US Measles Cases Surpass 1,000 as Texas Infection Rate Slows
The US has confirmed 1,001 measles cases since the outbreak began in January, even as the virus' spread in the hardest-hit state has slowed.
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported 66 new measles cases on Friday, a 7% increase from a week prior. Cases have now been confirmed in 30 states.
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Gizmodo
40 minutes ago
- Gizmodo
RFK Jr. Is Opening the Alternative Medicine Floodgates
Snake oil salesmen will be eating good during the Trump presidency. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. recently declared that he will greatly expand people's access to experimental and alternative medical treatments, even while acknowledging that a 'lot of charlatans' are likely to take advantage of suffering people as a result. RFK Jr. made the announcement during a recent interview on the Ultimate Human Podcast hosted by Gary Brecka, a self-proclaimed biologist, biohacker, and longevity expert (Brecka appears to possess two bachelors' degrees in biology, but is not a licensed medical doctor). Kennedy stated that, under his reign as Secretary of Health and Human Services, Americans will more easily be able to get their hands on treatments not currently approved by health regulators. 'If you want to take an experimental drug—you can do that, you ought to be able to do that,' Kennedy told Brecka. While many patient advocates in general have pushed for looser regulations surrounding experimental or off-label treatments, other experts have cautioned that it's important to strike a balance between improved access and safety. And it's unlikely Kennedy's approach will meet that threshold. For starters, Kennedy has long spread misinformation about vaccines (one of the most effective medical interventions ever created), nutrition, and other health topics. And he's no stranger to backing alternative treatments that have next to no evidence supporting their use. During this latest interview, for instance, he referenced chelation and stem cells as unproven therapies that people should have easier access to. Stem cell medicine is a legitimate and growing field of research. But direct-to-consumer stem cell clinics often exaggerate their benefits, claiming stem cells can treat everything from cancer to long covid. In recent years, this cottage industry has exploded in the U.S. and overseas, and some patients have been severely injured from buying into the hype. People have experienced pulmonary embolisms, bacterial infections, and other serious complications, including blindness, from visiting these clinics. The risk-balance equation is arguably even worse with chelation therapy. Chelation involves using drugs that bind to heavy metals in the body, allowing them to be excreted out through urine. It's an effective treatment for certain kinds of acute poisoning or toxic exposures. But in alternative medicine circles, chelation is regularly used to 'cleanse' people of supposed toxins dubiously blamed for a bevy of chronic illnesses, including autism. As with stem cells, people have gotten hurt or died after taking chelation for unapproved uses. RFK seems to be fully aware of the potential danger that would come with making these treatments easier to access, yet brushed that off as inevitable during his interview. 'And of course you're going to get a lot of charlatans, and you're going to get people who have bad results,' he said. 'And ultimately, you can't prevent that either way. Leaving the whole thing in the hands of pharma is not working for us.' The Food and Drug Administration has previously warned the public to stay away from chelation therapy for autism and from unregulated stem cell treatments, but who knows if these warnings will stay up for much longer. Kennedy and the Trump Administration have repeatedly undermined approved medical treatments like vaccines. Now he's set to open the floodgates for unlicensed drugs that may not work or will harm people desperate enough to use them.
San Francisco Chronicle
44 minutes ago
- San Francisco Chronicle
Who's in charge? CDC's leadership 'crisis' apparent amid new COVID-19 vaccine guidance
WASHINGTON (AP) — There was a notable absence last week when U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced in a 58-second video that the government would no longer endorse the COVID-19 vaccine for healthy children or pregnant women. The director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — the person who typically signs off on federal vaccine recommendations — was nowhere to be seen. The CDC, a $9.2 billion-a-year agency tasked with reviewing life-saving vaccines, monitoring diseases and watching for budding threats to Americans' health, is without a clear leader. 