Elevating Mr. Kennedy to secretary of H.H.S. “would put the public’s health in jeopardy,” more than 75 laureates wrote.More than 75 Nobel Prize winners have signed a letter urging senators not to confirm Robert F. Kennedy Jr., President-elect Donald J. Trump’s pick to lead the Department of Health and Human Services.The letter, obtained by The New York Times, marks the first time in recent memory that Nobel laureates have banded together against a Cabinet choice, according to Richard Roberts, winner of the 1993 Nobel in Physiology or Medicine, who helped draft the letter. The group tries to stay out of politics whenever possible, he said.But the confirmation of Mr. Kennedy, a staunch critic of mainstream medicine who has been hostile to the scientists and agencies he would oversee, is a threat that the Nobel laureates could not ignore, Dr. Roberts said.“These political attacks on science are very damaging,” he said. “You have to stand up and protect it.”The laureates questioned whether Mr. Kennedy, who they said has “a lack of credentials” in medicine, science or administration, was fit to lead the department responsible for protecting public health and funding biomedical research.“Placing Mr. Kennedy in charge of DHHS would put the public’s health in jeopardy and undermine America’s global leadership in the health sciences,” the letter warned.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe.

It’s not the just the elderly. More than three-quarters of heat-related deaths in Mexico occurred among people younger than 35, researchers reported.As climate change pushes global temperatures higher, attention has focused predominantly on the threat that heat poses to older adults, whose physiology makes them more susceptible to health complications.But a study published on Friday in the journal Science Advances found that certain types of young people — including seemingly hardy working-age adults — may also be particularly vulnerable to rising temperatures.The researchers analyzed deaths in Mexico from 1998 to 2019 and discovered that people younger than 35 accounted for three-fourths of heat-related fatalities.“These age groups are also quite vulnerable to heat in ways that we don’t expect even at temperatures that we don’t think of as particularly warm,” said Andrew Wilson, a first author of the paper and an environmental social scientist at Stanford University.Measuring heat-related deaths is complicated, since death certificates rarely name heat as a cause. A proximate cause of death, like cardiovascular failure, is often listed instead.To get around this, Dr. Wilson and his colleagues used a common statistical approach to estimate how daily mortality rates across Mexico change in response to fluctuations in the “wet bulb” temperature, a measurement that uses humidity and air temperature to capture how well humans can cool their bodies through sweating.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe.

Federal health agencies closed their investigations into the bacterial outbreak that sickened 104 people and was linked to onions on the fast-food chain’s signature Quarter Pounders.Health officials have closed their investigations into an E. coli outbreak linked to raw onions on McDonald’s Quarter Pounder hamburgers that sickened more than a hundred people, the Food and Drug Administration announced Tuesday.In total, 104 people from 14 states were sickened from the contaminated food and 34 were hospitalized. One older person in Colorado died.Officials said there did not appear to be a “continued food safety concern,” because McDonald’s had not served slivered onions — which investigators determined to be the “likely source of contamination”— on the Quarter Pounders for more than a month. The onions were recalled. And in many states, Quarter Pounders were removed from the menu altogether for several weeks.There have not been any new illnesses since McDonald’s decided to remove the onions from its menu on Oct. 22, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.Evidence linking the onions to the food-borne illnesses was limited. According to the F.D.A., one sample from the recalled onions supplied by Taylor Farms, a large vegetable and fruit grower, and an environmental sample from an onion grower in Washington State tested positive for E. coli. But those samples did not match the bacterial strain found in those customers who became ill, the agency said.Still, the F.D.A. investigation determined that the yellow onions were the likely source of the outbreak based on interviews with those who were sickened and from information provided by the distributors of the product. Of the people who recalled what they ate, roughly 84 percent had a menu item with slivered onions.McDonald’s identified Taylor Farms as its onion supplier in the Mountain West, and added that it would indefinitely discontinue the use of Taylor Farms onions from its Colorado Springs facility.“The process to reach this point has at times felt long, challenging and uncertain,” Michael Gonda, McDonald’s North America chief impact officer, and Cesar Piña, the chief supply chain officer, said in a statement. “But it is critical that public officials examine every possible angle, and we are deeply grateful that they moved quickly to identify and, in partnership with McDonald’s, contain the issue.”Illnesses related to the outbreak were first reported in late October, prompting McDonald’s to recall its Quarter Pounder hamburgers in 10 states. Other fast-food chains including Taco Bell, KFC, Pizza Hut and Burger King also stopped offering onions in their menu items as a precautionary measure.McDonald’s is now facing lawsuits from several customers claiming to have fallen ill from the outbreak. Spokesmen said the company was “laser-focused” on regaining its customers’ trust.

