11 hours ago

While the agency stressed that increased screening was most likely behind much of the increase, the health secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., called it an “epidemic.”The percentage of American children estimated to have autism spectrum disorder increased in 2022, continuing a long-running trend, according to data released on Tuesday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.Among 8-year-olds, one in 31 were found to have autism in 2022, compared with 1 in 36 in 2020. That rate is nearly five times as high as the figure in 2000, when the agency first began collecting data.The health agency noted that the increase was most likely being driven by better awareness and screening, not necessarily because autism itself was becoming more common.That diverged sharply from the rhetoric of the nation’s health secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who on Tuesday said, “The autism epidemic is running rampant.”Mr. Kennedy has repeatedly tried to connect rising autism rates with vaccines, despite dozens of studies over decades that failed to establish such a link. The health secretary nonetheless has initiated a federal study that will revisit the possibility and has hired a well-known vaccine skeptic to oversee the effort.Mr. Kennedy recently announced an effort by the Department of Health and Human Services to pinpoint the “origins of the epidemic” by September, an initiative that was greeted with skepticism by many autism experts. 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.

In the first clinical trial of its kind, an A.I. chatbot eased mental health symptoms among participants. The technology may someday help solve the provider shortage.The quest to create an A.I. therapist has not been without setbacks or, as researchers at Dartmouth thoughtfully describe them, “dramatic failures.”Their first chatbot therapist wallowed in despair and expressed its own suicidal thoughts. A second model seemed to amplify all the worst tropes of psychotherapy, invariably blaming the user’s problems on her parents.Finally, the researchers came up with Therabot, an A.I. chatbot they believe could help address an intractable problem: There are too many people who need therapy for anxiety, depression and other mental health problems, and not nearly enough providers.Fewer than a third of Americans live in communities where there are enough mental health providers to meet the local demand. According to one study, most people with mental health disorders go untreated or receive inadequate treatment.So the team at Dartmouth College embarked on the first clinical trial of a generative A.I. therapist. The results, published in the New England Journal of Medicine-AI, were encouraging.Chatting with Therabot, the team’s A.I. therapist, for eight weeks meaningfully reduced psychological symptoms among users with depression, anxiety or an eating 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.

Levies on Americans’ daily prescriptions and other medicines could raise costs, spur rationing and lead to shortages of critical drugs.President Trump’s decision to move a step closer to imposing tariffs on imported medicines poses considerable political risk, because Americans could face higher prices and more shortages of critical drugs.The Trump administration filed a federal notice on Monday saying that it had begun an investigation into whether imports of medicines and pharmaceutical ingredients threaten America’s national security, an effort to lay the groundwork for possible tariffs on foreign-made drugs.Mr. Trump has repeatedly said he planned to impose such levies, to shift overseas production of medicines back to the United States. Experts said that tariffs were unlikely to achieve that goal: Moving manufacturing would be hugely expensive and would take years.It was not clear how long the investigation would last or when the planned tariffs might go into effect. Mr. Trump started the inquiry under a legal authority known as Section 232 that he has used for other industries like cars and lumber.Mr. Trump said in remarks to reporters on Monday that pharmaceutical tariffs would come in the “not too distant future.”“We don’t make our own drugs anymore,” Mr. Trump said. “The drug companies are in Ireland, and they’re in lots of other places, China.”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.

