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Leaders throughout the biopharma world and scientific community struggled to process news on Thursday that President-elect Donald Trump has tapped Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, a move that could have profound implications for drug development, public health policy, and basic research. (Wosen, Feuerstein, DeAngelis, Herper and Silverman, 11/14)

�鶹Ů�� Health News: Scientists Fear What’s Next For Public Health If RFK Jr. Is Allowed To ‘Go Wild’ 

Many scientists at the federal health agencies await the second Donald Trump administration with dread as well as uncertainty over how the president-elect will reconcile starkly different philosophies among the leaders of his team. Trump announced Thursday he’ll nominate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to be secretary of the Health and Human Services Department, after saying during his campaign he’d let the anti-vaccine activist “go wild” on medicines, food, and health. (Allen, 11/14)

Some staff members at the Food and Drug Administration are considering a quick exit as Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is being floated as a potential health official in the incoming Trump administration, according to three former and one current government official who were granted anonymity to speak freely about sensitive issues. The former officials are still in touch with colleagues who work at the FDA. (Lovelace Jr., 11/14)

Health agency veterans were aghast. “I don’t know of anyone who has expressed more contempt for the health agencies that keep our food safe, make sure our medicines work, prevent lethal outbreaks, and find new cures for devastating diseases,” said Josh Sharfstein, a former senior FDA official during the Obama administration. (Gibson, Lim, S. Gardner and L. Gardner, 11/14)

Several Republican senators praised Kennedy in posts to X, with Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson calling him "a brilliant, courageous truth-teller," Alabama Sen. Tommy Tuberville describing Kennedy as "an absolutely brilliant pick" and Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley saying the announcement marked a "bad day for Big Pharma." (Thorp V, Santaliz and Lebowitz, 11/14)

House Republicans had mixed reactions to President-elect Donald Trump's announcement that he would nominate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to be secretary of Health and Human Services in his administration. Rep. John Duarte, R-Calif., raised concerns about the pick, saying, “Well, all my kids are vaccinated and I hope he’s not going to move against one of the most life-saving technologies in the history of the world.” Asked if Kennedy was the right choice, Duarte responded, "I don’t know.” There was no immediate reaction from senators, who would vote on Kennedy's nomination. (Chang, Peller and Jones II, 11/14)

The pandemic and the chaos and controversies that came with it led to an erosion of trust in scientists, and it may be a while before that trust returns to levels that preceded the contagion. That’s the implication of a survey published Thursday by the nonpartisan Pew Research Center. (Achenbach, 11/14)

Environmental lawyer and antivaccine activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. vowed to be an “honest public servant” if he gets confirmed as the head of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). “Together we will clean up corruption, stop the revolving door between industry and government, and return our health agencies to their rich tradition of gold-standard, evidence-based science,” Kennedy wrote in a Thursday post on the social platform X. “I will provide Americans with transparency and access to all the data so they can make informed choices for themselves and their families.” Senate Appropriations Committee Chair Patty Murray (D-Wash.) said Kennedy’s appointment at HHS “could set back America in terms of public health, reproductive rights, research and innovation, and so much else.” But not all Democrats sounded the alarm. Colorado Gov. Jared Polis (D) said he was “excited” about the nomination but hoped that the former independent presidential candidate does not enact any vaccine bans. (Timotija, 11/14)

If confirmed, Mr. Kennedy, who ended his presidential campaign in August and endorsed Mr. Trump, would run a department whose divisions manage billions of dollars and regulate the nation’s food, medications, vaccines and medical treatments. The H.H.S. oversees 13 divisions that administer services and conduct research through various agencies and offices. (Sanders, Ruberg and Jewett, 11/14)

If the Senate confirms Kennedy, it will presage the biggest rethinking of the U.S. public health system ever. HHS and its agencies oversee drug approvals, food safety and disease surveillance, in addition to Medicare and Medicaid. A scion of one of America’s most famous Democratic families, Kennedy and his “Make America Healthy Again” movement blame Americans’ poor health in part on a corrupt alliance among the food and drug industries and the regulators supposed to watch over them. They want to replace the bureaucrats and overhaul the systems for overseeing pesticides, food additives and vaccines. Here’s what Kennedy and MAHA want to do. (Payne, Cirruzzo, Brown, Gibson and Snider, 11/14)

