.”

Despite that evidence, “only about 1 in 10 menopausal women covered by Medicare use vaginal estrogen,” according to records reviewed by USA Today. Unlike menopause hormone therapy, which is “widely prescribed,” vaginal estrogen suffers from a “public relations problem,” said The Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy, with “few women knowing what it is.”

What happened

The Trump administration on Tuesday said it had kicked 760,000 enrollees off the Affordable Care Act insurance marketplace. Vice President JD Vance told a press conference that the canceled enrollees were a mix of “phantom people” and “real people who just don’t meet the eligibility requirements,” didn’t submit the proper documents or weren’t even aware they were enrolled in an ACA health plan.

Who said what

Tuesday’s announcement by the Vance-led anti-fraud task force “represents one of the largest administrative purges targeting individual insurance exchanges” since the administration’s “crackdown on fraud began last year,” The Wall Street Journal said. There’s “widespread agreement that unauthorized enrollments should be canceled,” ACA expert Cynthia Cox at KFF said to The New York Times, but it’s not clear that “these were all indeed unauthorized enrollments,” and Vance’s panel didn’t appear to use the “appropriate process” to determine which to cancel.

What next?

Vance said his anti-fraud effort, including further scrutiny of up to 450,000 more enrollees and bans on about 600 ACA brokers, would save $2.2 billion. The “price of ACA insurance has skyrocketed” during Trump’s second term, prompting “millions to downgrade their plans or exit the program entirely,” The Associated Press said. “Early filings from insurers suggest that prices will increase substantially again next year,” the Times said.

‘In the land of billionaire barbarians’

Arielle Pardes at The New York Times

Silicon Valley is “home to four of the most powerful companies in the world,” yet “by looking at it, you’d hardly know this place had any influence,” says Arielle Pardes. Tech billionaires have “donated generously to scientific research and global health initiatives, but little of their money goes to improving their own backyard.” The “lack of investment in the cities where our tech lords work and live reveals a stark reality about how this wealth benefits a select few.”

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‘Should the classroom be more like the gym?’

Dan Rockmore at The New Yorker

The “body offers something that the mind — at least in a traditional classroom — rarely does: clear, immediate loops linking effort and result,” says Dan Rockmore. In the “gym, we can steadily feel ourselves getting stronger,” but in the “classroom, progress can be difficult to see.” This “clarifies our real responsibilities: drawing out the quiet student, asking the question nobody thought to ask, forging a community of mind and friendship from the struggles of a classroom.”

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‘The people — OK, the men — who still love Bitcoin’

Nathaniel Moore at Slate

Among a “predominantly male crowd,” Bitcoin and “other cryptocurrencies offer an appealing alternative because they are not issued or managed by a central bank,” says Nathaniel Moore. The “concept of financial freedom — not having to trust anyone else — is the logical endpoint of the belief that the systems of American life cannot be mended, only circumvented.” Investors are “following the example set by those at the top: looking out for themselves and trying to swell their own stash.”

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‘The first mRNA flu vaccine may be just the beginning’

Sally C. Pipes at the Chicago Tribune

“Flu season is coming. And for the first time, Americans will have an mRNA vaccine to help fight it,” says Sally C. Pipes. Since “mRNA vaccines can be produced faster than conventional shots, manufacturers may eventually be able to wait longer before deciding which strains to target — and respond faster if circulating strains change.” During the “pandemic, mRNA became almost synonymous with Covid-19 vaccines,” but “anger over government coercion shouldn’t become hostility toward a promising medical technology.”

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New cases of HIV are surging at an unprecedented rate in Fiji, and the South Pacific island nation has declared a national emergency as a result. The government is doubling down on preventative measures with the help of the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS), as drug use and taboos around the disease contribute to the outbreak.

Why is there a crisis?

Over the last 15 years, new HIV infections have “increased 12-fold” in Fiji, according to recent UNAIDS data, said The Associated Press. As of 2025, about 9,000 people live with HIV in a country that has “less than a million people.” This means that about one in every 60 adults there has the virus, “compared with one in 167 five years ago.”

HIV is now a “national crisis,” and the government is “treating it like one,” said Fiji Health Minister Atonio Lalabalavu in a video statement on Facebook. “No more business as usual.” More people in Fiji are living with HIV than “ever before.”

Officials warn that the outbreak is not “limited to particular areas or populations,” said The New York Times. And because Fiji “serves as a regional hub for business, tourism and transport,” the surge could also affect nearby countries in the South Pacific if “left unchecked.”

Such interconnectedness may have contributed to a spike in infections, said Eamonn Murphy, the director of regional support teams in the Asia Pacific region, Central Asia and Eastern Europe for UNAIDS, to the Times. An influx of drugs like methamphetamine and cocaine during the Covid-19 pandemic added “fuel on the flame” of a longstanding HIV presence. Fiji is also one of “several global hot spots” in which a dangerous trend called bluetoothing, in which people “inject themselves with the blood of other drug users to get a cheap high,” is contributing to spikes in disease rates, said the Times.

What’s the plan to solve the crisis?

These alarming statistics don’t capture the full scale of the problem, said Renata Ram, the Fiji adviser for UNAIDS, to CNN. Most concerning is the “speed of the epidemic” and the “number of people who may be living with HIV without knowing it.” Only about 39% of Fijians living with HIV know their status, and less than a quarter (22%) are on treatment.

HIV is “not only a health issue,” said Joeli Colati, the executive director of Fiji Network Plus, an advocacy organization for HIV-positive people, to CNN. It’s also connected to “stigma, poverty, confidentiality and fear.”

Limited testing, low condom use, and shame are often cited as factors contributing to infection. And there are many reasons why people might be hesitant to seek treatment, including a “fear of being recognized at the HIV clinic,” said Colati. Fiji is a “deeply religious society” in which “premarital or casual sex is generally considered taboo,” said CNN.

Fiji’s government has “ramped up testing and treatment efforts” since January 2025, when the nation first “declared an HIV outbreak,” said the Times. However, an “outbreak-level response is no longer sufficient,” said Lalabalavu in his video statement. Moving forward, Fiji has pledged a “whole-of-government response,” including “expanded access to free testing, prevention services and treatment,” as well as harm-reduction measures such as programs that “allow people who inject drugs to exchange used needles for clean ones,” said the Times.

Fiji has “recognized the urgency of the moment and is stepping up its response,” said UNAIDS Executive Director Winnie Byanyima in a press release. It’s also a “stark reminder to the world that AIDS is not over.” HIV epidemics can “change quickly,” and countries need “health and community systems that are ready to respond urgently.”

What happened

Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Thursday addressed the anti-vaccine advocacy group he founded, telling the hundreds of attendees they “have a strong and steadfast friend in the White House.” Kennedy’s keynote speech at the Children’s Health Defense annual conference was slotted between MAHA Institute chief Mark Gorton, who called himself the “boldest anti-vaxxer at an anti-vax conference,” and Andrew Wakefield, whose discredited and retracted 1998 study linking the measles shot to autism helped fuel the anti-vaccine movement.

This “would’ve been an unthinkable appearance for past health secretaries,” CNN said, even if the U.S. weren’t experiencing its worst measles outbreak since 1991, “driven largely by unvaccinated people.” About 3,300 cases have been confirmed this year, and the “seven reported measles-associated deaths in the last two years” are “more than the combined total” over the “previous three decades,” The Associated Press said.

Who said what

After dedicating the first part of his speech to “far more politically popular topics” like food safety and fringier topics like “so-called chemtrails,” Kennedy “plunged headlong into vaccines,” The New York Times said. That “signaled a notable shift from earlier this year when White House officials” pushed Kennedy to “sidestep the vaccine issue, given widespread support among voters for protecting children against deadly diseases.”

Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro (D), whose state this week reported its fourth recent measles-related death, criticized Kennedy for spending his time “addressing the premier vaccine-denial conference in America.” Kennedy’s refusal to acknowledge the deaths as measles-related “ignited a public feud” with Shapiro, the AP said. Kennedy “suggested the deaths may have been ‘fabricated,’” the Times said, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, “which he oversees,” is “currently reporting no measles deaths for 2026.”

What next?

Pennsylvania’s health department late Wednesday requested emergency CDC support for its ballooning measles outbreak, “on condition that the federal agency recognize” the four deaths, Reuters said.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has arrested a record number of pregnant people and placed them in detention centers where they receive subpar prenatal and postnatal care. And the agency has lost count of how many have suffered miscarriages.

What’s happening to women who miscarry in ICE custody?

The Trump administration “placed more pregnant immigrants in detention” last fall and winter than at “any time over the previous year,” said The Guardian. In October, there were at least 87 pregnant women and teens in detention, and by November, there were 101, according to government documents obtained by the outlet. ICE reported 18 miscarriages during the first nine months of the Trump administration, but the agency stopped recording miscarriages after Oct. 3. There is no updated data on miscarriages because ICE ended its contract with the Veterans Affairs Financial Services Center, which had been handling medical billing for the agency, according to internal documents.

Detained pregnant women report they are “struggling to access routine and emergency medical care,” said The Guardian. Women who miscarried or were hospitalized for pregnancy complications told the outlet they “did not receive follow-up care, despite experiencing ongoing pain and symptoms.” While it is difficult to attribute the miscarriages to the detention conditions, it is clear these “incarcerated women” are not “getting the prenatal visits that they’re supposed to get,” Deborah Ottenheimer, an obstetrician-gynecologist and medical expert with Physicians for Human Rights, said to The Guardian. They’re not getting “high-risk prenatal visits if they need them.” And if they do miscarry, the “medical care they receive is minimal to none.”

Center for Reproductive Rights reports from earlier this year also indicate high numbers of miscarriages in detention centers and, in severe cases, “allegations of coerced or unnecessary gynecological surgeries and hysterectomies without proper informed consent,” said Forbes. These reports “raise concerns about compliance with established maternal health standards.”

Is anything being done to improve the problem?

Initially, a spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which oversees ICE, said the agency was tracking miscarriages in monthly reports in response to The Guardian’s follow-up questions about the missing data. Later, the spokesperson confirmed it “does not have data on miscarriages from October 2025 through June 2026,” said The Guardian. DHS has “never before acknowledged” that it lost count of miscarriages, “not even when U.S. senators asked the agency for the data.” It is convenient for the Trump administration that ICE cannot report how many miscarriages happened in its custody, because when “you don’t track something of that magnitude,” you don’t have to be “confronted with the reality of what your policies have yielded,” said Faisal Al-Juburi, the co-chief executive of Texas-based immigration services nonprofit Raíces, to The Guardian. “

In May, Democratic senators Richard Blumenthal (Conn.), Mazie Hirono (Hawaii) and Jon Ossoff (Ga.) demanded answers from DHS regarding the “appalling and horrific treatment” of pregnant, postpartum and nursing women in immigration detention, in a letter sent to Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin and private contractors operating an ICE detention facility in Texas. The trio cited “cases of miscarriages, medical neglect and the use of shackles during pregnancy,” said The Latin Times. They also urged the Trump administration to “restore a policy presuming the release of pregnant women from immigration custody except in extraordinary circumstances.”

