An interim U.S. attorney is demanding information about the selection of research articles and the role of N.I.H. Experts worry this will have a chilling effect on publications.A federal prosecutor has sent letters to at least three medical journals accusing them of political bias and asking a series of probing questions suggesting that the journals mislead readers, suppress opposing viewpoints and are inappropriately swayed by their funders.The letters were signed by Edward Martin Jr., a Republican activist serving as interim U.S. attorney in Washington, D.C. He has been criticized for using his office to target opponents of President Trump.Some scientists and doctors said they viewed the letters as a threat from the Trump administration that could have a chilling effect on what journals publish. The health secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., has said he wants to prosecute medical journals, accusing them of lying to the public and colluding with pharmaceutical companies.One of the letters was sent to the journal Chest, published by the American College of Chest Physicians. The New York Times obtained a copy of the letter.The Times confirmed that at least two other publishers had received nearly identically worded letters, but those publishers would not speak publicly because they feared retribution from the Trump administration.In the letter to Chest, dated Monday, Mr. Martin wrote, “It has been brought to my attention that more and more journals and publications like CHEST Journal are conceding that they are partisans in various scientific debates.”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.

Government websites that once provided basic information about the virus now redirect to a page citing a number of misleading or heavily contested claims.The Trump administration has replaced the government’s main portal for information about Covid with a website arguing that the virus leaked from a lab, throwing its weight behind a theory of the virus’s origins that is so far not backed by direct evidence and that many scientists consider less likely than the idea that it emerged at a wild-animal market.Covid.gov and Covidtests.gov, government websites that used to deliver information about Covid and allow people to order tests, now redirect to the lab leak web page. Carrying an image of President Trump flanked by the words “Lab Leak,” the new page is illustrated by a satellite image of Wuhan, China, the city where Covid began spreading, and says it will describe “the true origins of Covid-19.”The website notes that the city is home to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, a coronavirus lab that had been involved with research projects that some scientists considered dangerous. It also alludes to concerns that the lab had conducted its work under improper safety conditions. C.I.A. officials cited those same concerns when the agency recently shifted its position to favor a lab leak.But the page sidesteps holes in that theory — a number of large Chinese cities, for example, have labs that reported studying viruses like those the Wuhan institute worked on — and does not address the considerable evidence from early cases and viral genomes that the virus instead spilled from animals into humans at an illegal wild-animal market. It also cites a number of misleading or heavily contested claims.The purging of old Covid websites reflects a broader practice by the Trump administration of scrapping health websites that do not align with its views, including ones related to climate change and L.G.B.T.Q. people. (Some of those pages were later restored.)And it has turned what used to be the government’s main portals for disseminating reliable information about the virus into a vehicle for attacking the administration’s political enemies, including Dr. Anthony Fauci, who led a federal research institute that awarded funding to a virus-hunting nonprofit that worked with scientists in Wuhan.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.

People in the community called the remarks dehumanizing and warned they could perpetuate harmful stigma.Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s remarks this week that autism “destroys” children have prompted outrage among many autistic people, who said they had done things Mr. Kennedy claimed were impossible, like hold a job, write a poem, play baseball and go on dates. They added that the lives of people who did need help performing daily activities were still worthy of respect.“Autism doesn’t destroy families. It’s the ableism that does,” said Tyla Grant, who was diagnosed with autism at 17. She called Mr. Kennedy’s comments “fear-mongering” and said his “rhetoric flattens our existence into this outdated stereotype.”Many parents of autistic children said they feared Mr. Kennedy’s remarks would set back efforts to destigmatize autism and connect families with support services.“How will our children survive if they are considered a tragedy?” said Kim Cristo, whose 17-year-old daughter is “essentially nonverbal” but has a fulfilling social life, loves music and does yoga and karate. “How can we make their lives meaningful if they are being dismissed as lost causes?”Mr. Kennedy made his remarks at a news conference on Wednesday discussing new data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that showed autism diagnoses among children in the United States have continued to rise. Though the increase is largely thought to be driven by broadened criteria and increased awareness, Mr. Kennedy falsely declared that autism was preventable and called the situation an epidemic.“These are kids who will never pay taxes,” he said, adding, “Many of them will never use a toilet unassisted.”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.

Eli Lilly reported promising results from a study of its experimental oral drug that could rival popular injections to treat obesity and diabetes.Encouraging clinical trial results announced on Thursday stand to open up a huge market for a convenient daily pill to treat obesity and diabetes.The experimental drug, developed by Eli Lilly and known as orforglipron, is a type of medication known as a GLP-1. Drugs in this class like Wegovy have become hugely popular because they help people lose weight.But those drugs must be given as weekly injections, which has limited their use. If orforglipron can deliver similar results in an easy-to-take pill form, as the study suggested it could, it has the potential to reach many more patients and become a major blockbuster.Here’s what to know about Eli Lilly’s pill, which still must go through a review process by the Food and Drug Administration to be approved for sale.When will the pill become available?Eli Lilly said that it planned to seek regulatory approval to market the drug for weight loss later this year, and early next year for diabetes. The F.DA. could take months and possibly longer to review the company’s trial data before making a decision.Wall Street analysts said that if all went smoothly, orforglipron could become available in the United States sometime in the second half of next year.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.

