Author: n Beth Molen

An alleged extortion attempt, a petty yearslong grudge, shocking social media posts, and ominous text messages make up the latest scandal at the Food and Drug Administration, an agency that industry outsiders are calling a “clown show” and “soap opera” amid the Trump administration’s leadership, according to reporting by Stat News.

Federal health agencies, in general, have taken heavy blows in Trump’s second term. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in particular, has seen the abrupt dismantling of whole programs and divisions—teams that provide critical health services to Americans. CDC staff regularly describe being demoralized over the last year. Their Senate-confirmed director didn’t make it a full month before being dramatically ousted after allegedly refusing to rubber-stamp vaccine recommendations from a panel filled with vaccine skeptics by anti-vaccine Health Secretary Robert. F. Kennedy Jr.

While the CDC is in shambles, the FDA has turned into something of a sideshow, with concern mounting that it remains a serious enough regulator to keep America’s medicines and treatments modern and safe. Many of the scandals are tied to Vinay Prasad, the Trump administration’s top vaccine regulator, who also has the titles of chief medical officer and chief scientific officer. Prasad made a name for himself on social media during the pandemic as a COVID-19 response skeptic and, since joining the FDA, has been known for overruling agency scientists and sowing distrust, unrest, and paranoia among staff. He was pushed out of the agency in July only to be reinstated about two weeks later.

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A measles investigation amid a large, ongoing outbreak at the Arizona-Utah border has hit a roadblock as the first probable case identified in the Salt Lake City area refuses to work with health officials, the local health department reported this week.

There have been over 150 cases collectively across the two states, mostly in northwestern Mohave County, Arizona, and the southwest health district of Utah, in the past two months. Both areas have abysmally low vaccination rates: In Mohave County, only 78.4 percent of kindergartners in the 2024–2025 school year were vaccinated against measles, according to state records. In the southwest district of Utah, only 80.7 percent of kindergartners in the 2024–2025 school year had records of measles vaccination. Public health experts say vaccination coverage of 95 percent is necessary to keep the disease from spreading in a community.

While the outbreak has largely exploded along the border, cases are also creeping to the north, toward Salt Lake County, which encompasses the city. Utah County, which sits just south of Salt Lake County, has identified eight cases, including a new case reported today.

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The speedy demolition of the East Wing of the White House last week has health advocates and Democratic lawmakers seeking answers about what efforts were taken, if any, to keep workers and passersby safe from potential plumes of asbestos that could arise from the destruction, according to a report by The Washington Post.

The East Wing was originally constructed in 1902 and was renovated in 1942, and asbestos was used extensively in government buildings during this period, according to the Asbestos Disease Awareness Organization (ADAO), a nonprofit focused on preventing asbestos exposure. Anyone who inadvertently breathes in asbestos fibers launched into the air by construction work could be at heightened risk of lung diseases and cancer.

“Every building of this age must undergo full asbestos inspection and abatement before any demolition begins,” Linda Reinstein, president and cofounder of ADAO, said in a press statement.

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Siblings Casey and Calley Means—wellness darlings of the Make America Healthy Again movement, despite being rife with potential conflicts of interest—are both missing from the political arena, at least for now.

Casey Means, President Trump’s nominee for surgeon general, was scheduled to appear virtually at a Senate confirmation hearing today, but the hearing was postponed indefinitely after she went into labor. The hearing, it turns out, had been scheduled two days after her due date, CNN reported this morning.

Meanwhile, The New York Times separately reported that Calley Means has departed from the White House, vacating his role as a “Special Government Employee,” which has a 130-day term limit. The Times reported that Calley left about a month ago when the term ended, though the White House never announced his departure, and he has continued to be identified as a government employee in press articles and at a conference. Calley, who has acted as an influential advisor to anti-vaccine health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., told the Times that the press articles and his conference biography were inaccurate.

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Steven Hatfill, a senior advisor for the Department of Health and Human Services was fired over the weekend, with health officials telling reporters that he was terminated for giving himself a fake, inflated title and for not cooperating with leadership.

For his part, Hatfill told The New York Times that his ouster was part of “a coup to overthrow M. Kennedy,” referring to anti-vaccine Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Further, Hatfill said the coup was being orchestrated by Matt Buckham, Kennedy’s chief of staff, though Hatfill didn’t provide any explanation of how his ouster was evidence of that. An HHS spokesperson responded to the allegation, telling the Times that “firing a staff member for cause does not add up to a coup.”

