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Good morning and happy Thursday. The Big News Week continues, so read more:
The last about this week’s large federal health benefits
Stat reporters have continued to get a clearer picture of how the cuts on federal health authorities take place and the specific groups are the most difficult:
More than half of the employees at the office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation and the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality have been fired, Stat’s Bob Herman and Tara Bannow Report. The two agencies were approximately 0.04% of the health care expenditure of the federal government, but experts are concerned that explaining the departments will undermine the efforts to improve care and to introduce political interference in data -driven organizations. Read more.
The majority of staff, including the entire divisions for management and regulations, was cut off from the FDA Center for Tobacco Products, reports Sarah Todd of Stat. In recent years, the center has drawn up criticism from all sides and former officials, researchers, politicians and others told Sarah that the cutbacks will only worsen problems with tobacco regulation and enforcement in the US Read more.
At the NIH, scientists and other employees wonder where the agency is going in the middle of the cutbacks. Yesterday afternoon a group of scientists sued the agency and claimed that an “ideological cleansing” of research financing is illegal and threatens medical healings. But a paper published last week – entitled “A Blueprint for NIH Reform” – circulates in academic circles and can give an indication of which desk leadership is in mind. It is written by Martin Kulldorff, an employee of the new director of the Bureau, Jay Bhattacharya, who is also a member of the editorial board of the publication, called the Journal of the Academy of Public Health. Stat’s Anil Oza wrote about the details of the blueprint and what scientists think about it. Read more.
How the shingles vaccine protects against dementia
As vaccines become more political than ever, a new study shows a different advantage: getting the shingles vaccine could protect against dementia. De Paper, published yesterday in NatureDiscovered that people who received the vaccine had a 20% lower risk of developing dementia later than those who did not. The shot had no other influence on other common health problems for older adults such as heart disease, lung infections or cancer.
The researchers came to this finding through a natural experiment. They looked at 300,000 electronic health files that were randomly collected from people born between 1925 and 1942, comparing them with birthdays on either side of one fateful day in 1933, making people eligible for the shot when it was introduced in 2006.
“I was afraid to set this up because it is such a different approach than what is generally done in epidemiology and medicine,” Pascal Meldetzer told Stat’s Megan Molteni last fall, when she first wrote about the research as a preprint. “We look at a causal effect. … there is something clear here.” Read more.
Meanwhile at the Supreme Court
Three health -related matters came before the Supreme Court yesterday. This is what you need to know:
The judges ruled unanimously in favor of the FDA in a case with regard to the actions of the Agency against Vapen with sweet taste. It did not violate the federal law, they said, by refusing a company’s request to sell tastes such as “Jimmy the Juice Man in Peachy Strawberry” and “Suicide Bunny breast milk and cookies.” But the battle is not yet completely over – read more.
The court also ruled in favor of a truck driver who did not succeed a drug test and lost his job after taking a CBD supplement for chronic pain that was advertised as no THC in it. In one 5-4 DecreeThe Justices decided that Douglas Horn can continue with an anti-tracker court case to keep the company that the product has made responsible.
Later in the morning the court heard oral arguments in Medina v. Planned Parenthood South Atlantic. In 2018, the Governor of South Carolina issued an executive order that forbids every clinic where abortions are performed by participating in the state of Medicaid. The Supreme Court is considering one specific question: Can people at Medicaid sue the state about a prohibition like this, referring to the free choice of the Medicaid Act of the provider? Planned Parenthood argued that patients should be able to do this, while the Trump administration and South Carolina said no.
The judges are expected to give a ruling by the end of the term in June. The result will have consequences for people who are looking for reproductive care in South Carolina, but also in various other states who have tried to keep parenthood in the same way from their medicah networks. If you want to know more, KFF published a great primer About the case, and Vox’s Ian Millhiser wrote a bit useful analysis After the arguments about how politics could disrupt the law.
The pharmaceutical scandal you have forgotten
Erythropoietin – also known as EPO – is mainly remembered as one of the medicines that cyclist Lance Armstrong used to win seven Tours de France victories. But what you may have forgotten or never known is the role that this blood extraction played in a disaster that, according to one estimate, cost almost half a million people their lives.
It started in 2003, when a study concluded that EPO could kill cancer patients. Johnson & Johnson sold it as a cancer treatment under the Prosrit brand name, and experts initially assumed that the study was an Uitbijter. But it was not the first study to come up with these alarming results – months earlier, a study showed that almost three times as many participants died in taking procrrit as in the placebo group. So what happened?
“Lies, Feckless Government Supervision and the participation of almost every oncologist and the Cancer Hospital in the country are all part of this story,” writes Gardiner Harris in a new essay of the first opinion. Read more.
What we read
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Head Start will be 60. Will the federal childcare program make it to 61? The Hechinger report
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Miscarriage and motherhood, Atlantic
- The Health Department of New York City just lost $ 100 million to federal funds. That has consequences, Stat
- The Cory Book Endurance Test, New York Times
- Decimation of HHS Comms, Foia offices will leave Americans in the dark about urgent health matters, Stat