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When oncologists gave my 5-year-old daughter the all-clear from high-risk neuroblastoma in 2010, I breathed a sigh of relief. But her health needs were just beginning. Fifteen years later, the intense and often toxic treatments that saved Emily’s life have left her with a host of lifelong health challenges — hearing loss, stunted height, endocrine and kidney dysfunction, and permanent hair-thinning — issues no one talked about during her 18 months of cancer treatment. (McHugh, 5/25)

In grade school, Jamie Donovan often spent recess picking bark off trees. At home, she sometimes hid in her father’s truck if she needed to block out visual stimulation and sounds. She usually had trouble relating to other people, and felt like she was always saying the wrong thing. She didn’t understand the reason until she was almost 47 years old—when she was diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder. (Toth, 5/28)

Since the US Supreme Court in 2022 overturned its Roe v. Wade decision establishing a nationwide right to an abortion, the fight over the intervention has focused largely on a pill that ends pregnancies: mifepristone. The court in June 2024 preserved the current level of access to medication abortion, the most common way to terminate a pregnancy in the country. Still, many states limit access to mifepristone, efforts continue to curtail it further, and leaders in the US Department of Health and Human Services have indicated that they are interested in a renewed review of the drug’s safety. (Nix and Butler, 5/28)

When Robert F. Kennedy Jr. became health secretary, he didn’t just bring with him an unconventional and controversial approach to policy. He also elevated and empowered a group of like-minded deputies and advisers. With the exception of allies in Congress, all are new to government, and many are longtime gadflies who have made careers of criticizing policy makers and the health and food industries. Some have been heavily focused on Americans’ food supply and chronic diseases, while others are more from the world of vaccine skepticism and opposition, though their views often overlap. Many forged ties with each other as critics of mainstream public health measures during the COVID pandemic. (Kopan, 5/27)

When the Trump administration declared two weeks ago that it would largely disregard the economic cost of climate change as it sets policies and regulations, it was just the latest step in a multipronged effort to erase global warming from the American agenda. But President Trump is doing more than just turning a blind eye to the fact that the planet is growing hotter. He is weakening the country’s capacity to understand global warming and to prepare for its consequences. (Gelles, 5/19)