RFK Jr. teams up to ‘save the ostriches' with NYC's own animal-loving billionaire John Catsimatidis
Birds of a feather …
Animal-loving New York City supermarket billionaire John Catsimatidis has joined forces with emu-owning federal health Commissioner Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in urging Canadian officials to take their heads out of the sand to save ostriches at a north-of-the-border bird farm.
Catsimatidis told The Post on Sunday he is grateful the head of Health and Human Services is also now sticking his neck out for the cause, which he has been pushing since last month, as first reported by The Post's Page Six.
'Let's save the ostriches! They have a right to live if they are healthy,' said the Gristedes supermarket founder, who also owns 770 WABC radio.
The Canadian Food Inspection Agency has said it needs to kill nearly 400 of the birds at the Universal Ostrich Farm in British Columbia to curb the spread of the avian flu.
Catsimatidis, who also owns oil and bio-fuel businesses, said he raised the alarm after animal-rights activists alerted him to the situation.
'I love animals. Let's save the whales, too,' he said — noting his next project is protect whales from being imperiled by offshore wind-power set-ups.
The mogul also has been known to love pandas, once trying to convince the Chinese government to loan out the bears to the Big Apple's Central Park Zoo.
As for the ostriches, Kennedy, along with the heads of the US Food and Drug Administration and National Institutes of Health, sent a May 23 letter to the Canadian agency urging it to reconsider its plan.
The birds don't need to be killed to thwart the flu, wrote RFK Jr., who famously owns a pet emu, in the letter first reported by Rebel News.
The ostriches should be preserved for long-term scientific study instead of culling or killing them, he said, echoing Catsimatidis' stance.
'Ostriches can live up to 50 years, providing the opportunity for future insights into immune longevity associated with the H5N1 virus,' Kennedy said in the letter co-signed by NIH Director Jay Bhattachary and FDA Commissioner Martin Makary.
'The indiscriminate destruction of entire flocks without up-to-date testing and evaluation can have significant consequences, including the loss of valuable genetic stock that may help explain risk factors for H5N1 mortality,' the letter said. 'This may be important for future agricultural resilience.'
The missive added that avian influenza has been endemic in birds for thousands of years and that culling birds would be 'fruitless unless we are willing to exterminate every wild bird in North America.'
'We're dealing with a bunch of bureaucrats in Canada. They're mean-spirited,' Catstimatidis said.
'Test the ostriches. They are not sick!'
He added that the ostriches may have 'herd immunity' whose antibodies can be studied to save human lives.
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Atlantic
3 hours ago
- Atlantic
How the Glucose Monitor Became a MAHA Fixation
To hear some of them tell it, the companies selling continuous glucose monitors have stumbled upon a heretofore unknown quirk of human biology. Seemingly healthy people, many of these companies argue, have 'glucose imbalances' that need to be monitored and, with dietary vigilance, eradicated. Millions of people are going through life eating bananas, not knowing that their blood sugar is rising with every bite. This must be stopped. To this end, the companies market the continuous glucose monitor, or CGM, a quarter-size sensor that takes a near-constant measure of the glucose in the fluid between a person's cells. Once inserted into an arm, the sensor allows the wearer to monitor their blood-sugar levels on a phone app for $80 to $184 a month. Doing so allows you to 'see the impact of what you eat' (according to the start-up Lingo), to 'motivate behavior change and encourage healthier choices' (according to another called Levels), and to 'personalize your approach' to weight loss, because 'everyone's journey is different' (according to Nutrisense). The gadgets have been revolutionary for many people with diabetes—previously the main available device for measuring blood sugar required users to prick their fingers multiple times a day. Many insurers cover CGM prescriptions for diabetics; they can pick up the devices at the pharmacy just as they would blood-test strips. But when I asked a half dozen experts whether people who don't have diabetes should wear CGMs, I got a resounding 'Meh.' 'It's a free country. People can pay money for whatever they feel like doing,' David Nathan, a diabetes expert at Harvard, told me. 'But from a medical point of view, I am personally unconvinced that they lead to any health benefit.' Relying on a Harvard diabetes expert to give you diabetes advice, however, goes against the general ethos of the 'Make America Healthy Again' movement, many of whose members have been heavily promoting CGMs in recent months, including to people who don't have diabetes. Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the secretary of Health and Human Services, talked them up in an April CBS interview as 'extraordinarily effective in helping people lose weight and avoid diabetes.' At his Senate confirmation hearing, before becoming Food and Drug Administration commissioner, Marty Makary said glucose monitors help people 'learn about what they're eating.' Casey Means, the wellness influencer whom President Donald Trump nominated for surgeon general, has said that more Americans should use CGMs too. (As it happens, she is a co-founder of Levels.) 'I believe CGM is the most powerful technology for generating the data and awareness to rectify our Bad Energy crisis in the Western world,' Means wrote in her best-selling book, Good Energy. (Bad Energy is her term for the metabolic dysfunction that she believes to be at the root of many chronic health problems.) The devices are emblematic of the self-reliance that characterizes the MAHA movement. 'The Casey Means's of the world,' Alan Levinovitz, a James Madison University religion professor who has studied alternative health, told me in an email, 'are using the rhetoric of naturalness as a way of telling people they can have complete control and expertise over their own health—which is the natural way to be healthy, rather than outsourcing that wisdom to top-down elites.' Indeed, one of the chapters of Good Energy is titled 'Trust Yourself, Not Your Doctor.' (Means did not respond to a request for comment.) CGMs appear to have trickled into MAHA world from the Joe Roganosphere, helped along by the fact that the devices, which in the past had been prescribed mainly to diabetics, were made available last year for purchase over the counter—that is, by anyone. Five years ago, Paul Saladino, a doctor who promotes an ' animal-based diet,' said on Rogan's podcast, 'This is the kind of stuff that really tells you about your metabolic health. There's no way to lie with a continuous glucose monitor.' Since then, CGMs have been endorsed on popular wellness podcasts such as Andrew Huberman's Huberman Lab and Dave Asprey's The Human Upgrade, and by pop-health doctors such as Peter Attia and Mark Hyman, the latter of whom called the CGM 'a gadget that has completely changed my life.' A wellness influencer known as the Glucose Goddess said that although they may not be for everyone, CGMs can be 'a pretty incredible tool to start to connect what you're eating with what's actually happening inside of your body,' and offers a guide to them on her website. Gwyneth Paltrow, the empress of Goop, was recently spotted wearing one. Sun Kim, a Stanford endocrinologist, told me that a few years ago, 'I was literally contacted by a start-up almost every month who wanted to incorporate a CGM' into their products. Of course, some CGM companies do specialize in people who have diabetes and need around-the-clock monitoring. But Kim and others I spoke with told me they suspect that, to boost sales, CGM manufacturers are trying to expand their potential-customer base beyond people living with diabetes to the merely sugar-curious. Jake Leach, the president of Dexcom, maker of the over-the-counter CGM Stelo, told me via email, 'Stelo was originally designed for people who have Type 2 diabetes not using insulin and those with prediabetes, however, given the broad accessibility of this device, we are encouraged to see people without diabetes interested in learning more about their glucose and metabolic health.' A spokesperson for Dexcom pointed out to me that most people with prediabetes are undiagnosed. Fred St. Goar, a cardiologist and clinical adviser for Lingo, told me in a statement that CGMs can be beneficial for nondiabetics because 'understanding your body's glucose is key to managing your metabolism, so you can live healthier and better.' Scant research exists on how many nondiabetic people are buying CGMs, but anecdotally, some providers told me that they are seeing an uptick. Nicola Guess, a University of Oxford dietician and researcher, said that '10 years ago, no, I never saw anyone without diabetes with a CGM. And now I see lots.' Mostly, she said, they're people who are already pretty healthy. In this sense, CGMs are an extension of the wearables craze: Once you have an Oura Ring and a fitness tracker, measuring your blood sugar can feel like the next logical step of the 'journey.' Should people who aren't diabetic wear one of these? Health fanatics who have $80 a month to burn and want to see how various foods affect their blood sugar are probably fine to wear a CGM, at least for a little while. Spoiler: The readout is probably just going to show that eating refined carbs—such as white bread, pasta, and sweets—at least temporarily raises blood sugar to some degree. Normal glucose patterns for nondiabetic people tend to vary quite a bit from meal to meal and day to day. Most nondiabetics' blood-sugar readings will typically fall within the 'normal' range of 70 to 140 milligrams per deciliter. But many healthy people will occasionally see spikes above 140, and scientists don't really know if that's a cause for concern. ('Great question' is a response I heard a lot when I asked.) In the studies he's worked on, Kevin