This letter came right after new legislation was introduced by Rep. Sydney Kamlager-Dove (D-Calif.) that “would establish care standards for federally incarcerated pregnant people,” including those in ICE and Customs and Border Protection facilities, said Mother Jones. The bill builds on one that the “House already passed in 2022,” which only applied to those in the Federal Bureau of Prisons’ custody.

Immigration detention is known to foster “medical neglect, abusive conditions” and “utter disregard for the dignity of people,” Eunice Cho, a senior staff attorney at the ACLU’s National Prison Project and the co-author of a letter to ICE documenting these conditions, said in an ACLU report. “What we heard from the pregnant women we interviewed” are some of the “most horrifying stories I’ve heard about detention.”

A pharmaceutical company claims to have used artificial intelligence to discover a drug that reverses the impacts of aging. Whether or not the medication is truly effective for antiaging purposes remains to be seen, but the finding highlights how the burgeoning technology could make the drug discovery process easier, or at least faster.

Beating the ‘aging clocks’

Last year, Insilico Medicine, a company that “aims to accelerate drug discovery” using artificial intelligence, announced that a clinical trial of one of its drug candidates suggested it could help treat a chronic lung disease, said The New York Times. The disease in question, idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, or IPF, is sometimes referred to as “Alzheimer’s of the lungs.” Now, new data from the same clinical trial shows an even “more intriguing possibility”: The drug, called rentosertib, could “also slow the aging process.” The company used AI to assist in generating the drug’s molecular structure.

Rentosertib reduces the biological markers of age as measured by six separate “aging clocks,” or AI technology “designed to predict a person’s morbidity and mortality,” according to a new study published in the journal Nature Biotechnology. This “elaborate clinical trial” is a milestone in the “widespread effort to improve healthcare” using the same technology that underpins “popular chatbots like ChatGPT and image generators like Midjourney.” Insilico is just “one of many startups, tech giants and academic labs” working to “accelerate drug discovery” and “hone other medical tasks with help from these methods.”

If your biological age is lower, “you are likely to die later,” the AI drug discovery startup’s CEO, Alex Zhavoronkov, said in an interview, per Bloomberg. But these are early results, and the drug’s potential long-term health effects in larger groups of people are unknown.

The clinical trial included just 42 patients who had a chronic lung disease. While longevity enthusiasts have “long embraced the repurposing of existing medications” to delay aging, efforts to develop “novel antiaging drugs” have often “ended in failure,” said Bloomberg. With the advent of GLP-1 treatments, however, whose benefits appear to extend well beyond weight loss and diabetes, “major pharmaceutical players are increasingly showing interest in the field.”

‘Not replacing scientific intuition’

The results of this study are the first to show “very clearly” that “predicted biological age can be reduced,” Vadim Gladyshev, a Harvard Medical School professor who helped build one of the aging clocks, said to the Times. Still, the study is far from conclusive, Gladyshev acknowledges, citing the small sample size and the unreliability of aging clocks. Most notably, Insilico’s drug has “not yet been tested in healthy patients,” said the Times. Because the company conducted its clinical trial solely with IPF patients, the results may be specific to this condition.

The idea of “reducing aging certainly sounds good” and has become the “obsession of some tech bro-types,” but the “actual utility of aging clocks is up for debate,” said Gizmodo. More recent models focus on proteomics, or “measuring blood proteins,” which a 2024 study found could be used to determine if a person had a higher risk of age-related diseases. While some researchers believe that these “catch-all measurements” could be useful, there’s still a “long way to go before they become truly meaningful markers.” There isn’t yet a measurement that “serves as a universally accepted ‘age’ indicator,” and some doctors have warned that “leaning on these metrics could lead to pursuing the wrong interventions.”

AI is not “replacing scientific intuition,” and it is “unlikely to do so anytime soon,” said Forbes. What it can do is “make the costly, time-consuming R&D work” of preparing for clinical trials “more efficient.” For the drug discovery field, that means the “computer screen is becoming nearly as essential as the lab bench.” That shift is “familiar across industries” as “digital tools increasingly become part of the craft rather than merely an add-on.”

While glucagon-like peptide-1s have been widely celebrated for transforming weight loss, some who attempt to use the medications find themselves in a less-studied patient category called nonresponders. This minority of people haven’t experienced any significant change in weight even after adjusting their dose or switching brands.

What are the influencing factors?

Between “9% and a third of participants” in clinical trials for GLP-1 weight-loss drugs lose less than 5% of their body weight after months of use, which is the threshold associated with health improvements, said The Guardian. Now, researchers are “trying to work out why” the drugs are ineffective for nonresponders — a discovery that could help doctors “tailor the use of the drugs, maximize cost-effectiveness and reduce side effects.”

The drug’s lack of efficacy cannot be blamed on patients, said Alexander Miras, an obesity expert at Ulster University, to The Guardian. If the drug does not “reduce hunger and food intake for someone,” it is “just not going to work.”

For now, the “short answer” to why some people don’t respond is that “we don’t really know,” said Miras. Research suggests that factors such as “motivation, intelligence, education and socioeconomics” are not predictors of how patients would “respond to GLP-1 medications.”

Other characteristics such as age, sex and whether or not someone has Type 2 diabetes do appear to have an effect. Studies have also suggested “ancestry might have an impact,” with the medications “most effective in people of European ancestry and least effective in people of African American ancestry,” said The Guardian.

Some may be jumping the gun, however. Many people labeled as nonresponders simply “do not take the medication correctly” or “discontinue treatment before adequate therapeutic effect can be achieved,” said Kingston University biologists Nadine Wehida and Ahmed Elbediwy at The Conversation. Studies show up to 20% to 60% of people “stop treatment within the first year” amid “widespread use of the drug in doses below the recommended amounts.”

Is there hope for nonresponders?

There is “no reliable way” to predict what group one will fall into when trying GLP-1s, said Stanford Medicine News Center. The good news is “you don’t have to wait long to find out.” In general, higher doses produce better results, so doctors “typically start patients low and increase gradually, watching for side effects.”

If the dose is not associated with any weight loss, “waiting three months on the same dose is not going to give you more answers,” said Stanford Medicine endocrinologist Sun Kim to the department’s News Center. You should “increase the dose and reassess.” Whether or not it’s working tends to become clear within the first few weeks.

Certain medical factors such as “thyroid disorders” can “disrupt metabolism,” said Yale Medicine. People with “impaired glucose regulation,” including those with diabetes, therefore tend to “lose less weight on these medications.” A less common underlying condition could also be playing a role.

Sometimes, “despite doing everything right,” a patient “just doesn’t respond the way we would hope,” said Avlin Imaeda, a Yale Medicine gastroenterologist. And this phenomenon isn’t “unique to weight-loss medications,” said Yale Medicine. Some patients may not react to “certain blood-pressure drugs, antidepressants or cancer therapies.” Biology is complex, and treatment responses can vary widely.

For those hoping for something to look forward to, a “series of promising new drugs are in development,” said The Guardian. In the meantime, for nonresponders still struggling to lose weight, “weight-loss surgery may be the only option left.”

GLP-1-based drugs not working does not “predict a lack of response to [bariatric] surgery,” said Miras. In the end, it’s “not your fault,” and it’s not the drug’s fault either. “This is purely luck.”

‘Healthcare is more badly broken than political leaders admit’

Marj Halperin at the Chicago Tribune

While “rising costs are a barrier for too many, even those who can afford comprehensive health insurance are finding money can’t buy you a timely appointment,” says Marj Halperin. Americans in cities are “now in much the same bind as patients in rural areas who have long found limited doctors available for routine care, with specialists often a few hours’ drive away.” It is “time for political leaders to spell out a strategy to speed in the opposite direction.”

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‘A wildly popular movie meets the film world’s most revered label’

Sophia Nguyen at The Atlantic

“‘KPop Demon Hunters’ seems to have completely overtaken culture,” says Sophia Nguyen. But “even the most ardent fans likely did not anticipate the mega-hit’s next big merch drop: a disc release from the Criterion Collection, home to some of cinema’s most distinguished titles.” Some of the “label’s longtime devotees greeted the addition of ‘KPop Demon Hunters’ with an eye roll,” but “Criterion has good reason to widen the net: Netflix, Apple and Amazon make and distribute a significant share of films.”

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‘Trump’s tariffs prove even Canada can’t afford to be nice to the United States anymore’

The Philadelphia Inquirer editorial board

It “fell to Canada, a country famous for friendliness, to demonstrate the limits of an age-old friendship with the United States,” says The Philadelphia Inquirer editorial board. After a “decade of dealing politely with President Donald Trump’s manic ricocheting between trade agreements and trade warfare, supplies of northern niceness are sorely depleted, and rightly so.” Prime Minister Mark Carney’s “defiance in the face of his neighbor’s unprovoked bullying should inspire other traditional American allies to abandon appeasement.”

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‘Meta’s $18 billion settlement could reshape social media for young people’

Tom Jones at the Poynter Institute

Meta “reached a landmark settlement and agreed to pay up to $18 billion to 47 states” to settle claims it “endangered children through addictive features,” says Tom Jones. Meta’s promised changes are “meant to curb endless scrolling, which can interrupt sleep and have other negative effects on young people’s health and well-being.” The “smart move for Meta was to settle,” as a “major challenge for all social media companies is verifying the ages of their users.”

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What happened

Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. repeatedly testified in his Senate confirmation hearing last year that a 2019 trip to Samoa had “nothing to do with vaccines,” but new documents obtained through freedom of information requests “refute that testimony,” The Associated Press said Thursday. Kennedy was a “prominent anti-vaccine activist" at the time, and "critics said the visit fueled anti-vaccine sentiment" before a measles outbreak that killed 83 Samoans. In one letter, Kennedy “explicitly told the Samoan prime minister he wanted to study” the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine there and “used the words ‘vaccine’ or ‘vaccination’ eight times,” said The Guardian.

Who said what

“RFK’s platform is built on lies” that “leave a trail of dead children,” said Sen. Ron Wyden (Ore.), the top Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee. “There are consequences for lying to Congress.” Watchdog group American Oversight on Thursday asked the Justice Department to investigate Kennedy’s testimony for false statements. The Health and Human Services Department told the AP that “any claim or insinuation” Kennedy “lied under oath or to Congress” based on these letters is “not only false but outright defamatory.”

What next?

“Lying to Congress is a crime, whether or not the witness is under oath,” Georgetown law professor Josh Chafetz told The Guardian. But this Justice Department is “unlikely” to prosecute Kennedy.

