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Top FDA Vaccine Official Steps Down Again as Deputy Takes Over
The Food and Drug Administration’s top vaccine official has left the agency for a second time, and his deputy has been promoted to the vacant position. Dr. Vinay Prasad had been the director of the FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research (CBER), which reviews applications from companies for experimental vaccines. His last official day was April 30.
Dr. Tracy Beth Hoeg, acting director of another FDA center, wrote on X that she was grateful she had the opportunity to work with Prasad, describing him as having done “transformational work at the FDA.”
Katherine Szarama, who had been CBER’s deputy director, has been elevated to acting director of the center, a spokesperson for the Department of Health and Human Services, the FDA’s parent agency, told The Epoch Times in an email.
Health Freedom at the Forefront of Individual Rights vs. Government Debate
The Arizona Capitol Times reported:
Six years after the start of the Covid pandemic, health freedom and vaccine mandates are still major issues at the Arizona Legislature. At least 17 bills related to vaccinations or medical interventions have been filed this year. Some of them concern insurance prohibitions or requirements, reporting requirements, studies related to Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, exemptions and other related topics, but two bills are specifically aimed at the principle of health freedom.
House Bill 2248 would prohibit businesses, ticket issuers, schools, state, county and local governments or officials from requiring a person to receive or use a medical intervention or discriminate against a person based on whether the person has received or used a medical intervention. Rep. Lisa Fink, R-Glendale, filed the bill, which has since passed third reading in the House and the Senate.
House Concurrent Resolution 2056, subject to voter approval, would constitutionally recognize the right to refuse medical mandates and prohibits governments from requiring any person to receive or administer any medical treatment as a condition of employment, education or exercising any right or benefit. Rep. Nick Kupper, R-Surprise, filed the bill which currently awaits Senate floor action.
US Lawmakers Move to Restrict AI Chatbots Used By Kids
A bipartisan pair of House and Senate bills would impose new federal restrictions on AI chatbots, including a ban on minors using AI “companions.”
The bills would require mandatory age verification for chatbot users, repeated disclosures that users are interacting with a machine, and civil and criminal penalties for companies whose systems expose children to sexual content or encourage self-harm.
The legislation, called the Guidelines for User Age-verification and Responsible Dialogue Act (GUARD Act), was introduced in the Senate by Sens. Josh Hawley, Richard Blumenthal, Katie Britt, Mark Warner, and Chris Murphy.
A House companion bill was introduced by Reps. Blake Moore and Valerie Foushee.
The legislation arrives as lawmakers in both parties are increasingly focused on children’s online safety, age verification, social media design, algorithmic harms, and the use of AI systems in products marketed to or accessible by minors.
Infant Formula Recalled Due to Toxic Contamination: FDA
New Zealand-based a2 Milk Company (a2MC) is recalling three batches of its infant formula sold in the United States, citing the presence of cereulide toxin. The recall is applicable to a2 Platinum Premium infant formula, zero to 12 months, milk-based powder with iron, the company said in an announcement published by the Food and Drug Administration on May 2.
“Cereulide is a heat-stable toxin produced by some strains of the bacterium Bacillus cereus. Illness occurs through the consumption of food contaminated with the toxin and preparing formula with hot water does not eliminate it,” it said. “Symptoms typically develop within 30 minutes to six hours of ingestion and most often involve gastrointestinal symptoms such as nausea and vomiting that typically self-resolve within 24 hours. Infants are at greater risk due to their developing immune systems and can experience complications such as dehydration which require medical care.”
Recalled products were sold in 31.7 oz. tins with batch number 2210269454 and “Use By” date of July 15, 2026; batch number 2210324609 with date Jan. 21, 2027; and batch number 2210321712 with date Jan. 15, 2027. More than 63,000 units of infant formula were tagged across these three batch numbers, out of which 16,428 units are estimated to have been sold to customers.
Did the Biden Administration Purposefully Ignore Covid Vaccine Side Effects?
The effort to promote COVID vaccines to the general public took many forms. Experts like Anthony Fauci downplayed the extreme difference in risk between age groups, asserting that everyone should be vaccinated, regardless of youth or a lack of other health-related risk factors. The former CDC director, Rochelle Walensky, made the completely unsupported claim that “vaccinated people don’t carry the virus” and “don’t get sick,” promises that were false at the time and proved humiliating later.
Former President Joe Biden said that unvaccinated people should prepare for a “winter of severe illness and death” in 2021-2022. He also tried to force all private businesses with more than 100 employees to enforce vaccine mandates. There were vaccine passports, university mandates, and of course, the pinnacle, or nadir, or COVID absurdity, Stephen Colbert’s “The Vax-scene.”
But the other side of the incessant push for more COVID vaccine uptake was the purposeful downplaying or denying of potential side effects and their impact on the risk-benefit calculation.
A Long, Strange Trip: How the G.O.P. Came to Embrace Psychedelic Drugs
Mindbending may be just the word to describe the Oval Office ceremony on April 18, when President Trump ordered federal agencies to speed up research into the potential therapeutic uses of illegal psychedelic compounds like LSD, peyote and MDMA. Here was a law-and-order Republican and lifelong teetotaler championing the hallucinogenic substances that a previous Republican president, Richard Nixon, had condemned as “public enemy No. 1.”
In the decades since 1970, when Nixon consigned psychedelics to the most restrictive category of federal prohibition, his absolutist, just-say-no approach was embraced by waves of conservative politicians. They generally held to the view that psychedelics were a morally corrupting intoxicant, the indulgences of hippies, draft-dodgers and other liberal degenerates.
“As someone who has worked with psychedelics for decades, watching the White House event was a very trippy experience,” said Dimitri Mugianis, an underground practitioner who was prosecuted by federal authorities for illegally treating a heroin addict with the psychedelic drug ibogaine.
