Well’s new Ask the Therapist columnist, Lori Gottlieb, helps a reader who is sick of being her mother’s dumping ground.My mother is hypercritical of my brother’s wife, to the point that she blames my sister-in-law for my brother’s “failings” (not getting a better job, not taking better care of his health, etc.). It has gotten worse now that there are grandchildren. My mother constantly criticizes how my sister-in-law is raising the kids, who are lovely and adore their grandparents.Although my mother will occasionally raise criticisms with my sister-in-law and brother, I am mostly her audience.I have a great relationship with my sister-in-law, and when my mother goes off on one of her rants, I defend her. I tell my mother how lucky she is to have such wonderful grandchildren, and point out that my brother is an adult who makes his own decisions. This just leads to an argument between my mother and me.When I finally told my mother how much it hurts me to hear her say these things about my sister-in-law, she said that she needed to air her frustrations with someone. I want to be there for my mother, but I don’t like being put in this position. How do I navigate this?From the Therapist: The short answer to your question is that you can navigate this by no longer engaging in these conversations. But I imagine you already know this. What you might be less aware of is that you aren’t being “put in this position” of supportive daughter, protective sister-in-law and unwilling confidante. You’ve chosen it, and it’s worth examining why you’ve signed up for a job you don’t want — and what makes it hard to resign.Usually when we find ourselves repeatedly engaging in uncomfortable family patterns, it’s because they echo familiar roles from our childhood. It sounds as if you’re struggling with enmeshment, a relationship pattern in which boundaries between family members become blurred or are nonexistent.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.

A law that coaxed companies to lower the price of drugs came with a little-known consequence: smaller discounts for low-income health clinics.Maricruz Salgado was bringing her diabetes under control. Thanks to a federal program that allowed health clinics that serve poor people to buy drugs at steeply discounted prices, she was able to pay less than $75 for all five of her diabetes medications every three months.But in July, the cost of three of those drugs soared. Ms. Salgado, who does not have health insurance, suddenly faced costs of hundreds of dollars per month. She could not afford it.Her doctor switched her to cheaper medicines. Within days of taking one of them, she experienced dizzy spells so severe that she said could barely keep up with her hectic daily schedule as a phlebotomist and an in-home caregiver. By the time she returned to the doctor in September, her blood sugar levels had ticked up.“We were in a good place,” said Dr. Wesley Gibbert, who treats Ms. Salgado at Erie Family Health Centers, a network of clinics in Chicago that serves patients regardless of their ability to pay. “And then all the medicines had to change.”The price hikes at the clinic happened for a reason that is symptomatic of the tangled web of federal policies that regulate drug pricing. In 2024, drug makers lowered the sticker price of dozens of common medications, which allowed them to avoid massive penalties imposed by the American Rescue Plan, the Covid relief package passed three years earlier. But that change backfired for low-income people like Ms. Salgado.The decision to make these medications more affordable for large swaths of patients has quietly created another problem: a severe financial hit to the clinics that are tasked by the federal government with caring for the country’s poorest people. These nonprofit clinics operate in every state and serve nearly 32.5 million people, or about 10 percent of the country’s population.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.

Tanzania has dismissed a World Health Organisation (WHO) report of a suspected new outbreak of the Ebola-like Marburg virus in the north-west of the country.

By day, he helped run an autism center he opened in a suburb of Paris. In the evening, he delighted audiences as a clown named Buffo. In between, he wrote novels.Howard Buten, a college dropout from Detroit, juggled three extraordinary lives.In one, he was a tender, clumsy and wordless red-nosed clown named Buffo. He sold out theaters around the world. Critics compared him to Charlie Chaplin and Harpo Marx.In another, he volunteered as an aide with autistic children, went back to school to earn a doctorate in psychology, helped pioneer a therapy for autism and opened a treatment center.He squeezed in a third life as a novelist. “Burt,” written in the voice of a disturbed 8-year-old boy, flopped in the United States but implausibly achieved “Catcher in the Rye” status in France, where it sold nearly a million copies and he became — to his amusement and slight chagrin — a cultural sensation.“Howard Buten is a kind of walking poem,” the French writer and actor Claude Duneton wrote in his introduction to Mr. Buten’s autobiography, “Buffo” (2005). “Images emanate from him, producing a slow music, a concentric adagio like ripples on water.”Mr. Buten died on Jan. 3 at an assisted living facility near his home in Plomodiern, France, a town in coastal Brittany. He was 74.His partner and only immediate survivor, Jacqueline Huet, said the cause was a neurodegenerative disorder.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.

Getty ImagesPatients are dying in corridors and pregnant women are miscarrying in side rooms as overwhelmed hospitals struggle to cope, nurses say.

Getty ImagesCovid vaccines saved lives. Lots of them. Research by the World Health Organization (WHO) now puts the number at 475,000 in the UK with many more kept out of hospital or off a ventilator.

Family handoutFamilies of those harmed by Covid vaccines told the UK Covid Inquiry they were forced to support each other during the pandemic because there was no other help.

