Welcome to Public Health Watch, a weekly roundup from Protect Our Care tracking catastrophic activity as part of Donald Trump’s sweeping war on health care. From installing anti-vaccine zealot RFK Jr. as Secretary of HHS to empowering Elon Musk to make indiscriminate cuts to our public health infrastructure, including the National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control, Donald Trump is endangering the lives of millions of Americans. Protect Our Care’s Public Health Watch will shine a spotlight on the worst of the Trump/RFK/Musk war on vaccines, science and public health and serve as a resource for the press, public and advocacy groups to hold them accountable.
What’s Happening In Public Health?
Catastrophic Cuts And Cruel Policies Are Creating Chaos And Endangering Americans’ Health And Scientific Innovation
Stat: New analysis predicts sprawling effects of proposed NIH budget cuts Initial analyses of the Trump administration’s proposed National Institutes of Health budget cuts have overlooked key aspects of their long-term economic and health impact, according to a newly released paper, which suggests the effects will be sprawling and ultimately cost the country more than is being saved through the cuts. The authors point to NIH budget cuts decimating the scientific workforce, diminishing support for public health programs that have increased life expectancy, and creating gaps in scientific knowledge that are not likely to be filled by private industry. The paper, published in JAMA Health Forum, also highlights difficulties researchers have had in quantifying, and communicating, the potential impacts of declining federal support.
New York Times: U.S. Quietly Drafts Plan to End Program That Saved Millions From AIDS The federal program to combat H.I.V. in developing nations earned a reprieve last week when Congress voted to restore $400 million in funding. But that may be short-lived: Officials at the State Department have been mapping out a plan to shut it down in the coming years. Planning documents for the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, obtained by The New York Times, call for the organization to set a new course that focuses on “transitioning” countries away from U.S. assistance, some in as little as two years. PEPFAR, as the program is called, would cease to exist as an initiative to provide medicines and services needed to treat and prevent the spread of H.I.V. in low-income countries. It would be replaced by “bilateral relationships” with low-income countries focused on the detection of outbreaks that could threaten the United States and the creation of new markets for American drugs and technologies, according to the documents.
Reuters: US-funded contraceptives for poor nations to be burned in France, sources say U.S.-funded contraceptives worth nearly $10 million are being sent to France from Belgium to be incinerated, after Washington rejected offers from the United Nations and family planning organisations to buy or ship the supplies to poor nations, two sources told Reuters. A spokesperson for the U.S. State Department confirmed to Reuters on Wednesday that a decision had been taken to destroy the stock. The supplies have been stuck for months in a warehouse in Geel, a city in the Belgian province of Antwerp, following President Donald Trump’s decision to freeze U.S. foreign aid in January. They comprise contraceptive implants and pills as well as intrauterine devices to help prevent unwanted pregnancies, according to seven sources and a screengrab shared by an eighth source confirming the planned destruction. The U.S. government will spend $167,000 to incinerate the stocks at a facility in France that handles medical waste, the U.S. State Department confirmed.
Dismantling Key Agencies:
RFK Jr. Is An Extreme MAGA Anti-Vaxxer Who’s Breaking His “Assurances” To Key Republicans To Get Confirmed And Mis-Managing HHS
Wall Street Journal: RFK Jr. to Oust Advisory Panel on Cancer Screenings, HIV Prevention Drugs Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is planning to remove all the members of an advisory panel that determines what cancer screenings and other preventive health measures insurers must cover, people familiar with the matter said. Kennedy plans to dismiss all 16 panel members of the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force because he views them as too “woke,” the people said. The White House has made a priority of targeting initiatives that promote diversity equity and inclusion, or DEI, in everything from artificial intelligence to health research grants. The task force has advised the federal government on preventive health matters since 1984. The Affordable Care Act in 2010 gave it the power to determine which screenings, counseling and preventive medications most insurers are required to cover at no cost to patients. The group, made up of volunteers with medical expertise who are vetted for conflicts of interest, combs through scientific evidence to determine which interventions are proven to work.