'I've been disappointed that we haven't had an aggressive director since — February, March, April, May — fighting for the resources that CDC needs,' said Dr. Robert Redfield, who served as CDC director under the first Trump administration and supported Kennedy's nomination as the nation's health secretary. $9.2 billion-a-year agency without leader as nomination awaits The leadership vacuum at a foremost federal public health agency has existed for months, after President Donald Trump suddenly withdrew his first pick for CDC director in March. A hearing for his new nominee — the agency's former acting director Susan Monarez — has not been scheduled because she has not submitted all the paperwork necessary to proceed, according to a spokesman for Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., who will oversee the nomination. HHS did not answer written questions about Monarez's nomination, her current role at the CDC or her salary. An employee directory lists Monarez, a longtime government employee, as a staffer for the NIH under the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health. Instead, a lawyer and political appointee with no medical experience is 'carrying out some of the duties' of director at the agency that for seven decades has been led by someone with a medical degree. Matthew Buzzelli, who is also the chief of staff at the CDC, is 'surrounded by highly qualified medical professionals and advisors to help fulfill these duties as appropriate,' Andrew Nixon, an HHS spokesperson said in a statement. Adding to the confusion was an employee-wide email sent last week that thanked 'new acting directors who shave stepped up to the plate." The email, signed by Monarez, listed her as the acting director. It was was sent just days after Kennedy said at a Senate hearing that Monarez had been replaced by Buzzelli. The lack of a confirmed director will be a problem if a public health emergency such as the COVID-19 pandemic or a rapid uptick in measles cases hits, said Michael Osterholm, an epidemiologist at the University of Minnesota. 'CDC is a crisis, waiting for a crisis to happen,' said Osterholm. 'At this point, I couldn't tell you for the life of me who was going to pull what trigger in a crisis situation." An acting director rarely seen, and stalled decisions At CDC headquarters in Atlanta, employees say Monarez was rarely heard from between late January – when she was appointed acting director – and late March, when Trump nominated her. She also has not held any of the 'all hands' meetings that were customary under previous CDC chiefs, according to several staffers. One employee, who insisted on anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media and fears being fired if identified said Monarez has been almost invisible since her nomination, adding that her absence has been cited by other leaders as an excuse for delaying action. The situation already has led to confusion. In April, a 15-member CDC advisory panel of outside experts met to discuss vaccine policy. The panel makes recommendations to the CDC Director, who routinely signs off on them. But it was unclear during the meeting who would be reviewing the panel's recommendations, which included the expansion of RSV vaccinations for adults and a new combination shot as another option to protect teens against meningitis. HHS officials said the recommendations were going to Buzzelli, but then weeks passed with no decision. A month after the meeting ended, the CDC posted on a web site that Kennedy had signed off on recommendations for travelers against chikungunya, a viral disease transmitted to humans by mosquitos. But there continues to be no word about a decision about the other vaccine recommendations. The problem was accentuated again last week, when Kennedy rolled out recommendations for the COVID-19 vaccine saying they were no longer recommended for healthy children or pregnant women, even though expectant mothers are considered a high-risk group if they contract the virus. Kennedy made the surprise announcement without input from the CDC advisory panel that has historically made recommendations on the nation's vaccine schedule. The CDC days later posted revised guidance that said healthy kids and pregnant women may get the shots. Nixon, the HHS spokesman, said CDC staff were consulted on the recommendations, but would not provide staffer's names or titles. He also did not provide the specific data or research that Kennedy reviewed to reach his conclusion on the new COVID-19 recommendations, just weeks after he said that he did not think 'people should be taking medical advice' from him. 'As Secretary Kennedy said, there is a clear lack of data to support the repeat booster strategy in children,' Nixon said in a statement. Research shows that pregnant women are at higher risk of severe illness, mechanical ventilation and death, when they contract COVID-19 infections. During the height of the pandemic, deaths of women during pregnancy or shortly after childbirth soared to their highest level in 50 years. Vaccinations also have been recommended for pregnant women because it passes immunity to newborns who are too young for vaccines and also vulnerable to infections. Nixon did not address a written question about recommendations for pregnant women. Kennedy's decision to bypass the the advisory panel and announce new COVID-19 recommendations on his own prompted a key CDC official who works with the committee – Dr. Lakshmi Panagiotakopoulos – to announce her resignation last Friday. 'My career in public health and vaccinology started with a deep-seated desire to help the most vulnerable members of our population, and that is not something I am able to continue doing in this role,' she wrote in an email seen by an Associated Press reporter. Signs are mounting that the CDC has been 'sidelined' from key decision-making under Kennedy's watch, said Dr. Anand Parekh, the chief medical adviser for The Bipartisan Policy Center. 'It's difficult to ascertain how we will reverse the chronic disease epidemic or be prepared for myriad public health emergencies without a strong CDC and visible, empowered director,' Parekh said. 'It's also worth noting that every community in the country is served by a local or state public health department that depends on the scientific expertise of the CDC and the leadership of the CDC director.'
