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The health secretary has suggested allowing the virus to spread, so as to identify birds that may be immune. Such an experiment would be disastrous, scientists say.Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the nation’s top health official, has an unorthodox idea for tackling the bird flu bedeviling U.S. poultry farms. Let the virus rip.Instead of culling birds when the infection is discovered, farmers “should consider maybe the possibility of letting it run through the flock so that we can identify the birds, and preserve the birds, that are immune to it,” Mr. Kennedy said recently on Fox News.He has repeated the idea in other interviews on the channel.Mr. Kennedy does not have jurisdiction over farms. But Brooke Rollins, the agriculture secretary, also has voiced support for the notion.“There are some farmers that are out there that are willing to really try this on a pilot as we build the safe perimeter around them to see if there is a way forward with immunity,” Ms. Rollins told Fox News last month.Yet veterinary scientists said letting the virus sweep through poultry flocks unchecked would be inhumane and dangerous, and have enormous economic consequences.“That’s a really terrible idea, for any one of a number of reasons,” said Dr. Gail Hansen, a former state veterinarian for Kansas.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.

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Dozens of medical and scientific studies are ending or at risk of ending, leaving researchers scrambling to find alternative funding.Cancer researchers examining the use of artificial intelligence to detect early signs of breast cancer. Pediatricians tracking the long-term health of children born to mothers infected with the coronavirus during pregnancy. Scientists searching for links between diabetes and dementia.All these projects at Columbia University were paid for with federal research grants that were abruptly terminated following the Trump administration’s decision to cut $400 million in funding to Columbia over concerns regarding the treatment of Jewish students.Dozens of medical and scientific studies are ending, or at risk of ending, leaving researchers scrambling to find alternative funding. In some cases, researchers have already started informing study subjects that research is suspended.“Honestly, I wanted to cry,” said Kathleen Graham, a 56-year-old nurse in the Bronx, upon learning that the diabetes study she had participated in for a quarter of a century was ending.At Columbia’s medical school, doctors said they were in shock as they received notice that their funding was terminated. Some expressed resignation, while others sought a stopgap solution and asked whether the university could fund some of the staff on the projects in the short term, according to interviews with five doctors or professors who had been affected.“The most immediate need is to bridge in the short term and figure out what the longer-term plans are,” said Dr. Dawn Hershman, the interim chief the division of hematology and oncology at Columbia’s medical school. “That’s what is being worked out.”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.

Some current recipients of health and disability benefits are likely to lose out under a planned overhaul of the welfare system, which is expected to tighten eligibility criteria for the Personal Independence Payment (PIP).

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Veterans who wish to change their gender “can do so on their own dime,” the V.A. secretary said.The Department of Veterans Affairs is phasing out gender-affirming medical treatments for veterans, including hormone treatment for patients newly diagnosed with gender dysphoria, the V.A. announced on Monday.The V.A. will continue hormone treatment for veterans who currently receive it or were receiving it when they separated from the military. The rationale is that abrupt cessation can be harmful to patients’ health.The policy change was made to comply with an executive order by President Trump, titled “Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government,” the V.A. said in a news release.That order states that the United States recognizes only two sexes, male and female, which “are not changeable.”“I mean no disrespect to anyone, but V.A. should not be focused on helping veterans attempt to change their sex,” said Doug Collins, the V.A. secretary.Transgender veterans will continue to be welcome at the V.A., he added, “but if veterans want to attempt to change their sex, they can do so on their own dime.”The V.A. has been providing treatment for gender transition to veterans since 2011. It has never provided surgeries, but it has offered supportive services. In addition to hormone therapy, these have included mental health care, preoperative evaluations and letters supporting the need for procedures, as well as postoperative and long-term care.Fertility services, prosthetic devices like wigs, and voice coaching were also offered. Those services had been authorized under a V.A. directive on guiding health care for transgender and intersex veterans know as 1341(4), which has been rescinded.Many mental health providers at the V.A. have had concerns about their ability to continue providing adequate care to transgender patients after they were ordered to remove rainbow flags and lanyards, pamphlets describing services offered to L.G.B.T.Q.+ veterans, and wall posters that read “All are welcome here” and “We serve all who have served.”Mary Brinkmeyer, a psychologist who coordinated care for L.G.B.T.Q.+ veterans at the Hampton V.A. Medical Center in Virginia, refused to remove signs and fliers. She recently resigned, fearing that mental health care for transgender veterans would be compromised.“Our code of ethics is, ‘First do no harm,’ and if you’re caught between an institutional demand and your ethical code, you have to resolve it in favor of the ethics code,” Dr. Brinkmeyer said.The cessation of hormone treatment, along with the recent designation of V.A. bathrooms and inpatient rooms by biological sex, “will have a real chilling effect on veterans’ willingness to seek care for gender dysphoria,” she said.Studies indicate that gender dysphoria is much higher among veterans than among the general population and that the risk of suicide-related events is as much as 20 times higher among veterans with gender dysphoria than in the general Veterans Health Administration population.“If veterans don’t have other health insurance — and many transgender veterans are homeless or underemployed — will they not seek care if they’re suicidal rather than go to the V.A.?” Dr. Brinkmeyer asked.

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