Health

Subterms

    More stories

    • 150 Shares135 Views

      in US Politics

      Why Trump’s undermining of US statistics is so dangerous | Daniel Malinsky

      by

      In 1937, Joseph Stalin commissioned a sweeping census of the Soviet Union. The data reflected some uncomfortable facts – in particular, the dampening of population growth in areas devastated by the 1933 famine – and so Stalin’s government suppressed the release of the survey results. Several high-level government statistical workers responsible for the census were subsequently imprisoned and apparently executed. Though the Soviet authorities would proudly trumpet national statistics that glorified the USSR’s achievements, any numbers that did not fit the preferred narrative were buried.A few weeks ago, following the release of “disappointing” jobs data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), Donald Trump fired the commissioner of labor statistics, Dr Erika McEntarfer, and claimed the numbers were “rigged”. He also announced his intention to commission an unprecedented off-schedule census of the US population (these happen every 10 years and the next one should be in 2030) with an emphasis that this census “will not count illegal immigrants”. The real goal is presumably to deliver a set of population estimates that could be used to reapportion congressional seats and districts ahead of the 2026 mid-term elections and ensure conditions favorable to Republican control of Congress – though it is not clear there is sufficient time or support from Congress to make this happen. The administration is also reportedly “updating” the National Climate Assessments and various important sources of data on topics related to climate and public health have disappeared. In addition to all this, Trump’s justice department launched an investigation into the crime statistics of the DC Metropolitan police, alleging that the widely reported decline in 2024 DC violent crime rates – the lowest total number of recorded violent crimes city-wide in 30 years – are a distortion, fueled by falsified or manipulated statistics. One might say that the charge of “fake data” is just a close cousin of the “fake news” and all of this is par for the course for an administration that insists an alternate reality is the truth. But this pattern may also beget a specifically troubling (and quintessentially Soviet) state of affairs: the public belief that all “political” data are fake, that one generally cannot trust statistics. We must resist this paradigm shift, because it mainly serves to entrench authoritarianism.It was eventually a common sentiment in the Soviet Union that one could never trust “the official numbers” because they were largely manipulated to serve political interests. (At least, this is the sentiment reported by my parents, who grew up in the Soviet Baltic states during the 1960s and 1970s – I was an infant when we left in the late 80s so I cannot report much first-hand.) One upshot of this kind of collective belief, if it were to take hold, is that it can make one’s informational world quite small: if you can only trust what you can verify directly, namely what you experience yourself or hear from trusted friends and family, it is difficult to broaden your view to include experiences of people in circumstances very different from yours. This kind of parochial world with few shared reference points is bad for democracy and building solidarity across groups. It also makes it easier for an oppressive state to plant false and divisive “facts” to serve its goals; we’ll have a fake crime wave here and a booming economy there, and though maybe most people disbelieve this they do not quite believe the opposite either. No one can credibly claim or contest any socially relevant trends because all numbers are fake, so the activities of claiming and contesting things become pointless – just do what you can get away with.A political culture with no trust in data or statistics is also one that will rely more heavily on opaque decisions made by elites behind closed doors. In his influential historical study of the rise of quantitative bureaucracy, the historian Thomas Porter points out that basing policy decisions on calculated numerical costs and benefits reduces the role of “local” discretion and can have a homogenizing effect, which can strengthen centralized state control. The flip side of this coin is that it also divests people in power from part of their authority by enabling a degree of public transparency and scrutability: if a huge government project must be justified by reference to some cost-benefit calculations, these calculations can be cross-checked and challenged by various parties. If a government agency requires documentation of progress on initiatives, proof that public funds are being spent appropriately, and evidence on who benefits and by how much, there is substantially less room for plain corruption and mismanagement provided that independent parties have access to the relevant information. Without credible data that reflects the facts on the ground, how can the public push back against an invented “crisis” narrative, concocted to justify the invocation of emergency powers?Anyone who spends any time working with data is acutely aware that there are lots of choices to be made in the collection or processing of data – there are numerous “decision points” about what to include, how to precisely define or measure things, and so on. Indeed, insofar as data is used to tell stories about complex things such as the state of the economy or the health of a population, different data collection or analysis choices can to some extent lend support to different narratives, including predetermined narratives if an unscrupulous analyst is set on it. But it does not follow from this that “anything goes” or that statistics are meaningless. There are better and worse ways to collect and analyze data, both reasonable and preposterous ways to answer empirical questions such as “are crime rates in DC going up or going down?” Most importantly, when government statistics are managed by qualified and non-partisan officials and the relevant numbers can be challenged, debated and contested, then we have a democratic basis for guiding our institutions to better policy decisions. Data of public importance must be publicly accessible, not hidden from view.Trump’s assault on the integrity of data is not the worst of his ongoing abuses – the public should be more immediately outraged by the masked agents disappearing people on the streets and the national guard occupying city centers – but this pattern of actions vis-a-vis official statistics should be extremely alarming. It is a slow boil: if we reach the point where nobody trusts numbers because it’s all “fake data”, it will be too late to resist and too difficult to undo the damage. The opposition must block appointments of unqualified and clearly biased nominees to lead the BLS and other agencies responsible for data stewardship. We must resist undue interference in data gathering, whether that is at the level of the US census or at the level of city government. On the contrary, we should be investing in initiatives that strengthen public trust in and understanding of the social, economic and environmental data that can be used to guide decisions that affect our communities’ wellbeing.