Cassava Sciences said that its drug did not significantly reduce cognitive decline in 1,900 people with mild to moderate Alzheimer’s disease.Cassava Sciences, a small biotechnology company based in Austin, Texas, announced it would stop the advanced clinical trial for an experimental Alzheimer’s drug, ending a long-contested bid for regulatory approval.The company announced on Monday that the drug, simufilam, did not significantly reduce cognitive decline in people with mild to moderate Alzheimer’s disease in the trial, which enrolled more than 1,900 patients.“The results are disappointing for patients and their families who are living with this disease and physicians who have been looking for novel treatment options,” the company’s chief executive, Richard J. Barry, said in a statement.These results were unsurprising to many dementia researchers, who had questioned why the trial had been allowed to proceed in the first place, since much of the drug’s underlying science had been called into question.Studies that once seemed to support the drug have been retracted from scientific journals. A consultant researcher who helped conduct some of the drug’s foundational studies was charged with fraud by a federal grand jury for allegedly falsifying data to obtain research grants.In September, the company settled with the Securities and Exchange Commission over allegations that Cassava had made misleading statements about the results of earlier clinical trial data. However, the company neither admitted nor denied wrongdoing.Even so, the company forged ahead with its Phase 3 clinical trial — typically the last evaluation before the Food and Drug Administration decides whether to approve a medication for public use — and maintained that there was still research and clinical results that suggested the drug could prove valuable.Hopes in the drug’s efficacy were dashed by Monday’s results, though the company said the trial still showed the drug was safe.Cassava’s future now appears to be in flux, as simufilam was the company’s only drug in clinical trials.Following the company’s investor call Monday morning, Cassava’s stock price dropped more than 80 percent, a blow to the company’s loyal investors, who once valued the company at more than $5 billion.

A sharp partisan divide remains over how involved researchers should be in policy decisions.For the first time since the start of the coronavirus pandemic, the public’s trust in scientists has improved, according to a survey published Thursday by the Pew Research Center.About 76 percent of Americans say they have confidence that scientists act in the public’s best interest, a modest but significant improvement from last year but about 10 points lower than the figure before the pandemic.This year’s uptick was driven largely by a slight increase in trust among Republicans, a group that also experienced the steepest drop in confidence during the pandemic, said Alec Tyson, a Pew researcher and the report’s lead author.Still, the roughly 9,500 Americans surveyed were divided over whether scientists should play a role in policy decisions — a particularly timely issue now, as President-elect Donald J. Trump prepares to appoint leaders of the country’s science and health agencies.About half of the survey respondents said experts should take “an active role” in policy debates about scientific issues, like childhood vaccines and climate change, while the other half said they should focus instead on “establishing sound scientific facts.”Respondents were largely split along partisan lines: 67 percent of Democrats believed scientists should be involved in policy debates, compared with just 35 percent of Republicans.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe.