Over 100 days into the Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), “the response is still struggling to keep pace”, said Liz Cookman in The Independent. It’s estimated that more than 2,500 people have now died, with the death toll accelerating sharply in recent weeks.

It is the fastest-growing Ebola outbreak on record, spreading much quicker than the deadliest crisis to date, the West African epidemic of 2014 to 2016, which killed more than 11,000 people. To put it in context, that outbreak took a year to reach 2,000 deaths.

Destabilised by conflict

“The situation is bad,” said Devi Sridhar in The Guardian. The mortality rate seems to be nearly 50%. More than half of victims are dying without receiving care. Children make up almost a third of all deaths.

Yet this outbreak isn’t attracting much attention abroad. Compared with the 2014 outbreak, the current silence is “astounding”. That year, Ebola was one of the most Googled terms in the world; this year, “no one wants to hear about infectious diseases”. Things are only going to get worse. A “perfect storm of factors” is making the spread hard to contain. The virus is the Bundibugyo species, for which there is currently no licensed vaccine or specific treatment, although clinical trials are under way.

The location of the outbreak has made it worse, said Matthew Mpoke Bigg in The New York Times. Uganda has succeeded in eliminating an outbreak; but Ituri province in north-eastern Congo is unstable, with ongoing conflict and roaming militias. More than 900,000 people have been displaced, while the region’s gold mines draw workers from a wide area. The virus has now spread to six provinces across the DRC. There are fears that it could spread to South Sudan, and to the Congolese capital, Kinshasa, one of Africa’s biggest cities.

Dismantling of USAID

The situation in DRC has been “disastrously compounded” by cuts to Western aid, said The Guardian, above all by the US. The dismantling of USAID has weakened health infrastructure and surveillance capacity, while Washington’s withdrawal from the World Health Organisation has also undermined the response. European countries, too, have started to treat international aid as “luxury expenditure”.

The 2014 outbreak laid bare the risk of Ebola spreading in the region and beyond. In the wake of the Covid pandemic, countless pieties were uttered about disease control. Yet here we are again. “Subsequent actions by governments have belied those words” leaving the DRC exposed to an epidemic that could soon spiral “out of control”.

What happened

The Food and Drug Administration on Wednesday approved a first-of-its-kind drug for advanced pancreatic cancer, one of the deadliest types of cancer and among the hardest to treat. The FDA’s expedited approval of daraxonrasib, a daily pill developed by Revolution Medicines and sold as Rasonque, followed a clinical trial in which patients on the drug lived a median 13.2 months, twice as long as those who underwent chemotherapy, and with fewer side effects. Some “patients who have gotten the drug through clinical trials have lived for years,” The New York Times said.

Who said what

Daraxonrasib has “electrified cancer specialists and patients,” the Times said. It’s “not a cure, but it is the first treatment to substantially extend the lives of patients” with a disease long considered among the “most hopeless in medicine.” Nearly all pancreatic tumors are fueled by a mutated cellular protein, KRAS, that’s stubbornly resistant to interventions. Daraxonrasib “uses what’s essentially a molecular glue to bind with multiple KRAS subtypes” and shut them down, The Associated Press said. Revolution is “studying its technology for several other forms of cancer, including lung cancer.”

What next?

Revolution said Rasonque is “now available in the United States at $39,800 for a 30-day ​supply,” Reuters said. The “vast majority of the cost is expected to be covered through insurance,” the Times said.

‘Sports medicine must get better at treating women’

Ashley Austin at Newsweek

Even as “more eyes turn to women’s sports and female athletes surge in popularity, there’s still a great deal that sports medicine doctors don’t know about actually treating women,” says WNBA doctor Ashley Austin. Americans need “increased investment in women’s sports science — not just to improve outcomes for elite athletes but to improve care for women and girls across the healthcare system.” Doctors should learn to “provide care that is truly based on evidence specific to women’s anatomy and physiology.”

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‘Are US black ops targeting boats in the Galapagos?’

The Dallas Morning News editorial board

Attacks on “fishing boats off the coast of Ecuador earlier this year are surrounded by mystery and unanswered questions,” says The Dallas Morning News editorial board. The “evidence is scarce, but it is enough for Congress to start asking questions.” Who “ordered these attacks and to what end”? If there is “indeed some sort of black ops targeting fishermen with no accountability, it will mark another stain in a long, bad history of U.S. intervention in Latin America.”

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‘I’m a physicist. Congress is about to close the door that let me in.’

Stephanie L. Bailey at The Seattle Times

Somewhere in the “country, a talented future scientist is about to be overlooked, not for lack of ability, but because no one has decided they’re worth helping,” says Stephanie L. Bailey. Two House bill provisions “would bar federal science agencies from funding the offices and grants that broaden participation in STEM.” Some “argue federal agencies should simply fund the best science and that programs like these distract from that mission,” but “in fact, the opposite is true.”

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‘My road trip revealed the good and the bad that hold America together’

LZ Granderson at the Los Angeles Times

There is a “commonality I saw on my drive across America: homelessness,” says LZ Granderson. Americans “like to tell ourselves it’s a California problem, a Chicago problem — something that happens in big blue states.” But of the “states I drove through, all but one were red.” We are “teaching the next generation that, in the richest country that has ever existed, it is acceptable that some people are reduced to huddling in storefront entryways overnight.”

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With the Trump administration pushing back against a swath of DEI-related federal grants, some research related to major diseases, including Alzheimer’s, is being caught in the crossfire. The most recent round of grant axing resulted in two major universities losing millions in funding related to studying brain disease, and experts say it could put them at a large disadvantage.

What research is being impacted?

In 2025, the U.S. awarded 52% fewer grants related to Alzheimer’s research than in 2024, according to the National Institutes of Health (NIH), with the number of grants falling from 369 to 177. The figure appears to be on track through 2026 as well, especially given the most recent cuts.

The newest funding slashes involve grant cancellations for “brain health and Alzheimer’s disease research at two leading research institutions, Emory University and the University of Pittsburgh,” said The Guardian. At least “three grants were canceled between the two institutions,” representing $15 million in funds that would’ve been used to study “how discrimination” — or racism — “affects long-term brain health.”

The topics “we’re measuring are scientifically valid concepts,” Andrea Rosso, an associate professor of epidemiology at the University of Pittsburgh, told The Guardian. Black people are two times more likely to develop dementia, according to the Alzheimer’s Association. And while these studies “don’t actually measure structural racism,” they do “use that as a framing for why one population is at such high risk.”

The DEI-related funding cuts are also coming alongside additional efforts by the White House to overhaul how grants are awarded. Under newly proposed rules by the Trump administration, any “multiyear grant could be terminated at any point,” and the government “would not be allowed to fund any DEI-related activities or projects or groups that ‘deny the biological reality of sex or the sex binary in humans,’” said The Boston Globe.

What does this mean for Alzheimer’s patients?

Many are worried that cutting Alzheimer’s research under the guise of the anti-DEI movement could negatively impact patients, specifically those who are Black. One canceled grant at the University of Pittsburgh “studied how Alzheimer’s disease risk was affected in people who live in divested, predominantly African American neighborhoods,” said The Guardian. The research tracked “socially driven Alzheimer’s disease risk factors by collecting surveys, brain imaging and blood samples.” Another grant at Emory University that was slashed by the White House “studied the impact of racial discrimination on the white matter of the brain, in part surveying participants’ self-reported incidences of discrimination.”

Behind all of these killed studies are “people waiting for answers, for therapies, for relief, for hope,” said a pain researcher at Mass General Brigham, per the Globe. This comes as the Trump administration has “been open about wanting a smaller NIH,” said Vox, and originally “proposed cutting the agency’s budget for 2026 by 40%.”

Some researchers say they are considering taking their studies offshore if things do not change. “While I hope to improve the lives of the American people with my research, if I am not able to pursue this aspiration in the U.S., I would rather continue to do so outside of the country,” one Ph.D. student said in comments about the cuts, per the Globe.

The current state of affairs “demonstrates a lack of understanding of our outcomes versus our exposures,” Ann Cohen, an associate professor of psychiatry at the University of Pittsburgh, said to The Guardian. “That’s epidemiology 101.”

Every cancer has its individual mutations, and scientists have long harboured hopes of developing treatments that can be tailored specifically for each individual patient. And now early results from a final-stage trial of personalised cancer vaccines has the research world holding its breath.

US pharmaceutical companies Moderna and Merck have been testing a personalised mRNA vaccine on melanoma patients who had had surgery for their skin cancer. This week, the firms announced that, combined with an established immunotherapy drug, the vaccine had significantly increased the length of time the patients remained cancer-free. This is “a major success in a new field of cancer treatment” that has sent both companies’ shares “surging”, said Reuters.

The results mark “a landmark moment” for the treatment of melanoma, one of the deadliest types of skin cancer, said the study’s principal investigator Georgina Long, medical director of the non-profit Melanoma Institute Australia. This is also “a pivotal moment” for cancer research, said Moderna’s chief executive, Stéphane Bancel.

How does the vaccine work?

It’s made using mRNA technology – as, famously, were some Covid-19 vaccines. But, while the Covid vaccines were created as a standard formulation for everyone, this time it’s created individually for each patient.

To do that, researchers sequence the DNA of each patient’s tumour (by analysing samples after it’s been removed) and identify its unique mutations. They then “encode selected targets into strands of mRNA”, producing a vaccine designed to teach the recipient’s immune system “to recognise and attack any tumour cells that remain”, said The Times. The result is “a personalised anti-cancer jab” specific to the patient’s tumour, said the BBC.

What do we know about the results?

Very little. The phase 3 trial involved 1,137 high-risk patients with melanoma, who were randomly assigned to receive either the vaccine and the immunotherapy drug Keytruda, or just Keytruda, for about a year.

In a similar smaller trial in 2022, Moderna reported that participants who received the vaccine and Keytruda were 44% less likely to develop new tumours or die within three years, compared to those who only received Keytruda.

Moderna has said that these new trial results “demonstrate statistically significant and clinically meaningful improvements” in survival times for the vaccine group, and that there had been “no new safety concerns”. But we don’t know exactly how much the vaccine increased survival times.

The results have not been publicly released or peer-reviewed. More findings from the trial will be presented at a medical conference in October.

What could this mean?

“I think it’s fair to call this a breakthrough,” said Marco Gerlinger of the Barts Cancer Institute. These results have “much wider implications” than just for melanoma treatment, he told The Times. They are “proof of principle that personalised cancer vaccines work”,

The hope is that this personalised vaccine “will work for many other types of cancer”, said New Scientist. Moderna and Merck are already trialling similar personalised mRNA vaccines for types of bladder, kidney and lung cancer. BioNTech, “the other big mRNA company”, is also testing personalised cancer vaccines in human trials. Several of these early-stage trials have produced “promising results”.