      Daniel Malinsky is an assistant professor of biostatistics in the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University More

    • 125 Shares143 Views

      in US Politics

      Former CDC leaders slam RFK Jr for endangering Americans’ health

      by

      Nine former officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have said that Robert F Kennedy Jr’s leadership of the US health and human services department is “unlike anything our country has ever experienced” and “unacceptable”. They also warned that Kennedy’s leadership “should alarm every American, regardless of political leanings”.In a guest essay for the New York Times, the former CDC leaders said Kennedy’s actions were “unlike anything we have ever seen at the agency”.The letter comes days after Kennedy sought to dismiss Susan Monarez, the CDC director he appointed just months earlier. Monarez refused to leave her post, and was later fired by Donald Trump. Monarez said through lawyers the clash came after she refused to sign off on Kennedy’s directives.In the essay, titled We Ran the C.D.C.: Kennedy Is Endangering Every American’s Health, the former leaders, including Rochelle P Walensky, Mandy Cohen and Tom Frieden, said they were concerned Kennedy is “focusing “on unproven ‘treatments’ while downplaying vaccines” and cancelling medical research “that will leave us ill prepared for future health emergencies”.The former officials accused Kennedy of replacing “experts on federal health advisory committees with unqualified individuals who share his dangerous and unscientific views”.The letter comes as the Trump administration is pushing back on criticism of Kennedy’s leadership.The White House said last week that Trump and Kennedy aim to make the agency “more public-facing” and “more accountable,” and that they would be “strengthening our public health system and restoring it to its core mission of protecting Americans from communicable diseases, investing in innovation to prevent, detect and respond to future threats”.The arguments over the direction of the CDC center in part on disagreements over vaccination policies.Monarez was reportedly fired after clashing with Kennedy over vaccine policy.In a sign that it is a debate even Trump can’t escape, the president on Monday in a Truth Social post called on pharmaceutical companies to “justify” the success of the Covid vaccines that were initiated during his first term.“Many people think they are a miracle that saved Millions of lives. Others disagree! With CDC being ripped apart over this question, I want the answer, and I want it NOW.”Trump added that while the drug companies “go off to the next ‘hunt’ and let everyone rip themselves apart, including Bobby Kennedy Jr. and CDC”, they should “figure out the success or failure” of Covid drugs.The White Househas named deputy health secretary Jim O’Neill to serve as acting CDC director. O’Neill is a biotech investor and former speechwriter for the health department during the George W Bush administration. He can only serve as an interim leader of the agency until a permanent director is confirmed by the Senate.Following Monarez’s firing, hundreds of CDC staffers rallied outside the agency’s headquarters in Atlanta in protest. Three senior CDC leaders, Debra Houry, Demetre Daskalakis and Daniel Jernigan, resigned from their posts.In Monday’s Times editorial, the nine former CDC officials stepped in to Covid vaccine dispute, saying Operation Warp Speed “produced highly effective and safe vaccines that saved millions of lives” during the pandemic.“During our respective CDC tenures, we did not always agree with our leaders, but they never gave us reason to doubt that they would rely on data-driven insights for our protection, or that they would support public health workers,” they added. More

