4 hours agoSophie Hutchinson & Philippa RoxbyHealth correspondent

10 minutes ago

34 minutes agoAsha PatelBBC News, Nottingham

Health experts see his retreat from international cooperation as disrupting the safe-keepers of one of the world’s deadliest pathogens.President Trump’s order that the United States exit the World Health Organization could undo programs meant to ensure the safety, security and study of a deadly virus that once took half a billion lives, experts warn. His retreat, they add, could end decades in which the agency directed the management of smallpox virus remnants in an American-held cache.Health experts say discontinuation of the W.H.O.’s oversight threatens to damage precautions against the virus leaking into the world, and to disrupt research on countermeasures against the lethal disease. They add that it could also raise fears among allies and adversaries that the United States, under a veil of secrecy, might weaponize the smallpox virus.“I’ve been in that lab,” said Thomas R. Frieden, a former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, where the American cache resides. “Imagine a submarine inside a building and the people walking around in spacesuits. It looks like something out of a movie.” To reduce smallpox risks and misperceptions, Dr. Frieden added, “we need to open ourselves up to inspection.”On Monday, Daniel R. Lucey, a Dartmouth medical professor, posted an article on the blog of the Infectious Diseases Society of America warning that Mr. Trump’s W.H.O. exit could imperil “smallpox virus storage, experiments, reporting and inspections.”A half century ago, the W.H.O. purged the smallpox virus from human populations after the scourge had killed people for thousands of years. Dr. Frieden called it “one of the greatest accomplishments not just of medical science but global collaboration.”While the germ was eradicated in people, two repositories were preserved to allow study of the virus should it re-emerge: one in Atlanta, the other in Russia. To curb leaks, both caches are stored in special labs classified as Biosafety Level 4, the highest tier of protection.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.

3 hours agoGemma DunstanBBC News

A federal judge ordered the Trump administration to hold off on a plan that would cut $4 billion in federal funding for research at the nation’s universities, cancer centers and hospitals.The funds disbursed by the National Institutes of Health cover the administrative and overhead costs for a vast swath of biomedical research, some of which is directed at tackling diseases like cardiovascular, cancer and diabetes.The order was issued by Judge Angel Kelley for the U.S. District Court in Boston late Monday night in response to a lawsuit filed by university associations and major research centers that had argued that the “flagrantly unlawful action” by U.S. health officials “will devastate medical research at America’s universities.”The temporary restraining order by Judge Kelley, a Biden appointee, expanded on a similar order that was granted earlier Monday after nearly two dozen attorneys general sued to stop the cuts in their states.The Trump administration’s plan to cap agreed-upon payments that universities and health systems receive to support research rocked the academic medical world when it was abruptly announced Friday.Academic researchers and university officials predicted that the plan would shut down valuable studies, cost thousands of jobs and kneecap the United States in competitive efforts to achieve medical breakthroughs.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.

5 hours agoSharon BarbourHealth Correspondent, North East and Cumbria

Adam Eley & Anna CollinsonBBC News Investigations

Doctors are advising women to take care using menstrual cups, after one user developed temporary kidney problems because the cup was misaligned.

Assisted dying cases would no longer have to be signed off by the High Court under changes suggested by the bill’s supporters.