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The Case for Finding Common Ground With RFK
Democrats need to build a bigger tent to be competitive. But building a bigger political tent means compromising — and that compromise usually means making someone inside your tent angry. Take, for instance, Colorado Governor Jared Polis, who surprised many and angered some by announcing that he was “excited” by the nomination of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to lead the Department of Health and Human Services. Asking people to hold off on mocking or disagreeing with RFK Jr., Polis pointed to issues like pharmaceutical reform, nutrition policy, and the use of pesticides.
After facing backlash, Polis clarified that he was pro-vaccines, but it left me thinking: What might it look like to open the Democratic tent to vaccine-skeptical Americans, of which there are a growing number?
How ‘Health Freedom’ Became a Winning Rallying Cry
Leah Wilson’s small organization was less than a year old when she realized she was making a difference. It was the beginning of 2020, just before the COVID-19 shutdowns, and hundreds of protesters had gathered to demonstrate outside the State House in Trenton, N.J. They held signs with slogans like “my child, my choice” and “hands off our kids,” urging politicians to vote against a bill that would end religious exemptions for school-mandated vaccines.
Ms. Wilson, 38, wasn’t there. She was almost 700 miles away in her home state of Indiana. But more than 80,000 people had used her online platform to send messages directly to legislators. The measure ultimately fell short of passage by a single vote. It was an outcome “no one thought was possible,” Ms. Wilson said, but her side had won.
Ms. Wilson’s organization, Stand for Health Freedom, has become part of a grassroots push in the years since. Hers is just one of many groups dedicated to the cause of “medical freedom,” a catchall term for ideas that often diametrically oppose scientific consensus and established medical practices. The medical freedom movement represents people with a broad range of positions. Many want to reduce Food and Drug Administration oversight and see the U.S. exit the World Health Organization.
Canadian Teen Recovers From Severe H5N1 Bird Flu Infection
A 13-year-old Canadian girl recovered after being hospitalized in critical condition with H5N1 avian influenza, researchers reported. The girl was hospitalized on Nov. 7, 2024, and transferred to BC Children’s Hospital the next day, where she was intubated and put on extracorporeal membrane oxygenation and treated with three different antivirals, David Goldfarb, M.D., of BC Children’s Hospital in Vancouver, and colleagues reported in the New England Journal of Medicine.
The girl had a history of asthma and a body mass index greater than 35. She first presented to an emergency department in British Columbia on Nov. 4, 2024, with a 2-day history of conjunctivitis in both eyes and a 1-day history of fever. She was discharged without treatment, but then she developed a cough, vomiting and diarrhea.
She went back to the emergency department on Nov. 7, 2024, with respiratory distress with hemodynamic instability, Goldfarb’s group reported. The next day, she was transferred to the pediatric intensive care unit at BC Children’s while on bilevel-positive airway pressure. She had respiratory failure, pneumonia in the left lower lobe, acute kidney injury, thrombocytopenia and leukopenia.
Weight Loss Drugs Help With Fat Loss, but They Cause Bone and Muscle Loss Too
For a long time, dieting and exercise were the only realistic options for many people who wanted to lose weight, but recent pharmaceutical advances have led to the development of weight loss drugs. These are based on natural hormones from the intestine that help control food intake, such as GLP and GIP.
GLP-1-based drugs such as semaglutide (Wegovy) and tirzepatide (Mounjaro) work by helping people to feel less hungry. This results in them eating less — leading to weight loss. In clinical trials of people with obesity, these drugs lead to a weight loss of up to 20% of body weight in some instances. But it’s important to note that not all the weight lost is fat.
Research shows that up to one-third of this weight loss is so-called “non-fat mass” — this includes muscle and bone mass. This also happens when someone goes on a diet and after weight loss surgery. Muscles and bones play very important roles in our health. Muscle is really important for a number of reasons including that it helps us control our blood sugar. Blood sugar control isn’t as good in people who have lower levels of muscle mass.
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Bird Flu Warning Over New Virus Risk: ‘Significant Public Health Concern’
Combined infection with bird flu and human flu could lead to mutations of new viruses that could have dangerous public health consequences, agencies have warned.
This is following the news that mutations of bird flu have occurred within a Louisiana patient and a teenager from Canada who both suffered with severe symptoms, potentially raising the risk of serious human infection among others.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) advises on their website that Americans, particularly those at high risk of bird flu such as farmworkers, should get the flu vaccine this season, even though it only prevents seasonal flu. “This is because it can reduce the prevalence and severity of seasonal flu and might reduce the very rare risk of coinfection with a human seasonal virus and avian virus at the same time, and the theoretical risk that reassortment between the two could result in a new virus,” the CDC says.
Pfizer, BMS and More Ring in 2025 With Fresh Round of Drug Price Increases: Report
While the New Year’s tradition of drug price hikes has held firm for years, pharma companies have decidedly tamped down on the magnitude of cost increases getting rolled out Jan. 1. All told, drugmakers plan to raise U.S. list prices on some 250 branded drugs beginning this month, Reuters reports, citing data from the healthcare research firm 3 Axis Advisors.
Notable medicines subject to price increases include Pfizer’s COVID-19 drug Paxlovid, Bristol Myers Squibb’s CAR-T therapies Abecma and Breyanzi and a clutch of vaccines from Sanofi, according to the report. The amount of medicines seeing their price tags tick up in 2025 marks a sizable increase over the 140 branded drugs that underwent price hikes at the start of 2024.
New Reports Sharpen Clinical Picture of Recent Human H5N1 Illnesses in US and Canada
Two groups of investigators today fleshed out a fuller clinical understanding of North American patients recently infected with H5N1 avian influenza, one of them describing a Canadian teen who had a severe infection and the other reviewing illness features of 46 U.S. patients, most of whom had mild infections following exposure to sick dairy cows or poultry. The teams published their reports today in the New England Journal of Medicine.
In the final months of 2024, U.S. health officials continue to battle outbreaks in dairy cattle from the B3.13 genotype, with sporadic spillovers to people and fallout from contamination in raw milk. The U.S. and Canada are now juggling a steep rise in poultry outbreaks from a different genotype carried by wild birds migrating south, which have been linked to two severe human infections — one on each side of the border — and a spate of deaths in U.S. cats.
Blood Test Can Predict How Long Vaccine Immunity Will Last, Study Shows
When children receive their second measles-mumps-rubella vaccine, around the time they start kindergarten, they gain protection against all three viruses for all or most of their lives. Yet the effectiveness of an influenza vaccine given in October starts to wane by the following spring.
Scientists have long been stymied by why some vaccines can coax the body to produce antibodies for decades, while others last mere months. Now, a study led by researchers at Stanford Medicine has shown that variation in vaccine durability can, in part, be pinned on a surprising type of blood cell called megakaryocytes, typically implicated in blood clotting.
“The question of why some vaccines induce durable immunity while others do not has been one of the great mysteries in vaccine science,” said Bali Pulendran, Ph.D., a professor of microbiology and immunology. “Our study defines a molecular signature in the blood, induced within a few days of vaccination, that predicts the durability of vaccine responses and provides insights into the fundamental mechanisms underlying vaccine durability.”
