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    CDC Posts, Then Deletes, Data on Bird Flu Transmission Between Cats and People

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    The data, which appeared fleetingly online on Wednesday, confirmed transmission in two households. Scientists called on the agency to release the full report.Cats that became infected with bird flu might have spread the virus to humans in the same household and vice versa, according to data that briefly appeared online in a report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention but then abruptly vanished. The data appear to have been mistakenly posted but includes crucial information about the risks of bird flu to people and pets.In one household, an infected cat might have spread the virus to another cat and to a human adolescent, according to a copy of the data table obtained by The New York Times. The cat died four days after symptoms began. In a second household, an infected dairy farmworker appears to have been the first to show symptoms, and a cat then became ill two days later and died on the third day.The table was the lone mention of bird flu in a scientific report published on Wednesday that was otherwise devoted to air quality and the Los Angeles County wildfires. The table was not present in an embargoed copy of the paper shared with news media on Tuesday, and is not included in the versions currently available online. The table appeared briefly at around 1 p.m., when the paper was first posted, but it is unclear how or why the error might have occurred.The virus, called H5N1, is primarily adapted to birds, but it has been circulating in dairy cattle since early last year. H5N1 has also infected at least 67 Americans but does not yet have the ability to spread readily among people. Only one American, in Louisiana, has died of an H5N1 infection so far.The report was part of the C.D.C.’s prestigious Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, which, until two weeks ago, had regularly published every week since the first installment decades ago. But a communications ban on the agency had held the reports back, until the wildfire report was published on Wednesday.Experts said that the finding that cats might have passed the virus to people was not entirely unexpected. But they were alarmed that the finding had not yet been released to the public.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Cucumbers Are Recalled After Salmonella Sickens People in 19 States

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      At least 68 people have fallen ill in the outbreak believed to be linked to cucumbers sold in the United States and Canada, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said.At least 68 people, including 18 that needed to be treated at hospitals, have fallen ill across 19 states in a salmonella outbreak that may be linked to cucumbers, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said on Friday.Federal officials announced they were investigating the outbreak believed to be tied to cucumbers grown by Agrotato, S.A. de C.V. in Sonora, Mexico, and sold by SunFed Produce, which is based in Arizona, and other importers. No deaths have been reported.The C.D.C. said it was working with public health and regulatory officials in several states, including the Food and Drug Administration, to investigate the infections.The cucumbers were sold in the United States and Canada, according to the F.D.A.SunFed recalled all sizes of the product described as “whole fresh American cucumbers.”Craig Slate, the president of SunFed, said in a statement that the company “immediately acted to protect consumers.”“We are working closely with authorities and the implicated ranch to determine the possible cause,” he said.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      How Will Trump’s Covid Contrarians Handle the Next Pandemic?

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      President-elect Donald J. Trump had already succeeded in rattling the nation’s public health and biomedical establishment by the time he announced on Tuesday that he had picked Dr. Jay Bhattacharya to run the National Institutes of Health. But amid growing fears of a deadly bird flu pandemic, perhaps no one was more rattled than experts in infectious disease.Dr. Bhattacharya, a Stanford University medical economist and outspoken opponent of lockdowns, masking, school closures and other Covid-19 mitigation measures, and Mr. Trump’s other health picks have one thing in common. They are all considered Covid contrarians whose views raise questions about how they would handle an infectious disease crisis.Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Mr. Trump’s choice for health secretary, has said he wants the N.I.H. to focus on chronic disease and “give infectious disease a break for about eight years.” Dr. Martin Makary, the president-elect’s choice to run the Food and Drug Administration, incorrectly predicted in 2021 that the nation was “racing toward an extremely low level of infection.”Dr. David Weldon, a Republican former congressman who is Mr. Trump’s choice to lead the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, has espoused the debunked theory that thimerosal, a mercury compound in certain vaccines, causes autism. As a congressman, he introduced legislation that would strip the C.D.C. of its role in ensuring vaccine safety, saying the agency had a “conflict of interest” because it also promotes vaccination.And Dr. Mehmet Oz, the talk show host who has been picked by Mr. Trump to run Medicare and Medicaid, prodded officials in the first Trump administration to give emergency authorization for the malaria drug hydroxychloroquine to treat Covid-19. The F.D.A. later revoked the authorization when studies showed the drug carried risks, including serious heart issues, to coronavirus patients.Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has said he wants to focus on chronic diseases rather than infectious diseases as head of the Department of Health and Human Services. Haiyun Jiang for The New York TimesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Trump’s Choices for Health Agencies Suggest a Shake-Up Is Coming