Dozens of rhesus macaques escaped a research facility in South Carolina. They’re still on the lam.A caretaker entered an enclosure at a research center in South Carolina on Wednesday, cleaning the space and feeding the 50 rhesus monkeys inside. But on leaving, she failed to latch the double doors behind her.Forty-three monkeys saw a rare chance at freedom and took it, racing out of the enclosure.“It’s kind of like follow-the-leader — one goes out and there’s, like, a mad dash,” said Greg Westergaard, the chief executive of Alpha Genesis, which runs the research center.Now officials in the surrounding town of Yemassee, roughly 60 miles west of Charleston, are urging residents to close their doors and windows, and to avoid interacting with the animals.Gregory Alexander, the town’s chief of police, said the monkeys were not likely to be aggressive toward humans — they are “very young females” who each weigh less than 10 pounds. The group is also too young to undergo clinical testing at the research center, so they don’t pose any infectious disease threat to humans, Mr. Westergaard said.Officials have laid out traps with fresh fruit and vegetables, which are typically effective since the domesticated animals struggle to find food in the wild, Mr. Alexander said.Mr. Westergaard said a group of escapees was discovered on Thursday at the very edge of the research center’s property, but workers have not been able to capture them.For the most part, nearby residents have been unfazed by the loose monkeys, said David Paul Murray, a town council member. This is not the first time animals have escaped the Alpha Genesis Primate Research Center, which sits on about 100 acres and houses about 7,000 monkeys for scientific research.But this is the largest group to break out in recent history. It has happened often enough, Mr. Murray said, that it has become a comical part of the town’s lore — some locals will even set food outside for the monkeys.“We’re not strangers to seeing monkeys randomly,” he said. “It’s something you don’t really think about until one runs across the road and you’re like, wait, what?”(Mr. Westergaard quibbled with that characterization, noting that many townspeople who believe they have seen a monkey have in fact seen a squirrel.)In 2014, 26 macaques escaped their enclosure and were recaptured within two days. A week later, a primate escaped while being moved to the medical clinic and “disappeared into the woods,” according to documents from federal regulators.The next year, two macaques broke out of their outdoor chain-link enclosure — one was lured back inside, and the other died shortly after its recapture.Nineteen monkeys scaled the 12-foot walls of their enclosure in 2016, using a protruding wall as a foothold, according to The State newspaper.The Department of Agriculture fined the company more than $12,000 in 2017 in part because of failures to contain the animals.

The company said it would put Quarter Pounders back on the menu, without the raw onions that were considered the likely source of the bacteria.McDonald’s announced on Sunday that tests in Colorado had ruled out its Quarter Pounder beef patties as the source of a deadly E. coli outbreak, and said that the popular burger would be back on the menu at hundreds of locations in a dozen states.But the company said Quarter Pounders would not be topped with raw slivered onions — which federal regulators have identified as the likely culprit in the outbreak that health officials said had sickened 75 people and caused the death of one Colorado resident.In a statement, McDonald’s cited tests conducted in Colorado, the state that had the most cases reported in the outbreak. On its website, the state’s Agriculture Department said that tests were done on “dozens of subsamples from all the lots and all samples were found to be negative for E. coli.”Colorado health officials tested beef samples from the two beef suppliers that provided patties to the 900 affected locations in a dozen states, McDonald’s spokesmen said.The company said it was not aware of any other state health agency that was still testing the beef patties for E. coli.As for the slivered onions, McDonald’s said on Friday it would stop buying onions from the Colorado Springs site of its major regional supplier Taylor Farms, a multistate producer of vegetables and fruits. Last week, Taylor Farms recalled several yellow onion products — among them diced and slivered — because of “potential E. coli contamination.”Several other fast-food chains, including Taco Bell, KFC, Pizza Hut and Burger King, have stopped offering onions in their menu items as a precautionary measure in the region.U.S. health officials said they believed that the recall of onions from the region’s food supply chain would lower the risk to consumers.Among the 75 people who became ill, at least a quarter were hospitalized, according to the most recent data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Two developed a serious kidney condition associated with E. coli, the agency said. The illnesses were reported between Sept. 27 and Oct. 10.A McDonald’s spokesman said that the number may rise, as federal regulators process case information, but said that they were “very confident” that they had removed the source of contamination from the supply chain.Since the C.D.C. first announced the outbreak on Tuesday, McDonald’s shares have fallen roughly 7 percent.