D. Hall, a former National Institutes of Health nutrition scientist, has found that even in tightly controlled settings, people's blood-sugar levels respond very differently to the same meal when eaten on different occasions. Given all these natural deviations, a CGM may not be able to tell you anything especially useful about your health. And CGMs can be less accurate than other types of blood-sugar tests. In another study, Hall and his co-authors stuck two different brands of CGM on the same person, and at times, they provided two different blood-sugar readings. The conclusion, to Hall, was that more research is needed before CGMs can be recommended to nondiabetics. What's more, blood sugar depends on sleep, stress, and exercise levels, and whether any given meal includes protein or fat. If you notice a spike after eating a banana, the banana might not be the reason. It might be the four hours of sleep you got the previous night, because sleep deprivation can affect the hormones that influence blood sugar. As a result, Guess said, 'a CGM cannot tell you whether a single food is right for you'—though some CGM enthusiasts make this promise. (A CGM can help you 'learn your reaction to individual foods and meals,' Means has written.) For some people, tracking data does help nudge them toward healthier behaviors. If you get a clear readout from a CGM that your blood sugar has risen after you've eaten refined carbs, and it moves you to eat fewer refined carbs, that's not necessarily a bad thing. But researchers haven't found evidence yet that nondiabetic people eat better after wearing a CGM. And if you know how to read a CGM, you probably already know what a healthy diet looks like. You could just eat it. Anne Peters, a diabetes researcher at the University of Southern California, told me, 'You could just not wear it at all and tell yourself to eat more vegetables and a more plant-based diet and eat healthy, lean protein.' Many of the biohackers who talk up CGMs also promote a low-carb, protein-heavy diet that would include a T-bone more readily than a Triscuit. (Asprey, the man behind The Human Upgrade, recommends putting butter in coffee.) The potential downside of glucose monitoring is that people who are (perhaps needlessly) alarmed by their CGM data will swap out healthy carbs such as fruit and whole grains for foods that are less healthy—butter, for example, or bacon and red meat. Those foods don't make an impact on blood sugar, but they can affect other markers of health, such as cholesterol and body fat. Eat a stick of butter, and your CGM will probably show a flat, pleasant line. But your arteries may protest. I noticed these perverse incentives myself during my pregnancy, when I had gestational diabetes and wore a CGM to manage my blood sugar. A bowl of heart-healthy oatmeal would cause my blood-sugar reading to soar to an unacceptable 157, but a piece of cheesecake—with loads of fat balancing out the sugar—would keep it safely under my goal level of 135. At the time, I wanted to eat whatever kept my blood sugar low, for the sake of my baby. But few dieticians would advise healthy people to eat cheesecake instead of oatmeal every morning. Glucose, after all, is just a small part of the picture of human health. 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One way for Kennedy and others in the Trump administration to find out if CGMs do all they say they do would be to fund studies on whether CGMs are helpful, and for whom. Quite the opposite is happening. Hall recently left Trump's NIH because he believed he was being censored when speaking about the results of studies that conflicted with Kennedy's views, and Nathan's diabetes-prevention study was recently frozen by the Trump administration. So far, the administration has ended or delayed nearly 2,500 NIH grants, including some related to researching blood glucose. If the Kennedy-led HHS department truly would like to make America healthy again, it could stop defunding the people studying Americans' health.
Hamilton Spectator
3 hours ago
- Hamilton Spectator
The best sunscreens from Canadian brands, tried and tested
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Infused with antioxidant-rich green tea extract and packaged with a built-in kabuki brush, it provides a hint of tint and a matte finish, making it a top pick for those hot and sweaty days. LaSpa Face & Body Fluid Sunscreen Lotion SPF 45. Shop Here A Toronto-founded brand that produces all its products in Canada, LASPA is all about environmentally conscious formulas that are safe to use on sensitized and easily irritated skin. Featuring zinc oxide for broad-spectrum protection, the one-and-done Face & Body Lotion is fragrance-free, hypoallergenic and won't leave behind a greasy finish. It comes in a refillable aluminum bottle with an easy pump for no-brainer daily application, and there's a must-pack mini size, too, for when you're hitting the trails or the sand. When you make a purchase through the links in this article, we may earn a small commission. Our journalism is independent and not influenced by advertising. Learn more .