    • 163 Shares140 Views

      in US Politics

      Former CDC official ‘only sees harm’ to public health under RFK Jr’s leadership

      by

      The former immunizations director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has warned of the future of American health under the leadership of Donald Trump’s health secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr.In an interview on Sunday with ABC, Demetre Daskalakis – who resigned this week in protest over the White House’s firing of CDC director Susan Monarez – said: “From my vantage point as a doctor who’s taken the Hippocratic Oath, I only see harm coming.”He went on to add: “I may be wrong, but based on what I’m seeing, based on what I’ve heard with the new members of the Advisory Committee for Immunization Practices, or ACIP, they’re really moving in an ideological direction where they want to see the undoing of vaccination.”Daskalakis’s interview comes amid growing chaos across US health agencies and rare bipartisan pushback towards the White House’s firing of Monarez, which came amid steep budget cuts to the CDC’s work as well as growing concerns of political interference.There have also been growing public calls for Kennedy to resign, particularly as he has continued to make questionable medical and health claims – and be lambasted in response by experts and lawmakers alike.Explaining his resignation, Daskalakis said: “I didn’t think that we were going to be able to present science in a way free of ideology, that the firewall between science and ideology has completely broken down. And not having a scientific leader at CDC meant that we wouldn’t be able to have the necessary diplomacy and connection with HHS to be able to really execute on good public health.”Daskalakis also criticized Kennedy’s recent changes to the childhood Covid-19 vaccine schedule, noting that the vaccine is currently approved only for people aged 65 and older, as well as for children and adults with underlying health conditions.“That’s not what the data shows. Six months old to two years old, their underlying condition is youth. 53% of those children hospitalized last season had no underlying conditions. The data say that in that age range, you should be vaccinating your child. I understand that not everybody does it, but they have limited access by narrowing that recommendation. Insurance may not cover it,” Daskalakis said.He also cast doubt on Jim O’Neill, the new CDC chief who was a top aide to Kennedy and has no training in medicine or infectious disease science.In response to whether or not he trusts O’Neill saying that he is in favor of vaccines, Daskalakis said: “Honestly, I really want to trust it … But based on the very first post that I’ve seen from him on X where he says that CDC scientists manipulated data to be able to follow an ideology or an agenda in the childhood schedule, makes me think that I know what leader he serves, and that leader is one that does not believe in vaccination.”In a Saturday op-ed for the New York Times, Vermont senator Bernie Sanders accused Kennedy of “endangering the health of the American people now and into the future”, adding: “He must resign.”Since he assumed leadership over the health department, Kennedy – a longtime anti-vaccine advocate – has fired health agency workers and entertained conspiracy theories. Last week, more than 750 current and former employees at US health agencies signed a letter in which they criticized Kennedy as an “existential threat to public health”.The health agency workers went on to accuse the health secretary of being “complicit in dismantling America’s public health infrastructure and endangering the nation’s health by repeatedly spreading inaccurate health information”.The letter comes after a deadly shooting at the CDC headquarters in Atlanta earlier this month, when a 30-year-old gunman fired more than 180 rounds into the buildings, killing a police officer before dying from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. The shooter had been struggling with mental health issues and was influenced by misinformation that led him to believe the Covid-19 vaccine was making him sick, according to the gunman’s father. More

    • 213 Shares84 Views

      in US Politics

      RFK Jr says he’ll ‘fix’ a vaccine program – by canceling compensation for people with vaccine injuries