Stat: An unusual FDA panel on antidepressant use during pregnancy elevated skeptics of the drugs Intrusive thoughts and panic attacks plagued Tinelle Windham throughout her first three pregnancies. During her second, a doctor recommended she start taking Zoloft, a type of antidepressant called a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor, or SSRI. But she was wary. What about side effects? What if it harmed her baby? “I really was leery of getting it treated that way, and I saw a therapist for a small amount of time, but mostly I just toughed it out,” said Windham, a lawyer living in southern Maryland. “It was a very terrible experience trying to tough it out.” Toughing it out is a common approach among pregnant people with anxiety and depression. Many choose to avoid or go off antidepressants out of fear that the medications will harm their developing babies. But the risks of untreated mental illness, especially during pregnancy, are serious, and tend to outweigh the small and uncertain risk of antidepressants harming unborn babies, experts told STAT. Mental health conditions, including suicides and drug overdoses, are now the leading cause of pregnancy-related deaths, according to a 2024 report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. If you tuned into a recent discussion hosted by the Food and Drug Administration on the effects of SSRIs during pregnancy, however, you would have heard a different story, one overwhelmingly focused on the treatments’ risks. That seemed to be by design. Rather than recruiting a wide range of experts to discuss the best data available, the administration mainly invited clinicians and researchers who have a record of deep skepticism of antidepressants, including some who financially benefit from that skepticism.
New York Times: Kennedy Rescinds Endorsements for Some Flu Vaccines Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Tuesday formally rescinded federal recommendations for all flu vaccines containing thimerosal, a mercury-based preservative that the anti-vaccine movement has falsely linked to autism. The decision cements a move last month by vaccine advisers whom Mr. Kennedy named to the federal Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices after abruptly firing all 17 previous members. After hearing a presentation by the former leader of an anti-vaccine group, the panel had voted to walk back federal recommendations for all flu vaccines containing thimerosal. The panel also voted to recommend seasonal flu vaccines to all Americans 6 months and older. Mr. Kennedy has not yet accepted that recommendation. The thimerosal decision will not affect most Americans seeking flu vaccines: The preservative is added to multidose vials of flu vaccines to prevent bacteria from growing, but it is not an ingredient of the single-dose vials administered to most people.
Axios: RFK Jr. targets organ donations after reports of premature removal attempts Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s push to overhaul government health programs is extending to the troubled U.S. organ donation system. Why it matters: Congress and past administrations have tried to address problems like long wait times and cases of lost or destroyed organs. Kennedy is now latching onto dozens of instances in which organ removal for donation was reportedly started while donors still showed signs of life. His involvement comes at a time when 100,000 people are on wait lists for donated organs and 13 die each day “The entire system must be fixed to ensure that every potential donor’s life is treated with the sanctity it deserves,” Kennedy said in a news release Monday.
NOTUS: FDA Will Reevaluate Fluoride Supplements, Says the Agency’s New Drug Director Scientists pleading fluoride’s case at a public meeting hosted by the Food and Drug Administration on Wednesday were given a cold reception by the agency’s new drug czar. George Tidmarsh, who became director of the Center for Drug Evaluation and Research on Monday, didn’t seem convinced of the benefits of ingestible fluoride supplements for children who live in areas with low or no water fluoridation. “We’ve got to look at a risk-benefit analysis. And since this isn’t approved, it’s never been through the rigorous FDA process of saying there’s a benefit that outweighs the risk,” Tidmarsh told NOTUS about the fluoride supplements. “And if there’s not, then, you know, we should probably act.” When asked if the FDA would reanalyze the data on fluoride supplements, Tidmarsh said, “That’s what we’ll do.” But many of the meeting’s attendees disagreed with the new CDER director. “We do know what the safe dosage of fluoride is,” said James Bekker, a dentist and associate dean of the University of Utah School of Dentistry. “Any data that refutes the benefit of fluoride is either something taken out of context or flawed data with some kind of extreme level of fluoride that’s being tested.”
Other MAHA Activity:
- The Guardian: RFK Jr strides into new controversy: hiking in sweltering Arizona … in jeans
- The Daily Beast: RFK Jr. Pictured Partying With Child Sex Predator Jeffrey Epstein
- Mother Jones: The Plot Against Vaccines