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      The picks to oversee public health have all pushed back against Covid policies or supported ideas that are outside the medical mainstream.A longtime leader of the anti-vaccine movement. A highly credentialed surgeon. A seven-term Florida congressman. A Fox News contributor with her own line of vitamins.President-elect Donald J. Trump’s eclectic roster of figures to lead federal health agencies is almost complete — and with it, his vision for a sweeping overhaul is coming into focus.Mr. Trump’s choices have varying backgrounds and public health views. But they have all pushed back against Covid policies or supported ideas that are outside the medical mainstream, including an opposition to vaccines. Together, they are a clear repudiation of business as usual.“What they’re saying when they make these appointments is that we don’t trust the people who are there,” said Dr. Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and an adviser to the Food and Drug Administration.Some doctors and scientists are bracing themselves for the gutting of public health agencies, a loss of scientific expertise and the injection of politics into realms once reserved for academics. The result, they fear, could be worse health outcomes, more preventable deaths and a reduced ability to respond to looming health threats, like the next pandemic. “I’m very, very worried about the way that this all plays out,” Dr. Offit said.But other experts who expressed concerns about anti-vaccine views at the helms of the nation’s health agencies said that some elements of the picks’ unorthodox approaches were welcomed. After a pandemic that closed schools across the country and killed more than one million Americans, many people have lost faith in science and medicine, surveys show. And even some prominent public health experts were critical of the agencies’ Covid missteps and muddled messaging on masks and testing.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Kennedy’s Views Mix Mistrust of Business With Bizarre Health Claims

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      Seven years after Americans celebrated the licensing of Jonas Salk’s polio vaccine, President John F. Kennedy called on Congress to finance a nationwide vaccination program to stamp out what he called the “ancient enemies of our children”: infectious disease.Now Kennedy’s nephew, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., is the nation’s chief critic of vaccines — a public health intervention that has saved millions of lives — and President-elect Donald J. Trump’s pick to become the next secretary of health and human services. Mr. Kennedy calls himself a vaccine safety activist. The press calls him a vaccine skeptic. His detractors call him an anti-vaxxer and a conspiracy theorist.Whatever one calls him, Mr. Kennedy is a polarizing choice whose views on certain public health matters beyond vaccination are far outside the mainstream. He opposes fluoride in water. He favors raw milk, which the Food and Drug Administration deems risky. And he has promoted unproven therapies like hydroxychloroquine for Covid-19. His own relatives called his presidential bid “dangerous for our country.”If there is a through line to Mr. Kennedy’s thinking, it appears to be a deep mistrust of corporate influence on health and medicine. In some cases, that has led him to support positions that are also embraced by public health professionals, including his push to get ultra-processed foods, which have been linked to obesity, off grocery store shelves. His disdain for profit-seeking pharmaceutical manufacturers and food companies drew applause on the campaign trail.People close to him say his commitment to “make America healthy again” is heartfelt.“This is his life’s mission,” said Brian Festa, a founder of We the Patriots U.S.A., a “medical freedom” group that has pushed back on vaccine mandates, who said he has known Mr. Kennedy for years.But like Mr. Trump, Mr. Kennedy also has a tendency to float wild theories based on scanty evidence. And he has hinted at taking actions, like prosecuting leading medical journals, that have unnerved the medical community. On Friday, many leading public health experts reacted to his nomination with alarm.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Says Trump Will Seek to Remove Fluoride From Drinking Water

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      Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said Saturday that among the first acts of a second Trump administration would be to “advise all U.S. water systems to remove fluoride from public water,” a stunning potential reversal of what is widely considered one of the most important public health interventions of the past century.The statement, posted on social media, is among the more concrete pledges made by Mr. Kennedy — a former independent presidential candidate who is now backing Mr. Trump — in his capacity as a top adviser on Mr. Trump’s transition team. It also raises the specter of an all-out assault on public-health expertise should Mr. Trump win next week’s election, a prospect that has already caused significant alarm among experts across the medical and environmental fields.As president, Mr. Trump would not have the power to order states and municipalities to remove fluoride from their water supplies; fluoridation is a matter of local control.But a presidential pronouncement would inject the White House into a debate that stretches back to the 1950s, when conspiracy theories swirled around fluoridation, with critics claiming it was a Communist plot to poison Americans’ brains — a view that was memorably parodied in Stanley Kubrick’s film “Dr. Strangelove.”More recently, however, there has been scientific debate around the practice, with some studies suggesting that excess exposure to fluoride — at levels twice the amount recommended by the Environmental Protection Agency — could harm infants’ developing brains. But scientists, including those at the federal government’s National Toxicology Program, say more research is needed to understand whether lower exposure to fluoride has an effect.The process of adding small amounts fluoride to drinking water, or fluoridation, began about 80 years ago to prevent tooth decay. That effort, public health officials say, has been extraordinarily successful. A majority of Americans today live in water systems that are fluoridated, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which lists fluoridation as one of the 10 great public health achievements of the 20th century.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Biden, Eyeing His Legacy, Signs Executive Orders on Gun Safety