If successful, these vaccines could prevent nearly 50,000 deaths in the US alone, Yale University estimated last year. “The positive hit here leads us ⁠into truly this next phase in immunotherapy,” Karen Knudsen of the Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy told Reuters. “This is an auspicious start – this is where things begin.”

What are the caveats?

Moderna and Merck have only released an interim analysis, not the full trial data. And experts “emphasise caution” until the dataset has been peer-reviewed, said the BBC.

The announcement gave Moderna’s shares “their biggest one-day jump on record”, said The Times, while Merck also rallied. But market moves are “imperfect indicators of real-world significance”, said the Financial Times. It’s “not quite the surprise clinical breakthrough” that the jump might imply. It’s “a big deal for Moderna” but, without all data, it’s “difficult to assess the magnitude, durability, and commercial relevance of benefit”.

Investors will be watching for the “next important steps”: “detailed clinical results, regulatory progress, and evidence that the technology works across other cancers”, a financial markets analyst told Sky News. Even then, they know that manufacturing personalised vaccines at scale is “expensive and complex”. One Reuters report suggested that each vaccine could cost about £147,000.

What happened

Moderna and Merck said Wednesday their experimental mRNA cancer vaccine successfully reduced recurrence of melanoma, and prevented the deadly skin cancer from spreading to other organs, in a large trial. The results “mark the first successful late-stage trial for a personalized mRNA cancer therapy,” The Wall Street Journal said, “validating decades of research” and “paving the way for a potentially new life-extending treatment” for people diagnosed with melanoma and other cancers.

Who said what

The ongoing study involves 1,137 high-risk melanoma patients whose cancer was surgically removed and genetically sequenced. The treatment combines Merck’s immunotherapy drug Keytruda with intismeran, a “made-to-order mRNA vaccine” created by analyzing and weaponizing “mutations found in the patients’ own tumors,” CNN said. The companies didn’t detail the results, but an earlier mid-stage trial showed that pairing intismeran with Keytruda reduced the risk of melanoma recurrence or death by 49% versus Keytruda alone. Moderna’s stock closed up 177% Wednesday.

What next?

Moderna and Merck said they planned to “present the details” of their latest “large, closely watched trial” at an “international medical meeting and to regulators,” The New York Times said. Investors and researchers “will be watching closely to see how effective and tolerable the vaccine proves to be,” the Journal said.

A new generation of drugs could transform the lives of people with narcolepsy and offer hope of future treatments for ADHD and depression.

Orexins help regulate wakefulness, as well as attention, motivation and the brain’s reward system. This month, the US Food and Drug Administration approved the first orexin agonist treatment for narcolepsy. Oveporexton (sold as Orzeyful) is designed to target the cause of the chronic sleep disorder, rather than treat the symptoms with stimulants.

But “the excitement is not just about narcolepsy”, said The Economist. Inspired by the success of drugs that mimic glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1), developed to treat diabetes and later used for weight-loss in medication such as Ozempic, drugmakers are “betting” that orexins could “follow a similar path”, potentially leading to treatments for conditions that “burden hundreds of millions” of people.

What are orexins?

They are two peptides (chains of amino acids that act as messengers in the brain) that are involved in the body’s sleep-wake system. Specifically, they are neuropeptides. They act as neurotransmitters, or chemicals, that carry messages between neurons. They are involved with reward and motivation.

Named after the Greek word orexis (appetite), orexins were discovered in 1998 by two teams working independently in the US. The discovery turned “the long march to develop a new kind of sleeping pill into a sprint”, said The Guardian.

But their “true role emerged” in 1999, said The Economist. People with narcolepsy were found to lack the specialised neurons that produce orexins, causing “abnormally low levels”. That means the brain “loses the ability to control when the body sleeps”, said Time.

How do they work?

In 2011, researchers at Takeda, a Japanese pharmaceutical company, found a chemical compound that could block the orexin receptor, and so promote sleep. Orexin antagonists were developed as a treatment for insomnia, differing from conventional sleeping pills that induce sedation.

But “the bigger prize may lie not in blocking orexin’s signal, but restoring it”, said The Economist. The results of Takeda’s trials of oveporexton, published last year in The New England Journal of Medicine, “created a stir”. Volunteers were able to stay awake 12.5 to 25 minutes longer with the drug (depending on the dose) than without it.

The drug “activates the orexin pathway” and “restores the brain’s ability to remain alert”, said Time. Volunteers also had fewer episodes of cataplexy, or loss of muscle control, as well as other symptoms such as hallucinations and irregular sleep. There were “no serious adverse events related to treatment”, said the Smithsonian magazine.

“It’s really a complete revolution,” Emmanuel Mignot, a sleep-medicine professor who led Takeda’s final studies, told The Wall Street Journal. “The first time patients take it, it’s like the light switch.” One 19-year-old trial participant said: “It was the first time I felt somewhat alive in the last 10 years.” “It’s the best thing that has ever happened to me,” he told Nature.

What might the future hold?

In the US and Western Europe, narcolepsy affects about one in 2,000 people, but there is no cure. Existing drugs – “decades-old stimulants and sedatives” – only manage symptoms, said The Wall Street Journal. Oveporexton and its competitors are “designed to treat the disease as a whole”. Morgan Stanley estimates that orexin-based medicines for narcolepsy and other sleep disorders could generate $16 billion a year by 2035, according to SF Globe.

Takeda is testing orexin-targeting drugs for sleep apnea and chronic daytime sleepiness. Alkermes, an Irish biotech company, is testing an orexin drug for ADHD in adults. And this year Eli Lilly (of Mounjaro fame) bought Centessa, a biotech firm with an orexin agonist in trials, in a deal potentially worth up to $7.8 billion. New research has also revealed “the essential role of orexin neurons” in motivation, said BioTechniques.

The twice-daily oral drug Orzeyful could be “a boon for the roughly 120,000 people in the United States with narcolepsy type 1”, said the Smithsonian. But its success also “opens the door to the use of orexin-mimicking drugs for other conditions associated with low levels of the chemical”, such as ADHD and depression. “Orzeyful is just the beginning,” said Andy Plump, Takeda’s president of research and development.

‘I grew up watching Hayden Panettiere. Her death is a reckoning.’

Sara Pequeño at USA Today

The “late-night Aug. 16 notification that Hayden Panettiere died took my breath away,” says Sara Pequeño. Every “so often, a celebrity’s death will feel like an exposed nerve,” and “millennials and Gen Z are still getting used to that feeling.” In the “last years of her life, Panettiere was talking about serious topics that many young women can empathize with.” Hers is “not simply a cautionary tale — it is also a story about the importance of speaking your truth.”

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‘By disparaging 2020 protests as “Woke 1,” liberals are following the right wing’s lead’

Andre Gee at The Guardian

This month has “brought us a referendum on ‘Woke 1’ — a term that reductively brands 2020’s social justice movement — as prominent liberal voices reflect on that time period with disappointing hindsight,” says Andre Gee. “Woke” has “long shifted from Black America’s prideful adjective to a mocking noun that has been weaponized to ridicule Black liberation movements.” Progressive liberals “now adopting that dismissive language while placing confines on the movement for Black lives is damning.”

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‘You cannot rebuild a country with people who are shattered’

Lilia Yapparova at The Boston Globe

“Stigma around mental health care still runs deep in Ukraine,” says Lilia Yapparova. This happens “even though the scale of trauma in Ukraine is extraordinary.” If the nation’s “mental health crisis goes untreated, overlooked grief and loss could become indelible parts of Ukraine’s social fabric, with cascading effects on future generations.” It is “not only soldiers who continue to live in a nightmare of ongoing trauma,” but there is “no systematic, streamlined approach to mental health support in Ukraine.”

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‘Pilots and flight attendants face a real cancer risk. Frequent fliers shouldn’t panic.’

Vishal R. Patel, Christopher M. Worsham and Anupam Jena at Time

There’s a “particular unease that comes from seeing that an ordinary part of life has been linked to cancer,” as “pilots and flight attendants die of radiation-related cancers at higher rates than workers in over 500 occupations,” say Vishal R. Patel, Christopher M. Worsham and Anupam Jena. The “next time a flight attendant hands you a coffee at 30,000 feet, there’s no need to fret over the tiny radiation dose,” but “do consider the doses they take on, day after day.”

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A methamphetamine known as the “crazy pill” is wreaking havoc in Bangladesh and fuelling an addiction crisis. The authorities have struggled for some time to crack down on yaba, which is also known as “Nazi speed”. Their efforts are bearing some fruit but tackling the widespread use of the drug remains an uphill battle.

Black market

Yaba is a street name for pills containing methamphetamine, a powerful, highly addictive stimulant. Users generally crush and smoke the pills, although some swallow them whole. They increase alertness and energy, and raise the heart rate and blood pressure of users. Heavy use can bring on a range of problems, including paranoia, psychosis, seizures, cardiovascular problems, and even death.

Yaba, which means “crazy pill” in Thai, is “pushing thousands into addiction” in Bangladesh, said The Telegraph. The tablets, which are a blend of the stimulant with caffeine and other adulterants, are particularly common in South and Southeast Asia.

Bangladesh has become a leading destination and market for yaba because of its geographic proximity to Myanmar, where production of the drug is particularly concentrated. Rebel militias there are increasingly using yaba and crystal meth as “partial payment for smuggled Bangladeshi goods”, said the Dhaka-based newspaper The Daily Star.

The drug is trafficked westward from Myanmar into Bangladesh, through border areas that are difficult to control. Fishing boats transport Bangladeshi goods to Myanmar and “return with narcotics”. Although most of the drugs are consumed in Bangladesh, some packages are flown on to Oman, Saudi Arabia and Dubai.

Daily drudgery

Since 2006, yaba has been a common for the poor and the realities of the “daily drudgery, which makes life so hard for so many of Bangladesh’s 178 million people”, means there is “little to dull the allure” of the drug, said The Telegraph.

“The reason yaba has become so prevalent here is that it is so easy to transport and far cheaper to buy than other drugs,” government social worker Adnan Zobayer told the newspaper. “People get an easy buzz and quickly become dependent.”

Authorities in Bangladesh have been fighting for years to stamp out trade in the stimulant. In 2018, the government passed a law which makes possession of yaba punishable by death. They are having some success: enforcement agencies seized 43,562,811 amphetamine-type stimulant tablets, including yaba, last year, up 90.58 % from 22,857,751 in 2024. However, drug lords are still able to “churn out” millions of yaba pills from camps in the jungle borderlands of Myanmar at a “relentless” rate, said The Telegraph.

