Publisher Health

After bird flu hit the nation’s dairy farms, it spread with alarming speed. Since March, the virus has infected more than 700 herds in 15 states. It has also infected at least 58 people, nearly all of them farm workers. In recent months, cases in cows and humans have mounted especially rapidly in California, now the epicenter of the outbreak.Initially, experts worried that the virus might be spreading through tiny, airborne droplets that cows exhaled.But data strongly suggests that the virus, known as H5N1, has spread primarily through milk. It replicates quickly in the udders of infected cows, which produce milk with sky-high levels of the pathogen. Droplets of milk can splash into dairy workers’ faces, while milk-splattered equipment and vehicles can transport the virus from cow to cow.Although pasteurization effectively inactivates the virus, the pathogen was recently detected in retail samples of raw milk in California.Those findings, plus the rising number of human cases, have made experts nervous about the growing public health threat — and the potential ascension of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to lead the Department of Health and Human Services. Mr. Kennedy is a vocal proponent and self-professed consumer of raw milk and has said that he wants federal researchers to take a “break” from studying infectious disease.In theory, a virus that spreads through milk should be easier to control than one that floats invisibly in the air. But a look inside the modern dairy industry reveals that milk-based transmission is profoundly worrying. “Milk is hugely problematic,” said Seema Lakdawala, a virologist at Emory University.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.

Anastasia CameronFrom the age of seven Anastasia Cameron was turned away from hairdressers because she was told they “don’t do Afro hair”.

Brands that make unhealthy foods will be able to get round the government’s junk food advertising ban if their adverts don’t show products that break the rules.

A new weight-loss jab will be rolled out on the NHS in England – but it could take 12 years for everyone to receive it, the NHS drugs advisory body says.

BBC/Sabbiyah PervezA patient whose mental breakdown was secretly filmed by an NHS worker and shared on WhatsApp says she has been left feeling “dirty, angry and confused”.

She was diagnosed with glioblastoma, an aggressive form of brain cancer, in 2020, and used her platform to talk about cancer research.Kelly Powers, a Fox News commentator and a podiatric surgeon who offered health tips and discussed medical news with viewers, with whom she also shared her own experiences with cancer, died on Sunday at her home in Colts Neck, N.J. She was 45.The cause was brain cancer, her mother, Joan Powers, said.Dr. Powers appeared as a medical expert on Fox News shows, including Fox & Friends, Fox Business and the talk show “Red Eye,” throughout the 2010s. She had emergency surgery in 2018 after doctors found fluid around her heart, starting a yearslong journey with life-threatening health crises.In July 2020, she had a seizure and was diagnosed with glioblastoma, an aggressive brain cancer. Dr. Powers had three brain surgeries and received chemotherapy, radiation and immunotherapy treatment, as her family described on a GoFundMe page, but the cancer returned and another mass was found in her brain earlier this year.Kelly Ann Powers was born in Yonkers, N.Y., on May 13, 1979, to Joan Marie Powers and Joseph Powers. Her mother said she was a “well-rounded” and “happy” person growing up who was always on the move.She attended Baruch College in New York and then went to medical school at New York College of Podiatric Medicine. She obtained a master’s degree at the University of San Francisco and completed her residencies at Georgetown and Boston Universities.In addition to her work as a surgeon, Dr. Powers began appearing on TV news programs early in her career to discuss medical breakthroughs and give health advice.She became a regular on Fox News, where she shared practical health tips with viewers, including diet options and advice on body pains. During the height of the coronavirus pandemic, she would appear on Fox Business to talk about the virus and vaccine development.After her diagnosis in 2020, Dr. Powers began to document her health journey on social media and spoke about it on TV. She called herself the “unluckiest lucky girl” because her cancer was caught early.Amid her health challenges, Dr. Powers and her husband, Steven Doll, wanted to have a baby. But her cardiologist told her she should not carry a child, so they chose to use a surrogate, she said in a 2023 iHeart Radio interview.Her son, Bennett, was born in 2021 while she was continued to receive treatments. Her parents, husband and son survive her.During this time, Dr. Powers also used her platform to talk about brain cancer research and raise money for medical nonprofits and organizations.“This horrible disease needs to stop, and we all need to just fight cancer in general, every type of cancer,” she said on Instagram in June. “Why is this even still a problem?”Sheelagh McNeill

Brian Thompson spent more than 20 years climbing through the ranks at UnitedHealthcare, one of the nation’s largest health insurers and a main division of the conglomerate UnitedHealth Group, and there were no signs that his ascent was slowing.He had been chief executive of the insurance division since 2021, overseeing a period of substantial profits. The division reported $281 billion in revenues last year, providing coverage to millions of Americans through the health plans it sold to individuals, employers and people under government programs like Medicare. The division employed roughly 140,000 people.During his tenure, the company’s profits rose, with earnings from operations topping $16 billion in 2023 from $12 billion in 2021. Mr. Thompson received more than $10 million in salary and compensation last year.He was well-respected by Wall Street analysts, where he was known for his reassuring description of the company’s outlook.Those who worked with him during his oversight of the company’s government programs in Medicare and Medicaid said he was responsive to concerns about how to best serve the individuals in those programs. “Every interaction with him felt extremely genuine,” said Antonio Ciaccia, a consultant who discussed using pharmacists to help provide better care for people receiving Medicaid. “He was a very good listener.”On a recent call with Wall Street analysts and investors to discuss the company’s financial results, Mr. Thompson provided a confident voice when questioned. When asked about the employer segment, he told one analyst, “I feel really good about not only our performance, but our cost management inside our commercial business.”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.

