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Florida Republicans Refuse to Take Up DeSantis Bill Loosening Vaccine Mandates
Republican state lawmakers in Florida rejected Gov. Ron DeSantis’s latest push to loosen vaccine mandates for schoolchildren on Tuesday, once again rebuking the Republican governor on one of his legislative priorities.
Mr. DeSantis had called lawmakers into a four-day special session this week, in part to consider a bill that would allow more children to opt out of certain vaccines. But as soon as Daniel Perez, the Republican speaker of the State House and Mr. DeSantis’s chief legislative foe, opened the session on Tuesday morning, he made a surprise announcement that his chamber would not take up the proposal at all, effectively ending its chances.
Mr. Perez, who is from Miami and who has three young children, said he was concerned about “children being in school without measles and mumps and polio and chickenpox vaccines that have been working for decades.”
“That was something that I was uncomfortable with,” Mr. Perez told reporters shortly after his announcement.
U.S. Dentists Still Overprescribing Opioids Compared to Other Nations, Puerto Rico
U.S. News & World Report reported:
Folks getting a tooth pulled or a cavity drilled in the United States are still more likely to be prescribed powerful opioid painkillers, despite America’s ongoing opioid crisis, a new study says. There was a 27% drop in dental patients filling opioid prescriptions between 2021 and 2024, researchers reported recently in JAMA Network Open. But despite this decrease, U.S. dentists are still handing opioids out at rates far higher than other wealthy nations, researchers found.
For example, the Netherlands had a dental opioid prescription rate 24 times lower than that of the U.S. by 2024, the study found. Even the U.S. territory of Puerto Rico is more tightly controlling dental opioids, with a rate half that found in the U.S., researchers found.
“Our study shows that the U.S. dental opioid dispensing rate is decreasing but remains high by international standards,” lead researcher Dr. Kao-Ping Chua, an associate professor of pediatrics at the University of Michigan, said in a news release.
Shedding, Symptoms, and the Unfinished Science of Post-Vaccine Exposure
The pandemic left behind more than infection curves and policy battles. It left behind a vast archive of human reports — strange bleeding, dizziness, hormonal disruption, unexplained symptoms — many from people who insist they were never vaccinated but became ill after close contact with those who were.
In a widely read Substack essay, Marc Girardot revisits one of the most disputed claims of the COVID vaccine era: “shedding.” But his argument is not the familiar claim that vaccinated people spread spike protein or lipid nanoparticles in dangerous amounts. He largely rejects that theory as biologically unlikely. Instead, he proposes something narrower and more provocative: that vaccination may transiently disrupt vascular or tissue barriers, allowing the body’s own substances — hormones, immune signals, blood-derived components — to leak and, in rare circumstances, affect others.
The essay’s force comes from testimony. Girardot cites 182 self-reported accounts from unvaccinated individuals describing symptoms after contact with vaccinated people, especially menstrual changes, dizziness, and reproductive effects. The strongest reports, he argues, cluster around intimate contact, where dilution would be lowest. There are pieces of science that make parts of this hypothesis worth examining.
Menstrual changes after vaccination have been documented, usually as small and temporary effects. Experimental studies also show that the spike protein can affect endothelial cells and vascular permeability under certain conditions. Those findings support the possibility of internal physiological disruption.
CDC Warns of Antibiotic-Resistant Salmonella in Backyard Flocks
U.S. News & World Report reported:
A surge of Salmonella infections reported in 13 states has been linked to backyard poultry. Federal health officials warn that some of these cases involve superbugs that are resistant to common antibiotics. At least 34 people fell ill between late February and the end of March, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
Patients range from infants to seniors, with young children most often affected.
Symptoms, which may be serious and hard to treat, include diarrhea, high fever, vomiting and signs of dehydration such as not urinating much, dry mouth and throat, or dizziness, according to the CDC.
The germs stem from backyard flocks such as chickens, ducks, geese, guinea fowl and turkeys. Sick people range in age from 1 to 78, and 41% are children under 5 years old, according to the CDC. The outbreak may be even more widespread than reported, because recent cases may not yet have been recorded. What makes this specific outbreak alarming is the presence of drug-resistant bacteria.
FDA Alleges ‘Manipulated’ Data Supported Approval of Amgen’s Autoimmune Drug
The FDA has renewed calls for Amgen’s Tavneos to be pulled from the market, saying it has discovered new evidence that study personnel doctored the results of the drug’s pivotal study in order to make it look effective. The FDA is stepping up its campaign calling for Amgen to remove its autoimmune therapy Tavneos from the market, casting doubt on the integrity of the evidence that led to the drug’s approval nearly five years ago.
“New information that only became known to CDER [Center for Drugs Evaluation and Research] more than three years after approval shows that unblinded study personnel manipulated the results of the pivotal clinical study so the drug looked effective when the original analysis did not support that conclusion,” the FDA said in a statement on Monday.
The regulator did not provide evidence to back up these allegations. The FDA added that Amgen violated the agency’s regulations by not disclosing the original analysis in its application. CDER “can no longer conclude that there is, or has ever been, a valid demonstration that Tavneos is effective,” according to the press announcement.