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      The president used a poignant White House ceremony to pass the baton to Vice President Kamala Harris, who has made gun safety an issue in her campaign.President Biden, frustrated with congressional inaction on gun violence and seeking to secure the issue as part of his legacy, said on Thursday that he was using his executive authority to improve school preparedness and to stem the tide of untraceable weapons and devices that make firearms more deadly.Mr. Biden made the announcement at a packed and poignant ceremony in the East Room of the White House, where he was introduced by the mayor of Birmingham, Ala., Randall Woodfin. Mr. Woodfin’s brother was killed by gun violence, and his city has been grieving after a mass shooting left four people dead last week. Scores of activists and gun violence survivors attended.The event was timed to the first anniversary of the White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention, which Mr. Biden created last year after signing the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, the first major gun safety bill in nearly 30 years. It was also a chance for Mr. Biden to pass the baton to the official who heads that office: Vice President Kamala Harris, who is leaning into gun violence prevention as an issue as she campaigns to succeed Mr. Biden.“We know how to stop these tragedies, and it is a false choice to suggest you are either in favor of the Second Amendment or you want to take everyone’s guns away,” said Ms. Harris, who spoke before Mr. Biden and who has said while campaigning that she owns a firearm for self-protection. “I am in favor of the Second Amendment, and I believe we need to reinstate the assault weapons ban.”She was referring to a provision in the 1994 crime bill, spearheaded by Mr. Biden when he was a senator, that banned certain types of military-style assault weapons for 10 years. The ban expired in 2004, when Congress refused to renew it.The executive orders, which Mr. Biden signed at the conclusion of the ceremony, do not have the force of law. Should former President Donald J. Trump win the White House in November, he could easily reverse them.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      A Patchwork of Cannabis Laws Creates Health Risks, Study Finds

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      A new report calls for public education and closing of legal loopholes to keep the public safe.The NewsAs more states have legalized the sale of cannabis, a fractured and inconsistent legal framework has emerged across the country that has prioritized sales income and tax revenue over public health, a new report finds.The report, issued Thursday by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine, describes an “urgent need for a coordinated public health response.” The academies, a nonprofit advisory group of the nation’s leading scientists, said that such a response should include a federally led campaign to educate parents, children and others about the risks of a drug that is increasingly potent.Among the other suggestions, the report also calls for a lifting of research restrictions on cannabis. In recent years, many claims have been made about the medicinal and other health effects of the drug but often without substantiation from science.Even as a patchwork of laws and regulations have emerged, the potency of cannabis products has surged.Cindy Schultz for The New York TimesPotencyCurrently 24 states, the District of Columbia and two U.S. territories have legalized the sale of cannabis for recreational use, according to the National Conference on State Legislatures. In 13 other states, cannabis is legal for medicinal use.Even as a patchwork of laws and regulations have emerged, the potency of cannabis products has surged, as measured by the growing concentration of THC, the main psychoactive compound in cannabis. The rapid increases have left the public unaware of the health risks, particularly to young people, pregnant women and seniors, according to Yasmin Hurd, director of the Addiction Institute at the Icahn School of Medicine and the vice chair of the committee that issued the latest report.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      New York Resident Dies of Eastern Equine Encephalitis Infection

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      Gov. Kathy Hochul declared the mosquito-borne illness a public health threat after the first confirmed case in the state in nearly a decade resulted in a death.The first person to be diagnosed with Eastern equine encephalitis in New York in nearly a decade has died, prompting Gov. Kathy Hochul to declare the rare, mosquito-borne viral illness an imminent public health threat on Monday.Ms. Hochul announced the death, in Ulster County, in a news release outlining the steps that state officials are taking to reduce New Yorkers’ risk of exposure to the disease, also known as E.E.E.The death in New York appears to be the second linked to E.E.E. this year in the United States. The first involved a 41-year-old New Hampshire man who died in August. Human cases of the disease have also been reported this year in Massachusetts, New Jersey, Rhode Island, Vermont and Wisconsin, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.Ten human cases of E.E.E. had been reported nationwide as of Sept. 17, before the New York case was confirmed, according to the C.D.C.New York officials have not provided details about the Ulster County resident, who was confirmed as having the illness on Sept. 20. The infection was the first human case of E.E.E. in New York since 2015.To combat the disease’s spread, Ms. Hochul said, the state’s parks agency will make mosquito repellent available to visitors at its offices, visitor centers and campgrounds; post signs at parks and historic sites to raise awareness about E.E.E.; and consult with local health departments about limiting park hours and camping availability during times of peak mosquito activity.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More