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Still not over Dolly Parton’s death. Or Tim Curry’s. What a duo. Here’s my favorite Dolly song.
Did Robert F. Kennedy Jr. lie to lawmakers about vaccines?
Another day, another headline related to health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and his position on vaccines.
Kennedy insisted to lawmakers that a 2019 visit to Samoa before a deadly measles outbreak had “nothing to do with vaccines.” New documents obtained by AP and The Guardian question that testimony.
Kennedy preceded the visit with a letter to the Samoan prime minister (above, at right, greeting Kennedy and his wife, actress Cheryl Hines) requesting to study the Pacific island nation’s measles, mumps, and rubella vaccines after the deaths of two children who had received them. In the letter, he used the words vaccine or vaccination eight times. Critics have blamed Kennedy for fueling anti-vaccine sentiment and sparking an outbreak that killed 83 people, mostly children under 5.
What’s in these letters? Who are the Democratic senators accusing the secretary of lying? Read more.
Speaking of vaccines …
… Vaccines took center stage at a federal autism advisory committee meeting yesterday, with committee members explicitly naming vaccines as a cause of autism.
The link between autism and vaccines has been routinely debunked, but Kennedy reshaped the Interagency Autism Coordinating Committee in January with people who closely hew to his views on vaccines. Which is why nobody on the committee challenged those statements.
The committee spent the day discussing and then voting to approve a plan that would radically reshape the prevailing genetics-first approach to understanding autism, opting instead to fund research into areas with significantly less scientific evidence for their relevance — diet, inflammation, metabolic stress, and folate (remember leucovorin?).
The plan and its rollout received a ton of backlash, but the meeting was relatively tame — until the end. I’ve got the latest IACC drama, including the testy exchange between the committee chair and an autistic federal employee.
Former Stanford president responds to cover-up allegations
Three years ago, a closely watched research misconduct investigation led to the resignation of Stanford University’s then-president, Marc Tessier-Lavigne. Yesterday, Tessier-Lavigne revealed new details from his research, including nine emails, in an attempt to refute allegations that he published fraudulent results and orchestrated a cover-up. His self-defense is a direct rebuttal to charges made in the book “How to Rule the World: An Education in Power at Stanford University” by former Stanford Daily reporter Theo Baker.
As a Stanford undergraduate, Baker wrote a series of stories detailing concerns around studies co-authored by Tessier-Lavigne. In his book, he presented the former president as a case study in Silicon Valley’s culture of corner-cutting. “I believe it’s important to set the record straight,” Tessier-Lavigne told STAT’s Jonathan Wosen in an interview. Read more on the new details and how they line up with Baker’s account.
We quit the CDC. Here’s how to fix it
One year ago, Debra Houry, Daniel Jernigan, and Demetre Daskalakis jointly resigned from their posts at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to protest the Trump administration’s spread of misinformation and dismantling of the agency. The problems haven’t changed, they write.
As Erica Schwartz enters office as the new CDC director, the former federal health leaders have suggestions for Congress about fixing the CDC and restoring the agency as a bulwark for public health: shield science from politically driven policies, protect scientific publications, restore independent expert advice, and administer funding as directed by Congress.
“The answer is not simply to restore the CDC to what it was, but to build a stronger and more resilient public health institution for the future,” they write. “That requires safeguards so that no administration, Republican or Democratic, can replace independent public health decision-making with partisan ideology.” Read more.
The false hype of a new Medicare billing code
In a perfect world, primary care offers so much. Physical examinations, mental health check-ins, medication adjustments, vaccine suggestions. Two years ago, Medicare tried to enshrine this ongoing, relationship-based care and allow doctors to collect an additional $16 per visit with a specific billing code: G2211.
Unfortunately, early research suggests the code may not work as hoped, writes Ishani Ganguli, an associate professor of medicine and internal medicine primary care physician at Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women’s Hospital.
In reality, the physicians using the code the most? Specialists, not primary care physicians. Read more from Ganguli about her team’s research and the gaps in our current “fee-for-service” system.
What we’re reading
- Republican efforts to prosecute Fauci for contempt are hitting a wall, Wall Street Journal
- Some scientists have ‘magic hands’ in the lab. This AI is learning why, New York Times
- RFK Jr. bolts from MAHA event after being confronted over ties to ‘gas station heroin,’ Raw Story
- She made history as a trans Indigenous chief. Then addiction cost her the job, Washington Post