Publisher Health

9 minutes agoPhilippa RoxbyHealth reporter

Dr. Mehmet Oz, the celebrity TV doctor nominated by President Trump to oversee Medicare and Medicaid, has been a relentless promoter of controversial private insurance plans for older Americans.“I’d be signing up,” he told viewers, directing them to a call center in an episode that is still available on his YouTube channel.What Dr. Oz did not tell the audience was that he made money from touting the plans, known as Medicare Advantage. The for-profit company operating the call center, TZ Insurance Solutions, paid to be featured.Dr. Oz even became a licensed broker for TZ Insurance in almost every state, according to regulatory filings newly unearthed by The New York Times, with the idea that he could sell plans directly to viewers.He may be one of America’s best-known daytime TV personalities, or “America’s doctor,” as Oprah Winfrey called him. But little is known about exactly how he monetized his fame over the years. All told, his business and family ventures are valued in the neighborhood of roughly $90 million to $335 million.An examination by The Times of his myriad financial interests revealed not only opaque ties with the industries he may soon regulate but also a coziness with health care companies that lawmakers have already highlighted in questioning his independence.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 nation’s largest association of psychologists this month warned federal regulators that A.I. chatbots “masquerading” as therapists, but programmed to reinforce, rather than to challenge, a user’s thinking, could drive vulnerable people to harm themselves or others.In a presentation to a Federal Trade Commission panel, Arthur C. Evans Jr., the chief executive of the American Psychological Association, cited court cases involving two teenagers who had consulted with “psychologists” on Character.AI, an app that allows users to create fictional A.I. characters or chat with characters created by others.In one case, a 14-year-old boy in Florida died by suicide after interacting with a character claiming to be a licensed therapist. In another, a 17-year-old boy with autism in Texas grew hostile and violent toward his parents during a period when he corresponded with a chatbot that claimed to be a psychologist. Both boys’ parents have filed lawsuits against the company.Dr. Evans said he was alarmed at the responses offered by the chatbots. The bots, he said, failed to challenge users’ beliefs even when they became dangerous; on the contrary, they encouraged them. If given by a human therapist, he added, those answers could have resulted in the loss of a license to practice, or civil or criminal liability. “They are actually using algorithms that are antithetical to what a trained clinician would do,” he said. “Our concern is that more and more people are going to be harmed. People are going to be misled, and will misunderstand what good psychological care is.”He said the A.P.A. had been prompted to action, in part, by how realistic A.I. chatbots had become. “Maybe, 10 years ago, it would have been obvious that you were interacting with something that was not a person, but today, it’s not so obvious,” he said. “So I think that the stakes are much higher now.”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 frozen supplemental drinks have been linked to an outbreak of listeria that has killed at least 11 people and hospitalized 37.Frozen shakes sold to nursing homes, hospitals and other institutions have been recalled after the drinks were tied to a yearslong deadly listeria outbreak, the Food and Drug Administration said on Friday.Since 2018, at least 11 people have died from the outbreak and dozens have been hospitalized, the F.D.A. said, but previous investigations had not been able to find a source of the bacteria.In 37 of the 38 known cases, the patients were hospitalized; 34 of those infected were in long-term care facilities or had been hospitalized before becoming sick with listeria.Cases have been reported in 21 states, including California, Florida and New York. Since January 2024, there have been 20 cases, and the outbreak is ongoing, the F.D.A. said.The F.D.A. said on Friday that the outbreak had been linked to Lyons ReadyCare and Sysco Imperial frozen shakes, which are made to supplement meals. They come in four-ounce cartons and in flavors such as vanilla, strawberry and chocolate.The F.D.A. said that it had been notified about a listeria outbreak on Nov. 25 and had started an investigation that found a connection to the frozen shakes after a review of records at facilities where people who contracted the infection had been living.The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has been working with the F.D.A. to investigate the outbreak.Lyons Magnus, the food service company that distributes the drinks, said on Saturday in a news release that it was recalling the shakes because they could be contaminated with the bacteria, Listeria monocytogenes.The company said the drinks had mostly been sold to long-term care facilities and were not available for retail sale.Most people who get sick from food contaminated by listeria show symptoms such as fever, diarrhea, vomiting and muscle aches for a few days, or no symptoms at all.Some groups, including people who are 65 and older, who are pregnant or who have weakened immune systems, are at a higher risk of having a serious infection. Symptoms can appear on the same day a person eats contaminated food or as late as 10 weeks later, according to the F.D.A.The drinks were manufactured by Prairie Farms Dairy at a facility in Fort Wayne, Ind., Lyons Magnus said. Prairie Farms did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Sunday.Sysco, a food distribution company, said in a news release on Friday that it had recalled the shakes and stopped the purchase of other products supplied by Lyons Magnus from the facility in Fort Wayne.“Sysco expresses our most sincere condolences with those affected by this outbreak and their families,” the company said in a statement.

It was 45 seconds too late, but the teacher had a plan.A gunman had just barraged her classroom with an AR-15, killing two students and injuring four others before turning to a classroom across the hall. The bullet-riddled walls were crumbling. Ceiling tiles were falling. If the shooter came back to kill more of her students, the teacher decided, she would stand up and shout, “We love you.”The teacher was Ivy Schamis, whose husband would be waiting at home with a Valentine’s Day dinner; whose son was planning a wedding she couldn’t imagine missing; whose curriculum for this class — History of the Holocaust — had just moments earlier stirred a discussion about hate on campuses.We love you. These would surely be her final words, Ms. Schamis thought. She knew her plan was futile — irrational, even. But with no stop-the-bleed kit, no shield, no help, words were all she had to show the children that an adult had put up a fight.The moment never came. The gunman doubled back to the class across the hall, but not to Room 1214. At the command of a SWAT team, Ms. Schamis climbed over bodies and ran with her surviving students down the blood-smeared hallway, out the doors, and into the blinding light.What waited for her there, in the days and months and years ahead, would be a whole new role in the lives of the 30 students who had survived. For them, she would be what she couldn’t be for the two who died: a lifeline.She felt she owed them that. She had been the only adult in the room.Attending to Her StudentsThe morning after the 2018 massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., Ms. Schamis rose before dawn and began cleaning her bloodstained suede boots. Seventeen people had been killed, including Nick Dworet and Helena Ramsay, who had been in her class. Some of the surviving students had abandoned their blood- and glass-caked shoes on the school pavement, but Ms. Schamis had the strange feeling she ought to take hers home and wipe them down, over and over, until they came clean.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.

