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How the alcohol industry puts policy on ice
Each year, the American Cancer Society raises hundreds of thousands from the wine and spirits industry through an annual fundraising gala featuring free-flowing booze like pineapple margaritas. That may seem like an odd event for the health nonprofit, given mounting research on the links between alcohol consumption and cancer risk. But it’s just one of many striking examples (“shocking, actually,” according to one Tufts University professor) that Isa Cueto and Lev Facher identify in their latest dispatch from The Deadliest Drug series — this one focused on the alcohol industry’s behind-the-scenes tactics for influencing public policy.
Read on to find out more details like which senator (a Democrat) received more donations from alcohol groups than any other as the industry panicked over potential changes to the dietary guidelines, and alcohol companies’ surprising connections with Mothers Against Drunk Driving. And if you need some catching up on Isa and Lev’s blockbuster alcohol series, check out their biggest takeaways so far.
Safety of mRNA vaccines affirmed in large new review
The mRNA vaccines rolled out in response to the Covid-19 pandemic have been subject to lots of misinformation and public distrust — including from some members of the Trump administration. A new review published in The Lancet confirms their safety, finding that “[a]cross billions of administered doses, serious adverse events have been rare, well characterised, and consistently outweighed by the substantial protection conferred against severe disease, hospitalisation, and death.”
As one example, incidents of myocarditis and pericarditis (inflammatory conditions related to the heart) were about 12.6 cases per million for Pfizer’s Covid vaccine and 35.6 cases per million for Moderna’s. And the risk of developing those conditions from a vaccine was much lower than the risk from a Covid infection, particularly in the higher-risk group of teenage boys. Read the full study.
How Maryland’s governor wants to help young men’s mental health
Like many people, Maryland Gov. Wes Moore (D) is concerned about the welfare of boys and young men in the U.S. But he takes issue with the way they’re often discussed. “We need to stop treating our young men and boys as problems to be solved, and start treating them as people to be invested in,” Moore writes in a new First Opinion.
Maryland’s new Young Men and Boys initiative aims to improve the well-being of young men and boys, including a program aimed at recruiting more male teachers who can act as positive role models and a paid service year option for high school graduates. Read about how Moore proposes to take more active care of boys and prevent them from falling into crisis.
Anthropic’s Claude comes for the scientists
First AI titan Anthropic shook up the computer programming industry with Claude Code. Now it’s coming for science.
Claude Science, the new application Anthropic unveiled on Tuesday, is a large language model customized for use in scientific laboratories and pharmaceutical research. Anthropic’s efforts in biology are “the single most important thing” at the company, its head of life sciences Eric Kauderer-Abrams told STAT.
This is the first time a large AI developer has released a separate interface and product for scientists, Matt Herper and Brittany Trang report. Read more about what it could mean for life sciences and which businesses are already getting nervous about how it could affect their bottom line.
FDA says Zyn can market its pouches as safer than cigarettes
The nicotine pouch brand Zyn (owned by Swedish Match USA, which is owned by Philip Morris International) is booming in popularity in the U.S., selling 794 million cans last year — more than double its total in 2023. Now the FDA says Zyn also can market 20 of its pouches as safer than cigarettes, authorizing it to claim that the product “puts you at a lower risk of mouth cancer, heart disease, lung cancer, stroke, emphysema, and chronic bronchitis.”
The move is rattling some health organizations, with Lisa Licasse, president of the American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network, warning about its potential effects for young people. “[W]e know the tobacco industry continues to target a new generation with these highly addictive, flavored products,” she said in a statement. “FDA should be strengthening oversight, not opening the door to more marketing of addicting tobacco products.” The news comes in addition to another recent win for the tobacco industry, and smokeless tobacco products in particular, as the Trump administration opened the doors to the return of fruit-flavored vapes.
What we’re reading
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All of Us tests a new approach to collect real-world data for research, STAT
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The shilajit dilemma, Bloomberg
- What the Ebola outbreak and possible Marburg teach us about the next pandemic, STAT
- These church members disagree on politics. Together they’re wiping out medical debt, KFF Health News
- Marburg outbreak is reported in Uganda, threatening to complicate Ebola response in region, STAT