What happened

President Trump signed a nonbinding executive order this week recommending a radical overhaul of the U.S. childhood vaccine schedule, a policy proposal that health experts warned will only sow more mistrust and confusion about lifesaving immunizations. The order proposes reducing the number of recommended childhood vaccines from 18 to 11, downgrading vaccines for diseases such as Covid, hepatitis A and B, and RSV to optional for most children. It directs government health officials to plan for separating the doses in the measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine, which has been administered as a combined injection for 55 years. The order also authorizes the Justice Department to challenge state vaccine regulations deemed insufficiently respectful of parental objections. Trump claimed without evidence that the combined MMR vaccine can be “quite lethal” if given at once.

With Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. by his side, Trump made several other false claims. He said children were being pumped with “vats” of vaccine—the MMR shot is actually a fraction of a teaspoon—and revived the debunked theory that vaccines cause autism. Pediatricians were aghast. “As measles cases reach a 35-year high in the U.S.,” said American Academy of Pediatrics president Dr. Andrew Racine, Trump’s executive order is “not only disheartening but dangerous.” Several states, including New York and Illinois, declared they would keep current childhood immunization rules in place. “We will continue to be guided by the science,” said New York state Health Commissioner James McDonald.

What the columnists said

Trump claimed “nothing bad can happen from what we’re doing,” said Jonathan Cohn in The Bulwark. But “bad things are happening already.” Nearly 2,500 people have contracted measles this year as anti-vax rhetoric has pushed MMR vaccination rates below the community protection threshold. At least two children have died from the disease. And now many more parents will wrongly believe that a proven protection is unsafe, all because “they heard it from the president.”

Trump insists he isn’t promoting “vaccine skepticism,” said The Wall Street Journal in an editorial. He claims he’s merely aligning the U.S. with other “peer, developed nations” such as Denmark. But governments with “socialized health systems” have fewer vaccine recommendations because they don’t want to pay to cover rarer diseases, such as meningitis, and because problems like mother-to-child transmission of hepatitis B are “less common” there.

“Almost nothing Trump called for is practical or possible today,” said Michael Hiltzik in the Los Angeles Times. No American company even manufactures the individual components for separate measles, mumps, and rubella vaccines. Successive shots would leave kids vulnerable to the diseases for longer. But Trump and Kennedy “have been beating the anti-vaccination drum for years.” They long for the “good old days” before “excessive” immunizations. “They would expose millions of children to severe disease and death” in the name of misguided nostalgia. “In heaven’s name, why?”

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved Moderna’s mRNA flu vaccine, mFLUSIVA. The approval comes despite growing vaccine skepticism, especially toward mRNA vaccines following Covid-19. But research shows that this new vaccine can produce a stronger immune response and be produced more quickly than the traditional flu vaccine.

How does the mRNA vaccine differ from the traditional shot?

The approval of mFLUSIVA “demonstrates the continued strength and versatility of our mRNA platform,” Stephane Bancel, Moderna’s CEO, said in a release. The vaccine was shown to be almost 27% more effective against the flu than the standard flu shot. The FDA has authorized mFLUSIVA for adults over the age of 50 after “documented superiority in effectiveness to normal dose flu vaccines,” particularly “for those with underlying diseases,” Jesse Goodman, the FDA’s former top vaccine regulator, said to The Washington Post.

A move toward mRNA vaccines can create a more effective and faster flu shot. Traditional vaccines are “typically generated in chicken eggs” and are “what we call an inactivated flu vaccine,” Hanover Matz, an immunologist at WashU Medicine in St. Louis and the coauthor of a June study comparing the mRNA vaccine to the traditional flu vaccine, said to Science News. Pieces of the virus “are used to teach your immune system how to fight flu,” and “because the virus is raised in chicken eggs, it takes a long time to generate that vaccine.” This method also requires policymakers to “determine what the most likely strains of the flu virus are going to be for the fall season in the Northern Hemisphere,” and they “need to start that production well before the fall to get the vaccine doses ready.” If “there’s a mismatch in strains, there’s really no way they can go back and update the vaccine and change it.”

By contrast, the mRNA vaccine “contains three RNAs, which each encode the hemagglutinin protein of one of two influenza A strains and one influenza B strain,” said IFL Science. The genetic information “instructs the body to produce a fragment of a virus that then sets off the body’s immune response,” said The New York Times. Because the virus does not have to be produced in eggs, mRNA vaccines can be produced much faster and can be adjusted to “rapidly emerging new flu strains, a capacity we have not had before,” Georges C. Benjamin, the executive director of the American Public Health Association, said to the Times.

What is the future of the mRNA vaccine?

Despite the benefits of the mRNA vaccine, it was not an easy route to approval. The mRNA technology, famously used in Covid-19 vaccines, has been the subject of widespread anti-vaccine misinformation campaigns. The FDA “refused to even review Moderna’s application for approval earlier this year but quickly reversed course after a public outcry,” said the Times. In addition, the approval of mFLUSIVA is “likely to face pushback,” especially from some allies of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. “who have expressed skepticism over mRNA-based coronavirus shots,” said the Post.

Those in favor of cite the FDA’s approval as a step in the right direction. The FDA is “signaling openness” to mRNA vaccines, Jeanne Marrazzo, the chief executive officer of the Infectious Disease Society of America, said to NPR. It “could set us up not only for improved response to a bad flu season but also to an improved response to any biological threats.” The flu “remains a significant public health challenge,” Bancel said in the release, and “mFLUSIVA provides an important new option for America’s seniors.”

What happened

President Donald Trump on Monday signed an executive order proposing a reduction in routine childhood immunizations to 11 from 17, and pushing for the combined measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine to be split into three separate single-disease shots administered over several doctor visits. This is Trump’s third attempt to “promote his long-held but discredited theory that childhood shots should be spaced out,” The Associated Press said, and a continuation of his fixation on “connecting autism to vaccines,” even though “scientific consensus and decades of studies have firmly concluded there is no link.”

Who said what

“Nothing bad can happen from what we’re doing,” Trump said before signing the order. But pediatricians and public health experts have “long warned” that spreading out vaccinations “will reduce immunization rates and leave children more susceptible to disease,” CNN said.

Trump’s “renewed focus on vaccines marks a departure” from his administration’s “recent efforts to emphasize less controversial health policies” ahead of November elections, the AP said. Trump’s “own pollsters have warned” that the issue is “unpopular” with voters, Politico said. But the president’s “personal interest” in changing vaccine policy has been “thrown into high gear by his allegiance with Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.,” a longtime vaccine skeptic.

What next?

It’s unclear whether Trump’s order “has any legal power,” The New York Times said. Federal immunization recommendations come from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and its outside experts, and “only states can require vaccinations for children to enter school or day care.”

People might soon have a lot more to see. A retinal implant that can restore vision degraded by age has been approved for use in Europe and could soon be available in the U.S. Researchers are also evaluating the applicability of the implant for other eye conditions.

So much to see

The PRIMA retinal implant, created by the Science Corporation, can “restore functional central vision” in those with geographic atrophy (an advanced form of macular degeneration), said Stanford Medicine. The implant has shown measurable vision improvement, allowing “those who were considered legally blind to read letters and words.”

“Normal vision in the U.S. is 20/20, and blindness is 20/200,” Frank Brodie, the medical director for vision and the PRIMA implant at the Science Corporation, said to New Scientist. “Patients using PRIMA reached about 20/160, so they went from blind to not blind.”

The implant is “about the size of a pinhead and is inserted beneath the retina” and “used alongside glasses with a frame-mounted camera,” said New Scientist. It operates with a brain-computer interface (BCI), in which the camera “captures and processes images, then projects the result onto the implant’s chips using near-infrared light.” The method “offers users black-and-white vision and the ability to zoom in on objects” without interfering with any existing vision, said Stat News. “We have a cochlear implant for vision now,” Max Hodak, the founder and CEO of Science Corporation, said to Stat News.

Geographic atrophy affects eight million people globally and over one million in the U.S. Currently available treatments for geographic atrophy are “extremely limited.” We “have two [U.S. Food and Drug Administration]-approved medications for the treatment of geographic atrophy that slow down the progressive disease but, unfortunately, cannot bring back lost vision,” Sunir Garg, a doctor at the Wills Eye Hospital in Philadelphia, said to New Scientist.

New field of vision

PRIMA has been approved for use and sale in Europe and is set to launch in Germany, Italy and the Netherlands. The implant also “received a Humanitarian Use Device designation from the FDA in March,” said Stat News. The designation “puts the device on track to debut in the United States early next year if it receives agency approval.” If PRIMA received FDA approval, it would be only the “second brain-computer interface (BCI) to enter the U.S. market.”

Cost could be a barrier. “Each PRIMA device is expected to cost in the hundreds of thousands of dollars,” said TechCrunch. Science Corporation and “its medical partners in Europe are currently in discussion with healthcare providers over reimbursement.” In the U.S., “most of the patient population for the device is over 65, so they expect the device to be covered by Medicare, though those details are yet to be finalized,” said Stat News. Researchers are also evaluating PRIMA for other retinal conditions like Stargardt disease and retinitis pigmentosa.

The Trump administration is recycling the failed message that teens should be sexually abstinent, said Jill Filipovic in Slate, and urging them “to forgo contraception, get married, and plan their lives around having babies.” The Department of Health and Human Services recently canceled 53 of 67 grants, totaling $68 million, provided through the decades-old Teen Pregnancy Prevention program. The federal government will now provide grants only to sex education organizations that emphasize fertility over contraception, falsely depict the pill and hormonal contraception as dangerous, and urge teens to prepare for marriage and parenthood. The new guidelines ban any “content that encourages, normalizes, or promotes sexual activity for minors.” Since TPP began in 2010, the birth rate for 15-to-19-year-olds has decreased by over 65%, reaching a record-low 11.7 births per 1,000 last year. Now HHS is “stripping money from the programs that sent teen pregnancy rates tumbling to put it toward those that tell teens that actually, reproduction is the goal.”

But the teen birth rate has been declining since the 1990s, long before TPP, said Michael J. New in National Review. HHS tried to refocus grants toward abstinence education during Trump’s first term, but grantees sued and kept their funding. They’re doing so again, and “conservatives should hope” Trump is more successful this time. The purpose of sex ed has changed, said Kat Rosenfield in The Free Press. Preventing unplanned teen pregnancies and sexually transmitted disease was a “reasonable and appropriate” goal when they were more common. But it doesn’t make much sense “in a world where young people are barely having sex” compared with previous generations.

The new sex-ed policy is purely political, said Danielle Han in Jezebel. “Eliminating comprehensive sex ed was one of the goals of Project 2025,” the blueprint for Trump’s second term. Anti-abortion activists have sought to “change the curricula to stigmatize abortion” and teach young people that life begins at conception. Legal abortion, contraception, and comprehensive sex ed helped bring the teen pregnancy rate to this historic low, said Lisa Needham in Daily Kos. But “conservative creeps are actually sad that teen birth rates are down.” They aim to boost population growth—“well, population growth for white people, which is what the disgusting ‘pronatalist’ movement is really about.” Under Trump, sex ed now amounts to “more teen pregnancies, please.”