      by

      While unrest and new vaccine restrictions have kept US health agencies in headlines, there’s one vaccine program in particular that Robert F Kennedy Jr, secretary of the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), recently vowed to “fix”, which experts say could further upend the vaccine industry and prevent people experiencing rare side effects from vaccines from getting financial help.While some changes to the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (VICP), which compensates people who suffer very rare side effects from vaccination, must come from Congress, Kennedy could take several actions to reshape or affect the program’s operations.Kennedy “seems to be pursuing two opposite theories” on changing VICP, said Anna Kirkland, a professor at the University of Michigan and author of Vaccine Court.“Make it easier and compensate more, versus blow it all up. And then maybe there’s a third way of, foment skepticism, undercut recommendations,” she said.The moves represent the latest battle in “the war on vaccines that he’s been waging for decades”, Art Caplan, head of the division of medical ethics at New York University’s Grossman School of Medicine said. Kennedy, an anti-vaccine activist for about two decades, has reported more than $2.4m in income for referring vaccine-related cases to a law firm, for instance.Making major changes to the program may open up vaccine makers to more litigation, making it difficult for them to keep existing vaccines on the market or to produce new ones.In 1980, there were 18 companies in the US producing vaccines; a decade later, there were four. Congress passed a law in 1986 leading to the establishment of the VICP to prevent further instability in the vaccine market.By making changes to the program, Kennedy “can scare the manufacturers”, and the market is “pretty fragile”, said Caplan.Dorit Reiss, professor of law at University of California College of the Law, San Francisco, said that “VICP was adopted … because manufacturers were leaving the market over litigation” and that “this would mean manufacturers will pull out of the market and we’ll have less vaccine accessible”.There aren’t many vaccine makers left in the US. Most vaccines are not very lucrative – either for the manufacturers or the doctors who administer them. Most routine vaccines are covered under the VICP.Caplan said any vaccines could be vulnerable and these actions have major consequences for uptake even if vaccines remain on the market.“The biggest problem is still undermining trust in mainstream science,” Caplan said.Changing or even eliminating the program would also likely make it more difficult for patients to have their cases addressed. Yet a bill that would abolish the VICP entirely, introduced by the representative Paul Gosar, a Republican from Arizona, is gaining traction in anti-vaccine circles.Reiss noted that “undoing VICP might mean there’s no vaccines available”.A website about Gosar’s bill features a quote from Kennedy: “If we want safe and effective vaccines, we need to end the liability shield.”HHS did not respond to the Guardian’s questions on whether Kennedy knows about this use of his quotation, or what his plan to “fix” the compensation program involves.There are several actions Kennedy can take to “make vaccine availability much more difficult”, Caplan said.Kennedy has mentioned two concrete plans: adding discovery to existing compensation claims, and removing the backlog of claims. The program rules already allow discovery at the discretion of the adjudicators, called special masters. Adding special masters could help speed up claim processing, but the number of special masters was set by Congress, not HHS.In addition, the special masters answer to the US Department of Justice (DoJ), not HHS – though they represent the secretary in claims.“The first thing [Kennedy] said he was doing was working with Pam Bondi at DoJ,” Kirkland said. “Bondi could certainly direct her own employees to stop contesting a lot of things, and just let as much as possible go through, because they represent the secretary against the petitioners. So they could certainly change the softer ways that they operate, try to be easier, try to be faster.”In that case, Kennedy could ask the special masters to concede – effectively approving automatically – any claims about, for instance, diagnoses of autism or allergies after vaccination, Reiss said.One way to argue that a vaccine caused severe side effects under VICP is to present in a causation hearing a preponderance of evidence demonstrating it’s more than 50% likely – a metric known as “50% and a feather” – that the vaccine is the cause of a side effect.But “there doesn’t have to be existing literature that shows this connection. If you have a credible expert with a convincing theory, that’s enough” under VICP, Reiss said.Reiss noted that the “program was intentionally and consciously designed to make it easy to compensate”.“It increases vaccine trust when we have a quick, generous compensation program – when we can tell people: ‘Look, if the worst happens, if you’re the one in the million where things actually go wrong, you can be quickly and generously compensated, whereas if you instead get a vaccine-preventable disease, you don’t have any compensation.’ I think that can help trust. It’s also the right thing to do,” she said.The other way to settle a claim is the table of injuries, which lists the vaccines included in ACIP [the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices], potential injuries and time periods.“If the injury occurs within that time, then causation is presumed,” Reiss said.Kennedy could change the table, adding more or different side effects. This would require publishing public notice and accepting comments. If a new injury is added to the table, cases are allowed to be submitted for the past eight years, rather than the usual three years.The table is “the one that’s the most straightforwardly under his control”, Kirkland said. The last time a government agency tried to change the table, it failed. “That’s got to mean something,” she added.If the ACIP no longer recommends a routine vaccine, it may be removed from the table. Claims would then need to go through the regular court system.There is a higher bar in the regular courts, where claimants have to show fault, demonstrating a defective product or negligence, for instance. The rules of evidence are stricter. Claimants also have to hire a lawyer and pay the lawyer costs and the experts.With the private US healthcare market, “if you don’t win your case, you’re going to then get stuck with gigantic medical bills”, Caplan said.In a country like the US, where the burden is on the individual to pay their medical bills, VICP is a safety net for people having medical events after vaccination, he said.Many of the claims now handled under VICP are for relatively low amounts of money that law firms – especially the rare firms with the expertise to take on large pharmaceutical companies – might not find worthwhile in representing.There are aspects of VICP that need reform, Reiss said. The program needs more special masters, the caps on payments need to be updated from original levels set in the 1980s, and the statute of limitations should be expanded beyond three years – especially because it is difficult to diagnose side effects in young children in that amount of time, she said.“The statute of limitations, special masters and caps need to be changed, and there have been efforts to do that,” she said. “They just, I think, didn’t get enough attention, and that’s probably not what he’s focusing on.” More

