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Appeals Panel Backs Vaccine Requirement for Virtual Student
A West Virginia law requiring childhood vaccination is likely constitutional and doesn’t require a religious exemption for a virtual student, a divided federal appeals court ruled.
Writing for the majority in a three-judge panel of the US Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III said West Virginia’s vaccine law “is a legitimate exercise of the state’s power to protect the health and wellbeing of school children,” and that “striking the law down would undermine not just our system of dual sovereignty, but also a long line of Supreme Court precedent.”
From ERs to Courtrooms, Trump’s Warning That Pregnant Women Shouldn’t Take Tylenol Is Causing Shockwaves
Six months after President Donald Trump shocked mainstream medicine by saying pregnant women shouldn’t take Tylenol because it is “associated with a very increased risk of autism,” the effects of his comments are still rippling across the country.
Early analysis of hospital prescriptions since September suggests fewer pregnant patients in emergency rooms were taking acetaminophen, the generic name for the drug Tylenol, in the first few months since the White House announcement, according to a recently published report in the medical journal, The Lancet.
A state attorney general has sued Tylenol’s makers, arguing they did not disclose the risks. And amid concerns about autism misinformation, researchers have founded an independent group to rival government efforts. Even a scientist who has prominently argued that there is a link between Tylenol and autism thinks Trump oversold the risk to pregnant women.
Dr. William Parker, a biochemist with ties to Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., has argued for years that acetaminophen is linked to autism — claims that have formed the basis of the Trump administration’s anti-Tylenol stance.
Hormone Drugs Make $6.3 Billion Comeback After FDA Nixes Safety Warnings
Lea Didion didn’t realize the night sweats she began experiencing in her 40s might be a sign of perimenopause. Her doctor clued her in and suggested she consider hormone replacement therapy, a once-vilified treatment that has come roaring back to help relieve hot flashes, vaginal dryness and other symptoms women start to experience in mid-life.
Didion soon began seeing a flood of social media posts and news articles about the benefits of hormone therapy, especially as the Food and Drug Administration prepared to ask drugmakers to remove strict black box warnings that had been placed on the medicine since 2003 — product labels that the agency now says led to “fear and misinformation.” In the fall, she started on a weekly estradiol patch and a nightly progesterone pill.
“It’s been shockingly helpful,” the California resident, 45, said. The aches she assumed were just part of getting older disappeared, her energy level increased and her gut health improved. “Some crappy research has been hurting women for decades.”
FDA Seeks More Power Over Drug Ads, Advisory Panels
The Trump administration dropped its fiscal 2027 budget request April 3, and the massive document release includes some notable legislative proposals for the FDA as the White House looks to build on the Make America Healthy Again agenda heading into the midterms. The request isn’t binding, and congressional appropriators steered clear of much of the administration’s biggest proposed spending cuts to health programs — as well as Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s suggested reorganization of several department functions into a new agency dubbed the Administration for a Healthy America.
Still, some of the policy-focused asks could make their way into a spending package that will likely be the last major vehicle for legislative changes to FDA authority before a slew of major user fee agreements are due for reauthorization in September next year.
Pharma advertising: The Food and Drug Administration seeks new authority to deem a drug misbranded if a direct-to-consumer advertisement “lacks fair balance and creates a misleading impression” about its approval, including the scope of the FDA-backed indication and the drug’s benefits.
The agency also wants Congress to clarify that ads for compounded drugs would similarly run afoul of the law if they don’t “clearly and prominently disclose” that the FDA hasn’t evaluated them for safety, effectiveness or quality or if they misleadingly compare them to FDA-approved drugs — a request that harkens back to Commissioner Marty Makary’s February statement foreshadowing a crackdown on the consumer marketing of compounded weight-loss drugs.
Is a New Weight-Loss Drug Making People Fall Out of Love?
