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    F.D.A. Expands Access to Clozapine, a Key Treatment for Schizophrenia

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    Federal regulators will no longer require patients to provide blood tests before receiving the drug from pharmacies.The Food and Drug Administration has taken a crucial step toward expanding access to the antipsychotic medication clozapine, the only drug approved for treatment-resistant schizophrenia, among the most devastating of mental illnesses.The agency announced on Monday that it was eliminating a requirement that patients submit blood tests before their prescriptions can be filled.Clozapine, which was approved in 1989, is regarded by many physicians as the most effective available treatment for schizophrenia, and research shows that the drug significantly reduces suicidal behavior. Clozapine is also associated with a rare side effect called neutropenia, a drop in white blood cell counts that, in its most severe form, can be life-threatening.In 2015, federal regulators imposed a regimen known as risk evaluation and mitigation strategies, or REMS, that required patients to submit to weekly, biweekly and monthly blood tests that had to be uploaded onto a database and verified by pharmacists.Physicians have long complained that, as a result, clozapine is grossly underutilized.Dr. Frederick C. Nucifora, director of the Adult Schizophrenia Clinic at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, said he believed that around 30 percent of patients with schizophrenia would benefit from clozapine — far more than the 4 percent who currently take it.“I have had many patients who were doing terribly, who struggled to function outside the hospital, and cycled through many medications,” he said. “If they go on clozapine, they really tend to not be hospitalized again. I’ve had people go on to finish college and work. It’s quite remarkable.”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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      Scientists Describe Rare Syndrome Following Covid Vaccinations

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      In a small study, patients with the syndrome were more likely to experience reactivation of Epstein-Barr virus and high levels of a coronavirus protein.The Covid-19 vaccines were powerfully protective, preventing millions of deaths. But in a small number of people, the shots may have led to a constellation of side effects that includes fatigue, exercise intolerance, brain fog, tinnitus and dizziness, together referred to as “post-vaccination syndrome,” according to a small new study.Some people with this syndrome appear to show distinct biological changes, the research found — among them differences in immune cells, reawakening of a dormant virus called Epstein-Barr, and the persistence of a coronavirus protein in their blood.The study was posted online Wednesday and has not yet been published in a scientific journal. “I want to emphasize that this is still a work in progress,” said Akiko Iwasaki, an immunologist at Yale University who led the work.“It’s not like this study determined what’s making people sick,” she said, “but it’s the first kind of glimpse at what may be going on within these people.”Independent experts noted that the findings were not conclusive on their own. Yet the results, from a scientific team known for rigorous work, suggest that post-vaccination syndrome deserves further scrutiny, they said.“One of the most important things is that we get some attention to really shine a light on this and try to understand exactly what it is,” said John Wherry, director of the Institute for Immunology at the University of Pennsylvania. (Dr. Wherry has previously collaborated with Dr. Iwasaki’s team, but did not participate in this work.)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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      An Invisible Medical Shortage: Oxygen

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      Oxygen is vital to many medical procedures. But a safe, affordable supply is severely lacking around the world, according to a new report.At the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, millions of people in poor nations died literally gasping for breath, even in hospitals. What they lacked was medical oxygen, which is in short supply in much of the world.On Monday, a panel of experts published a comprehensive report on the shortage. Each year, the report noted, more than 370 million people worldwide need oxygen as part of their medical care, but fewer than 1 in 3 receive it, jeopardizing the health and lives of those who do not. Access to safe and affordable medical oxygen is especially limited in low- and middle-income nations.“The need is very urgent,” said Dr. Hamish Graham, a pediatrician and a lead author of the report. “We know that there’s more epidemics coming, and there’ll be another pandemic, probably like Covid, within the next 15 to 20 years.”The report, published in The Lancet Global Health, comes just weeks after the Trump administration froze foreign aid programs, including some that could improve access to oxygen.Boosting the availability of medical oxygen would require an investment of about $6.8 billion, the report noted. “Within the current climate, that’s obviously going to become a bit more of a challenge,” said Carina King, an infectious disease epidemiologist at the Karolinska Institute and a lead author of the report.Still, she said, governments and funding organizations should prioritize medical oxygen because of its importance across health care. People of all ages may need oxygen for pneumonia and other respiratory conditions, for severe infections including malaria and sepsis, for surgeries and for chronic lung conditions.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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      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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      Wyoming’s Abortion Bans Are Unconstitutional, Judge Rules