    • 138 Shares127 Views

      in US Politics

      Bernie Sanders demands that RFK Jr step down as health secretary

      by

      Bernie Sanders has joined in on growing public calls for Donald Trump’s health secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr, to resign, after recent chaos across US health agencies.In an op-ed published in the New York Times on Saturday, the Vermont senator accused Kennedy of “endangering the health of the American people now and into the future”, adding: “He must resign.”“Mr Kennedy and the rest of the Trump administration tell us, over and over, that they want to Make America Healthy Again. That’s a great slogan. I agree with it. The problem is that since coming into office President Trump and Mr Kennedy have done exactly the opposite,” Sanders wrote.Sanders pointed to the White House’s firing of Susan Monarez, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, as well as four other top CDC officials who resigned in protest this week after Monarez “refused to act as a rubber stamp” for Kennedy’s “dangerous policies”.“Despite the overwhelming opposition of the medical community, secretary Kennedy has continued his longstanding crusade against vaccines and his advocacy of conspiracy theories that have been rejected repeatedly by scientific experts,” Sanders wrote.“Against the overwhelming body of evidence within medicine and science, what are secretary Kennedy’s views? … He has absurdly claimed that ‘there’s no vaccine that is safe and effective’… Who supports secretary Kennedy’s views? Not credible scientists and doctors. One of his leading ‘experts’ that he cites to back up his bogus claims on autism and vaccines had his medical license revoked and his study retracted from the medical journal that published it.”Sanders went on to add: “The reality is that secretary Kennedy has profited from and built a career on sowing mistrust in vaccines. Now, as head of [the Department of Health and Human Services] he is using his authority to launch a full-blown war on science, on public health and on truth itself.”Pointing to what he described as “our broken health care system”, Sanders said that Kennedy’s repeated attacks against science and vaccines will make it more difficult for Americans to obtain lifesaving vaccines.“Already, the Trump administration has effectively taken away Covid vaccines from many healthy younger adults and kids, unless they fight their way through our broken health care system. This means more doctor’s visits, more bureaucracy and more people paying higher out-of-pocket costs – if they can manage to get a vaccine at all,” he wrote.The senator warned that Kennedy’s next target may be the childhood immunization schedule, which involves a list of recommended vaccines for children to protect them from diseases including measles, chickenpox and polio.“The danger here is that diseases that have been virtually wiped out because of safe and effective vaccines will resurface and cause enormous harm,” Sanders said.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIn recent days, the Trump administration has faced rare bipartisan pushback following its firing of Monarez, which came amid steep budget cuts to the CDC’s work as well as growing concerns of political interference.Meanwhile, Kennedy has continued to make questionable medical and health claims – and has been lambasted in response by experts and lawmakers alike.Since he assumed leadership over the health department, Kennedy – a longtime anti-vaccine advocate – has fired health agency workers and entertained conspiracy theories. Last week, more than 750 current and former employees at US health agencies signed a letter in which they criticized Kennedy as an “existential threat to public health”.The health agency workers went on to accuse the health secretary of being “complicit in dismantling America’s public health infrastructure and endangering the nation’s health by repeatedly spreading inaccurate health information”.The letter comes after a deadly shooting at the CDC headquarters in Atlanta earlier this month, when a 30-year-old gunman fired more than 180 rounds into the buildings, killing a police officer before dying from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. The shooter had been struggling with mental health issues and was influenced by misinformation that led him to believe the Covid-19 vaccine was making him sick, according to the gunman’s father. More

