US Senate Democrats demand Kennedy explain canceling bird flu vaccine contract
WASHINGTON, June 18 (Reuters) - U.S. Senate Democrats demanded on Wednesday Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. make public the reviews on which his department said it based its decision to cancel a contract for developing a bird flu vaccine.
President Donald Trump's administration last month canceled a $590-million contract awarded to Moderna (MRNA.O), opens new tab in January by outgoing President Joe Biden's administration for the late-stage development of its bird flu vaccine for humans, as well as the right to purchase shots.
"This is a grievous mistake that threatens to leave the country unprepared for what experts fear might be the next pandemic – and there appears to be no rationale for this decision other than your ill-informed and dangerous war on vaccines," Senators Elizabeth Warren and Tammy Duckworth wrote in a letter seen by Reuters.
The cancellation endangers American lives and will likely contribute to a 20% rise in the price of eggs this year, they wrote to Kennedy, who has a long history of questioning the safety of vaccines contrary to scientific evidence.
A spokesperson for the Department of Health and Human Services at the time said the contract was canceled after a comprehensive internal review determined the project did not meet the scientific standards or safety expectations required for continued federal investment.
Warren and Duckworth demanded Kennedy make the review public, alongside a similar review the department cited when it cut funding of a $258-million program researching an HIV vaccine. They also asked for a detailed description of how the department decided to end the contracts, and a staff briefing.
"You have failed to justify either of these moves to cripple vaccine research," Warren and Duckworth wrote. "Furthermore, these decisions appear to be part of your larger, unfounded vendetta against mRNA technology."
Kennedy named eight members last week to serve on a panel of vaccine advisers to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, including some who have advocated against vaccines, days after abruptly firing all 17 members who had been serving on the independent committee of experts.
Several of his appointees specifically oppose the mRNA vaccine technology used in some of the newest immunizations such as the COVID-19 vaccine, including by Moderna.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Independent
22 minutes ago
- The Independent
‘My mission is to make him so angry:' E Jean Carroll reveals plans for her $83m judgement against the president
E Jean Carroll, the woman who beat President Donald Trump in two separate court cases, has vowed to make him 'so mad' by spending her multimillion-dollar windfall on 'things that Trump hates.' In 2019, Carroll accused the commander-in-chief of raping her in the changing rooms of New York's Bergdorf Goodman department store in 1996, resulting in a civil case in 2023 in which he was found liable for sexual abuse and ordered to pay her $5m in compensation. She then sued him again for defamation after he repeatedly protested his innocence and denied knowing her, which resulted in a jury awarding her an astonishing $83.3 million payout in early 2024. A U.S. appeals court last week rejected Trump's attempt to overturn the first verdict. He is still appealing the second, claiming presidential immunity. Carroll, 81, is currently promoting a new book, "Not My Type," a title taken from the president's notorious slur against her. She told Newsweek that she's setting up a charitable foundation in her own name to manage the money and distribute donations to anti-Trump causes. 'My mission is to make him so angry and so mad by taking this $83.3 million and giving it to things that Trump hates. That's what I'm doing,' she explained. Carroll specifically said she would direct her capital to areas like 'women's reproductive rights, binding up the wounds that he's inflicting on democracy and shoring up voting rights.' The former columnist told Newsweek that she found it 'stunning' that Trump had won last November's presidential election after a year of blockbuster indictments and court hearings outlining his long track record of troubling behavior. She said the outcome left her with little choice but to conclude: 'People don't believe women when they're saying one thing and a very, very powerful man is saying something else.' Carroll said she retains 'complete, 100 percent faith' in the legal system as a corrective to executive overreach and corruption, but urged people, particularly women, to continue protesting against the administration in the streets. ' Women have the power. We just have to realize it. We hold, as they say, the purse strings,' she said. Shockingly, the writer also revealed that she is not taking any chances when it comes to her own safety, given the recent wave of political violence in America, and sleeps at night alongside a Mossberg shotgun she has nicknamed 'Aphrodite,' after the Greek goddess of love, and two guard dogs. Not My Type is about her experiences taking on Trump in Manhattan federal courtrooms, an experience she described as 'comedy gold' and which she said she was able to recollect thanks to the voice-accurate notes she recorded after each day's session as reminders, as well as the official court transcripts. Carroll described the transcripts as 'probably the most comedic script ever written since Jonathan Swift published Gulliver's Travels ' and said she relished observing and describing Trump's defense lawyers, particularly the fashion-conscious Alina Habba and the hulking Joe Tacopina, noting the latter was 'built like Popeye' with 'glittering eyes.' 'The whole thing to me was like a high comedy,' she said.
