Publisher Health

The patient tested positive for the infection, but state health officials could not confirm that it was the cause of death. An unvaccinated person who died in New Mexico has tested positive for measles, state health officials said on Thursday, possibly the second such fatality in a growing outbreak that began in West Texas.The officials have not yet confirmed that measles was the cause of death, and said the individual did not seek medical treatment before dying. The announcement comes a little over a week after a child died of measles in Gaines County, Texas, the first such death in the United States in ten years.Ten cases of measles, six adults and four children, have been reported in Lea County, N.M., which borders Gaines County, the epicenter of the West Texas outbreak. This outbreak has been a trial by fire of the new secretary of department of health and human services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a prominent vaccine skeptic. His equivocal response has drawn harsh criticism from scientists, who say he has offered muted support for vaccination and has emphasized such untested treatments for measles as cod liver oil.Instead of broadly lauding the safety and efficacy of vaccines, as past health secretaries have, his message has been that vaccines help protect against measles but that the decision to vaccinate “is a personal one.” 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 week after terminating thousands of contracts, the administration has sent questionnaires to those programs asking how their work benefits the U.S. national interest.Last week, the Trump administration terminated nearly all of the United States’ foreign aid contracts after telling a federal court that its review of aid programs had concluded, and it had shut down those found not to be in the national interest.But over the last few days, many of those same programs have received a questionnaire asking them for the first time to detail what their projects do (or did) and how that work aligns with national interests.The survey, obtained by The New York Times, is titled “Foreign Assistance Review.” Some agencies received it with instructions stating that data collected will “support the next stage of the administration’s foreign assistance review.” The deadlines given for returning the surveys range from March 7 to March 17.Many of the projects under scrutiny have already fired their staff and closed their doors, because they have received no federal funds since the review process ostensibly began. President Trump issued an executive order freezing aid on Jan. 20, pending a review. Within some organizations, there are no staff members left to complete the survey.The distribution of the survey is the latest twist in an eight-week-long roller coaster ride for aid organizations. The chaos began with a stop-work order for employees and contractors of the United States Agency for International Development and a freezing of all funds, including reimbursements for hundreds of millions of dollars already spent. That was followed by a process allowing organizations that provided lifesaving medical treatment and food aid to seek a waiver allowing them to continue their work.Then came terminations, last Wednesday, of more than 5,000 projects and programs. Since then, some projects have been told they were fully restored, and others that they are restored only to the terms of their original waiver, which runs out next month. Almost none have seen any of the funds they are owed unfrozen.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.

At a hearing, Dr. Marty Makary, the nominee for F.D.A. commissioner, fielded questions focused on whether he would review or reopen certain policy areas.At a confirmation hearing for Dr. Marty Makary on Thursday, senators focused heavily on the safety of the abortion pill, with Republican lawmakers urging him to restrict access and Democratic lawmakers demanding that he maintain its current availability.Dr. Makary, President Trump’s nominee to lead the Food and Drug Administration, signaled that he shared Republicans’ concerns about the current policy, issued during the Biden administration, which expanded access by allowing people to obtain the pills without an in-person medical appointment.Several Democrats pointed to volumes of studies showing that the drugs are safe. Dr. Makary told members of the Senate health committee, which held the hearing, that he would review the pill’s safety and the policy at issue.He said he would “take a solid, hard look at the data and to meet with the professional career scientists who have reviewed the data at the F.D.A. and to build an expert coalition to review the ongoing data, which is required to be collected.”The hearing also touched on vaccines, with several lawmakers, including the committee chairman, Senator Bill Cassidy, Republican of Louisiana, questioning why an advisory committee meeting on next year’s flu vaccine had been canceled in recent weeks and asking whether it would be held later. He and others stressed that the flu panel met annually, and some reminded Dr. Makary that Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who oversees the F.D.A. as health secretary, had pledged transparency in agency decision-making.Senator Patty Murray, Democrat of Washington, called the cancellation “unprecedented and dangerous” after decades of annual meetings.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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Dr. Marty Makary will testify before the Senate health committee on Thursday. Lawmakers may press him over staff reductions and changes in agency direction on issues like vaccines.Dr. Marty Makary may face sharp questions from senators about whether he will defend the Food and Drug Administration against staff cutbacks and industry pressure on Thursday, although he is still expected to sail through his confirmation hearing to become the agency’s commissioner.Dr. Makary built his reputation as a contrarian in the medical field, gaining widespread notice by speaking out about medical errors. Those close to him have remarked on his willingness to agree with Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the nation’s health secretary, on a variety of issues.As a pancreatic cancer surgeon and health policy researcher at Johns Hopkins University, Dr. Makary has been viewed by some as a study in contrasts. He has written several books criticizing what he considers flaws in medical orthodoxy that result in recommendations backed by scant evidence.Yet he also drew attention from the Trump team as a Fox News personality with more controversial views, like his relatively early predictions that Covid would fade as a concern and that widespread immunity would take hold long before it did.Dr. Reshma Ramachandran, an assistant professor at the Yale School of Medicine, said that it was not clear which is the “true Marty Makary.”She said that was an important question, given some of Mr. Kennedy’s pronouncements. The health secretary has suggested that the F.D.A. should lift constraints on risky products like raw milk, which can be rife with bacteria, and had embraced hydroxychloroquine, a drug briefly used as a Covid therapy before its risks were deemed to exceed any benefit.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.