Yahoo
5 hours ago
- Yahoo
As Trump cuts funding, these Harvard scholars consider leaving US — and academia
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The Trump administration has also frozen or cut nearly $3 billion in federal funding, giving the reason of antisemitism at Harvard. The administration has claimed the university failed to protect Jewish students, particularly in the wake of the war in Gaza. 'In the Trump Administration, discrimination will not be tolerated on campus. Federal funds must support institutions that protect all students,' the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services wrote in May as it cut $60 million in grants to Harvard. Read more: Trump cuts threaten 'irreplaceable' Harvard stockpile of human feces, urine Countries like Australia and France are offering Harvard researchers funding and job opportunities if they leave, at a time of uncertainty for Harvard, both in terms of research funding and the institution's ability to host foreign students. 'I stand behind Harvard in its decision to fight for its First Amendment rights,' Quakenbush said. 'But I'm looking, at this point in my career, at potentially two years with almost no external research funding — maybe longer. And, as you get to that point, and you're not doing research anymore, picking back up and starting up again becomes more difficult. Even securing federal research grants becomes difficult.' Quakenbush has applied, with some colleagues, for grant opportunities in Europe to continue his work at Harvard — but it is also a way of 'testing the waters' of what possible interest there is for his work overseas. 'We're throwing away tens of millions of dollars of work by prematurely terminating these projects,' Quakenbush said. Leaving higher education isn't something that Kelsey Tyssowski, a Harvard postdoctoral researcher, wants to do. Her pathway to getting a tenure-track job has been halted by federal funding cuts. Her research only has funding until the end of the month — then it is up to tenure faculty to determine if she will have any left. A canceled grant from the National Institutes of Health was supposed to cover her salary through March 2026 and the first three years of research in her own lab. 'I have to get a job this year. And this year it's going to be very hard to get a tenure track faculty job because there's hiring freezes everywhere,' Tyssowski said. 'If I can't stay in this job here, I almost certainly have to leave academia,' she said. Tyssowski's research involves skilled movement, complex learned movements that can be reproduced accurately and efficiently and take entire body coordination to do, like climbing. She is pioneering a new way to study skilled movement through deer mice — whose skilled movement might have evolved in a way that humans and primates have. This could have major impacts on understanding how our brains do skilled movement and ultimately in treating diseases like ALS, where skilled movement is the first thing to go. If she leaves academia, the work that she has been doing is at risk of completely vanishing. 'No one will do this research. I won't do this research. It will just go away,' she said. While she has the skillset to work in biotechnology or at a pharmaceutical company and make more money, it's not something she is interested in. She believes in the 'mission of federally funded research' and the work of higher education, she said. Read more: As Harvard fights Trump admin in court, professors are quietly dropping courses Jules Riegel, a lecturer in History and Literature at Harvard, agreed. 'We don't go into academia because we want to make money. We go into academia because we believe in the mission of it,' said Riegel, who uses they/them pronouns. Riegel has a three-year time cap to work at Harvard — a restriction on how long they can work at Harvard as someone who isn't tenured. They are approaching their last year. While there is bargaining going on to eliminate time restrictions for non-tenure members through the Harvard Academic Workers chapter of the United Automobile, Aerospace and Agricultural Implement Workers of America, there is a likelihood that Riegel will soon have to look for another job, they said. With a tight job market filled with hiring freezes at universities and colleges as a reaction to an onslaught of federal funding cuts, Riegel is considering looking for a job overseas or leaving academia entirely. 'I really don't want to, but I have to be realistic about the world we're now in and that at the end of the day, that lies at the feet of the Trump administration,' Riegel said. 'This is what I've worked for my whole life, really, — certainly my whole adult life — and it's ... my sense of calling. It's my mission,' they said. Quakenbush said he has had to give notice to four of his staff that they will be laid off and has sat down with each of his postdoctoral students that they should seriously be considering leaving the U.S. Admittance to the Biostatistics Department at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health's doctoral program has been whittled down from a typical year of 12 to 15 people to now four — two of which are international and are worried they might not be able to get their visas, he said. Bence Ölveczky, a Professor of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology at Harvard, said as much as he is trying to stay positive, it is difficult to encourage students and researchers to come to Harvard right now. That is especially true for international students at Harvard, as the Trump administration has attempted to block Harvard international students from entering the country or enrolling at the institution. 'I have an incoming graduate student from Taiwan, who's phenomenal by all accounts, and I can't encourage him about this situation because the degree of uncertainty and anxiety associated with this whole situation is not something that I would necessarily want for myself if I had other options,' Ölveczky said. When Ölveczky came to the U.S. at the age of 28 from Hungary, he said he found it to be the first place where he didn't feel like a foreigner. Now, that has changed. 'This is a unique country because it's a country of immigrants. And that's why I felt at home because nobody cared,' he said. Ölveczky is settled in the U.S. now as an American citizen. However, only a few short years ago, that wasn't the case. If he were making the move again out of Hungary for his doctoral degree, he said there would be 'no chance' of him coming to the country, he said. Harvard researcher released from custody after months in detention Ex-Harvard professor fired after refusing COVID shot named to CDC vaccine panel U.S. House committee demands Harvard send them hiring policies for review Williams College stops accepting federal grants, opposing new policy Trump cuts threaten 'irreplaceable' Harvard stockpile of human feces, urine Read the original article on MassLive.