Vivek Ramaswamy is the less famous and less wealthy half of the duo of billionaires that President-elect Donald J. Trump has designated to slash government costs.His better-known co-leader, Elon Musk, stands to benefit from the job in ways that are numerous and glaring. Mr. Musk’s companies have tremendous influence, billions of dollars in government contracts and ongoing battles with federal regulators.Less attention has been paid to the potential conflicts that could stem from Mr. Ramaswamy’s complex web of financial interests, which span biotechnology, finance and other holdings.At 39, he is one of the world’s youngest billionaires, having made his fortune in the pharmaceutical industry. As he reaches into the federal bureaucracy that shapes the fortunes of American companies, he could recommend spending cuts that ultimately make him and his investors richer. Mr. Ramaswamy, who owns a stake currently valued at nearly $600 million in a biotechnology company he started, has called for changes at the Food and Drug Administration that would speed up drug approvals. He could help shape energy policy to promote fossil fuels, making it more attractive for investors to put their money into an oil-and-gas fund, provocatively called DRLL, offered by his investment firm. And if he were to boost officials who embrace cryptocurrency, it may benefit his firm’s new Bitcoin business.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.

Consumer and food safety groups have long urged the agency to revoke the use of this dye and others. The F.D.A. says there still is no evidence it is a human carcinogenic.The Food and Drug Administration on Wednesday banned the use of Red Dye No. 3 in food, beverages and drugs, more than three decades after the synthetic coloring was first found to cause cancer in male laboratory rats.The dye, a petroleum-based additive, has been used to give candy, soda and other products their vibrant cherry red hue. Consumer advocates said the F.D.A.’s decision to revoke the authorization was long overdue, given the agency’s decision in 1990 to ban the chemical for use in cosmetics and topical drugs.Under federal rules, the F.D.A. is prohibited from approving food additives that cause cancer in humans or animals.“This is wonderful news and long overdue,” said Melanie Benesh, vice president for government affairs at the Environmental Working Group, one of several organizations that petitioned the agency to take action on the additive. “Red Dye 3 is the lowest of the low-hanging fruit when it comes to toxic food dyes that the F.D.A. should be addressing.”Beginning in 2027, companies would have to start removing the dye from their products. Imported foods would also have to lose the additive to be sold in the United States.Although the dye is still used in hundreds of products, many companies have been switching to other food colorings, a move that accelerated after California in 2023 became the first state to ban Red 3 along with three other food additives that have been linked to disease. The dye has also been linked to health concerns for children.In announcing the ban, the agency downplayed the risks to humans, saying that researchers had not found similar cancer risks in studies involving animals other than male rats. Claims that the use of Red Dye No. 3 “in food and in ingested drugs puts people at risk are not supported by the available scientific information,” Jim Jones, the F.D.A.’s deputy commissioner for human foods, said in a statement.Sarah Gallo, senior vice president of product policy and federal affairs for the Consumer Brands Association, a trade group, said food and beverage companies would comply with the agency’s decision. “Revoking the authorized use of Red No. 3 is an example of the F.D.A. using its risk and science-based authority to review the safety of products in the marketplace,” she said.First approved for use in food in 1907, Red Dye No. 3 was banned in cosmetics in 1990 by U.S. regulators. At the time, the F.D.A. cited an industry-conducted study that found that the chemical caused thyroid cancer in male rats but estimated that it might cause cancer in fewer than one in 100,000 people. Along with prohibiting the dye in cosmetics, the agency pledged to do the same with food.Artificial dyes and food additives have been a primary target for Robert F. Kennedy Jr., President-elect Donald J. Trump’s pick for health secretary whose confirmation hearings before the Senate are set to begin soon.

In the final days of the Biden administration, the F.D.A. is moving ahead with a proposal to require companies to produce a less addictive product for traditional smokers.The Biden administration unveiled a proposal on Wednesday to cut the level of nicotine in cigarettes, a last-minute push on a plan that could meaningfully cut cancer rates nationwide and extend the lives of millions of cigarette smokers.If finalized, the proposal would require cigarette makers to significantly reduce the levels of nicotine in their products in an effort to make smoking less addictive and less satisfying. Research has suggested that the move would result in fewer people taking up the habit and would help the nation’s roughly 30 million smokers quit or switch to less harmful alternatives like e-cigarettes.The policy is a centerpiece of antismoking initiatives by Dr. Robert Califf, commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, who has recounted treating cardiology patients ravaged by smoking during his medical career. “It’s the biggest thing I’ve ever seen in terms of societal benefit, cost saving and lives saved, and strokes prevented and cancers prevented,” Dr. Califf said.The policy’s companion effort to ban menthol cigarettes has been set aside indefinitely after vehement opposition from cigarette makers and other opponents, including convenience store retailers.Whether the nicotine reduction plan would survive the incoming administration of President-elect Donald J. Trump is unclear. Mr. Trump has traditionally been industry friendly and opposed to heavily regulating businesses. In addition, he has had the support of tobacco companies, including Reynolds American, which contributed at least $8 million to Mr. Trump’s main super PAC during the presidential campaign. Reynolds has already expressed its opposition to the proposed requirement.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.