‘Why are we just watching America become a surveillance state?’

Sara Pequeño at USA Today

There is a “larger issue of mass surveillance becoming mainstream,” says Sara Pequeño. Flock cameras have “recently been in the news for what happens when police officers misuse the technology,” but “faceless corporations aren’t the only ones policing our behavior through mass surveillance.” Americans are “also creating the panopticon among ourselves.” People “can opt out of a culture that calls on us to record our fellow man if we ourselves would not like to be documented.”

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‘What should a 21st-century central bank look like?’

Daniel Moss at Bloomberg

Central banks “have done a sterling job in responding to swings in prices and employment, and severe gyrations in capital markets,” says Daniel Moss. Still, they “haven’t always gotten everything right.” Then “there’s the perceived overreach.” Politicians “might insist that they support central bank independence but now want to peel back what policymakers can do, how they can do it and when they can do it.” The “case for freedom to implement policy has never been stronger.”

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‘A “Free Palestine” T-shirt at a Holocaust memorial is no contradiction’

Gideon Levy at Haaretz

“Teenagers from an international anti-fascist youth camp visited Austria’s Mauthausen Concentration Camp Memorial last week,” and a “number of them wore T-shirts with slogans calling for the liberation of Palestine,” says Gideon Levy. The “notion that there is no better place than the ruins of a concentration camp to fight for the liberation of 2 million human beings who are currently incarcerated in the Gaza Strip is beyond the grasp of Israelis.” The “call to free Palestine is not antisemitic.”

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‘Should an insurer or a doctor decide where your care takes place?’

Edmund Pribitkin at The Philadelphia Inquirer

“Every day, physicians, patients and the families who care for them make hundreds of decisions together about where and how care should be delivered,” says Edmund Pribitkin. “Increasingly, however, these collective judgments are being second-guessed — and often overruled — by large insurance companies through policies that prioritize administrative convenience and cost-shifting over clinical judgment.” Healthcare decisions “should be made by patients, their families and their care teams — not by insurance company policies.”

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‘My laundromat accepts Apple Pay. Why won’t they take my cash?’

Mary Anna Mancuso at the Miami Herald

Cash “isn’t going out of circulation; it’s disappearing from everyday transactions,” says Mary Anna Mancuso. Businesses “prefer electronic payments” because it “reduces the risk of robbery, digital transactions go into the bank almost immediately and the bookkeeping is simpler.” But it is “worth asking what we lose when convenience becomes the only option.” A “modern payment system should accommodate everyone — whether they choose to tap their phone, swipe a card or hand over a dollar bill.”

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‘Ukraine has always been here — and always will be’

Lidia Pilecky at the Chicago Tribune

Ukraine’s “history tells the facts. We were here. We are here. And we will remain here,” says Lidia Pilecky. For “centuries, Russian rulers repeatedly tried to ban the Ukrainian language and suppress the very identity Putin claims never existed.” But “today, Ukrainians defend the universal principle that no nation should be destroyed because a more powerful neighbor claims it has no right to exist.” Ukraine’s “fight is also taking place in classrooms where children learn the truth.”

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‘Cyclospora outbreaks will only get worse as climate chaos grows’

Amy Moas at Newsweek

This “has been one of the most dangerous summers on record, and experts have been warning about it for decades,” says Amy Moas regarding “two deaths linked to the outbreak of cyclospora.” It is “easier to associate loss of life with extreme weather when it’s tied to a singular event.” But “you can ‘contact-trace’ this now-fatal outbreak back to the ongoing climate crisis.” If “summer gets longer and warmer, we’ll see a longer, hotter mechanism for the parasite to thrive.”

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‘Fancy sodas fall flat with me’

Brenda Cronin at The Wall Street Journal

Fancy sodas “come in winsome bottles or sleek cans and have ridiculous flavors like watermelon-dandelion or rosehip-jacaranda,” but “they taste like carbonated cough syrup with a Windex chaser,” says Brenda Cronin. People “should be reveling in the gourmet soda parade,” if “only the flavors didn’t sound like products from Bath & Body Works” or “taste like a mashup of SweeTARTS and Jolly Ranchers.” When “drinking feels more like penance than a party, I’ll do without.”

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What happened

Scientists at Stanford University on Thursday reported in the journal Science that they had successfully directed artificial intelligence to create 16 new viruses. This first-ever use of AI to design and build viruses not found in nature raised “hopes for medical advances” like eliminating drug-resistant bacteria, The New York Times said, while also “raising the disturbing possibility that the technology could someday be used to invent dangerous pathogens.”

Who said what

“Synthesizing viruses from scratch is hardly new,” the Times said, but the Stanford and Arc Institute researchers went “well beyond” previous efforts by teaching AI to “recognize patterns of DNA structure in nature, and then to use that data to write recipes for entirely new viruses.” Their AI tool, Evo, was fed genetic sequences “much like ChatGPT and other language models are trained on large sets of existing text material,” CNN said.

What next?

The new study “arrives at a moment of heightened anxiety regarding danger posed by increasingly powerful AI models,” The Wall Street Journal said. Evo was constrained to create “simple viruses” that can “only infect bacteria and pose no threat to humans.” But the breakthrough “raises urgent biosafety and biosecurity questions,” Johns Hopkins health security experts said in a corresponding Science article. “The ability to compose viral genomes using generative AI now exists; the governance to safely steer it does not.”

What happened

The Senate Homeland Security Committee on Thursday voted along party lines to hold former U.S. infectious disease chief Dr. Anthony Fauci in contempt of Congress for repeatedly refusing to answer questions during testimony on the federal response to Covid-19. Committee Chair Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and other Republicans contended that Fauci could not invoke his Fifth Amendment rights “because he’d already received a preemptive pardon from former President Joe Biden,” CNN said. But “GOP lawmakers also openly acknowledged” last week that they “hoped to get Fauci to perjure himself in his testimony, allowing them to bring new charges.”

Who said what

“Fauci faced no risk of federal prosecution,” Paul said. “All he had to do was tell the truth.” Fauci’s lawyer called the vote a “crude political stunt” to “punish” a public servant for “exercising his constitutional rights.” Paul appears so “hellbent on putting Fauci in jail” that his office immediately hand-delivered the contempt resolution to federal prosecutors, Politico said. Contempt referrals “rarely bypass the full Senate,” The Wall Street Journal said, and “it isn’t clear whether a referral made in such a manner is legally valid.”

What next?

The Justice Department on Thursday evening said it had received Paul’s referral, is “reviewing it and will work with the Senate accordingly.” If prosecutors decide to file charges and win a conviction, Fauci faces up to a year in prison.

‘The godmother of the “conspiracy mom”’

Jessica Winter at The New Yorker

After JFK’s assassination, Oklahoma housewife Shirley Martin “flung herself into investigating the crime and getting to know some of those closest to it,” says Jessica Winter. It is “generally understood today, as it was not understood 60-plus years ago, that those who subscribe to conspiracy theories tend to do so in order to make sense of an unstable reality,” and “in some ways, Martin was a preview of today’s post-Covid, stay-at-home ‘conspiracy mom’ or of the MAHA moms.”

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‘The ethical perils of gene therapy’

Anjana Ahuja at the Financial Times

In China, a “risky experimental treatment was undertaken for a nonfatal condition; oversight by external authorities, regulators and ethical review boards in China was insufficient to avert tragedy,” says Anjana Ahuja. The “episode is another blow to a country vying to become a global leader in biotech,” as “truly advancing science means being open, honest and transparent about mistakes, as well as successes.” Parents “crave better lives for their children and ambitious researchers covet world firsts.”

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‘I used to mock gym bros. Here’s why I became one.’

Emily Hoeven at the San Francisco Chronicle

It “may seem absurd to say that deadlifts and squats and bench presses changed my life,” but “then again, it wasn’t long ago that I couldn’t lift a coffee cup without excruciating pain,” says Emily Hoeven. It is “almost impossible to name an area of life that weightlifting doesn’t improve.” Studies “show that it boosts confidence and mood, strengthens bones, reduces joint pain and chronic inflammation, and improves cognition,” and it “can be especially beneficial for older women.”

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‘How to fight a cloud’

Nitish Pahwa at Slate

It “feels like an inflection point” for the construction of AI data centers, as “more community leaders and elected officials are listening to their concerned constituents and hitting the pause button,” says Nitish Pahwa. But an “even bigger fight is at hand: whether these halts on buildouts will eventually lead to permanent bans, or whether elected officials are just kicking the clankers down the road.” It’s “one thing to impose a pause for a period of time” but “another to actually make use of that time.”

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What happened

The Senate on Wednesday confirmed Dr. Erica Schwartz as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s first permanent director in nearly a year. Schwartz is “widely considered a qualified and traditional selection for the role,” Politico said. She “has repeatedly affirmed the safety and efficacy of childhood vaccines,” The New York Times said, but the 51-44 vote “fell mostly along partisan lines.”

Who said what

Schwartz will take over a “public health agency beleaguered by political meddling and low morale,” The Associated Press said. Her predecessor, Susan Monarez, was ousted after less than a month following a clash with Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. over vaccine policy, The Wall Street Journal said, and the White House was “looking for a CDC nominee who would minimize controversy” this time around.

What next?

Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) said he joined Republicans in voting for Schwartz because public health leadership is urgently needed amid the U.S. outbreaks of measles and cyclosporiasis and Congo’s Ebola crisis. “It’s becoming very obvious what happens when the invisible workings of public health are not functioning the way we need them to,” Johns Hopkins biosecurity expert Gigi Gronvall told The New York Times. But it’s not clear “how much good” Schwartz can do when “the main problem is RFK Jr.”

TV might actually be rotting our brains. Watching television for extended periods of time could increase the risk of dementia and Alzheimer’s disease, new research says. To combat this danger, experts recommend taking breaks from binge-watching and engaging in more mentally stimulating activities.

Your brain on TV

Frequent TV watching in midlife was associated with reduced volume in the parts of the brain vulnerable to Alzheimer’s disease, according to a study published in Alzheimer’s & Dementia. The diminished brain systems include those associated with memory and cognition as well as executive functioning. More surprisingly, the brain volume reduction was not tied to sedentary behavior but specifically to watching TV. “People whose jobs involved sitting for much of the day tended to have healthier-looking brains,” said ScienceAlert. Also, “when the researchers accounted for differences in overall physical activity, that didn't seem to impact the outcome.”

The results also showed that men were particularly vulnerable to these brain changes. “This could be because men and women accumulate sedentary time differently,” Natan Feter, a biological scientist and the lead author of the study, said to ScienceAlert. “Women may interrupt their sitting more often,” or “biological differences in how the brain responds to prolonged sedentary behavior” may be to blame. In general, “women tend to prefer TV programming in shorter chunks, though they spend more time watching overall,” said ScienceAlert. By contrast, “men’s preferences for watching sports and movies” mean they are are “more likely to spend long, uninterrupted periods on the couch.”