    • 200 Shares87 Views

      in US Politics

      A report tied Iowa’s water pollution to agriculture. Then the money to promote it mysteriously disappeared

      by

      When a team of scientists embarked two years ago on a $1m landmark study of Iowa’s persistent water-quality problems, they knew that the findings would be important to share. High cancer rates amid the state’s inability to stem the tide of pollutants flowing into rivers and lakes was a growing public concern.But now, after the completed study pointed to agricultural pollution as a significant source of the key US farm state’s water problems, public officials have quietly stripped funding from plans to promote the study findings, according to sources involved in the project.The report, the results of two years of data analysis, has been highly controversial in Iowa because of the large amount of evidence it cites linking water pollution – and resulting human and environmental health risks – to the state’s economically and politically powerful farm industry.Supporters of the report said the agricultural industry and allied public officials have tried to downplay the findings for months, and they fear this move is another impediment to change.‘Zeroed out’When the report was finalized earlier this year, there was a little more than $400,000 left in the budget, with some of that money earmarked for communications and “public awareness” work, travel and other costs associated with promoting the findings, records show.Jennifer Terry, the project lead on the water report, had planned in-person meetings with scientists and community groups to focus on recommendations made in the report.But those funds were recently “zeroed out” with no explanation, according to email communications.Funding for the water report and related public outreach came from Polk county, Iowa’s most populous county and home to the state capital city of Des Moines. County leadership has changed since the report was commissioned.“The intent was that at the conclusion of the report to make sure it was seen widely in a public education effort,” said former Polk county administrator John Norris, who led support for the water report in 2023. “That was a big part of the value of it – that the public learns from it.”Norris, who agreed to leave office earlier this year as part of a legal settlement with the county, said he hoped the county would use some of the money in some way for water-quality work.Frank Marasco, who replaced Norris, did not respond to a request for comment. Neither did Polk county spokesperson Jon Cahill. Terry also declined to comment.The water report, authored by a team of 16 scientists, focuses on pollution patterns in two “essential” rivers fed from a watershed running from southern Minnesota through the central part of Iowa to Des Moines. The rivers are the primary source of drinking water for roughly 600,000 people and considered important recreational state assets, but they’re commonly laden with harmful contaminants that include phosphorus and nitrogen, bacteria from animal and human waste, pesticides and other chemicals.This summer, nitrate levels in key drinking-water sources were measured in quantities far higher than is allowed under federal safety standards.Much, though not all, of the contamination is tied to agriculture, according to the report. Among multiple recommendations, the report calls for the top US corn-growing state to diversify into production of crops that require fewer chemical inputs, and for limits on the density of livestock.The water report comes alongside growing concerns about the prevalence of cancer across the state. For the last few years, Iowa has had the second-highest rate of cancer in the nation, and is one of only two US states where cancer is increasing. Pesticides and nitrates both are scientifically shown to cause cancers.Kerri Johannsen, senior director of policy and programs at the Iowa Environmental Council, said all allocated funds should be fully utilized to educate the public.“People in Polk county and across the state are facing a water crisis but we cannot begin to make progress until all Iowans, including decision-makers, understand the urgency of this moment,” she said.“The importance of accessible, transparent public education and awareness cannot be understated,” Johannsen added. “The current resources available for addressing our water issues are a drop in the bucket, and our elected officials have a responsibility to do everything they can to find a way forward for the sake of the health of the people of this state.”Feds add to worriesThe issues over how to address water-quality problems in Iowa, which has nearly 87,000 farms and ranks first in the nation for corn, pork and egg production, comes as the Trump administration and Republican allies in Congress are moving to dismantle regulations aimed at protecting water quality, including those that work to limit discharges of pesticides and other farm-related chemicals into waterways.One chief concern for environmental advocates is the Permit Act, which is actually a package of more than a dozen bills that would streamline permitting requirements. The legislation would cut protections for many waterways, limit requirements for updated pollution-control measures and exempt pesticide spraying and agricultural runoff from permitting and accountability, according to the advocacy group Beyond Pesticides.If the measures become law, it will make it that much harder for Iowans to clean up their waterways.In another blow to efforts to address the state’s water-quality problems, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) recently reversed a decision made under the Biden administration that found additional areas of four Iowa rivers should be designated as impaired.When waters are classified as impaired, it triggers stricter regulatory measures to limit pollutants entering the waterways and other enhanced measures aimed at reducing the inflow of harmful contaminants.The reversal angered environmental groups across the state as well as the utility providers tasked with cleaning up the water. But farm groups, including the Iowa Farm Bureau, which had opposed the impairment designations, cheered the news.News of the reversal broke the same week that the EPA administrator, Lee Zeldin, visited Iowa to meet with farmers and others and attend the Iowa state fair to serve as a grill master at the Iowa Pork Producers Association tent.When asked what drove the decision to reverse the impairment decision, an EPA spokesperson said only that the agency had been tracking the levels of nitrates this spring and summer in the waterways and is “ensuring that all of the information and data collected by the cities, universities, and other groups is provided to the Iowa Department of Natural Resources for evaluation”.The agency is “not currently aware” of any “exceedances” of nitrates at public water systems “using surface waterbodies in Iowa”, the spokesperson said. The agency is working with state officials to “understand and resolve the issues forming the basis for EPA’s reconsideration of its 2024 decision”.Adam Shriver, director of wellness and nutrition policy at the Harkin Institute at Drake University, said the recent events are disheartening.“I think it shows just how far we still have left to go,” Shriver said. “The farm bureau opposed the initial impairment designation and was taking a victory lap with the recent EPA announcement. As long as they continue to get whatever they want from every level of government while other stakeholders are ignored, public health is going to suffer.”This story is co-published with the New Lede, a journalism project of the Environmental Working Group More