CNN
an hour ago
- CNN
Despite Kennedy's claims, vaccines have been tested in placebo-controlled studies – nearly 260 of them
Vaccines New in medicine Children's health Federal agenciesFacebookTweetLink Follow US Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has repeatedly claimed in public statements that most vaccines recommended for children in the US have not been tested against placebos, and particularly inert placebos such as saline solution or water. 'The only vaccine that has been tested in a full-blown placebo trial against an inert placebo was the Covid vaccine,' Kennedy said May 14 in testimony before the US Senate's Health, Labor, Education and Pensions Committee. 'The other 76 shots that children in this country received between birth and 18 years old, none of them have been safety tested in prelicensing studies against the placebo, which means we don't understand the risk profile for those products, and that's something I intend to remedy,' he told Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Connecticut. In 2023, Kennedy told Fox News host Jesse Watters: 'Vaccines are exempt from prelicensing placebo-controlled trials, so that there's no way that anybody can tell the risk profile of those products or even the relative benefits of those products before they're mandated. And we should have that kind of testing.' HHS is acting on Kennedy's claims, too. The department recently announced it will require all new vaccines be tested in placebo-controlled trials before they're licensed for use, a change it called 'a radical departure from past practices.' These claims made Dr. Jake Scott's ears perk up. Scott, an infectious disease specialist at Stanford University, knew that the assertions couldn't be true, and now he says he has the proof. Scott launched a project in April to round up every randomized, placebo-controlled clinical trial of vaccines in the medical literature, including studies run in other countries, since some vaccines used in the US are tested overseas. It took five weeks to arrive at a number: There have been 258 placebo-controlled clinical trials of vaccines, according to Scott and a team of volunteers who scoured databases of medical literature. More than half of those studies tested vaccines against inert placebos. Based on Scott's research, at least nine of the 16 vaccines that are routinely recommended by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for children have been tested against inert placebos, while several more have been tested against active placebos. In scientific research, randomized, placebo-controlled clinical trials are considered to generate the highest-quality evidence. That's because they split their study participants into equal groups; some get the study intervention or treatment, while others get a placebo or dummy remedy. Placebos are often carefully designed to look, taste or even smell like the intervention that's being tested. The idea is to keep both the participants and the researchers themselves in the dark about who's getting the real thing until the end of the study, when the results are analyzed and reported, to prevent any potential bias. HHS did not respond to CNN's request for comment on the new project's findings or clarification on Kennedy's statements. On April 22, Scott posted a link to a shared Google spreadsheet online, along with some ground rules about which trials could and couldn't be included. The studies had to be in humans; no animal studies or lab-only investigations allowed. The researchers also used a particular set of search terms, with no limits on dates, languages or pathogens. The team then read each study that was found to make sure it met the specified criteria for inclusion in the review. 'It took off,' Scott said. He estimates that the project had five or six core contributors, but they had help from around the world. Together, they scoured PubMed, the database of medical research maintained by the National Library of Medicine, as well as reference lists from Cochrane, the World Health Organization and the CDC. Dr. Isaac Bogoch, an infectious disease specialist at the University of Toronto, said he was blown away when he saw the final list of studies, which included about 2.5 million participants in total. 'The body of evidence for many of the vaccines that we use is very impressive, and the data is robust,' said Bogoch, who didn't contribute to the project. 'This type of work is extremely important in era of unprecedented vaccine hesitancy.' Scott said the research proves that Kennedy's statements are 'demonstrably false.' To understand why, it's useful to break down the parts of Kennedy's argument, which he has repeated in different iterations for years. Kennedy has shifted the goalposts, but there are a few things he has said would make a clinical trial meet his requirements: First, an inert placebo, meaning a placebo control that didn't have any biological effects on the body, like water or saline solution. Kennedy has said that without comparison to an inert placebo, the true side effects of vaccines can't be fully understood. He also uses the term 'prelicensing,' meaning the research is conducted before the US Food and Drug Administration has approved the vaccines. The FDA sometimes accepts enough evidence to approve a vaccine but then will require more safety studies and monitoring after approval. Kennedy and other critics argue that more safety testing should be done before the vaccines are approved in the first place. In some instances, Kennedy has also said that these studies should be large, including many participants, and long-running. In general, larger studies have greater statistical power to show subtle differences between groups. And the longer a trial follows its participants, the more confident researchers can be in the durability of their results. Although scientists agree that larger and longer clinical trials are the most reliable, these studies are expensive to conduct. They can take years to run, which delays the possibility of getting an effective intervention to people. It can also be difficult to find participants who can stick with the monitoring requirements of a study for longer periods of time. In recent testimony, however, even Kennedy seemed to be softening his stance on this particular stipulation, agreeing that other types of studies can provide solid evidence, too. 