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FDA, Merck Accused of ‘Covering up’ Hair-Loss Pill’s Suicide Link
Hair-loss drug Finasteride has long been tied to depression and suicide, but researchers say regulators have ignored the warnings, with a recent analysis by a public health expert slamming authorities and the manufacturer after global data showed psychiatric harm and a pattern of inaction by Merck and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
Professor Mayer Brezis from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem said that despite its cosmetic use, the drug’s effects on brain chemistry can be devastating, and has called for urgent regulatory reforms and post-marketing studies to protect public health. Brezis said Finasteride has been associated with depression and suicide for more than 20 years, but despite these long-standing concerns, neither regulators nor the drug’s manufacturer took meaningful action or launched the necessary safety investigations.
Drawing on adverse event reports and health records from several countries, his review, published in The Journal of Clinical Psychiatry, identifies a consistent pattern of psychiatric side effects linked to the drug, and he has appealed for major reforms on how medications are approved and monitored for long-term risks.The findings show a clear trend: people who used finasteride were far more likely to experience mood disorders and suicidal thoughts than those who did not.
‘Alternative’ to CDC’s Flagship Journal in the Works
A public health group and a top-tier journal will partner to publish an alternative to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC’s) flagship weekly publication that has been diminished under the Trump administration. The Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy (CIDRAP) at the University of Minnesota, and NEJM Evidence, will establish a field notes-style publication, CIDRAP director Michael Osterholm, Ph.D., MPH, announced at the IDWeek conference in Atlanta.
The new open-access publication will be titled Public Health Alerts and could serve as a venue for research that isn’t being published in Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR). It’s expected to come online in about a month, Osterholm said during the meeting. The alerts “will basically serve to be a way to convey the information that once was shared in the MMWR with all of us in a very timely way,” Osterholm said, according to STAT. “We encourage all of you to begin thinking about submissions of outbreaks or data you think should be evaluated.”
Public Health Alerts will be published as needed rather than weekly, STAT reported. An NEJM spokesperson confirmed to MedPage Today that “in the coming weeks, we will be sharing more information on a new, rapid digital alert to disseminate essential data on disease outbreaks and other issues of public health importance.”
Senate Plans Hearing With Trump’s Surgeon General Pick Casey Means Next Week: Sources
The influential Senate HELP Committee is planning a hearing next Thursday with Casey Means, President Donald Trump’s latest pick for surgeon general, considered “America’s Top Doc,” several people familiar with the situation told ABC News, though they cautioned the hearing has yet to be finalized. A Senate HELP Committee nomination usually leads to full Senate approval.
Means is pregnant and is expected to attend virtually, the sources added. She will meet later Tuesday with the staff of Republican HELP Committee members to discuss the timing of her hearing, two people familiar with the meeting told ABC News. A spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services referred ABC News to the HELP Committee.
“Dr. Means’ nomination hearing has not been finalized,” a HELP Committee spokesperson said in a statement. “We continue to work with Dr. Means and the administration to move her nomination through the process and schedule a hearing.”
Means, whom Trump nominated in May, would be one of the last major health nominees to appear for a Senate hearing.
The White House withdrew the nomination of Trump’s initial surgeon general pick, former Fox News contributor Janette Nesheiwat. A wellness entrepreneur, Means earned a medical degree from Stanford, but she left her residency program with just months remaining, a decision she has attributed to her becoming “disillusioned with the practice and incentives of surgical care,” according to her biography on her website.
Gulf South Residents and Green Groups Sue Trump and EPA Over Toxic Air Pollution Exemptions
Frontline community groups teamed up with national environmental organizations Wednesday to sue the Trump administration for letting chemical manufacturing plants off the hook for toxic, carcinogenic air pollution. The lawsuit targets an executive action from July that gave 50 plants a two-year exemption from a Biden-era U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) rule that tightened restrictions on cancer-causing air toxics like ethylene oxide and chloroprene.
After years of fierce grassroots advocacy from communities harmed by chemical plants, the EPA enacted the 2024 HON rule — Hazardous Organic NESHAP (National Emission Standards for Hazardous Air Pollutants) — and projected that it would reduce air pollution-related risks for communities living near these facilities by about 96% while cutting the industry’s emissions by more than 6,200 tons annually.
The plaintiffs — which include Texas Environmental Justice Advocacy Services, the Environmental Defense Fund, the Natural Resources Defense Council, Concerned Citizens of St. John and RISE St. James — say President Donald Trump’s exemption is unlawful and will increase health risks for communities in Texas, Louisiana, Kentucky, Illinois and other states. “For him to bring it back two more years, that means two more years of toxic pollution, two more years of us getting sick,” said Sharon Lavigne, founder and CEO of the grassroots Louisiana group RISE St. James and a leading environmental justice activist.
From Industry to E.P.A.: Lobbyist Now Oversees Pesticide Rules
Until recently, Kyle Kunkler was the top lobbyist for America’s soybean industry. In that job he once boasted of helping to keep a controversial weedkiller called dicamba in use, likening his back-and-forth with regulators to a tennis match full of “rocketing volleys.”
Now, he is that regulator. In June, Mr. Kunkler was named the Trump administration’s top official in charge of pesticide policy at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
Less than a month later, the EPA proposed allowing the use of herbicides containing dicamba, a chemical whose use has twice been restricted by a federal court. Critics of the proposal say it closely aligns with the soybean industry’s priorities. As the deputy assistant administrator for pesticides, Mr. Kunkler will lead the effort to finalize those plans. He is one of four former industry lobbyists or executives overseeing the EPA office that regulates chemicals including pesticides.
“It’s incredible, the entire leadership of that office comes directly from industry,” said Lori Ann Burd, a senior attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity, which previously took the EPA to court over dicamba. Dicamba has become increasingly important to American cotton and soybean farmers to control aggressive “superweeds” that are resistant to other weedkillers. But herbicides containing dicamba tend to drift into neighboring fields, damaging crops or threatening wildlife and trees. In 2016, one farmer murdered another in Arkansas in a dispute about dicamba that had drifted across property lines.
