Login
Senate Democrats Open Probe Into Kennedy’s Firing of CDC Vaccine Panel
The Honolulu Star-Advertiser reported:
Democrats on the U.S. Senate’s health committee launched an investigation today into Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s firing of all members of a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) panel of vaccine experts.
Kennedy last month fired the 17 members of the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), which reviews vaccines approved by the Food and Drug Administration before making recommendations to the CDC on their use. Kennedy replaced them with hand-picked advisers including anti-vaccine activists.
“The harm your actions will cause is significant. As your new ACIP makes recommendations based on pseudoscience, fewer and fewer Americans will have access to fewer and fewer vaccines,” Democrats on the Senate’s Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee wrote to Kennedy in a letter reviewed by Reuters.
RFK Jr. May Remove Top Panel on Preventive Services Task Force
U.S. News & World Report reported:
U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is considering removing all 16 members of an advisory group that helps decide which preventive services, like cancer screenings and HIV medications, should be fully covered by insurance.
The group, known as the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, is made up of doctors, nurses and public health experts. They volunteer their time to study the latest research on many health issues, such as diabetes, heart disease, obesity and mental health. Their recommendations help decide what most private insurers must offer at no cost to patients under the Affordable Care Act.
Andrew Nixon, spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), said in a statement that “no final decision has been made on how the USPSTF can better support HHS’ mandate to Make America Healthy Again,” according to NBC News.
RFK Jr. Lashes out at Vaccine Injury Program, Pledges Changes
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said Monday he is working to overhaul the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (VICP), which is aimed at compensating people who have been injured by vaccines.
“The VICP is broken, and I intend to fix it. I will not allow the VICP to continue to ignore its mandate and fail its mission of quickly and fairly compensating vaccine-injured individuals,” Kennedy wrote in a lengthy post on social platform X. Kennedy has long targeted the VICP, and his X post echoed many of his previous arguments.
He has previously said he wants to expand the program, making it easier for claimants to qualify for awards based on adverse events he claims are associated with vaccines but are not currently part of the program.
Is MAHA Losing Its Battle to Make Americans Healthier?
On a Friday evening this July, the Trump administration announced it would lay off all of the health research scientists at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Hundreds of investigators who try to understand how toxic pollution affects the human body would be gone.
That wasn’t a surprise. The EPA — which had a founding mission to protect “the air we breathe and the water we drink,” as President Richard Nixon put it — has been busy dismantling policies that are in place to ensure environmental and public health.
The New York Times reported earlier this month that the agency is drafting a plan that would repeal its recognition of climate change as a threat to human health, potentially limiting the government’s ability to regulate greenhouse gases.
HHS, RFK Jr. Target Synthetic Opioid 7-OH Aiming to Avert the Next National Addiction Crisis
Federal regulators will take action to ban the synthetic version of the opioid found in kratom, a herbal supplement sold in gas stations and convenience stores around the country. The opioid 7-OH, short for 7-hydroxymitragynine, has become the target for new rules and expanded public attention to warn of the potential dangers of the drug.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services will ask the federal Drug Enforcement Agency to classify it as a Schedule 1 controlled substance, said U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Commissioner Marty Makary, M.D., MPH.
FDA also is publishing a new report with scientific and layman details about 7-OH, along with a “Dear Colleague” letter to warn physicians about the risks of synthetic 7-OH. Along with stronger regulations, a goal is to spark a national conversation about the drug by starting conversations among parents and children, school boards, leaders of places of worship, and the medical community.
The FDA Is Cracking Down on an Indian Drugmaker Investigated by ProPublica Last Year
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is cracking down on a generic drugmaker that was the subject of a ProPublica investigation last year, citing problems with safety tests that delayed the recall of a medicine linked to deaths in the U.S.
In December, ProPublica reported that a Glenmark Pharmaceuticals factory in central India was responsible for an outsized share of recalls for pills that didn’t dissolve properly and could harm American patients. Among the string of recalls, federal regulators had determined that more than 50 million potassium chloride extended-release capsules sold in the U.S. could be deadly. Yet, federal drug inspectors at that point hadn’t set foot in the Madhya Pradesh factory for more than four years, ProPublica found.
Seven weeks after that story was published, FDA inspectors showed up at the plant and found serious problems. Glenmark subsequently recalled an additional two dozen medicines made there and sold to U.S. patients.
WATCH: COVID Doctors Blast Vaccine Mandates, Censorship in Front of Supreme Court
Dr. Stella Immanuel, a Texas physician known for treating thousands of COVID-19 patients with hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin, joined fellow physicians Dr. Simone Gold, Dr. Mary Talley Bowden, and other experts in front of the U.S. Supreme Court (SCOTUS) on Sunday to demand accountability from those who mandated vaccines and censored opposing voices.
The demonstration fell on the fifth anniversary of the 2020 “White Coat Summit,” where Immanuel and her colleagues went mega-viral as she claimed that hydroxychloroquine worked to save 350 COVID-19 patients at her Houston practice, Breitbart News reported.
The original event garnered millions of views as it was streamed by Breitbart News, but Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook censored and restricted the video. Speaking to a crowd gathered outside SCOTUS, Immanuel recognized the five-year mark “of when we stood here to tell the world that COVID is treatable, and we don’t have to die.”
