A highly-anticipated White House report about childhood diseases has provoked a tug-of-war pitting farmers and some prominent Republican lawmakers against health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and his “Make America Healthy Again” movement ahead of its release.

Farmers and Republicans are nervous about what the report might say about glyphosate, the ingredient commonly used in pesticides sprayed on crops. Kennedy has denied the report will be unfavorable to farmers.

Speaking on the Senate floor on Wednesday, Iowa Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley warned that farmers have reached out to him, upset they have not been able to provide input on the MAHA report ahead of its release.

News that Joe Biden has advanced prostate cancer has revived long-standing questions about the benefits versus the harms of a blood test that screens for the most commonly diagnosed cancer among men in the U.S.

Prostate-specific antigen, or PSA, screening tests are an imperfect tool for detecting prostate cancer, doctors and public health experts say.

Part of the problem is identifying and treating aggressive cancers like Biden's while not unnecessarily treating men with slow-growing cancers unlikely to sicken them. Autopsies found the disease to be so widespread that more than one-third of white men and half of Black men in their 70s had prostate cancers that would never do any harm.

After talks with Food and Drug Administration, company plans to resubmit vaccine application later this year

Moderna said on Wednesday it had withdrawn an application seeking approval for its flu and Covid combination vaccine candidate after discussions with the US Food and Drug Administration.

The company said it would resubmit the application later this year with vaccine efficacy data from a late-stage trial of its experimental seasonal influenza vaccine, which it expects to report this summer.

The decision comes a day after the US FDA said it would require new clinical trials for approval of annual Covid-19 boosters for healthy people under 65 years.

Jab hailed as ‘landmark moment for sexual health’ and comes amid record cases of infection

A vaccine for gonorrhoea will be rolled out in England as part of a world-first programme, officials have announced.

The move, hailed as a “landmark moment for sexual health”, will aim to tackle rising levels of the sexually transmitted infection (STI).

Gonorrhoea cases in England topped 85,000 in 2023, the highest since records began in 1918, with warnings over some strains being resistant to antibiotics.

The vaccine is an existing jab, known as 4CMenB, that is used against the meningococcal B disease, a serious bacterial infection that can cause meningitis and sepsis. It is used in the routine childhood programme and given to babies at eight weeks, 16 weeks and one year.

Annual COVID-19 shots for healthy younger adults and children will no longer be routinely approved under a major new policy shift unveiled Tuesday by the Trump administration.

Top officials for the Food and Drug Administration laid out new requirements for yearly updates to COVID shots, saying they’d continue to use a streamlined approach that would make vaccines available to adults 65 and older as well as children and younger adults with at least one health problem that puts them at higher risk.

But the FDA framework urges companies conduct large, lengthy studies before tweaked vaccines can be approved for healthier people. In a framework published Tuesday in the New England Journal of Medicine, agency officials said the approach still could keep annual vaccinations available for between 100 million and 200 million adults.

Moving forward, the FDA will adopt the following Covid-19 vaccination regulatory framework: On the basis of immunogenicity — proof that a vaccine can generate antibody titers in people — the FDA anticipates that it will be able to make favorable benefit–risk findings for adults over the age of 65 years and for all persons above the age of 6 months with one or more risk factors that put them at high risk for severe Covid-19 outcomes, as described by the CDC (Figure 2). For all healthy persons — those with no risk factors for severe Covid-19 — between the ages of 6 months and 64 years, the FDA anticipates the need for randomized, controlled trial data evaluating clinical outcomes before Biologics License Applications can be granted. Insofar as possible, when approving a Covid-19 vaccine for high-risk groups, the FDA will encourage manufacturers to conduct randomized, controlled trials in the population of healthy adults as part of their postmarketing commitment.

Source.

While abortion clinics have faced threats of violence for decades, fertility clinics have generally been insulated. But in recent years, in vitro fertilization has drawn increased scrutiny.

A bombing this weekend at a fertility clinic in California is raising fears that the threat of violence that has long loomed over abortion providers is now extending to other areas of reproductive health.

Authorities said four people were injured when a car bomb exploded outside the American Reproductive Centers clinic in Palm Springs Saturday, and the 25-year-old suspect was killed. The facility was badly damaged in the blast.

Law enforcement officials said the suspect’s writings expressed anti-natalist views, a belief that procreation is morally wrong. They characterized the blast as an act of terrorism and said it was believed to be an isolated incident.

The United States on Friday approved the first blood test for Alzheimer's, a move that could help patients begin treatment earlier with newly approved drugs that slow the progression of the devastating neurological disease.

The test, developed by Fujirebio Diagnostics, measures the ratio of two proteins in the blood. The rato is correlated with amyloid plaques in the brain – a hallmark of Alzheimer's that, until now, has been detected only through brain scans or spinal fluid analysis.

Drugmaker Regeneron Pharmaceuticals will buy genetic testing firm 23andMe for $256 million through a bankruptcy auction, the companies said Monday.

Regeneron said it will comply with 23andMe’s privacy policies and applicable laws with respect to the use of customer data and that it is ready to detail its intended use of the data to a court-appointed overseer.

The bankruptcy proceedings, filed in March, had drawn scrutiny from lawmakers who warned that millions of customers’ genetic data could be sold to unscrupulous buyers.

Summary

Emergency contraception is now available in over 11,000 U.S. convenience stores, including 7-Eleven and Circle K, through Cadence’s "Morning After Pill" brand.

This expanded access comes as some Republican-led states push for stricter contraception scrutiny following abortion bans.

Cadence wants to normalize and broaden access to contraception, particularly for women lacking pharmacy access or facing stigma.