Health officials say that recalls of onions — the suspected source of the contamination — would help lessen the risk to consumers. Other major fast-food chains have also stopped offering onions.The number of people hospitalized from the E. coli outbreak linked to raw onions on McDonald’s Quarter Pounder hamburgers has more than doubled, and those reporting they have been sickened rose to 75, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported on Friday.Illnesses of people ranging in age from 13 to 88 were reported in 13 states. Additionally, the C.D.C. said a second person had developed the life-threatening condition associated with E. coli called hemolytic uremic syndrome.While cases had been originally clustered in the Mountain West, updated data from the C.D.C. now shows cases in Michigan, Washington and Oregon. It is still unclear whether those people ate at McDonald’s in their home states or stopped at one of the restaurants while traveling.One older person in Colorado has died in the outbreak. The C.D.C. said the most recent illness occurred on Oct. 10, although the agency said more cases could be reported because it can take three to four weeks to determine whether an illness is part of the outbreak.Federal health officials said they hoped the risk to consumers would now be lower because onions have been recalled in many of those states, and many other fast-food chains including Taco Bell, KFC, Pizza Hut and Burger King also decided to stop offering onions in their menu items as a precautionary measure.News of the outbreak broke this week when the C.D.C. issued a food safety alert, as McDonald’s pulled its Quarter Pounders from locations in 10 states.The fast-food chain and the Food and Drug Administration have said preliminary investigations indicated that the raw, slivered onions served mainly atop the popular quarter-pound beef patties were a “likely source of contamination.” McDonald’s has also stopped providing fresh onions on its other burger items in the region.McDonald’s identified Taylor Farms as its onion supplier in the Mountain West and that company has since recalled several yellow onion products — slivered, diced and whole — because of “potential E. coli contamination.”Taylor Farms, a major fruit and vegetable supplier, did not respond to repeated requests for comment.Other restaurants that were customers and received the recalled onions have been notified and asked to remove the vegetables, the C.D.C. said.McDonald’s has halted sales of Quarter Pounders at restaurants in Colorado, Kansas, Utah, Wyoming, Idaho, Iowa, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Mexico and Oklahoma. Other hamburger items are not affected by the outbreak, the company emphasized.Regulators are still investigating whether the ground beef in the Quarter Pounder patties could have been a source of the bacteria.One lawsuit has already been filed by a resident who became sick after eating at a McDonald’s in Colorado, according to the law firm Ron Simon and Associates. That state has the higher number of cases, 26, the C.D.C. said, with Montana at 13 and Nebraska 11.

Officials said the onions served atop the popular hamburger were the likely source of an E. coli outbreak that has killed one person and sickened many others.One day after a multistate E. Coli outbreak linked to McDonald’s Quarter Pounder hamburgers was publicized, a major supplier of onions in that region has issued a recall.Though federal regulators have not confirmed the source of the outbreak, which has so far killed one person and sickened 49, initial investigations have suggested that the fresh slivered onions served mainly atop the Quarter Pounder were a “likely source of contamination.”Taylor Farms, the sole supplier of those onions to the affected McDonald’s locations in 10 states, issued a recall Wednesday of several yellow onion products because of “potential E. coli contamination,” according to a notice from U.S. Foods, which distributes the products to many restaurants.The notice instructed restaurants to immediately stop serving the specified onions — diced, peeled and whole — and destroy them.The items were voluntarily recalled by Taylor Farms Colorado out of an “abundance of caution,” a spokeswoman for U.S. Foods said in an email. Taylor Farms did not immediately respond to requests for comment.McDonald’s and the Food and Drug Administration said preliminary reviews linked the outbreak to those slivered onions, but health officials and McDonald’s said they had not ruled out possible contamination of the quarter-pound beef patties used for the popular menu item. The Department of Agriculture and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are also investigating the source of the contamination.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe.

The C.D.C. said that nearly 50 people had become ill and one person had died from the deadly bacteria, which the agency tied to an ingredient in one of the fast food chain’s burger items.One person has died and 49 people have become ill from an E. coli outbreak linked to McDonald’s Quarter Pounder hamburgers, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said on Tuesday.McDonald’s has now stopped selling Quarter Pounders from locations in several states, mostly in the Mountain West, the C.D.C. said, and has also discontinued the use of slivered onions in all sandwiches in those states as health investigators try to determine which ingredient may be contaminated with the deadly bacteria.The public health agency called the situation “a fast-moving outbreak investigation” in its news release.The same strain of bacteria has sickened 49 dozens of people in 10 states, although the C.D.C. said most people were from Colorado and Nebraska. One Colorado resident has died. Ten people were hospitalized, including a child who the health agency said has a complicating illness.All of those interviewed said they had eaten at McDonald’s recently, and most said they had consumed Quarter Pounders. The fast-food chain told investigators it mainly uses fresh onion slivers on that item.Food and health investigators are also trying to determine whether any contaminated beef has been sold to other retailers or grocery stores.This is a developing story.