Researchers analyzed a sample of 1,712 adults with an average age of 53 years who did not have a diagnosis of dementia when the research began. Between 1987 and 1989, “participants completed a detailed physical activity questionnaire during an in-person interview” where they reported “how often they watched television during their leisure time,” as well as “answered specific questions about how often they sat down during their work hours,” said PsyPost. Between 2011 and 2013, the participants underwent an MRI of their brains.

The study “shows an association, not a cause-and-effect relationship” between TV and dementia, Feter said to Healthline. The researchers also “relied on self-reported data for TV consumption, which can be less precise than timed tracking,” said a news release about the study.

Beyond the screen

“For years, we’ve focused on how much people sit,” David Raichlen, a professor of biological sciences and anthropology at the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences and the senior author of the study, said in the news release. But these findings “suggest we should also pay attention to what they’re doing while they’re sitting.” For example, working from home, while sedentary, is more “intellectually stimulating” compared to watching TV, said the release.

Because TV watching appears to specifically affect the brain, “we might eventually see a different approach to health guidance around sedentary activities,” said the release. “Rather than just directing their patients to move more, for example, physicians might recommend they reduce television time and add cognitively engaging activities for when they do sit.” Activities like “puzzling, crafts and even texting, which require your brain to work while you are sitting might also change how much sitting negatively impacts your brain,” said ScienceAlert.

“The goal is not to eliminate passive rest,” Dung Trinh, a doctor at the MemorialCare Medical Group and the chief medical officer of Healthy Brain Clinic in Irvine, California, said to Healthline. It is to “build more cognitively engaging moments into the day.”

‘One problem with attacking the Smithsonian? Americans like it.’

Kelsey Ables at The Atlantic

Even as the “museum complex continues to face a pressure campaign from the White House, public fondness for the Smithsonian — for its free entry and eclectic collections — is hard to break,” says Kelsey Ables. Museums have “been largely immune to the most deleterious effects of the culture wars.” Most “Americans, unlike the president, seem to trust these entities to do their thing” so “coming after a history museum may not be the base-galvanizing issue the White House hopes it is.”

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‘The US government’s mislabeled map of Africa at a global AIDS conference shows again a failure to understand the continent’

Kenneth Ngure at The Guardian

At the 26th International AIDS Conference, a “slide presented by a senior U.S. State Department official displayed a map of Africa with country names glaringly scrambled and mislabeled,” says Kenneth Ngure. While the “mistake apparently occurred due to an overreliance on AI tools, it carried a painful symbolic weight.” The map “reinforced a longstanding frustration: that too many political leaders treat Africa as a monolithic abstraction rather than a continent of 54 distinct sovereign nations.”

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‘Why patients wait months for care they don’t get’

Tessa Adzemović at The Boston Globe

Hospitals “were never designed to become long-term accommodations, but that’s become a reality for a select population,” says Tessa Adzemović. These “patients are medically cleared to leave but cannot be discharged because of capacity bottlenecks, insurance delays or legal complexities.” Many “prolonged hospitalizations have significant implications for patient outcomes, hospital resource utilization and healthcare costs.” The “reasons for these delayed discharges range from financial to administrative to legal, so any solution to the problem must be multifaceted.”

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‘“Ted Lasso” is back, but is his moment over?’

A.A. Dowd at The American Prospect

As “comebacks go,” a new season of “Ted Lasso” is “not exactly improbable,” says A.A. Dowd. The show “remains one of the most widely watched series of the last decade, a true juggernaut of popularity.” But at “what point does a show go from having its finger planted firmly on the pulse of now to suddenly looking more out of touch than anything else?” We “may have reached the moment when Ted Lasso’s brand of turn-the-other-cheek humanism is no longer enough.”

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What happened

Ariana Grande “will be taking a step back from visibility” following the conclusion of her world tour due to “endless, ongoing public scrutiny,” a representative for the Grammy winner told People over the weekend. The announcement follows the Friday release of Grande’s “Petal” music video, which “reignited fan concerns about her weight loss,” Variety said.

Who said what

“She looks emaciated” in the video, with “sunken” cheeks and a “protruding” ribcage, said critic Monica Hesse in The Washington Post. Grande’s team is “thoroughly irresponsible for not guiding her away from this deeply damaging image for her young fans to see so glamorized,” actor and activist Jameela Jamil said in a now-deleted Instagram post.

The hiatus decision “was made from a thoughtful and empowered place,” Grande told fans during a tour performance in Chicago. “Human beings can need a break sometimes.” She “performs a very physical show,” a source close to the star told People, “and there is a lot of athleticism involved.”

What next?

Grande will finish her Eternal Sunshine tour on Sept. 1 and then take a “much-deserved break,” her representatives said. Her team confirmed that she is also pulling out of leading a revival of Stephen Sondheim’s “Sunday in the Park With George,” which was expected to open next summer in London’s West End.

What happened

Michigan health officials on Monday confirmed the first two deaths linked to the ongoing cyclosporiasis outbreak. The fatalities mark the “first known deaths related to the multi-state outbreak of explosive diarrhea in the United States,” CNN said.

Who said what

Both victims had “significant underlying health conditions” that may have been “impacted by cyclosporiasis and dehydration,” Michigan’s Department of Health and Human Services said in a website update. The parasitic infection is “generally not a life-threatening illness.” This is the “worst year on record for cyclosporiasis” in the U.S., said The New York Times, and Michigan is “at the center” of the “nine-state outbreak linked to iceberg lettuce supplied by Taylor Farms.”

What next?

Health experts in Michigan are “cautiously optimistic” that the outbreak there is “starting to wane,” said the Times. But the deaths reinforce the “importance of continuing efforts to investigate the outbreak, identify its source, and prevent additional illnesses,” food safety expert Wade Syers said to the Detroit Free Press.

Microplastics could be responsible for a lot of heartache. The tiny pieces of plastic have been found in high amounts in patients who suffered from heart attacks, leading experts to question their effect on cardiovascular health. Plastic likely has a more significant impact on health than we currently know and should be taken into account in analyzing environmental risk management.

Heart of plastic

Microplastics were “detected significantly more frequently” in patients who suffered heart attacks, said a study published in the European Heart Journal. Among those who had heart attacks, “micro and nanoplastics were detected in 84% of patients, compared with 40% of patients with chronic ischemic heart disease and 32% of patients with normal coronary arteries,” said a press release about the study.

The “highest levels of plastics were in blood drawn from the blocked artery itself, at the site of the blockage,” said Time. These tiny plastic particles are “found virtually everywhere in the environment, including the air we breathe, the water we drink and many foods we consume,” Pasquale Paolisso, the first author of the study, said in the release. “Scientists have begun to detect these particles in human tissues and organs, raising concerns about their potential health effects.”

The study also found that “people who smoke were six times more likely to have detectable micro and nanoplastics in the blood supplying their hearts than non-smokers,” David C. Gaze, a senior lecturer in chemical pathology at the University of Westminster, said in The Conversation. Therefore, along with the well-known detrimental effects of cigarettes, they “may also act as an efficient delivery system for microscopic plastic particles.”

The same pattern for smoking held for those who were exposed to bad air quality. “Both exposures appeared to amplify each other,” Paolisso and Emanuele Barbato, another author of the study, said to El País. “All patients who smoked and lived in areas with high air pollution had detectable plastics, compared with only one in eight of those who neither smoked nor were highly exposed.”

World of plastic

The study’s findings “do not prove that microplastics cause heart attacks, but they reveal a strong association between environmental exposures, microplastics in the blood and cardiovascular disease,” Barbato said in the press release. Microscopic plastic particles are present in “synthetic clothing fibers, tire wear, degraded packaging and countless other environmental sources,” Gaze said in The Conversation. But “at the moment, we cannot measure our exposure to plastics” in an accessible way, Rocco Montone, an interventional cardiologist at Fondazione Policlinico Universitario Agostino Gemelli in Rome, said to Time.

Microplastics were previously “found inside the liver, kidney, intestine and human brain, among other tissues,” said El País. Scientists have been interested in the health implications for some time. This study “reframes the issue of microplastics not as an isolated curiosity but as another link in a wider environmental exposome interconnected with the air we breathe and our habits,” the study authors said to El País.

The apparent connection between microplastics, smoking and air pollution also “underscores the urgent need to shift from isolated risk factor management toward comprehensive environmental health strategies,” said the study. Such strategies may include the “integration of air quality monitoring, anti-smoking interventions, plastic pollution reduction and exposomic assessment into cardiovascular disease prevention guidelines.”

“America is about to go over a peptide cliff,” said Tom Bartlett in The Atlantic. An FDA advisory panel voted last month to recommend that six unproven peptides be added to the list of custom drugs that so-called compounding pharmacies can sell. Peptides are chains of amino acids that tell cells to regulate biological processes; some peptides, including insulin and GLP-1s, are FDA-approved medicines. But pharmacies were banned in 2023 from dispensing these six peptides—which adherents claim deliver benefits ranging from improved endurance to reduced inflammation—over efficacy and safety concerns. That annoyed Heath Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a peptides fan, who added eight new members to the panel ahead of the vote, six of whom run clinics that offer the chemicals. The vote is only a recommendation, but “ultimate approval seems likely”—to the glee of sellers anticipating a “peptide gold rush” and the horror of experts who fear we’re opening a “Pandora’s box.”

Demand for injectable peptides is surging “thanks to the endorsement of podcasters, wellness influencers,” and celebrities, said Emily Mullin in Wired. Among the chemicals that got the nod from the panel are two that combine to make the Joe Rogan–backed “Wolverine stack,” which supposedly aids in injury recovery. Undaunted by the lack of evidence that they work, users currently buy peptides on the “unregulated gray market”; the chemicals are sourced from labs in China and India and sold as for “research use only.” The vote “exposed a deep divide” between Kennedy’s appointees and FDA scientists, said Yonathan Daniel in ABCNews.com. The latter cited the absence of clinical trial data and the possibility of harmful immune reactions. But proponents argued thousands of people already take potentially dangerous black market peptides, and that the agency should protect them by granting access to safer product.

This isn’t “just about peptides,” said Julia Belluz in The New York Times. It’s “part of a broader push” to increase access to drugs that haven’t met “the strict evidence standards the FDA usually requires.” The agency “wasn’t designed for this wellness-crazed” telehealth era, in which Americans are “going outside the bounds of traditional health care in growing numbers.” But the FDA is “the only thing standing between consumers and a Wild West market” for untested and potentially harmful drugs. “There has to be a better way forward” than dropping standards and allowing consumer demand to override “scientific evidence.”