For more than a decade, Navindra Seeram, a biomedical researcher, has praised maple syrup, calling it a “hero ingredient” and “champion food” that could have wide-ranging health benefits.Dr. Seeram, dean of the School of Pharmacy at the University of New England, has published more than three dozen studies extolling the power of maple. Much of his work has been bankrolled by Canada’s maple syrup industry and the Canadian and American governments.At the same time, he has taken on another role: maple syrup pitchman.“I am uniquely qualified as the world’s leading researcher on maple health benefits with the scientific reputation and credibility to promote the sales of maple products,” he has written in grant applications. He has assured leaders of the Canadian industry that he would always support maple from Quebec, according to emails obtained through a public records request.As he straddles the realms of scientific inquiry and promotion, he has distorted the real-world implications of his findings and exaggerated health benefits, according to a review by The Examination and The New York Times of 15 years of his studies and public statements. In videos and press releases, he has suggested that consuming maple syrup may help stave off diseases including cancer, Alzheimer’s and diabetes. Other scientists told The Examination and The Times that they thought he had overstated his lab findings and made misleading claims.Industry funding is commonplace in nutrition research and may become even more critical as scientists grapple with the Trump administration’s sweeping cuts. Dr. Seeram’s work shows the perils of intertwining science and salesmanship, propelling information that can shape consumer habits and public health.At the University of Rhode Island, where he worked until last year, Dr. Seeram oversaw projects that were awarded $2.6 million in U.S. government funding, including a grant explicitly intended to increase maple syrup sales. That promotional work produced a stream of social media posts like, “Maple Syrup’s Benefits: Anti-Cancer, Anti-Oxidant, Anti-Inflammatory.”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.

4 hours ago

The Trump administration took steps on Monday that appear likely to result in new tariffs on semiconductors and pharmaceutical products, adding to the levies President Trump has put on imports globally.Federal notices put online Monday afternoon said the administration had initiated national security investigations into imports of chips and pharmaceuticals. Mr. Trump has suggested that those investigations could result in tariffs.The investigations will also cover the machinery used to make semiconductors, products that contain chips and pharmaceutical ingredients.In a statement confirming the move, Kush Desai, a White House spokesman, said the president “has long been clear about the importance of reshoring manufacturing that is critical to our country’s national and economic security.”The new semiconductor and pharmaceutical tariffs would be issued under Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962, which allows the president to impose tariffs to protect U.S. national security.Earlier in the day, Mr. Trump hinted that he would soon impose new tariffs on semiconductors and pharmaceuticals, as he looked to shore up more domestic production.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.

Users needing emergency care or hospitalization were at much greater risk of later dementia, researchers reported. That does not prove cannabis was the cause.Middle-aged and older adults who sought hospital or emergency room care because of cannabis use were almost twice as likely to develop dementia over the next five years, compared with similar people in the general population, a large Canadian study reported on Monday.When compared with adults who sought care for other reasons, the risk of developing dementia was still 23 percent higher among users of cannabis, the active ingredient in marijuana, the study also found.The study included the medical records of six million people in Ontario from 2008 to 2021. The authors accounted for health and sociodemographic differences between comparison groups, some of which play a role in cognitive decline.The data do not reveal how much cannabis the subjects had been using, and the study does not prove that regular or heavy cannabis use plays a causal role in dementia.But the finding does raise serious concerns that require further exploration, said Dr. Daniel T. Myran, the first author of the study, which was published in JAMA Neurology.“Figuring out whether or not cannabis use or heavy regular chronic use causes dementia is a challenging and complicated question that you don’t answer in one study,” said Dr. Myran, an assistant professor of family medicine at University of Ottawa.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.

14 minutes ago

Scientists developed a way to freeze a large mammal’s kidney, which could ease organ shortages in the future. First, they had to see if their method would work in a pig.On the last day of March, surgeons at Massachusetts General Hospital began an operation that they hoped might lead to a permanent change in how kidneys are transplanted in people.That morning’s patient was not a person. It was a pig, lying anesthetized on a table. The pig was missing one kidney and needed an implant.While kidneys typically must be transplanted within 24 to 36 hours, the kidney going into the pig had been removed 10 days before, frozen and then thawed early that morning.Never before had anyone transplanted a frozen organ into a large animal. There was so much that could go wrong.“I think there is about a 50 percent chance that it will work,” Korkut Uygun, a professor of surgery and a leader of the team, said before the surgery. Dr. Uygun is on the scientific advisory board of Sylvatica Biotech Inc., a company that is developing freezing methods to preserve organs.But the promise from freezing and storing organs is great.There is a severe and ongoing shortage of kidneys for transplants — more than 92,000 people are on waiting lists. One reason is that the window of 24 to 36 hours is so brief that it limits the number of recipients who are good matches.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.