Bloomberg was first to report Hatfill’s termination.

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Since the dawn of civilization, leeches have been firmly attached to medicine. Therapeutic bloodsuckers are seen in murals decorating the tombs of 18^th dynasty Egyptian pharaohs. They got their earliest written recommendation in the 2^nd century BC by Greek poet and physician Nicander of Colophon. He introduced the “blood-loving leech, long flaccid and yearning for gore,” as a useful tool for sucking out poison after a bite from a poisonous animal. “Let leeches feed on [the] wounds and drink their fill,” he wrote. Ancient Chinese writing touted their medicinal potential, too, as did references in Sanskrit.

Galen, the physician for Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius, supported using leeches to balance the four humors (i.e. blood, phlegm, and yellow and black bile) and therefore treat ailments—as initially outlined by Hippocrates. Leeches, doctors found, provided a method for less painful, localized, and limited bloodletting. We now understand that leeches can release an anesthetic to prevent pain and a powerful anticoagulant, hirudin, to prevent clotting and keep blood flowing.

In the centuries since the Roman era, leeches’ popularity only grew. They were used to treat everything from gout to liver disease, epilepsy, and melancholy. The very word “leech” is derived from the Anglo-Saxon word “laece,” which translates to “physician.”

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While the underlying cause or causes of autism spectrum disorder remain elusive and appear likely to be a complex interplay of genetic and environmental factors, President Trump and his anti-vaccine health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.—neither of whom have any scientific or medical background whatsoever—have decided to pin the blame on Tylenol, a common pain reliever and fever reducer that has no proven link to autism.

And now, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is suing the maker of Tylenol, Kenvue and Johnson & Johnson, who previously sold Tylenol, claiming that they have been “deceptively marketing Tylenol” knowing that it “leads to a significantly increased risk of autism and other disorders.”

To back that claim, Paxton relies on the “considerable body of evidence… recently highlighted by the Trump Administration.”

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A 61-year-old man in California is lucky to be alive after a combination of herbal supplements he was taking for joint pain ended up utterly wrecking his body, landing him in intensive care and in a delirious state for months. His case is reported in the Annals of Internal Medicine: Clinical Cases.

The man turned up at a hospital in San Francisco in bad shape, but with nonspecific problems that had begun just two days earlier. His back hurt, he was feverish, nauseous, bloated, and he hadn’t been eating much. He was so weak he couldn’t walk or get out of bed without help. His heart rate and breathing rate were high. His blood pressure was low. There were multiple wounds on his lower body in various stages of healing.

Initial exams and lab work revealed Staphylococcus aureus bacteria in his blood. There was also an abscess on his shoulder and an infection in and around his spine, which was worsening. Doctors wanted to perform a surgical procedure to relieve the pressure building up on his spinal cord and nerves, but his blood pressure was too low—and then he went into hemorrhagic shock from bleeding in his gastrointestinal tract. Doctors transferred him to the intensive care unit.

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The director of a federal health institute that has arguably produced two of the most controversial government studies in recent years has accepted a new federal role to advance the goals of the Make America Healthy Again movement. Meanwhile, the person replacing him as director is a close friend of Vice President JD Vance and was installed in a process that experts describe as completely outside standard hiring practices.

The series of events—revealed in an email to staff last week from the National Institutes of Health Director Jay Bhattacharya—is only exacerbating the spiraling fears that science is being deeply corrupted by politics under the Trump administration.

Richard Woychik, a molecular geneticist, is the outgoing director of the NIH’s National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS), which is located in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina. He has been director since 2020 and was recently appointed to a second five-year term, according to Science magazine. Woychik was hired at the institute in 2010, when he joined as deputy director, and was appointed acting director in 2019.

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Shock and dismay have already begun as Americans face next year’s health insurance costs—and it looks like everyone will be in for some grim numbers.

So far, much of the attention has been on the stratospheric prices that Americans might see on plans they buy from Affordable Care Act marketplaces. Critical tax credits for those plans are set to expire at the end of the year, and, on top of that, insurers have proposed a median 18 percent price increase for 2026. With the higher prices and a loss of credits, some Americans could see their monthly premiums more than double.

In an analysis last month, nonpartisan health policy group KFF estimated that, on average, ACA marketplace premiums would rise 114 percent, going from $888 in 2025 to $1,904 in 2026.

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