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      The ruling found that two state laws — one barring use of abortion pills, and one banning all forms of abortion — violated the state Constitution’s “fundamental right to make health care decisions.” A Wyoming judge ruled on Monday that two state abortion bans — including the first state law specifically banning the use of pills for abortion — violated the Wyoming Constitution and could not be enforced.Judge Melissa Owens of Teton County District Court wrote in her ruling that both the ban on medication abortion and a broader ban against all methods of abortion “impede the fundamental right to make health care decisions for an entire class of people, pregnant women.” She added, “The abortion statutes suspend a woman’s right to make her own health care decisions during the entire term of a pregnancy and are not reasonable or necessary to protect the health and general welfare of the people.”Enforcement of the two abortion bans, passed last year, had been temporarily halted by Judge Owens while the court case proceeded. Her decision on Monday blocks the laws permanently, although the state is expected to appeal. Efforts to reach the state attorney general’s office and the governor’s office were unsuccessful on Monday night.The suit to block the bans was filed by a group of plaintiffs that included two abortion providers in Wyoming; an obstetrician-gynecologist who often treats high-risk pregnancies; an emergency-room nurse; a fund that gives financing to abortion patients; and a woman who said her Jewish faith required access to abortion if a pregnant woman’s physical or mental health or life was in danger.An amendment to the Wyoming Constitution, approved by an overwhelming majority of the state’s voters in 2012, guarantees adults the right to make their own health care decisions.In court last year, the state, represented by Jay Jerde, a special assistant attorney general for Wyoming, argued that even though doctors and other health providers must be involved in abortions, there were many instances in which abortion was not “health care” because “it’s not restoring the woman’s body from pain, physical disease or sickness.”Mr. Jerde also argued that the constitutional amendment allowing people to make decisions about their own health care did not apply to abortion because terminating a pregnancy affected not just the woman making the decision, but the fetus as well.Judge Owens rejected both of those arguments. She wrote: “The uncontested facts establish that the abortion statutes fail to accomplish any of the asserted interests by the state. The state did not present any evidence refuting or challenging the extensive medical testimony presented by the plaintiffs.”Dr. Giovannina Anthony, an obstetrician-gynecologist and abortion provider who was one of the plaintiffs in the case, said on Monday night that she was “grateful and relieved that the judge agreed that abortion is health care and that abortion bans violate the rights of pregnant women.”Dr. Anthony said she expected the state to appeal. “This is not the end of the fight in Wyoming, but for now we can continue to provide evidence-based care without fear of a prison sentence.” More

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      Americans Have Regained Modest Trust in Scientists, Survey Finds

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      A sharp partisan divide remains over how involved researchers should be in policy decisions.For the first time since the start of the coronavirus pandemic, the public’s trust in scientists has improved, according to a survey published Thursday by the Pew Research Center.About 76 percent of Americans say they have confidence that scientists act in the public’s best interest, a modest but significant improvement from last year but about 10 points lower than the figure before the pandemic.This year’s uptick was driven largely by a slight increase in trust among Republicans, a group that also experienced the steepest drop in confidence during the pandemic, said Alec Tyson, a Pew researcher and the report’s lead author.Still, the roughly 9,500 Americans surveyed were divided over whether scientists should play a role in policy decisions — a particularly timely issue now, as President-elect Donald J. Trump prepares to appoint leaders of the country’s science and health agencies.About half of the survey respondents said experts should take “an active role” in policy debates about scientific issues, like childhood vaccines and climate change, while the other half said they should focus instead on “establishing sound scientific facts.”Respondents were largely split along partisan lines: 67 percent of Democrats believed scientists should be involved in policy debates, compared with just 35 percent of Republicans.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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      Church in Egyptian Desert Reveals Early Christian Burial Practices

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      A basilica from the 4th century held a surprising number of tombs with women and children, researchers found.More than a decade ago, archaeologists began to excavate one of the world’s oldest Christian churches in the middle of a forbidding Egyptian desert. Delayed by war, political unrest and a global pandemic, the dig has turned out to be a revealing and confounding look at how early Christians buried their dead.Built on an oasis sometime in the fourth century, the church held a surprisingly large number of corpses: 11 bodies in two crypts and six in separate tombs. Typically, in that period, leaders like priests and bishops would have been buried in a church, while others would have been relegated to cemeteries. But in this desert outpost, most of the remains belonged to women and children.“The fact that there are so many tombs right inside the church is remarkable,” said David Frankfurter, an Egyptian religion scholar at Boston University who was not involved in the project.Whereas ancient Egyptian funeral practices tended to be lavish and grandiose, early Christian burials favored simplicity. The bodies in the church were wrapped in linens, and only two were inside coffins. Bundles of rosemary, myrtle and palm leaves were left with one body, and one child was buried with a bronze cup. Otherwise, the tombs were sparse.The team — led by David Ratzan, a scholar of ancient civilizations at New York University, and Nicola Aravecchia, an archaeologist at Washington University in St. Louis — began excavations at the church in 2012. But political upheaval, as well as the accidental killing of several tourists by the Egyptian military in a nearby area of the Western Desert, kept the researchers out of Egypt for many years. Only in 2023 was the team allowed to return to Egypt and finish its work, as described in a book published in September.The remains of a female from Tomb 10, Room 3, about 50–65 years old, who lived a comparatively élite lifestyle and ate a refined diet.The NYU Amheida ExcavationsA Bronze vessel found associated with a child’s coffin in Tomb 9 in Room 2, the northern crypt in the church.The NYU Amheida ExcavationsWe 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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      82 American Nobel Prize Winners Endorse Kamala Harris

