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Stay tuned for our live coverage today as Heidi Overton appears before senators in her bid to become the next commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration.
Also, let me know if you’re going to watch the MAHA movie.
Can Heidi Overton fix the FDA?
Heidi Overton, a soft-spoken physician once described as “bound by her faith,” will answer questions later today in front of the Senate committee that holds the key to her eventual confirmation. She’s likely to be asked about her views on abortion, vaccines, and how to rebuild an agency that DOGE decimated.
Politicians, industry leaders, and public health groups are split on Overton. She is relatively unknown to the pharmaceutical industry and lacks managerial experience. But she has been a key health policy adviser during President Trump’s second term.
It’s been a meteoric rise for Overton, who once told a journalist that her dream was to become a doctor then return to her small hometown of Gallup, New Mexico, off Route 66.
STAT’s Margaret Manto has the scoop on Overton’s prepared remarks and her past, including the former Trump administration official who brought her into the president’s sphere. Read more.
White House shelves controversial NIH executive order
Thousands of researchers collectively unclenched their jaws yesterday after the White House backed off a planned executive order that would have given a commission of political appointees veto power over grant awards.
Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), the Appropriations Committee chair, confirmed that the administration appeared to have reversed course. The drama started during a White House meeting last week in which the Office of Management and Budget director sought to assert more control over science funding — the latest in a series of attempts.
Read more from Chelsea Cirruzzo and Anil Oza.
Radiologists rush to embrace AI
Oprah said it best: “You get a scan! You get a scan! You get a scan!”
Americans are getting more medical imaging, and radiologists’ ranks aren’t growing fast enough. It has led the field to full-throatedly embrace AI tools to keep up, perhaps more than any other medical specialty, writes STAT’s Katie Palmer.
Everyone is getting in on the AI feeding frenzy — Silicon Valley, private equity-backed practices, outpatient and teleradiology groups. Startups have aggressively developed and acquired their own tech, deploying it in-house, and marketing their “AI-native” capabilities to radiologist employees and hospital customers.
There’s huge potential for a product that can reduce the administrative and workflow problems that eat up radiologists’ time. But it’s not a given that the strategy will pay off — for patients or their businesses. Katie has the full readout.
1*
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has added a single measles death to its online counter. The tally has an asterisk that reads, “This number is subject to change.”
In the last several weeks, four unvaccinated people have died from measles in Pennsylvania, according to state officials. But health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has publicly questioned whether the deaths were actually caused by measles, launching a political firestorm. The United States is experiencing its worst year for measles since 1991. International health officials will determine in the coming weeks whether the country will lose its measles elimination status.
Speaking of measles…
…it is one of the most contagious diseases on the planet.
In 1961, there was no measles vaccine. Jewel Murray remembers when one of her siblings caught it. Then another. And then her. Her siblings quickly recovered. But Murray, then a kindergartner, vividly recalls her father carrying her to their station wagon and rushing to the hospital, where she stayed for a month, partly in a coma.
“Since I survived rather than dying, why is my story worth repeating? The answer is simple: Children who die don’t grow up to tell their own stories,” said Murray, an internist and epidemiologist at the Dell Medical School at the University of Texas at Austin. “The current surge in measles cases should worry all of us.”
Read more about Murray’s insights from her near-death experience.
What we’re reading
- Americans are about to lose access to cheap gray-market prescriptions from Canada, WSJ
- Momentum is building for major change to how docs get paid, STAT
- FDA advisory panel endorses Grail blood test for cancer, saying benefits outweigh risks, STAT
- I’m a Republican senator. The U.S. needs a stronger NIH, Washington Post