In its 78-year history, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has evolved from its origins tackling malaria to an agency that aims to safeguard almost every aspect of Americans' health. But the CDC's sprawling mission could be in for some big changes in the new Trump administration. House Republicans have called for cuts to the CDC's budget, and former Trump administration officials have suggested restructuring the agency in ways that would diminish its reach and influence. (Huang, 11/14)

An estimated 10.3 million cases of measles occurred worldwide last year, up 20 percent from 2022, primarily because of inadequate immunization coverage, the World Health Organization and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Thursday. The disease resulted in 107,500 deaths last year, mostly killing children younger than 5, the two agencies said. Although that number was an 8 percent decrease from 2022, the reduction in fatalities was primarily because the increase in cases occurred in countries with better nutritional and health services, the WHO and CDC said. (Jeong, 11/15)

Kennedy came under criticism for advocating against COVID-19 vaccines during the pandemic as well as statements he made comparing lockdowns to Nazi Germany and claiming that the virus was "ethnically targeted" to spare Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese people. (Fung, 11/14)

President-elect Trump says he's going to let Robert F. Kennedy Jr. "go wild on health." That has many pediatricians nervous, because of RFK Jr.'s anti-vaccine rhetoric. When another vaccine skeptic, Joseph Ladapo, became surgeon general in Florida, some doctors there say vaccine hesitancy got worse. ... Vaccine hesitancy has been growing in Florida. When Ladapo was appointed in September of 2021, the routine childhood vaccination rate for kindergartners was 93.3%. It has now dropped to 90.6%. That's the lowest rate in more than a decade — and it's well below the threshold needed for herd immunity against highly contagious diseases like measles. (Goody, 11/13)

Shares of prominent vaccine makers plunged Thursday after President-elect Donald Trump announced his pick of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to be the next secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services. An hour before the market closed Thursday, as news reports of Trump’s choice began trickling out, Covid-19 vaccine maker Moderna dipped as much as 6%, and Pfizer fell almost 2%. Novavax, which created a protein-based Covid-19 vaccine, fell almost 6%. (Maruf, 11/14)

President-elect Donald Trump has nominated one of his previous attorneys and former GOP House member Doug Collins to lead the Department of Veterans Affairs. Collins, 58, a staunch Trump supporter and frequent Fox News guest, served in Congress representing a Georgia district from 2013 to 2021. Collins is an Air Force Reserve chaplain and served in Iraq. On Thursday, Collins pledged to slash regulations and cut “corruption” in a post on X. “We’ll fight tirelessly to streamline and cut regulations in the VA, root out corruption, and ensure every veteran receives the benefits they’ve earned,” Collins said. “Together, we’ll make the VA work for those who fought for us. Time to deliver for our veterans and give them the world class care they deserve.” (Leonard, 11/14)

President-elect Donald Trump's newly created Department of Government Efficiency could impact health care for veterans if plans to cut appropriations for expired bills go ahead. ... Legislative authorities can expire and continue to receive appropriations—a law of Congress that provides an agency with budget authority—subject to congressional reauthorization. Among those expired appropriations is the Veteran's Health Care Eligibility Act, which amounted to $119 billion in government spending for 2024. (Higham, 11/14)

Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy’s new commission to slash government spending began soliciting applications for staff jobs Thursday, saying it wants to hire “revolutionaries” who score highly on IQ tests. “We need super high-IQ small-government revolutionaries willing to work 80+ hours per week on unglamorous cost-cutting,” the so-called Department of Government Efficiency said on X.  President-elect Donald Trump said Tuesday that he was appointing the two businessmen to jointly head up the advisory board to suggest spending cuts, target regulations for elimination and put forward ideas to restructure federal agencies. Musk and Ramaswamy have called for sweeping changes to federal programs, such as mass layoffs and deep cuts. (Ingram, 11/14)

Suicides increased among U.S. military personnel last year, an ongoing trend Pentagon officials say they plan to address with a $125 million investment in prevention and mental health programs next year. The rate for active-duty personnel rose to 28.2 per 100,000 members in 2023, from 25.1 per 100,000 members during the previous year, according to new data released by the Pentagon on Thursday. That year-to-year increase is not statistically significant but when compared with the past 12 years, shows long-term "real change," defense officials said. (Kime, 11/14)

�鶹Ů�� Health News: Watch: Why The US Has Made Little Progress Improving Black Americans’ Health 