Elon Musk threw federal workers into further confusion and alarm on Saturday when he ordered them to summarize their accomplishments for the week, warning that a failure to do so would be taken as a resignation.Shortly after his demand, which he posted on X, civil servants across the government received an email from the Office of Personnel Management with the subject line, “What did you do last week?”The missive simultaneously hit inboxes across multiple agencies, rattling workers who had been rocked by layoffs in recent weeks and were unsure about whether to respond to Mr. Musk’s demand. His mounting pressure on the federal work force came at the encouragement of President Trump, who has been trumpeting how the billionaire has upended the bureaucracy and on Saturday urged him to be even “more aggressive.”In his post on X, Mr. Musk said employees who failed to answer the message would lose their jobs. However, that threat was not stated in the email itself.“Please reply to this email with approx. 5 bullets of what you accomplished this week and cc your manager,” said the Office of Personnel Management message that went out to federal employees on Saturday afternoon. The email told employees to respond by midnight on Monday.The email was received by workers across the government, including at the State Department, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Office of Personnel Management, the Food and Drug Administration, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, according to copies seen by The New York Times.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.

Texas reported 90 cases this week, while New Mexico reported nine. A majority of the cases have been in a Texas county where vaccination rates have lagged behind the rest of the state.Outbreaks of measles in parts of Texas and New Mexico have sickened nearly 100 people, according to state health officials who warned that the number of cases was expected to rise.An outbreak has been spreading through the South Plains region of Texas since late January, the Texas Department of State Health Services said on Friday. Measles vaccination rates in the region lag significantly below federal targets.On Friday, the department confirmed 90 cases of measles, with at least 77 of them being children. Sixteen people have been hospitalized, the department said.The cases come amid growing concerns by public health experts about declining vaccination rates and the confirmation of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a prominent vaccine skeptic, as the nation’s health secretary.Mr. Kennedy, who has cited disputed research on the side-effects of vaccines, has vowed to scrutinize childhood vaccines.In Texas, a majority of the cases have been concentrated in Gaines County, a farming area close to the New Mexico border. In only five of the 90 cases were patients vaccinated against measles. The rest were unvaccinated or had an unknown vaccination status, the department 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.

Confusion has ensued about the future of programs and research supporting people with disabilities as a result of President Trump’s executive order.Tyler Nelson, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Florida, studies the neurobiology of pain, a choice partly motivated by his own frustrations with a neuromuscular disability. Last October, he applied for a grant at the National Institutes of Health that, if awarded, would support his dream of someday running his own lab.But, earlier in February, he learned that his application, which took six months to pull together, was about to be thrown out.The reason: Dr. Nelson had applied for a version of the award that supports researchers who are historically underrepresented in science, including people with disabilities. That funding avenue now violates President Trump’s executive order banning federal agencies from activities related to diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility, or D.E.I.A.Dr. Nelson was tipped off by an N.I.H. affiliate, but he has received no official notice about the situation. “I’ve tried to call probably 150 times,” he said. Unofficially, he learned that the agency was planning to pull his submission altogether rather than move it to the general award pool for consideration. This has happened with at least one other type of award offered by the agency, which did not respond to a request for comment.Thanks to the tip, Dr. Nelson was able to withdraw his application and resubmit it to the general award pool before its deadline — but he is unsure if others were so lucky.“What this does is discriminate against people who are underrepresented,” said an N.I.H. reviewer who asked to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation. The reviewer added that the evaluation criteria for the general and diversity award pools were the same, with no priority given to either pool. “I can’t stress enough,” the reviewer said, that an undeserving grant “is not going to get funded, whether it’s ‘diversity’ or not.”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.

China could reap the soft-power advantage, but like Western governments, the country is cutting back on aid. Philanthropies say they cannot replace the United States.As the reality sets in that the United States is drastically diminishing its foreign assistance to developing countries, an urgent conversation is starting among governments, philanthropists, and global health and development organizations.It is centered on one crucial question: Who will fill this gap?Last year, the United States contributed about $12 billion to global health, money that has funded treatment of H.I.V. and prevention of new infections; children’s vaccines against polio, measles and pneumonia; clean water for refugees; and tests and medications for malaria. The next largest funder is the Gates Foundation, which disburses a fraction of that amount: its global health division had a budget of $1.86 billion in 2023.“The gap that has been filled by the U.S. cannot be easily matched by anybody,” said Dr. Ntobeko Ntusi, the chief executive of the South African Medical Research Council.U.S. assistance has been channeled through the United States Agency for International Development, or U.S.A.I.D., which the new Trump administration has largely dismantled, and other government agencies, including the National Institutes of Health, which is also facing substantial cuts in health research grants.Many people are suggesting that other countries, particularly China, could move into some of the areas vacated by the United States, Dr. Ntusi said. Others are making urgent appeals to big philanthropies including the Gates Foundation and Open Philanthropy.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.

29 minutes agoLiam BarnesBBC News, Nottingham