Publisher Health

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The Senate Finance Committee holds a confirmation hearing on Friday for Dr. Mehmet Oz, the TV celebrity who is nominated to run major health programs for older Americans and the poor.Dr. Mehmet Oz, the TV celebrity doctor, is expected to face a tense confirmation hearing on Friday, with Democratic senators planning to question how he would oversee Medicare and Medicaid now that Republicans and the Trump administration are weighing significant changes affecting millions of Americans.Among the possible plans being considered by Republican lawmakers and President Trump are severe reductions to health insurance coverage for low-income people and a greater shift toward private plans for older Americans.Dr. Oz, 64, a cardiothoracic surgeon who rose to fame through his successful daytime show, appears poised to secure confirmation by the full Senate.His confirmation hearing is among the last of the Trump nominees whose agencies fall under the jurisdiction of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the nation’s health secretary. It immediately follows Mr. Trump’s decision on Thursday to withdraw the nomination of Dr. Dave Weldon to head the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Dr. Weldon’s long-held views against certain vaccines weakened his chances for confirmation.Given that older Americans are advised to receive certain vaccines because they are among the most vulnerable for illnesses like Covid, the flu and pneumonia, it’s possible that Dr. Oz’s positions on immunization will also be of interest to the Senate panel reviewing his qualifications.In addition, some of the Senate Finance Committee members are likely to grill Dr. Oz about his myriad financial ties, many of which would pose troubling conflicts of interest if he were to lead the agency.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.

Johns Hopkins University, one of the country’s leading centers of scientific research, said on Thursday that it would eliminate more than 2,000 workers in the United States and abroad because of the Trump administration’s steep cuts, primarily to international aid programs.The layoffs, the most in the university’s history, will involve 247 domestic workers for the university, which is based in Baltimore, and an affiliated center. Another 1,975 positions will be cut in 44 countries. They affect the university’s Bloomberg School of Public Health, its medical school and an affiliated nonprofit, Jhpiego.Nearly half the school’s total revenue last year came from federally funded research, including $365 million from the U.S. Agency for International Development. In all, the university will lose $800 million in funding over several years from U.S.A.I.D., which the Trump administration is in the process of dismantling.Johns Hopkins is one of the top university recipients of the funding that the administration is aiming to slash. And it appears to be among the most deeply affected of the major research institutions that are reeling from cuts — or the threat of cuts — to federal money that they depend on for research studies and running labs.In a statement on Thursday calling it a “difficult day,” Johns Hopkins said it was “immensely proud” of its work on the projects, which included efforts to “care for mothers and infants, fight disease, provide clean drinking water and advance countless other critical, lifesaving efforts around the world.”In a statement last week describing Johns Hopkins’s reliance on federal funding, Ron Daniels, the university’s president said, “We are, more than any other American university, deeply tethered to the compact between our sector and the federal government.”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.

2 hours ago

Baroness Mone and her husband Doug Barrowman have accused the Covid inquiry of an “establishment cover-up” after their second attempt to be given an official role in the inquiry was rejected.

1 hour ago

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particles were causing the problem in these children, and I was surprised that O’Leary withdrew
his assertions.
I then called O’Leary on the phone and asked him why he was doing this. There was a very long
pregnant pause. He then said that it had taken him many years to get to the place where he was
in the scientific community, and after another pause, he said he had four small children at
home. I had small children at home myself at the time and I understood what he was saying. If
he didn’t do it, he was going to be fired. He was going to be ruined.
British officials were not satisfied with just getting the journal to withdraw the article and
getting Dr. O’Leary to withdraw his claims. They then decided to begin proceedings to take away
Dr. Wakefield’s medical license and one of his lead co-authors. Wakefield by this time had
moved to the United States and to defend himself in court would have cost him hundreds of
thousands of dollars so he let them take his license away. But his lead co-author Dr. Simon
Murch was still practicing medicine in England and decided to defend himself in court, and the
government lost and they were not able to take his license away. If Wakefield had the money to
defend himself, he would never have lost his license. The court documents clearly show that
Wakefield and his co-authors had not done anything unethical or inappropriate and their work
was possibly valid.
But that was all big Pharma needed. They could go around, saying it and feeding it to the media
that the research had been withdrawn and Wakefield lost his license. But I looked at the
micrographs and it sure looked to me like there was vaccine strain measles particles infecting
the bowels of these kids.
The CDC was charged with the responsibility of repeating to Wakefield research and showing
that the measles vaccine was safe, but they never did it the right way. They decided to de
epidemiologic studies instead of a clinical study. Again, as in the mercury study there were
claims made that indicators that there was a problem with MMR were there. CDC was accused
again of changing the protocol and data analysis until the association went away.
Ironically, I talked with Wakefield after all of this was over. He agreed with me that we have to
vaccinate our kids for measles. He thought the solution was to give the vaccine at a slightly
older age, like they do in many European countries. Or we might be able to do research and
figure out why some kids have a bad reaction to the MMR. Clearly, big Pharma didn’t want me
in the CDC investigating any of this.
There are a lot of additional ironies in all of this. I believe the CDC is mostly made up of really
good people who really care about public health for our nation, though its credibility has been
seriously tarnished because of the failures in the way the COVID-19 crisis was managed. 40% of
Democrats and 80% of Republicans, don’t trust the CDC. Many don’t trust Pharma as well. I
really wanted to try to make the CDC a better more respected agency and killing my nomination
may have the opposite effect. Distrust may worsen.

1 hour ago