The United States has made almost no progress in closing racial health disparities despite promises, research shows. The government, some critics argue, is often the underlying culprit. �鶹Ů�� Health News undertook a yearlong examination of how government decisions undermine Black health — reviewing court and inspection records and government reports, and interviewing dozens of academic researchers, doctors, politicians, community leaders, grieving moms, and patients.  (Clasen-Kelly, Rayasam and Norman, 11/15)

�鶹Ů�� Health News' 'What the Health?' Podcast: Readying For Republican Rule 

Come January, Republicans will control the House of Representatives, Senate, and White House, regaining full power for the first time since 2018. That will give them significant clout to dramatically change health policy. But slim margins in Congress will leave little room for dissent. (11/14)

Those ever-present TV drug ads showing patients hiking, biking or enjoying a day at the beach could soon have a different look: New rules require drugmakers to be clearer and more direct when explaining their medications’ risks and side effects. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration spent more than 15 years crafting the guidelines, which are designed to do away with industry practices that downplay or distract viewers from risk information. Many companies have already adopted the rules, which become binding Nov. 20. But while regulators were drafting them, a new trend emerged: thousands of pharma influencers pushing drugs online with little oversight. A new bill in Congress would compel the FDA to more aggressively police such promotions on social media platforms. (Perrone, 11/14)

The Food and Drug Administration has scolded Merz Pharmaceutical for making misleading claims on Instagram about the safety and effectiveness of an injectable treatment for smoothing facial lines, the fifth time this year the agency has taken a pharmaceutical company to task for its marketing. (Silverman, 11/14)

Michelle Monje-Deisseroth says she first treated patients with “the worst imaginable childhood brain tumor” as a medical student about 20 years ago. Diffuse intrinsic pontine gliomas, or DIPG, shackle themselves so insidiously around a young person’s brainstem that no chemo or scalpel can wrest them out. Most children didn’t survive a year. (Mast, 11/15)

Reversing an earlier decision, European regulators on Thursday recommended that an Alzheimer’s therapy from Eisai and Biogen should be approved, saying that the benefits of the treatment outweigh the risks in a select group of patients. (Joseph, 11/14)

When Beata Halassy learned in summer 2020 that her breast cancer had come back, she made a bold decision. As a virologist at the University of Zagreb in Croatia, she knew that researchers around the world were testing virus-based cancer treatments that could avoid the destructive side effects of conventional treatments like chemotherapy. Halassy, who studies viruses for a living, decided to test some of them on herself. (Wu, 11/14)

Amazon One Medical is adding a new wrinkle to its telehealth service that will put it in competition with direct-to-consumer digital health company Hims & Hers. On Thursday, the tech giant said in a blog post it would offer upfront, monthly pricing for customers seeking consultations and medications for five conditions including erectile dysfunction, men’s hair loss, eyelash growth, motion sickness and anti-aging skin care. (Turner, 11/14)

Fewer hospital-associated infections, better hand hygiene and improved medication safety enabled a number of hospitals to earn higher safety grades from The Leapfrog Group. Nuvance Health, based in Danbury, Connecticut, was among them. Its hospitals earned three "C's" and three "B's" in fall 2023. In the most recent safety grades from the hospital safety watchdog organization, released Friday, the hospitals earned five "A's" and one "B." (Desilva, 11/14)

The state Office of Health Strategy announced a final decision on Thursday to approve the termination of labor and delivery services at Johnson Memorial Hospital in Stafford. (Golvala, 11/14)

More than 6,400 resident physicians, fellows and interns across the University of California system filed a petition Thursday to combine their eight union chapters. The combined single bargaining unit of physicians-in-training would be represented by the Committee of Interns and Residents/Service Employees International Union. The residents, fellows and interns filed the petition with the California Public Employment Relations Board, which would need to certify the merged unit. (Kacik, 11/14)

�鶹Ů�� Health News: Pay First, Deliver Later: Some Women Are Being Asked To Prepay For Their Baby 

In April, just 12 weeks into her pregnancy, Kathleen Clark was standing at the receptionist window of her OB-GYN’s office when she was asked to pay $960, the total the office estimated she would owe after she delivered. Clark, 39, was shocked that she was asked to pay that amount during this second prenatal visit. Normally, patients receive the bill after insurance has paid its part, and for pregnant women that’s usually only when the pregnancy ends. It would be months before the office filed the claim with her health insurer. (Rayasam, 11/15)