'You know that the Cochrane Collaboration in 2016 published a study that showed that the predictive capacity of placebo-controlled trials, which are the gold standard, is actually not any better than good observational trials in retrospective trials. So we can do those kind of studies without subjecting people to an unethical experiment,' Kennedy said during a May 20 Senate budget hearing when asked about the need to test established vaccines in large, lengthy placebo-controlled trials. In his 2021 book, 'The Real Anthony Fauci: Bill Gates, Big Pharma, and the Global War on Democracy and Public Health,' Kennedy repeats the claim that vaccines for children haven't been tested against inert placebos, saying that he and groups he's affiliated with have explicitly asked to be shown such studies. He cites two letters between the Informed Consent Action Network or ICAN, a group run by his close associate Del Bigtree, and HHS. The letter from ICAN asserts that in contrast to most other FDA-approved medications, 'vaccines are not required to undergo long-term double-blind inert-placebo controlled trials to assess safety. In fact, not a single one of the clinical trials for vaccines given to babies and toddlers had a control group receiving an inert placebo.' The HHS letter refutes this claim: 'Contrary to statements made on page two of your letter, many pediatric vaccines have been investigated in clinical trials that included a placebo.' The letter goes on to say inert placebos are not necessary to understand the safety of a new vaccine, and so they haven't been required. Still, Scott says the evidence is clear: Of the 258 placebo-controlled vaccine studies he and his colleagues found, about half – 128 – included inert placebos. When it comes to vaccines routinely recommended for children, specifically, Scott found that at least nine of the 16 on the CDC's regular schedule have been tested against inert placebos: These are the vaccines against Covid-19; rotavirus; polio; influenza; measles, mumps and rubella; human papillomavirus; varicella, or chickenpox; pneumococcal; and H-flu, or Haemophilus influenzae. One of the largest of these trials was on the polio vaccine. The placebo-controlled part of the study included more than 400,000 grade-schoolers. Half got the inactivated polio vaccine created by Dr. Jonas Salk, and the other half were given injections of an inert placebo, which was saline solution. The trial was conducted in 1954, and the results were announced in April 1955. So great was the urgency to get the vaccine to kids that the FDA licensed it the same day. 'It's frankly astounding that someone who made such easily disprovable claims is now heading HHS and continues to promote similar misinformation,' Scott said of Kennedy in an email to CNN. 'We compiled this evidence specifically to counter these false narratives with hard data.' Scott says he and his colleagues hope to have their project published in peer-reviewed medical journal soon. For now, it's available in a publicly posted spreadsheet. Vaccine trials that don't use inert placebos will sometimes use what are known as active placebos. These comparison shots have some biological effect but don't interfere with scientists' ability to interpret the results of their study. Active placebos are used for a variety of reasons. In some parts of the world, for example, where it might be difficult to recruit participants, researchers might give the control group an unrelated vaccine to make sure they're getting some benefit by enrolling in the study. One study published last year in the Lancet, testing a vaccine against malaria, gave participants in the control group a vaccine against rabies instead. Rabies vaccines don't protect against malaria, so they wouldn't interfere with researchers' ability to tell whether the malaria shot actually worked. Other active placebos in the studies in Scott's project included shots that contained only an adjuvant, an ingredient that's added to vaccines to trigger a stronger immune response. Dr. Greg Poland, who studies how adults and children respond to vaccines at the Mayo Clinic, said it would be a mistake to assume that active placebos can't be valid and rigorous ways to test vaccines. Adjuvants, such as aluminum, are often the reason people get soreness around an injection site. Giving just the adjuvant can guard against even psychological bias in control participants who might guess that they didn't get a real vaccine if they didn't feel anything after their shots. It also allows researchers to isolate the benefits and side effects of the vaccine proteins, since everyone got the adjuvant. 'You're literally saying, 'OK, we're testing a vaccine that has ingredient A plus B against a non-vaccine placebo that has ingredient B.' So the only thing different between the two of them is the actual vaccine,' Poland said. An active comparator might also be used rather than an inert placebo because of ethics. When there's already a vaccine that's considered to be safe and effective against an infection, it's considered unethical to deny study participants the chance to get it. In that case, companies that want to test a new and improved version of a vaccine against an older one would normally have to offer participants in their control group the older vaccine. Many modern vaccines have been compared against older versions of the same vaccine. Flu vaccines are a good example, Poland says. If you were testing an improved type of flu vaccine, chances are that the board that oversees your clinical trial wouldn't approve a study that used an inert placebo – especially if you were testing it in a vulnerable group, like people over 65, for whom an infection is more likely to be dangerous. 'It's unethical because the recommendation is that everyone, each flu season, receive an influenza vaccine. So it'd be unethical to enroll people in a study where they may just get placebo and not get any benefit of protection,' Poland said. Poland said he's been puzzled by Kennedy's statements, too. He's concerned that they are getting traction with the public now that Kennedy is the head of the nation's health agencies. 'This notion that there are no placebo-controlled vaccine trials is patently false, but it's a really interesting phenomenon that I have a hard time understanding,' he said.
