Publisher Health

The cancellation plays into fears among scientists who worry that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. will use his position as health secretary to sow doubts about vaccines.A panel of scientific experts that advises the Food and Drug Administration on vaccine policy — and has been the target of criticism from Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — learned on Wednesday that its upcoming meeting to discuss next year’s flu vaccines has been canceled.The F.D.A. sent an email to members of the Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee on Monday afternoon informing them of the cancellation, according to a senior official familiar with the decision. There was no reason given. The panel was to meet March 13.One committee member, Dr. Paul Offit of the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, an outspoken critic of Mr. Kennedy, confirmed the cancellation and warned that it could interfere with or delay production of flu vaccines.“It’s a six-month production cycle,” Dr. Offit said. “So one can only assume that we’re not picking flu strains this year.”The cancellation — and the postponement last week of a similar meeting of scientific advisers to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — plays into fears among scientists who worry that Mr. Kennedy will use his perch to sow doubts about vaccines and interfere with the regulatory process that leads to their approval.Richard Hughes, a lawyer for some vaccine makers, said the postponement was concerning since the schedule for making the flu vaccine tends to be quite strict. Strains are usually selected in the F.D.A. meeting in February or March using data from the World Health Organization — a relationship the United States walked away from early in the Trump administration. He said manufacturing tends to begin in June.“The stakes are incredibly high,” he said, noting that this year’s flu season has been especially intense.According to the C.D.C., 86 children and 19,000 adults have died from flu this winter season. About 430,000 people were hospitalized. In June, a C.D.C. committee tends to decide whether to advise use of the vaccine, which sets in motion insurance and government coverage of the vaccines, Mr. Hughes said.As a presidential candidate and more recently as a supporter of President Trump, Mr. Kennedy repeatedly warned of “regulatory capture” — the idea that federal regulators are captive to industry. He has said he intends to root out conflicts of interest on the scientific panels that advise federal regulatory agencies.The members of those committees often team up with industry; Dr. Offit, for instance, is an inventor of a rotavirus vaccine that was developed by the pharmaceutical giant Merck. Committee members are currently required to declare their collaborations and recuse themselves from voting on issues in which they have a financial stake. Mr. Kennedy has suggested he wants more stringent restrictions.The meeting of the C.D.C.’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices would have covered topics related to a number of vaccines, including one that protects against the human papillomavirus. Mr. Kennedy has been sharply critical of that vaccine.

The Demographic and Health Surveys were the only sources of reliable information in many countries on metrics such as mortality, nutrition and education.An obscure but influential program that gave detailed public health information to about half of the world’s nations will fold as a result of the Trump administration’s freeze on foreign aid.With funding from the United States Agency for International Development, the Demographic and Health Surveys were the only sources of information in many countries about maternal and child health and mortality, nutrition, reproductive health and H.I.V. infections, among many other health indicators.The surveys collected data in 90 low- and middle-income nations, which then used the information to set health benchmarks at the local, national and global levels, including the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals adopted by member countries of the United Nations.On Tuesday, the program’s administrators learned that it was being “terminated for the convenience of the U.S. Government,” effective immediately, according to an email viewed by The New York Times. They were ordered to “stop all work, terminate subcontracts and place no further orders.”The Trump administration is dismantling U.S.A.I.D.; thousands of layoffs are expected in the coming days. Without future surveys, it will be nearly impossible to measure the impact of the those foreign aid cuts on citizens in nations without substantial health infrastructure.Some global health experts reacted to the program’s demise with dismay.“It’s really challenging for me to understand how you could implement thoughtful programs in public health and monitor progress toward strategic goals if you don’t have the kind of data that are available from the D.H.S.,” Win Brown, a demographer at the University of Washington, 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.

15 hours agoZac SherrattBBC News, South East

At least 124 cases of measles have been identified in Texas since late January, mostly among children and teenagers who are either unvaccinated or whose vaccination status is unknown, officials say.A child has died of measles in West Texas, the first known death from an outbreak of the disease that is spreading in the state and in neighboring New Mexico, officials said on Wednesday.Health officials in Lubbock and the Texas Department of State Health Services said in a statement that the patient was an unvaccinated school-age child who had died in the previous 24 hours.The officials did not release further information, but said that a news conference was planned for Wednesday afternoon at the Covenant Medical Center in Lubbock.At least 124 cases of measles have been identified in Texas since late January, mostly among children and teenagers who are either unvaccinated or whose vaccination status was unknown, Texas health officials say. Eighteen have been hospitalized.Measles is a highly contagious respiratory illness that can be life-threatening to anyone who is not protected against the virus.Doctors say the best way to protect against the disease is with two doses of a vaccine, which is usually administered to children as a combination measles-mumps-rubella, or MMR, vaccine. Two doses of the MMR vaccine prevent more than 97 percent of measles infections, according to Texas health officials.The South Plains region of Texas, where the outbreak has been spreading, has vaccination rates that lag significantly behind federal targets.New Mexico has also reported an outbreak, with nine cases in Lea County, in the southeastern part of the state, on the Texas border. Four of those cases are children under the age of 18, all of whom are unvaccinated, according to Robert Nott, a spokesman for the New Mexico Department of Health. None of the cases in New Mexico have led to hospitalizations, he said.The outbreak comes amid growing concerns among 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.Measles can be transmitted when an infected person breathes, coughs or sneezes. People who are infected will begin to have symptoms within a week or two after being exposed. Early symptoms include high fever, cough, runny nose and red, watery eyes. Within a few days, a telltale rash breaks out as flat, red spots on the face and then spreads down the neck and trunk to the rest of the body.Texas health officials have been holding vaccination clinics and encouraging people to get the MMR vaccine.