‘Kids lose more than just books when school is on a screen’

Sarah Schneider Kavanagh and Katie A. Danielson at The Washington Post

Parents “don’t realize how different many aspects of elementary school have become,” say Sarah Schneider Kavanagh and Katie A. Danielson. Screens “organize the school day,” and “these technological changes in elementary classrooms might look like progress.” But “attention span in particular is weakened when schools prioritize constant stimulation over intellectual endurance.” As “technology becomes more powerful, distinctly human capacities become more valuable, not less.” Children “need a place designed for other aims, such as conversation instead of consumption.”

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‘The New York-ification of media keeps growing, warts and all’

Justin Fox at Bloomberg

The “nation’s media capital is in many ways far less central to the national conversation than it used to be,” says Justin Fox. But in the “production of certain kinds of media — journalism in particular — New York is more dominant than ever.” The “New York-ification of media has for the most part continued to grow.” The “journalists who remain are increasingly concentrated in a city that, while wonderful, is utterly different from most of the rest of the country.”

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‘The box office just rejected Hollywood’s AI bet’

Peter Zerzan at Newsweek

This year’s “box office has become a referendum on how films are made,” says Peter Zerzan. After “years of pandemic disruption, writers’ strikes and uncertainty, theatrical exhibition is finally recovering.” Americans “were told that AI would become the dominant form of visual storytelling.” But “instead, audiences are buying tickets to films that demanded extraordinary effort to make.” They “are discussing performances, practical effects and directorial choices rather than marveling at how efficiently a computer assembled images.”

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‘Clinical trials aren’t the only way to know if flu shots work’

Christopher M. Worsham and Anupam Jena at Time

It is “correct to note that observational studies of annual flu shots suffer from various statistical biases,” say Christopher M. Worsham and Anupam Jena. Randomized trials “have earned their reputation as the ‘gold standard’ because they address a real statistical problem,” and “true randomized controlled trials remain the most rigorous form of evidence.” But this “can be drawn from the data we already have.” The “efficacy of flu shots in children is just one of thousands of questions we could answer this way.”

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Almost three in 10 Britons now use AI chatbots to get health advice. And UK medical-policy experts are concerned that this could create confusion, undermine trust in GPs and other healthcare workers, and make it more difficult to take an informed decision about your health.

The warning, from The Academy of Medical Sciences, comes as Open AI rolls out ChatGPT Health in the US. It allows users to “securely connect” their medical records and wellness apps to “ground conversations” in their own health information, so that the bot can “take a more active role” in their health.

ChatGPT Health is not yet available in the UK but, with more than 300 million people worldwide regularly directing their health-related questions to ChatGPT, it could swiftly become a “democratising force in healthcare”, Tanzeem Choudhury, a health-innovation expert at New York’s Cornell University told CBS News. But there are definite risks and trade-offs. “Used well,” an AI tool such as this can “help direct people to trusted sources”, said Yvonne Doyle, a fellow of The Academy of Medical Sciences and former medical director of Public Health England. But it can also mislead “convincingly”.

‘Zero awareness of fallibility’

People have been using the internet to answer their questions for decades, but the “danger” with an AI chatbot is that it responds with “fluent, emotionally convincing paragraphs” and “remembers context”, making it “sound more ‘human’ than many humans”, said Celina Cartoto and Anthony Kelly on RTE. Yet it has “zero awareness of its own fallibility”, always providing an answer, “even when one doesn’t exist”. People need to remember that, though it “speaks like a doctor, listens like a therapist and remembers like a friend”, it is actually “none of them”.

We know that all AI chatbots can “hallucinate” and provide “misleading, inaccurate or even dangerous” information, said CBS News. Open AI has been careful to state that ChatGPT Health is designed to support, not replace doctors, but it has not responded to questions about whether it is “equipped to recognise when to advise a user to seek help from a medical professional”. It seems that “onus is on the user”.

Even before the rollout of the Health feature, there were indications that users could become dangerously reliant on ChatGPT for medical advice. Last month, a 55-year-old US pastor sued OpenAI, claiming its bot “brought him to the brink of death”, by “repeatedly and insistently” misdiagnosing his symptoms of near-fatal pulmonary embolism, said the BBC. An OpenAI spokesperson told CBS News that “ChatGPT is not a doctor and should never be a substitute for medical care, diagnosis or treatment”.

AI can be a “useful educational tool” for health information, said Leana Wen, an emergency doctor in the US, and a clinical associate professor at George Washington University, told CNN. It can “explain medical terminology” and “compare treatment options at a high level”, helping “people prepare questions” for their doctor and be “more engaged” in their care. But “it has important limitations” and “should not replace clinical judgement” by a medically qualified human.

Privacy concerns

There is also the question of privacy. How risky is it to share so much of your individual medical information with an AI tool, such as ChatGPT Health? Open AI has said that Health has “enhanced privacy” and encryption, and that conversations used in the Health tab won’t flow into non-Health chats. But it’s no accident that Health has not yet been rolled out in the UK, or the EU, where data protection and digital privacy laws are stricter than in the US.

“If you are providing data directly to a technology company that is not providing any healthcare services, then it is buyer beware,” Bradley Malin, a biomedical informatics expert, told Time. OpenAI says it will protect your data but “what exactly does that mean”?

It all comes down to whether or not “you trust OpenAI to keep to its word”, Robert Wachter, a medic who has written extensively about AI and healthcare, told the magazine. OpenAI does have “really strong corporate interest in not screwing this up”. Its brand is “dependent” on the user “feeling comfortable” in sharing their information, and any sort of data breach would end that trust.

The end of doctors?

The increasing use of AI programmes for health queries is becoming “existentially threatening” for medics, Jonathan Chen, a doctor at Stanford University Medical Center, told The New York Times. What is our purpose going to be now? Should we “get out of the way and let a computer take over”?

Not for a while yet, Lee Schwamm, associate dean for digital strategy and transformation at Yale School of Medicine, told the paper. And that’s because chatbots can’t yet think critically enough about the health information people are providing – and more importantly, not providing – them with. AI is “really good at matching patterns and making predictions”. But it can only do so “based on the data that it is given about the patient. It has no way to extract” what may be crucial further information itself.

Besides, patients still need a human connection. If you’re going to be told you have a serious health issue, or even how much longer you have to live, “you want to look someone in the eye”.

While the jury is still out on whether diet and zero-sugar drinks are really better for your health than sugary sodas, a recent study has found that the artificial sweeteners they use may have one very unintended side effect: memory loss, particularly among younger consumers. But even though the study found a significant link between artificial sweeteners and memory issues, experts say this is still only a correlation, not causation.

What did the study find?

Several widely used artificial sweeteners may be “associated with faster declines in memory and thinking skills over time,” according to the study published by the American Academy of Neurology. It followed 12,772 adults in Brazil for about eight years and examined their intake of seven sugar substitutes: aspartame, saccharin, acesulfame K, erythritol, xylitol, sorbitol and tagatose. These are “frequently added to ultra-processed products, including flavored water, soft drinks, energy drinks, yogurt and desserts marketed as low in calories.”

Researchers found that the people who consumed the highest amount of artificial sweeteners “experienced a 62% faster rate of cognitive decline than those with the lowest intake,” said USA Today, a rate “estimated to be comparable to about 1.6 additional years of brain aging.” People who were in the mid-range of consumption “experienced cognitive decline that was 35% faster than those in the lowest-intake group.” The memory loss itself was also most prevalent in study participants who were under 60; researchers “did not find the same association among participants older than 60,” said the study.

When it came to the amount of sweetener consumed, those in the “lowest consumption group averaged 20 milligrams per day, while those in the highest group averaged 191 milligrams per day,” said the study. Regarding aspartame, one of the most common artificial sweeteners, the “amount consumed by the highest group was roughly equal to the aspartame in one can of diet soda.”

What is the bigger picture?

This study suggests that sugar substitutes are not as good for you as their marketing makes them seem. “Low- and no-calorie sweeteners are often seen as a healthy alternative to sugar; however, our findings suggest certain sweeteners may have negative effects on brain health over time,” the lead study author, Dr. Claudia Kimie Suemoto of Brazil’s University of São Paulo, said in a press release.

This is not the only new study to suggest that artificial sweeteners have negative health effects; recent research published in the journal Current Atherosclerosis Reports showed that these chemicals are “linked to higher fasting insulin levels and a higher HbA1c — a measure of long-term blood sugar control,” said HealthDay. It also “found that people who consume more artificial sweeteners may have a higher risk of cardiometabolic conditions, including type 2 diabetes and heart disease.”

When it comes to memory issues, scientists are careful to point out that this research doesn’t necessarily mean artificial sweeteners cause lapses. The study “identified a relationship between sweetener intake and cognitive decline but could not determine whether the sweeteners caused the changes,” said USA Today. The data also “did not include every artificial sweetener currently used in foods and beverages,” and Suemoto emphasized that more research was needed.

It’s widely assumed that eight hours is the perfect amount of sleep but a new study found the “sweet spot” is a little less than that, said sleep specialist Dr Allie Hare in The Telegraph.

Getting it right matters because new research, published in Nature, found that “falling short, or exceeding” the “precise window” discovered by the research, is “linked with poorer brain, heart and immune health”.

What did the research say?

People who got between six hours 24 minutes and seven hours 48 minutes of sleep a night were found to have better functioning immune systems, brains and hearts, according to researchers at Columbia University Irving Medical Center.

This ideal amount of sleep was associated with less ageing, as measured by organ-specific biological clocks. Duration alone doesn’t cause organs to age faster or slower, but the findings do suggest that insufficient or excessive sleep may be “markers of poorer overall health across the body”.

Is it different for men and women?

There is also a gender factor because women “seem to do better with a little longer”, Marie-Pierre St-Onge, a professor at Columbia University, told The Washington Post. They need “15, 20 minutes” more sleep, which reflects the “slightly longer” sleep duration reported by the “general population”, which “tends to be slightly longer in women than men”.

Previous research found that sleep is “largely linked to ageing and the pathological burden of the brain”, said Junhao Wen, an assistant professor at Columbia and lead author of the study. But the new research "goes further” and shows that “too little and too much sleep” are “associated with faster ageing in nearly every organ”.

Should we all be getting seven hours?

There are a number of conflicting theories about how much sleep we need. According to individual needs theories, there is no single ideal amount of sleep, because genetics, age, health, activity level and even life circumstances influence how much sleep someone needs. Adaptive or evolutionary theories hold that the correct amount of sleep varies depending on factors such as season, workload, stress, illness and safety.

But we “might be overthinking it”, said Emma Beddington in The Guardian. Sleep is “important and fascinating for science to explore, but surely, for the rest of us”, it’s “best left mysterious”.

There’s “so little we can do” to reach the “ideal” amount of unconsciousness, so “knowing precisely how bad that is for us is unhelpful”.