Telegraph
28 minutes ago
- Telegraph
I'm a GP and this is how I'd save the burnt-out NHS
A 'national emergency' is facing the NHS. So says Health Secretary Wes Streeting, who in the coming weeks will publish the Government's 10 Year Health Plan – an 'ambitious yet essential' doctrine to bring the waiting list down from six million, harness private providers, and ensure that patients no longer 'suffer unnecessarily when capacity exists to treat them'. Streeting has also suggested that the new reforms could see GPs take over hospital trusts. 'The NHS should not be bound by traditional expectations of how services should be arranged,' he told the NHS ConfedExpo Conference in Manchester last week, describing the current divide between institutions as 'old-fashioned' and 'increasingly meaningless', in the face of the new plans. The idea is unlikely to thrill the many patients who have found themselves falling through NHS cracks as a result of departments seemingly unable to talk to one another. How this might work practically remains to be seen. Might healthcare professionals welcome a break in the divide between hospitals and GPs, or would it lead to more/inefficiencies? Here, three family doctors share their views. 'We need a new approach to chronic health issues' Martin Brunet, GP GPs think in a different way from hospital doctors, and that's our skill. We're pretty much the only people in general in medicine that look at every aspect of a patient's life; we're interested in all their physical problems, but also their social set-up and what's going on emotionally for them, and we put it all together. In the hospital, you see a cardiologist for the heart and a neurologist for the brain, but what if what's going on crosses all of those areas? Where the health system could be radically different is by challenging the current model, which is biomedical. That means when a patient has symptoms, a doctor makes a diagnosis, usually with the aid of complex tests, and then they find a definable disease with a definable treatment. This works brilliantly for conditions like cancer or pneumonia. But if you've got something like chronic pain or irritable bowel syndrome (9.1 million people are projected to have a chronic condition by 2040) it really doesn't work as well. What then happens is you have all these patients having loads of tests for their pain, none of which really get to the root of the problem, and they end up on lots of medication which doesn't help them, and is a very inefficient use of money. If you could set up holistic clinics – mostly run by GPs, but perhaps with some specialist input from people who really understand how the mind and the body work together – we could more effectively get to the root cause of why someone's brain is not allowing them to recover from chronic conditions, and make a massive difference to people's lives. GPs are very innovative, if you give them the chance. But Streeting's idea to send us into hospitals will not work if we are expected to go in and act like hospital doctors. We don't need GPs to try to pretend to be specialists. We're generalists, and that's our strength. 'We have to change the NHS culture, and how we all work together' Prof Kamila Hawthorne
The Independent
32 minutes ago
- The Independent
More employers are sending workers shopping for their own health coverage
A small, growing number of employers are putting health insurance decisions entirely in the hands of their workers. Instead of offering traditional insurance, they're giving workers money to buy their own coverage in what's known as Individual Coverage Health Reimbursement Arrangements, or ICHRAs. Advocates say this approach provides small companies that couldn't afford insurance a chance to offer something. It also caps a growing expense for employers and fits conservative political goals of giving people more purchasing power over their coverage. But ICHRAs place the risk for finding coverage on the employee, and they force them to do something many dislike: Shop for insurance. 'It's maybe not perfect, but it's solving a problem for a lot of people,' said Cynthia Cox, of the nonprofit KFF, which studies health care issues. Here's a closer look at how this approach to health insurance is evolving. What's an ICHRA? Normally, U.S. employers offering health coverage will have one or two insurance options for workers through what's known as a group plan. The employers then pick up most of the premium, or cost of coverage. ICHRAs are different: Employers contribute to health insurance coverage, but the workers then pick their own insurance plans. The employers that use ICHRAs hire outside firms to help people make their coverage decisions. ICHRAs were created during President Donald Trump's first administration. Enrollment started slowly but has swelled in recent years. What's the big deal about ICHRAs? They give business owners a predictable cost, and they save companies from having to make coverage decisions for employees. 'You have so many things you need to focus on as a business owner to just actually grow the business,' said Jeff Yuan, co-founder of the New York-based insurance startup Taro Health. Small businesses, in particular, can be vulnerable to annual insurance cost spikes, especially if some employees have expensive medical conditions. But the ICHRA approach keeps the employer cost more predictable. Yuan's company bases its contributions on the employee's age and how many people are covered under the plan. That means it may contribute anywhere from $400 to more than $2,000 monthly to an employee's coverage. How is this approach different? ICHRAs let people pick from among dozens of options in an individual insurance market instead of just taking whatever their company offers. That may give people a chance to find coverage more tailored to their needs. Some insurers, for instance, offer plans designed for people with diabetes. And workers can keep the coverage if they leave — potentially for longer periods than they would be able to with traditional employer health insurance plans. They likely will have to pay the full premium, but keeping the coverage also means they won't have to find a new plan that covers their doctors. Mark Bertolini, CEO of the insurer Oscar Health, noted that most people change jobs several times. ' Insurance works best when it moves with the consumer,' said the executive, whose company is growing enrollment through ICHRAs in several states. What are the drawbacks for employees? Health insurance plans on the individual market tend to have narrower coverage networks than employer-sponsored coverage. It may be challenging for patients who see several doctors to find one plan that covers them all. People shopping for their own insurance can find coverage choices and terms like deductibles or coinsurance overwhelming. That makes it important for employers to provide help with plan selection. The broker or technology platform setting up a company's ICHRA generally does this by asking about their medical needs or if they have any surgeries planned in the coming year. How many people get coverage this way? There are no good numbers nationally that show how many people have coverage through an ICHRA or a separate program for companies with 50 workers or less. However, the HRA Council, a trade association that promotes the arrangements, sees big growth. The council works with companies that help employers offer the ICHRAs. It studies growth in a sample of those businesses. It says about 450,000 people were offered coverage through these arrangements this year. That's up 50% from 2024. Council Executive Director Robin Paoli says the total market may be twice as large. Still, these arrangements make up a sliver of employer-sponsored health coverage in the United States. About 154 million people were enrolled in coverage through work last year, according to KFF. Will growth continue? Several things could cause more employers to offer ICHRAs. As health care costs continue to climb, more companies may look to limit their exposure to the hit. Some tax breaks and incentives that encourage the arrangements could wind up in a final version of the Republican tax bill currently under consideration in the Senate. More people also will be eligible for the arrangements if extra government subsidies that help buy coverage on the Affordable Care Act's individual marketplaces expire this year. You can't participate in an ICHRA if you are already getting a subsidy from the government, noted Brian Blase, a White House health policy adviser in the first Trump administration. 'The enhanced subsidies, they crowd out private financing,' he said. ___ The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute's Science and Educational Media Group. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