An internal memo proposes carving out $40 billion from federal health agencies while eliminating dozens of programs. Congress has ultimate appropriation authority.The Trump administration is eyeing about $40 billion in cuts to the Department of Health and Human Services’s budget next year, according to a memo obtained by The New York Times, as the White House charges ahead with plans for drastic changes to the agencies that regulate food and drugs, protect Americans from disease and research new treatments.The proposed cuts laid out in the preliminary budget memo would reduce the department’s budget from about $121 billion to about $80.4 billion. The document also proposes eliminating dozens of programs focused on various public health challenges, such as autism, teen pregnancy, lead poisoning, opioid recovery and support for rural hospitals. The memo was first reported by The Washington Post.The cuts deal with discretionary H.H.S. funding, not what the federal government is obligated by law to spend annually on insurance programs like Medicare and Medicaid, which insure nearly half of Americans.While it is not yet clear if the Trump administration will pursue all of the cuts the document outlines, it is Congress that will decide whether to enact them, as the legislature appropriates the federal government’s funding.Still, the memo reveals how President Trump and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the health secretary, might put into practice their plans to overhaul the department and refashion it as a crucible for Mr. Kennedy’s “Make America Healthy Again” movement.About a quarter of the funds that would survive the proposed cuts would be directed toward the Administration for a Healthy America, a new $20 billion effort that would oversee agencies focused on H.I.V. and AIDS, maternal and child health, environmental health, mental health and primary care.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.

Surges in Mennonite communities near the U.S. border may complicate containment efforts, experts say. As the United States struggles to contain a resurgence of measles that has swept through swaths of the Southwest, neighboring countries are responding to their own outbreaks.Canada has reported more than 730 cases this year, making this one of the worst measles outbreaks in the country since it declared the virus “eliminated” in 1998. Mexico has seen at least 360 measles cases and one death, most of them in the northern state of Chihuahua, according to Mexican health authorities.Many of the communities grappling with measles have large Mennonite populations that public health officials have linked to outbreaks. The multinational resurgence has concerned epidemiologists, who fear that simultaneous outbreaks near the U.S. border will make it more difficult to contain the virus.“It’s just a line on the map that separates them — we share air, we share space,” said Lisa Lee, an epidemiologist at Virginia Tech.Falling vaccination rates have left the United States more vulnerable to the highly contagious virus, she added. “If we don’t have a buffer or herd immunity to keep the virus out,” she said, “we will be at risk as long as any of our neighbors are at risk.”The outbreak in the Southwest shows no signs of slowing. Since late January, the virus has sickened more than 560 people in Texas, 63 people in neighboring New Mexico, and a dozen people in Oklahoma.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.