The terminations, which hit agencies involved in protecting the nation’s food supply and agricultural products, could have long-lasting consequences, experts said.Shortly after taking office for the second time, President Trump began making deep cuts to agencies and programs that play critical roles in human health, slashing funding for medical research, halting global health aid and firing scores of workers at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.But the campaign to downsize government, which has been led by Mr. Trump and Elon Musk, has also hollowed out agencies and programs devoted to protecting plant and animal health. The recent wave of mass firings hit federal workers responding to the nation’s growing bird flu outbreak, protecting crops from damaging pests and ensuring the safety of pet food and medicine, among other critical duties.Although the government has since rescinded some of these firings, the terminations — combined with a federal hiring freeze and buyout offers — are depleting the ranks of federal programs that are already short on employees and resources, experts said.The damage could be long-lasting. Workers whose jobs were spared said that the upheaval had left them eyeing the exits, and graduate students said they were reconsidering careers in the federal government. The shrinking work force could also have far-reaching consequences for trade and food security and leave the nation unequipped to tackle future threats to plant and animal health, experts said.“These really were indiscriminate firings,” said John Ternest, who lost his job at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, where he was preparing to conduct studies on honeybee health and crop pollination. “We don’t know what we’ve lost until it’s potentially too late.”Plant and animal inspectorsThe most recent wave of firings focused on the roughly 200,000 “probationary” employees across the federal government, who had fewer job protections because they were relatively new to their positions. (For some roles, the probationary period can be as long as three years, and it can also reset when longtime employees are promoted.)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.

Dr. Bryant Lin, who teaches medicine at Stanford University, was given a terminal diagnosis. He wanted his students to understand the humanity at the core of medicine.Dr. Bryant Lin stood before his class at Stanford in September, likely one of the last he would ever teach.Listen to this article with reporter commentaryJust 50 years old and a nonsmoker, he had been diagnosed with Stage 4 lung cancer four months earlier. The illness is terminal, and Dr. Lin estimated that he had roughly two years left before the drug he was taking stopped working. Instead of pulling back from work, he chose to spend the fall quarter teaching a course about his own illness.Registration for the class had filled up almost immediately. Now the room was overflowing, with some students forced to sit on the floor and others turned away entirely.“It’s quite an honor for me, honestly,” Dr. Lin said, his voice catching. “The fact that you would want to sign up for my class.”He told his students he wanted to begin with a story that explained why he chose to pursue medicine. He picked up a letter he had received years earlier from a patient dying of chronic kidney disease. The man and his family had made the decision to withdraw from dialysis, knowing he would soon die.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.

5 hours agoKen BanksBBC Scotland, Aberdeen

3 hours agoDebbie JacksonBBC Scotland News

Federal regulators will no longer require patients to provide blood tests before receiving the drug from pharmacies.The Food and Drug Administration has taken a crucial step toward expanding access to the antipsychotic medication clozapine, the only drug approved for treatment-resistant schizophrenia, among the most devastating of mental illnesses.The agency announced on Monday that it was eliminating a requirement that patients submit blood tests before their prescriptions can be filled.Clozapine, which was approved in 1989, is regarded by many physicians as the most effective available treatment for schizophrenia, and research shows that the drug significantly reduces suicidal behavior. Clozapine is also associated with a rare side effect called neutropenia, a drop in white blood cell counts that, in its most severe form, can be life-threatening.In 2015, federal regulators imposed a regimen known as risk evaluation and mitigation strategies, or REMS, that required patients to submit to weekly, biweekly and monthly blood tests that had to be uploaded onto a database and verified by pharmacists.Physicians have long complained that, as a result, clozapine is grossly underutilized.Dr. Frederick C. Nucifora, director of the Adult Schizophrenia Clinic at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, said he believed that around 30 percent of patients with schizophrenia would benefit from clozapine — far more than the 4 percent who currently take it.“I have had many patients who were doing terribly, who struggled to function outside the hospital, and cycled through many medications,” he said. “If they go on clozapine, they really tend to not be hospitalized again. I’ve had people go on to finish college and work. It’s quite remarkable.”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 chair of the Covid inquiry has ruled that evidence related to PPE Medpro, the firm linked to Baroness Michelle Mone and her husband Doug Barrowman, will be heard in a closed, private session next month.