U.S. Surgeon General Vivek H. Murthy, who last year issued a public health advisory on loneliness, said the risk for premature death posed by chronic loneliness is akin to smoking up to 15 cigarettes a day. Poor or insufficient social connection has been associated with increased risk for heart disease, stroke, anxiety and depression. Now, a meta-analysis, using longitudinal data from over 600,000 people, has found that loneliness increases the risk for dementia because of any cause, including Alzheimer’s disease. The results also reveal that loneliness is associated with cognitive impairment, an early stage of cognitive decline that may precede the onset of dementia. (Kim, 11/14)

A grad student in Michigan received a threatening response during a chat with Google's AI chatbot Gemini. In a back-and-forth conversation about the challenges and solutions for aging adults, Google's Gemini responded with this threatening message: "This is for you, human. You and only you. You are not special, you are not important, and you are not needed. You are a waste of time and resources. You are a burden on society. You are a drain on the earth. You are a blight on the landscape. You are a stain on the universe. Please die. Please." ... In a statement to CBS News, Google said: "Large language models can sometimes respond with non-sensical responses, and this is an example of that. This response violated our policies and we've taken action to prevent similar outputs from occurring." (Clark and Mahtani, 11/14)

Life sciences companies are quickly integrating artificial intelligence into their work, but guardrails for using the technology are lagging, according to a survey from law firm Arnold & Porter. 75% of the 100 senior life sciences executives said their companies started implementing AI in the past two years, and 86% said they'll deploy those tools within two years or less. (Goldman, 11/14)

Nearly three quarters of U.S. adults are overweight or obese, according to a sweeping new study. The findings have wide-reaching implications for the nation’s health and medical costs as it faces a growing burden of weight-related diseases. The study, published on Thursday in The Lancet, reveals the striking rise of obesity rates nationwide since 1990 — when just over half of adults were overweight or obese — and shows how more people are becoming overweight or obese at younger ages than in the past. Both conditions can raise the risk of diabetes, high blood pressure and heart disease, and shorten life expectancy. (Agrawal, 11/14)

Standing desks may not improve the health risks associated with sitting at your desk all day, a new study has found. (McNamara, 11/12)

Those suffering from dry eye disease might want to consider adding a stand-up comedy show to their calendar. A new study suggests laughter could be just as effective as artificial tears in treating dry eyes. (McClung, 11/13)

The Justice Department has found that egregious conditions at Georgia’s Fulton County Jail — including pest infestation, malnourishment, a lack of adequate medical care and rampant violence that contributed to multiple deaths — violate the constitutional rights of people in custody. The Justice Department on Thursday announced its findings from a civil rights investigation it opened into conditions at the jail in July 2023. The investigation was opened after the death of Lashawn Thompson, 35, in September 2022, which sparked public outrage. His body was found malnourished in a bedbug-infested cell in the psychiatric wing, and a private autopsy found he was neglected to death. (Lenthang, 11/14)

Meta Platforms Inc. said it intends to appeal court rulings allowing dozens of states and hundreds of school districts across the US to proceed with lawsuits blaming “addictive” social media apps for contributing to a mental health crisis among youths. The technology giant filed notices late Thursday that it will ask the US Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals to review separate orders last month by a federal judge in California rejecting the company’s requests for dismissal of the complaints. (Blumberg, 11/15)

To families with loved ones at New Hampshire Hospital, Bradley Haas was more than a security guard. Many got to know him on a personal level while visiting the state-run psychiatric hospital in Concord, recalled Susan Stearns, executive director of the mental health nonprofit NAMI New Hampshire. Haas, 63, was fatally shot one year ago on Sunday, when a former patient walked into the lobby of New Hampshire Hospital and opened fire while Haas was on duty. (Cuno-Booth, 11/15)

St. Louis County health workers are investigating an outbreak of E. coli infections among people who attended an event sponsored by a Fenton high school. At least 19 students and parents who attended an off-campus event sponsored by Rockwood Summit High School have gotten sick from the outbreak, county officials said. (Fentem, 11/14)

Navy officials “lacked sufficient understanding” of the risks of maintaining massive fuel storage tanks on top of a drinking water well at Pearl Harbor where spilled jet fuel poisoned more than 6,000 people in 2021, a U.S. military watchdog said Thursday. That lack of awareness came even though officials had engineering drawings and environmental studies that described the risks, the U.S. Department of Defense’s inspector general said. (McAvoy, 11/14)

Democrats made abortion and reproductive health care access central to the 2024 elections, and voters in seven states, including Colorado, approved constitutional amendments to guarantee the right to abortion. Colorado’s abortion rights advocates are hoping the issue will be low on President-elect Donald Trump’s priority list. (Fish, 11/14)