A recent TikTok video shows a man in a black baseball cap, with text over the video stating: “strange effects of Reta” and “ruining relationships”. He is referring to retatrutide, an experimental weight-loss drug that targets three appetite-related hormones. It is still in clinical trials but has generated such interest that some users are already sourcing it illegally online before approval. The “weird theory going around”, the TikTok poster says, is that the drug can “make you fall out of love”.
Below the video, the comments fill with accounts of what users describe as emotional flattening. One person says the drug “stopped food craving and lusting as well”, another says they have “severe anhedonia [the inability to experience joy or pleasure]”, and a third says retatrutide made them feel “unbothered by 99% of everything”.
It is among several viral videos asking whether peptides stop you falling in love. While it sounds outlandish, medical researchers are beginning to investigate whether these drugs act as a “general reward dampener”. Because they target the brain’s reward centre, the mesolimbic system, they apparently do not just stop “food noise” but inadvertently the quiet joy found elsewhere.
While retatrutide is the newest and most potent, reports of “emotional flatness” have also surfaced among users of approved GLP-1 drugs, such as Mounjaro. A recent case report suggests that such medications can influence brain regions involved in emotional regulation and potentially trigger or worsen severe depressive symptoms.
RSV Is Still Spreading, Prompting States to Extend the Immunization Period
Respiratory syncytial virus is continuing to spread later into the spring than usual, driving most states to extend the window for RSV immunizations for eligible infants and toddlers.
RSV is a common respiratory virus that typically causes a mild illness like a cold. But it can cause serious illness for young children. The RSV season usually starts in the fall, peaks in the winter and continues into spring. Immunization is recommended through the end of March in most states, but this year, nearly all of those states have extended the immunization period through the end of April.
For the third week of March, federal data shows that 7.5% of tests were positive for RSV — significantly higher than the 5% test positivity rate at this time last year and even lower rates from the few years before that.
Scientists Are Working on a Vaccine for Cancer. Here’s How It Would Work
An advance in vaccine technology is showing promise toward fighting the second-most common cause of death in the United States, cancer. Scientists are working on developing mRNA vaccines that would work to fight cancer once it’s detected, said Andrew Pekosz, professor and vice chair at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, in a recent briefing.
From a technological sense, they would work similar to the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines that were developed to fight COVID-19. These vaccines would be considered “therapeutic vaccines” rather than preventative ones, he explained. “So once you develops the cancer, you can then design a vaccine that targets some of the unique proteins and other things that the cancer cells are showing to your body, and therefore your immune system can get ramped up and target those very specific cancer antigens that the cells are showing.”
While some cancers have common antigens, mRNA technology could make personalized vaccines a reality. A physician could take a sample from a patient’s cancer cells and design a vaccine that targets their specific cancer.
Medvi, the AI-Powered Telehealth Company, Is Fueled by Ads From Doctors Who Don’t Appear to Exist
Medvi is an AI-powered telehealth startup with two employees. It did $401 million in business last year, generated $65 million in profit, and is projected to do $1.8 billion in sales this year, according to a recent profile in the New York Times. A key factor in Medvi’s growth has been the use of affiliate marketers. Matthew Gallagher, Medvi’s founder, told Business Insider in an email that “maybe 30%” of its advertising was through affiliates.
A review of Meta’s ad library showed that some of these affiliates have run ads that feature what appeared to be AI-generated content, including people described as doctors. The supposed doctors’ pages include posts suggesting the pages were formerly run by other people or businesses, and some of their photos include telltale signs of AI use, like garbled text.
As of Monday, at least six purported doctor pages were marketing Medvi’s weight-loss drugs and a product that claims to increase men’s sexual performance. One profile, “Dr. Matthew Anderson MD,” lists an Angolan phone number and appears to have previously belonged to a gospel musician. Another, “Dr. Spencer Langford MD,” features older posts and contact information corresponding to a clothing store in the Republic of Congo. One Medvi marketer, “Wade Frazer MD,” dropped the “MD” after Business Insider asked about it. The same profile photo was used by three other pages that advertised Medvi.