    • 175 Shares140 Views

      in US Politics

      RFK Jr continues to make dubious health claims as CDC roils under his leadership

      by

      In a week of chaos at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Donald Trump’s health secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr, has continued to make questionable medical and health claims – and has been slammed for them by experts and lawmakers alike.In recent days, Kennedy has been facing increasing calls for his resignation following the Trump administration’s firing of the CDC director, Susan Monarez, which in turn prompted four other top officials to quit the agency. The chaos across US health agencies also comes as Kennedy released a slew of controversial and contradictory rules surrounding Covid-19 vaccines.On top of all this turmoil, Kennedy has also met with significant backlash for a handful of outlandish remarks and revelations, which have only fueled the controversy surrounding his leadership at the health department.After the deadly mass school shooting in Minneapolis this week where two children were killed and 17 others injured, Kennedy suggested that psychiatric drugs may be contributing to the rise in gun violence across the country.During an appearance on Fox & Friends, the host Brian Kilmeade asked Kennedy if the health department was investigating whether medications used to treat gender dysphoria might be linked to school shootings.According to court documents reviewed by the Guardian, the 23-year-old shooter, Robin Westman, had changed their birth name from Robert to Robin because they identified as a woman.In response to Kilmeade’s question, Kennedy, without acknowledging the prevalence and easy accessibility of firearms across the US – said that his department was “launching studies on the potential contribution of some of the SSRI [selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors] drugs and some of the other psychiatric drugs that might be contributing to violence”.Kennedy’s comments triggered criticism from the Minnesota senator Tina Smith, who took to X and wrote: “I dare you to go to Annunciation School and tell our grieving community, in effect, guns don’t kill kids, antidepressants do. Just shut up. Stop peddling bullshit. You should be fired.”This week, Kennedy also suggested that he could identify “mitochondrial challenges” in children at airports just by looking at them.Speaking at an event in Texas alongside the state’s governor, Greg Abbott, Kennedy claimed: “I’m looking at kids as I walk through the airports today, as I walk down the street, and I see these kids that are just overburdened with mitochondrial challenges, with inflammation. You can tell from their faces, from their body movements, and from their lack of social connection. And I know that that’s not how our children are supposed to look.”In response, Ashish Jha, former White House Covid-19 response coordinator under the Biden administration, said: “I’m sorry but what?”“This is wacky, flat-earth, voodoo stuff, people. This is not normal,” Jha added on X.Then, in a revelation on Thursday, Demetre Daskalakis – who recently resigned as director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases in protest of Monarez’s firing – revealed that Kennedy had never been briefed by CDC experts before making major public health decisions.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionSpeaking to CNN, Daskalakis said: “I think that another important thing to ask the secretary is, has he been briefed by a CDC expert on anything, specifically measles, Covid-19, flu? I think that people should ask him that in that hearing,” referring to Kennedy’s upcoming hearing before the Senate finance committee.Upon being asked what Kennedy’s answer would be, Daskalakis said: “The answer is ‘no’. No one from my center has ever briefed him on any of those topics … He’s getting information from somewhere, but that information is not coming from CDC experts.”In a separate statement to the Daily Beast, Daskalakis said: “It’s not just that he hasn’t asked us. I asked for us to be able to do briefings, and I was told by his office of the secretary officials, some of whom are now fired, that they would be happy to have us do briefings, that they would reach out to be able to set them up. They’ve never done so.”Since he assumed leadership over the health department, Kennedy – a longtime anti-vaccine advocate – has fired health agency workers and entertained conspiracy theories. Last week, more than 750 current and former employees at US health agencies signed a letter in which they criticized Kennedy as an “existential threat to public health”.The health agency workers went on to accuse Kennedy of being “complicit in dismantling America’s public health infrastructure and endangering the nation’s health by repeatedly spreading inaccurate health information”.The letter comes after a deadly shooting at the CDC headquarters in Atlanta earlier this month, when a 30-year-old gunman fired more than 180 rounds into the buildings, killing a police officer before dying from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. According to the gunman’s father, the shooter had been struggling with mental health issues and was influenced by misinformation that led him to believe the Covid-19 vaccine was making him sick. More