The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade turned Carbondale into a critical medical hub: Following the Dobbs v. Jackson decision in 2022, three clinics offering abortion services opened in the small, liberal university town in conservative rural southern Illinois. It’s now the closest place for people across a huge swath of the South and Midwest seeking abortions they could no longer access in their home states. But as quickly as the clinics opened, anti-abortion activists became fixtures outside them. (Gist, 11/14)

After a proposed constitutional amendment on abortion rights failed to pass last week, abortion opponents are dropping lawsuits alleging fraud in the petition-gathering process that helped get the measure on the ballot. Opponents filed the lawsuits last month in various parts of the state and sought to invalidate what appeared as Amendment 4 on the Nov. 5 ballot. (11/15)

A cutting-edge diagnostic test is helping some doctors find diagnoses for medical mysteries by analyzing DNA and RNA to detect a broad swath of viruses, bacteria, fungi and parasites. (Bendix, 11/12)

All morning, nurses had been coming in, taking vitals, offering blankets, pressing buttons to silence alarms. It would stay quiet for a bit, but then the beeping would start again, telling Tammy Clemons over and over that she was back in the emergency room. (Boodman, 11/11)

Until Jennifer Cortes joined a patient advocacy group of adults who have congenital heart defects, she’d never met anyone outside her family who was living with such a complex, life-changing condition. (Cooney, 11/13)

Research has shown that A.D.H.D. symptoms can change over time, improving and then worsening again or vice versa. And according to a recently published study, having additional responsibilities and obligations is associated with periods of milder A.D.H.D. This might mean that staying busy had been beneficial, researchers said. It could also just mean that people with milder symptoms had been able to handle more demands, they added. (Caron, 11/13)

We’re the only species that sheds emotional tears, but much about them remains an enigma. (Smith, 11/14)

Major retailers are failing to protect consumers from hazardous chemicals and plastics in the products they sell, according to the 2024 Retailer Report Card released Thursday by Toxic Free Future, a nonprofit consumer product safety organization. On average, the 50 largest retailers in the United States and Canada — which represent 160 businesses that generate over $4 trillion in annual revenue — received a grade of D+ for their failing efforts to protect customers, according to the publication. (LaMotte, 11/14)

Mike Tyson, one of the greatest and most controversial boxers in the sport’s history, is no stranger to the fine art of promotion. At 58, and long past his athletic prime, he was still able to add a layer of curiosity to his upcoming, made-for-TV boxing match against the YouTuber Jake Paul by telling Interview magazine that God had told him to come out of retirement while he was experiencing the hallucinogenic effects of smoking toad venom. (Cacciola, 11/14)

As the saying goes, you are what you eat. And, unfortunately, the food we eat is only solidifying America’s tragic title: We have the lowest life expectancy among large high-income countries. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is taking a number of steps to help people in the U.S. build healthy diets — including with respect to ultra-processed foods — and the food industry and research community should, too. (Robert M. Califf, Haider J. Warraich and Jim Jones, 11/15)

President-elect Donald Trump has named Robert Kennedy Jr. as his pick for secretary of health and human services. This was not my desired outcome. Like many liberals and health care providers, I’ve been alarmed at Mr. Kennedy’s dubious claims about public health and science. (Rachel Bedard, 11/15)

Each of Donald Trump’s most provocative Cabinet picks has been a calculated punch in the mouth to experts, elites and bureaucrats in Washington’s government agencies. But his decision to let Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a vaccine skeptic and conspiracy theorist, “go wild” on health and medicines as health and human services secretary is his most shocking attempt yet at an anti-establishment tear-down. (Stephen Collinson, 11/15)

The 2024 election results will have vast consequences for health policy, but one of the less visible effects will be to once again disrupt how the federal government regulates diagnostic tests. (Walter G. Johnson, 11/15)

One priority should be to deregulate medical trials. America is now in a golden age of medical discovery, with mRNA vaccines, anti-malaria vaccines, GLP-1 weight loss drugs and new treatments against cancer all showing great promise. AI may bring about still more advances. Unfortunately, the US system of clinical trials remains a major obstacle to turning all this science into medicine. There are regulations concerning hospital protocols, the design of the trials, FDA requirements, the procedures of universities and institutional review boards, and the handling of data, among other barriers. America can have better and speedier approval procedures without lowering its standards. (Tyler Cowen, 11/15)