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Warning of Superbugs, Groups Urge Trump EPA to Ban Use of Important Drugs as Pesticides
Just a month after the head of the World Health Organization warned that “antimicrobial resistance is outpacing advances in modern medicine, threatening the health of families worldwide,” a coalition of conservation, farmworker, and public health groups on Monday petitioned the Trump administration to ban the use of crucial drugs as pesticides.
The legal petition provides a list of “active ingredients that are themselves, or whose use can promote cross-resistance to, medically important antibiotics/antifungals,” and requests that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) cancel registrations under the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act of all products that contain them.
“Research is clear that the use of antibiotics and antifungals as pesticides poses a threat to public health because it contributes to the evolution of pathogens that are resistant to medicine,” the petition states, referring to what are often called “superbugs.”
Boston Health Officials: ‘Do Not Visit CDC.Gov’ for Vaccine Information
The Boston Public Health Commission is telling residents “do not visit CDC.gov” for “reliable, trustworthy” information on vaccines. In a statement released Nov. 21, Boston Public Health Commissioner Bisola Ojikutu addressed a recent website revision by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) that suggests possible links between vaccines and autism, altering a long-standing public position by the federal agency.
“The statements on the CDC’s website are now false,” Ojikutu said. “They rely upon data that has been revoked by medical journals and debunked by a large body of high-quality research.” Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has a long history of promoting vaccine skepticism and claiming a link between vaccines and autism, told the New York Times he instructed the CDC to change its long-established website language. The revision essentially states that the possibility of a connection has not been ruled out.
“The whole thing about ‘vaccines have been tested and there’s been this determination made,’ is just a lie,” Kennedy said in the interview. “The phrase ‘Vaccines do not cause autism’ is not supported by science.”
Pfizer’s modRNA Flu Shot Shows Only Marginal Gains: Is This Really the Future of Influenza Vaccines?
David Fitz-Patrick, M.D., and colleagues, in a Pfizer-funded multicenter phase 3 trial published in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM), evaluated a quadrivalent modified mRNA (modRNA) influenza vaccine against the egg-based quadrivalent inactivated vaccine Fluzone in 18,476 adults aged 18–64 during the 2022–2023 flu season in the U.S., South Africa, and the Philippines.
The randomized, blinded trial found a 34.5% relative reduction in lab-confirmed influenza-like illness with modRNA versus control (57 vs 87 cases), driven entirely by A/H3N2 and A/H1N1, with no meaningful B-strain data.
Reactogenicity was substantially higher in the modRNA arm, though serious adverse events and deaths were similar, with no myocarditis cases detected at 6 months. NEJM (Impact Factor 78.5, 2024) frames the vaccine as statistically superior with “acceptable” safety and strong T-cell responses.
Eli Lilly Hits $1 Trillion Market Value, a First in Health Care, as Novo Nordisk Tumbles
Eli Lilly reached a $1 trillion market capitalization on Friday, the first health-care company in the world to join the exclusive club dominated by tech firms. The drugmaker’s stock inched about 1% higher Monday, trading above the $1 trillion threshold. Eli Lilly is the second nontechnology company to reach that market cap milestone in the U.S. after Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway.
The company’s rise came as shares of its chief rival in the GLP-1 drug space, Novo Nordisk, tumbled about 6% in U.S. trading Monday. While Novo Nordisk’s stock fell after disappointing Alzheimer’s trial results, the drugmaker’s market share losses to Eli Lilly in obesity and diabetes drugs have led its stock to drop nearly 45% this year.
Meanwhile, Eli Lilly’s stock has climbed more than 37% this year as investors have applauded the gains it has made over Novo Nordisk in the booming space. The Indianapolis-based company’s stock has been riding the skyrocketing popularity of its weight loss injection Zepbound and diabetes treatment Mounjaro.
UnitedHealth Adds Former FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb to Board
UnitedHealth has struggled over the past few years amid rising medical expenses, a costly cyberattack, antitrust probes from federal regulators and other challenges. The spotlight on the company further increased after its top insurance executive was publicly killed late last year.
The string of crises has made investors skittish, and UnitedHealth’s value has plummeted as a result. The company’s stock remains down 39% this year to date, despite a turnaround plan that’s yielded some recent signs of success.
Amid the broad spate of challenges, one priority for Stephen Hemsley — the chairman of UnitedHealth’s board who became CEO in May following the abrupt departure of then-chief executive Andrew Witty — is to improve the company’s relationship with regulators. Gottlieb, who has years of experience with regulatory agencies, could be a big help with that. Over his career, Gottlieb has held a variety of posts in the public and private sectors.
In government, Gottlieb worked for the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services and the committee that advises the U.S. Health and Human Services on health IT policy before being tapped as FDA commissioner in May 2017. Gottlieb was a generally popular choice, especially compared to some of the first Trump administration’s more unconventional earlier candidates.