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      More than 80 American Nobel Prize winners in physics, chemistry, medicine and economics have signed an open letter endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris for president.“This is the most consequential presidential election in a long time, perhaps ever, for the future of science and the United States,” reads the letter, a copy of which was obtained by The New York Times. “We, the undersigned, strongly support Harris.”The letter praises Ms. Harris for understanding that “the enormous increases in living standards and life expectancies over the past two centuries are largely the result of advances in science and technology.” Former President Donald Trump, by contrast, would “jeopardize any advancements in our standards of living, slow the progress of science and technology and impede our responses to climate change,” the letter said.Eighty-two Nobel laureates — from a physicist who helped discover leftover light from the Big Bang to an immunologist who paved the way for one type of Covid-19 vaccine — have signed the letter. The laureates include the molecular biologist Gary Ruvkun, the chemist David Baker, the physicist John Hopfield and the economist Daron Acemoglu, all of whom won Nobels this month.Read the Letter from Nobel Laureates Endorsing Kamala Harris for PresidentMore than 80 American Nobel Prize winners in physics, chemistry, medicine and economics have signed an open letter endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris for president.Read Document 4 pagesJoseph Stiglitz, an economist at Columbia University who won the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 2001, drafted the endorsement. He said he was motivated by the “enormous cuts in science budgets” Mr. Trump proposed during his presidency, as well as what Dr. Stiglitz described as the former president’s “anti-science” and “anti-university” stances.While in office, Mr. Trump proposed a budget that would have led to a severe loss of funds for federal health and science agencies, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Science Foundation and the Environmental Protection Agency. On the campaign trail this year, Mr. Trump has suggested shutting down the Department of Education.“I hope it’s a wake-up call for people,” Dr. Stiglitz said of the letter. “A consequence of this election is the really profound impact that his agenda has on science and technology.”The letter also praised Ms. Harris’s recognition of the role that immigrants play in advancing science and technology, both nationally and on a global scale. Immigration has been a key issue in this year’s election, with both candidates promising a stricter approach than their prior presidential campaigns.Many scientists are inclined to “stick to their knitting,” Dr. Stiglitz said — focusing on their research rather than politics, and on knowledge for knowledge’s sake instead of the real-world applications that result from it.“But they’ve recognized this is a moment where you can’t be silent,” he said. More

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      Why Democracy Lives and Dies by Math

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      A documentary filmmaker and a mathematician discuss our fear of numbers and its civic costs.“Math is power” is the tag line of a new documentary, “Counted Out,” currently making the rounds at festivals and community screenings. (It will have a limited theatrical release next year.) The film explores the intersection of mathematics, civil rights and democracy. And it delves into how an understanding of math, or lack thereof, affects society’s ability to deal with its most pressing challenges and crises — health care, climate, misinformation, elections.“When we limit access to the power of math to a select few, we limit our progress as a society,” said Vicki Abeles, the film’s director and a former Wall Street lawyer.Ms. Abeles was spurred to make the film in part in response to an anxiety about math that she had long observed in students, including her middle-school-age daughter. She was also struck by the math anxiety among friends and colleagues, and by the extent to which they tried to avoid math altogether. She wondered: Why are people so afraid of math? What are the consequences?One of many mathematicians who share their perspectives in the film is Ismar Volic, a professor at Wellesley College and a founder, in 2019, of the Institute for Mathematics and Democracy. He is also the author of “Making Democracy Count: How Mathematics Improves Voting, Electoral Maps and Representation.”Dr. Volic grew up in Bosnia-Herzegovina, a country that in the early 1990s went through “a horrific war,” he said. “I am familiar with what collapse of democracy can lead to.” He saw parallels between what happened in Bosnia and what was happening in the United States and around the world. “That has driven me in the last few years, understanding the mechanics of democracy, the infrastructure of democracy, which is very much mathematical,” he said.The following conversation, conducted by videoconference and email, has been condensed and edited for clarity.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