A day after attending the funeral of an unvaccinated child who died of measles, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. will kick off a tour through Southwestern states on Monday, spotlighting initiatives that emphasize nutrition and lifestyle choices as tools for combating disease. The Make America Healthy Again tour, which will take Mr. Kennedy through parts of Utah, Arizona and …
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As RFK Jr. Champions Chronic Disease Prevention, Key Research Is Cut
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has spoken of an “existential threat” that he said can destroy the nation. “We have the highest chronic disease burden of any country in the world,” Mr. Kennedy said at a hearing in January before the Senate confirmed him as the secretary of Health and Human Services. And on Monday he is starting a tour in …
Read More »Trump Rejects Proposal for Medicare to Cover Wegovy and Other Obesity Drugs
The Trump administration on Friday rejected a Biden plan that would have required Medicare and Medicaid to cover obesity drugs and expanded access for millions of people. Under the law that established Medicare’s Part D drug benefits, the program was forbidden from paying for drugs for “weight loss.” The Biden administration’s proposal last November had attempted to sidestep that ban …
Read More »FDA Layoffs Could Raise Drug Costs and Erode Food Safety
Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced wide-ranging cutbacks at federal health agencies, including the Food and Drug Administration, that would eliminate duplicative services and paper pushers. But in interviews with more than a dozen current and former F.D.A. staff members, a different picture emerged of the far-reaching effects of the layoffs that would ultimately reduce the agency work force …
Read More »C.D.C. Cuts Threaten to Set Back the Nation’s Health, Critics Say
The extensive layoffs of federal health workers that began on Tuesday will greatly curtail the scope and influence of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the world’s premier public health agency, an outcome long sought by conservatives critical of its handling of the Covid-19 pandemic. The reorganization of the Department of Health and Human Services shrinks the C.D.C. by …
Read More »Entire Staff Is Fired at LIHEAP
The Trump administration has abruptly laid off the entire staff running a $4.1 billion program to help low-income households across the United States pay their heating and cooling bills. The firings threaten to paralyze the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, which was created by Congress in 1981 and helps to offset high utility bills for roughly 6.2 million people …
Read More »Why the Right Still Embraces Ivermectin
Joe Grinsteiner is a gregarious online personality who touts the anti-parasitic drug ivermectin. In a recent Facebook video, he produced a tube of veterinary-grade ivermectin paste — the kind made for deworming horses. He gave the tube a squeeze. Then he licked a slug of the stuff, and gulped. “Yum,” Mr. Grinsteiner said in the Feb. 25 video, one of …
Read More »RFK Jr. Turns to a Discredited Vaccine Researcher for Autism Study
A steadfast figure in the anti-vaccine movement who has helped shape Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s thinking on a possible link to autism has joined his department to work on a study examining the long-debunked theory, according to people familiar with the matter. The new analyst, David Geier, has published numerous articles in the medical literature attempting to tie …
Read More »10,000 Federal Health Dept. Workers to Be Laid Off
The Trump administration on Thursday announced a massive layoff of 10,000 employees at the Health and Human Services Department, as part of a dramatic reorganization designed to bring communications and other functions directly under the purview of Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. The layoffs, reported earlier by The Wall Street Journal, are a drastic reduction in personnel for the …
Read More »H.H.S. Scraps Studies of Vaccines and Treatments for Future Pandemics
The Trump administration has canceled funding for dozens of studies seeking new vaccines and treatments for Covid-19 and other pathogens that may cause future pandemics. The government’s rationale is that the Covid pandemic has ended, which “provides cause to terminate Covid-related grant funds,” according to an internal N.I.H. document viewed by The New York Times. But the research was not …
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