After a court overturned a ban, the agency has proposed restricting chlorpyrifos to 11 food crops, illustrating the limits of federal regulation.Almost 25 years after federal regulators curbed household use of a pesticide linked to learning disorders in children, and three years after a total ban on its use on food crops, the chemical is again being applied to everything from bananas to turnips in most states.The saga of this pesticide, which has the unwieldy name chlorpyrifos, is a stark reminder of why so many Americans are alarmed about industrial farming and the food supply. The concern helped propel Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s presidential candidacy and subsequent selection to head the Department of Health and Human Services.The issue is also a vivid illustration of the obstacles that regulators will face if they try to make good on campaign promises to remove harmful chemicals from the food supply, as Mr. Kennedy often has.The latest twist arrived on Monday, when the Environmental Protection Agency proposed outlawing the use of chlorpyrifos on farmed foods — except on 11 crops, including fruits children tend to eat in large quantities, such as apples, oranges, peaches and cherries.In an interview, Dr. Michal Freedhoff, assistant administrator of the office of chemical safety and pollution prevention at the E.P.A., said the proposed rule would provide the greatest benefit to children’s health while still abiding by a federal-court decision last year that overturned the agency’s original ban.The proposal will lower the amount of the pesticide applied to fields and orchards annually by 3.9 million pounds, from the 5.3 million pounds used each year from 2014 to 2018, according to a preliminary E.P.A. analysis.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.

Reporting on the Supreme CourtThe court has sided with gay and transgender people in recent cases, but there have been dissents.Eric Lee/The New York TimesAt a pair of arguments in 2019 about employment discrimination against gay and transgender workers, the justices could not stop talking about bathrooms. In all, five justices explored questions related to who may use which facilities, though bathrooms did not figure in the cases before them.“Let’s not avoid the difficult issue,” said Justice Sonia Sotomayor, a member of the court’s liberal wing, posing a hypothetical question: “You have a transgender person who rightly is identifying as a woman and wants to use the women’s bathroom.”She added: “There are other women who are made uncomfortable, and not merely uncomfortable, but who would feel intruded upon if someone who still had male characteristics walked into their bathroom. That’s why we have different bathrooms. So the hard question is: How do we deal with that?”David D. Cole, a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union representing a transgender woman, seemed puzzled.“That is a question, Justice Sotomayor,” he said. “It is not the question in this case.”The argument also touched on sports, religion and dress codes, and it suggested that many justices found it hard to disentangle the legal question before them from related ones.Justice Neil M. Gorsuch, for instance, asked whether a ruling in favor of Mr. Cole’s client would do away with sex-specific dress codes. Mr. Cole said no.“There are transgender male lawyers in this courtroom following the male dress code and going to the men’s room,” he said, “and the court’s dress code and sex-segregated restrooms have not fallen.”When the court issued its decision, which sided with gay and transgender workers, Justice Gorsuch’s majority opinion said it was tightly focused on employment discrimination.“We do not purport to address bathrooms, locker rooms or anything else of the kind,” he wrote, adding that those “are questions for future cases, not these.”In dissent, Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. chastised the majority for kicking the can down the road.“The court may wish to avoid this subject,” he wrote, “but it is a matter of concern to many people who are reticent about disrobing or using toilet facilities in the presence of individuals whom they regard as members of the opposite sex.”In cases that reached the court on what critics call its shadow docket, the justices have ruled for a transgender prisoner seeking surgery and a transgender girl who sought to compete on the girls’ cross-country and track teams at her middle school in West Virginia. Justice Alito and Clarence Thomas dissented in both cases.Those two justices also dissented in 2021 when the court turned down an appeal from a ruling in favor of a transgender boy in Virginia who wanted to use the boys’ bathroom at his high school.

Labor and delivery units are losing money and struggling to find staff, in rural areas and large cities alike.Over 500 hospitals have closed their labor and delivery departments since 2010, according to a large new study, leaving most rural hospitals and more than a third of urban hospitals without obstetric care.Those closures, the study found, were slightly offset by the opening of new units in about 130 hospitals. Even so, the share of hospitals without maternity wards increased every year, according to the study, published on Wednesday in JAMA, a prominent medical journal. Maternal deaths remained persistently high over that period, spiking during the pandemic.Because its data runs only through 2022, the study does not account for the additional challenges that hospitals have faced since the Supreme Court case that overturned Roe v. Wade that year and led many states to restrict abortion. States with abortion bans have experienced a sharp decline in their obstetrician work force.“We’re more than a decade into a severe maternal mortality crisis in the United States, and access to hospital-based maternity care has continued to decline over that entire time period,” said Katy Kozhimannil, the study’s lead author and a professor of health policy at the University of Minnesota.Other research from Dr. Kozhimannil and her colleagues has found that the closures of rural maternity wards can lead to an increase in births in emergency rooms or outside of hospitals.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.