Clinical results of a GLP-1 in pill form showed safety and efficacy data similar to blockbuster injectable drugs.A daily pill may be as effective in lowering blood sugar and aiding weight loss in people with Type 2 diabetes as the popular injectable drugs Mounjaro and Ozempic, according to results of a clinical trial announced by Eli Lilly on Thursday morning.The drug, orforglipron, is a GLP-1, a class of drugs that have become blockbusters because of their weight-loss effects. But GLP-1s are expensive, must be kept refrigerated and must be injected. A pill that produces similar results has the potential to become far more widely used.“In the coming decades, 700 million people around the world will have Type 2 diabetes, and over a billion will have obesity,” said Dr. Daniel Skovronsky, Lilly’s chief scientific officer. “Injections cannot be the solution for billions of people around the world.”The results Lilly announced came from a clinical trial involving 559 people with Type 2 diabetes who took the new pill or a placebo for 40 weeks. In patients who took orforglipron, blood sugar levels fell by 1.3 to 1.6 percent, about the same amount in that time period experienced by patients taking Ozempic and Mounjaro in unrelated trials. For 65 percent of people taking the new pill, blood sugar levels dropped into the normal range.Patients on the new pill also lost weight — up to 16 pounds without reaching a plateau at the study’s end. Their weight loss was similar to that achieved in 40 weeks with Ozempic but slightly less than with Mounjaro in unrelated trials.Side effects were the same as those with the injectable obesity drugs — diarrhea, indigestion, constipation, nausea and vomiting.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 scheme to support GPs to provide care and advice to patients which avoids them joining long NHS hospital waiting lists is being expanded in England, the government says.GPs will work more closely with specialists to access expert advice quickly for patients with conditions such as irritable bowel syndrome, menopause symptoms and ear infections.Backed by £80m of funding, its ambition is to help two million people receive faster and more convenient care in their local community by the end of 2025/26.Health minister Karen Smyth said the scheme would “save time and stop masses of people having to head to hospital for unnecessary appointments”.The expanded scheme is part of the government’s plan to cut long NHS waiting lists and create extra appointments for patients.It has pledged that 92% of NHS patients will be waiting less than 18 weeks for treatment after referral to a consultant, by the end of this parliament.Between July and December 2024, the scheme diverted 660,000 treatments from hospitals and into the community, the government says.Called ‘Advice and Guidance’, the scheme links GPs and hospital specialists before patients are referred onto waiting lists, so that tests and treatments can be offered in the most convenient place.For example, patients with tinnitus and needing ear wax removal often end up being referred to specialists when they could be helped outside hospitals. And women needing advice on types of HRT could be treated in local hubs, rather than waiting to see a gynaecologist.GP practices are able to claim for each time they use the scheme to shift care from hospital to the community.Health Minister Karin Smyth said the government was “rewiring the NHS” and doing things differently.”This scheme is a perfect example of how we are saving patients time and reducing pressure on key NHS services in the process,” she said.”It will take time to reverse the damaging neglect the NHS has suffered in recent years, but our Plan for Change is starting to deliver benefits for patients, with waiting lists cut by 219,000 since July, and 1,500 new GPs in post.”National Voices, which represents health charities in England, said “real choice” must be offered to patients about what the best treatment routes are.”We must see strong communication about what the service is and what it means in practical terms for patient care,” director of policy Sharon Brennan said.The British Medical Association said in a statement: “We have seen decades of underinvestment in general practice, and this is an important small step in acknowledging the important role of the GP and supporting practices to deliver enhanced care to patients in the community.”The journey to bringing back the family doctor has only just begun. Now we must focus on the secretary of state’s promise to complete negotiation of a new GP contract within the term of this Parliament in order to safeguard family GP services for the future, and we look forward to working closely with the government to achieve that.”

The World Health Organization finally reached a compromise on a pandemic treaty after three years of talks. The United States withdrew from negotiations after President Trump took office.After three years of contentious negotiations, the member nations of the World Health Organization have agreed on a draft of a “pandemic treaty” designed to help the global community better prevent and respond to health crises.The agreement is aimed at averting the fractious, faltering response to the Covid-19 pandemic, which left many poor nations with limited access to vaccines and treatments. It would oblige wealthy nations to share key information on pathogens, and technology for interventions such as vaccines, with the rest of the world.The member states are expected to adopt the treaty, which will be legally binding, next month. The United States, which stopped participating in negotiations after President Trump announced plans to withdraw from the W.H.O., is not expected to ratify the treaty.The draft treaty is more limited in scope than the vision the W.H.O. first proposed during the throes of the Covid pandemic, but it is significant as the first major multilateral agreement in a world where the United States is no longer the unquestioned anchor.“It shows that with or without the U.S., the world can pull together for global health, and a recognition that pandemics require global solidarity,” said Nina Schwalbe, a global health consultant who has held leadership roles in U.S. and international organizations and who followed the negotiations closely. “They pushed past their red lines and they got to agreement. That’s no easy feat for 191 states. And there’s a lot in there. It’s maybe not as strong as we wanted on many issues, but there’s lots to build on.”In December 2021, the W.H.O. convened a group of negotiators to hammer out the terms of a new global agreement that it hoped would help countries respond more swiftly and effectively to future health threats.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 health secretary said he would prioritize studies into environmental causes while harshly discounting other factors scientists say are likely contributing to rising rates of the condition.In remarks laced with scientific inaccuracies, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, said on Wednesday that autism was preventable while directly contradicting researchers within his own agency on a primary driver behind rising rates of the condition in young children.Mr. Kennedy made his comments at a news conference, responding to a new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention showing that rates of autism had increased to one in 31 among 8-year-olds, continuing a long-running trend.Blaming environmental risk factors for the uptick, he accused the media and the public of succumbing to a “myth of epidemic denial” when it came to autism. He also called research into the genetic factors that scientists say play a vital role in whether a child will develop autism “a dead end.”“Genes don’t cause epidemics,” he said. “You need an environmental toxin.” Autism rates among children have increased nearly fivefold since 2000, when the C.D.C. first began collecting data on the condition’s incidence in children. The C.D.C.’s new report attributed some of the increase in autism’s prevalence to more screening for the condition. And researchers have pointed to several other factors, including greater awareness of what autism looks like, more access to services, more parents having children later in life and broader definitions of the disorder.Mr. Kennedy vowed that under his leadership, the health department would focus on looking into certain substances, like mold and food additives, and parental obesity to try to reverse rising rates of autism in children.“These are kids who, many of them, were fully functional and regressed because of some environmental exposure into autism when they’re 2 years old,” he said.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.