Priced around $25, the pill is placed near condoms, not behind counters. Despite opposition, polls show strong public support for contraception access amid rising demand and misinformation about legality and function.

During the first 4 months of 2025, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) has reduced funding for autism-related research by an estimated $31 million to $116 million from $147 million in the same period in 2024, according to a Reuters analysis of NIH data.

The spending is 26% lower than the prior 4-year average for that period, the analysis found.

In some cases, the NIH has canceled projects because they involved diverse populations, studied differences in gender or took place at research universities currently under scrutiny by the Trump Administration.

For others, funding for autism projects has simply halted or money for new projects has not been approved.

Research shows gardening preserves cognitive function, helping you live well for longer. Now, dementia patients are reaping the benefits with "care farms" prescriptions.

In 2015, Norway became one of the first countries to create a national dementia care plan, which includes government-offered daycare services such as Inn på tunet – translated as "into the yard" – or care farms.

Now, as researchers recognise the vast cognitive benefits of working on the land, more communities are integrating gardening into healthcare – treating all kinds of health needs through socially-prescribed activities in nature, or green prescriptions.

"Nature prescriptions can increase physical activity and social connection while reducing stress, which have multiple positive knock-on effects for blood pressure, blood sugar control and healthy weight, reducing the risk of diseases that can lead to dementia," says Melissa Lem,  a family physician based in Vancouver and researcher at the University of British Columbia, Canada – where she examines the opportunities and barriers  around nature-based prescriptions.

"We all know that more physical activity improves mental and physical health, but gardening supercharges those benefits," she says.

The HHS secretary "clearly believes that the more he tells a lie, the more it becomes the truth,” Sen. Angela Alsobrooks (D-Md.) told HuffPost.

During a Senate committee hearing on Wednesday, Sen. Angela Alsobrooks (D-Md.) had a strange clash with Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. over the massive cuts he’s overseen at his agency, including to personnel.

“You made it very clear here today you have no knowledge whatsoever of the absolutely amazing scientists and researchers who you have callously fired,” said Alsobrooks.

“I didn’t fire any working scientists,” Kennedy said.

“That, sir, is not true either,” replied Alsobrooks.

Soon after KJ Muldoon was born in the summer of 2024, he was diagnosed with a rare genetic disorder that is fatal for about half the infants who are born with it.

Until now, the only effective long-term treatment for the rare metabolic disease known as severe Carbamoyl Phosphate Synthetase 1 deficiency, or CPS1, had been a liver transplant.

Instead, doctors at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia told KJ's family they could try something never done before. They would use a technology known as CRISPR, a personalized gene-editing therapy, to find the one uniquely mutated gene out of 20,000 in his little body, and fix it.

He became the first known patient in the world to be treated using CRISPR personalized just for him, according to a news release from Penn Medicine. His case was published Thursday in the New England Journal of Medicine.

Imagine spending hours on the couch, feeling good about the morning’s workout. You ran, you lifted, you stretched. You believe you’ve done enough to protect your health. But new research says that may not be true.

Sitting for extended periods, regardless of exercise, can harm the brain. Even the most active older adults face the risk of faster brain shrinkage if they sit too much.

The study, led by researchers from Vanderbilt University’s Memory and Alzheimer’s Center, tracked older adults for seven years. They examined how long participants sat, how often they moved, and how much their brains shrank over time.

The results were troubling. Exercise didn’t fully counteract the effects of prolonged sitting. The more hours spent sitting, the greater the brain decline.

Researchers at the University of Rochester’s Wilmot Cancer Institute found that taurine, an ingredient in energy drinks like Red Bull and Celsius, could increase the risk of blood cancers

A recent study published in Nature has raised concerns about taurine, a widely used amino acid in energy drinks such as Red Bull and Celsius, indicating it may increase the risk of blood cancers.

Researchers at the University of Rochester’s Wilmot Cancer Institute discovered that leukemia cells absorb taurine, which develops in bone marrow, using it to fuel their growth through a process called glycolysis. This is the process where cells break down glucose to produce energy, which cancer cells use to grow.

The study suggests that the excessive intake of taurine, particularly through supplements and energy drinks, could exacerbate leukemia by providing additional fuel for cancer cells.

“It’s torture for me,” April Newkirk said. “I see my daughter breathing, but she’s not there.”

A pregnant woman in Georgia who was declared brain-dead is being kept alive by ventilators because of the state’s law banning abortions, the woman’s mother says, telling local news that the family has no say in the matter.

April Newkirk said her 30-year-old daughter, Adriana Smith, began experiencing intense headaches in early February. Smith was nine weeks pregnant at the time with her second child, NBC affiliate WXIA-TV of Atlanta reported.

Smith sought treatment at Northside Hospital but was released and given medication, Newkirk told the station. Newkirk said the hospital did not run any tests or scans.

Downward trend in deaths appears stalled due to lack of urgency among doctors, patients, along with healthcare barriers

Health secretary cites ‘new data’ that emerged from flawed study conservatives are using to pressure US government

The US health secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr, said on Wednesday that he had directed the FDA to review the regulations around the abortion pill mifepristone.

The review, he said, was necessary due to “new data” – data that emerged from a flawed analysis that top US anti-abortion groups are now using to pressure the Trump administration to reimpose restrictions on the abortion pill, if not pull it from the market entirely.

The analysis, which has not been peer-reviewed or published in a medical journal, came after the Food and Drug Administration commissioner said he was open to reviewing new safety data on the pills, which are used in nearly two-thirds of abortions nationwide.