    • 138 Shares89 Views

      in US Politics

      White House reportedly picks Kennedy deputy to replace fired CDC chief

      by

      The White House has reportedly chosen a deputy of Robert F Kennedy Jr to serve as the acting head of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), a decision that comes as the standoff over the firing of director Susan Monarez, has deepened, with Monarez’s lawyers claiming she will not depart unless Donald Trump himself removes her.The Washington Post reported on Thursday, citing two people familiar with the decision, that the White House has selected Jim O’Neill, currently the deputy secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services. The decision would give Kennedy a CDC chief who will be on board with his efforts to overhaul federal vaccine policy, the Post reported.Monarez, an infectious disease specialist who was confirmed as CDC chief just a month ago, was fired on Wednesday, according to a statement from the HHS, which gave no reason for the departure.However, the apparently ousted director has refused to be removed. Her lawyers claim that while the White House has said that she is “not aligned with the president’s agenda”, only the president himself can dismiss her.“As a presidential appointee, senate confirmed officer, only the president himself can fire her,” Monarez’s lawyer Mark Zaid posted on Bluesky.“For this reason, we reject notification Dr Monarez has received as legally deficient and she remains as CDC Director. We have notified the White House Counsel of our position.”A spokesperson for Trump, Kush Desai, said: “As her attorney’s statement makes abundantly clear, Susan Monarez is not aligned with the President’s agenda of Making America Healthy Again. Since Susan Monarez refused to resign despite informing HHS leadership of her intent to do so, the White House has terminated Monarez from her position with the CDC.”Meanwhile, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters at her press briefing that a replacement for Monarez would be announced “very soon”.The decision to remove Monarez has sparked further turmoil within the CDC, with four of its other senior leaders resigning over what they condemned as political interference in their work, budget cuts and the spread of misinformation under the Trump administration.The CDC is ultimately overseen by Robert F Kennedy Jr, the US health secretary who is known for founding an anti-vaccine group and in his current role has cut funding for medical research, removed scientific advisers and on Wednesday restricted the use of Covid vaccines for Americans.“First it was independent advisory committees and career experts. Then it was the dismissal of seasoned scientists. Now, Secretary Kennedy and HHS have set their sights on weaponizing public health for political gain and putting millions of American lives at risk,” Monarez’s lawyers said in a statement.“When CDC Director Susan Monarez refused to rubber-stamp unscientific, reckless directives and fire dedicated health experts, she chose protecting the public over serving a political agenda. For that, she has been targeted.”Monarez and Kennedy clashed over vaccine policy, while CDC leaders were angry and upset over how the administration handled a deadly situation earlier this month when a gunman fired upon the agency’s headquarters in Atlanta, killing a police officer, according to the New York Times.The four senior officials to resign from the CDC are Debra Houry, the chief medical officer; Daniel Jernigan, the vaccine safety chief; Jennifer Layden, head of the office for public health data; and Demetre Daskalakis, who ran the office that issues vaccine recommendations.On social media, Bernie Sanders, an independent US senator who serves as the ranking member on the health, education, labor and pensions committee, said that the attempt to fire Monarez was “outrageous” and demanded a hearing.“Vaccines save lives. Period,” Sanders said on X. More