Jill Warren heads the European Cyclists’ Federation, a Brussels-based nongovernmental organization that advocates cycling to help lower carbon emissions.This article is part of a Women and Leadership special report highlighting women who are charting new pathways and fighting for opportunities for women and others.Jill Warren was in corporate law firms for 20 years, doing business development and working as chief marketing officer. But in her private life, cycling was her absolute passion.“I cycled for daily mobility,” she said in a phone interview, “and a holiday wasn’t complete without taking a bike along.”Like many people, she had cycled as a child. But when she got her driver’s license at age 16, like most teenagers in American towns like Cary, Ill., the Chicago suburb where she grew up, the car was her main means of transport.That changed when she was studying abroad in Freiburg, Germany, where “absolutely everybody cycled.” There, she said, “I rediscovered cycling.”Now 56, she is the chief executive of the European Cyclists’ Federation (E.C.F.), a Brussels-based nongovernmental organization that advocates cycling as a sustainable and healthy form of transport and leisure. The conversation has been edited and condensed.Why is the federation’s work necessary?It’s a chance to make a big difference to people’s health, the environment and the livability of cities. Transport is responsible for about 27 percent of global carbon emissions. Road vehicles account for about three quarters of transport CO2 emissions, and this isn’t decreasing. A recent study found that people who cycle daily have 84 percent lower carbon dioxide emissions than noncyclists.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.

Here’s how to know, and how to get out of it.Therapy has been a part of Katerina Kelly’s weekly routine since elementary school, when a teacher suggested counseling for the 8-year-old.At the time, Katerina’s autism was affecting their ability to manage time, make decisions and socialize. And for many years, the therapist seemed helpful. But once college rolled around, things changed.“I always left counseling feeling either worse than I started — or numb,” said Mx. Kelly, 29, who lives in Natick, Mass, and uses they/them pronouns.The skills that Mx. Kelly’s therapist had taught her in childhood weren’t translating as well now that she was older. In other words, they had hit a rut — the therapy, and the therapist, were not producing the desired results.A therapy rut can feel disheartening, but it doesn’t have to end your pursuit of better mental health. We asked psychologists how to identify whether you’ve reached a sticking point and what to do about it.What exactly is a therapy rut?If you’ve hit a rut, you may feel as if your therapy sessions have stalled or become unhelpful, said Jameca Woody Cooper, president of the Missouri Psychological Association.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 patient from Telford who needed a lifesaving treatment developed from blood plasma has thanked donors.

After voting to confirm Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as health secretary, Senator Bill Cassidy, a doctor and Republican of Louisiana, is embracing “the gestalt” of Kennedy’s measles response.Perhaps no vote was as agonizing for Senator Bill Cassidy, the Louisiana Republican and medical doctor, than his vote to confirm Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as President Trump’s health secretary. Mr. Cassidy wondered aloud for days how Mr. Kennedy, the nation’s most vocal and powerful critic of vaccinations, might handle an infectious disease crisis.Now, as a measles outbreak rages in West Texas, Mr. Cassidy has found out. It all comes down, he said, to “the gestalt.”On Monday, days after the Texas outbreak killed an unvaccinated child, Mr. Cassidy, who chairs the Senate Health Committee, was clipping down a Capitol corridor when he was asked about Mr. Kennedy. He pointed to a Fox News Digital opinion piece in which Mr. Kennedy advised parents to consult their doctors about vaccination, while calling it a “personal” decision.“That Fox editorial was very much encouraging people to get vaccinated,” he said.Reminded that Mr. Kennedy had described it as a personal choice, Mr. Cassidy thought for a moment. “If you want to like, parse it down to the line, you can say, ‘Discuss with your doctor,’” Mr. Cassidy said. “He also said, ‘We’re making vaccinations available. We’re doing this for vaccination. We’re doing that for vaccination.’ So if you take the gestalt of it, the gestalt was, ‘Let’s get vaccinated!’”Mr. Cassidy’s assessment — that the whole of Mr. Kennedy’s message was more than the sum of its parts — reflects how the measles outbreak has put a spotlight on how Mr. Trump’s unorthodox choice to run the country’s top health agency has brought a once-fringe perspective into the political mainstream, creating discomfort for some Republicans.As the founder and chairman of his nonprofit, Children’s Health Defense, and later as a presidential candidate, Mr. Kennedy has repeatedly downplayed the benefits of vaccination. He has also repeatedly suggested that the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine causes autism, despite extensive research that has found no link.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.

31 minutes ago