Category: Health

(WASHINGTON) — Bird flu is continuing to spread in animals across the United States more than a year after the first human case was detected.

Since then, at least 70 people have fallen ill and at least one death was recorded in Louisiana, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The number of confirmed cases in humans has held steady for almost two months, but hundreds of dairy cows continue to be infected and raw milk samples in several states have tested positive for bird flu, according to federal health officials.

There is currently no evidence the virus is spreading between people, and the CDC has said the risk to the general public is low. However, some experts told ABC News fear the virus could still mutate or adapt to become more severe or transmissible.

Here’s the latest to know about the virus and current situation.

Bird flu in the U.S.

Bird flu, or avian influenza, is an infectious viral disease that primarily spreads among birds and is caused by infection with Avian Influenza A viruses

In March 2024, bird flu was reported in U.S. dairy cows for the first time. As of Friday, the virus has infected more than 1,000 herds across 17 states, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA).

The CDC confirmed the first human case in April 2024 in a Texas dairy worker who was exposed to cows presumed to be infected. This is believed to be the first instance of mammal to human spread of the H5N1 strain.

Bird flu has also been causing outbreaks in poultry, leading to human cases among U.S. poultry farm workers and culling operations workers.

Three human cases have had no known or identifiable exposure to the virus.

Dr. Tony Moody, a professor of pediatrics and in immunology at Duke University School of Medicine, said there has been so much transmission of bird flu in animals that he wonders if mass immunity is far off.

“In terms of the cattle population and other animal reservoirs, I’m starting to wonder exactly how many more cases we’ll see because, at this point, we’re probably heading toward — and pun is intended here — herd immunity,” he told ABC News.

Moody said there is currently no evidence of human-to-human transmission, which he says raises the question of whether or not H5N1 is likely to make that jump.

What is the U.S. doing to fight bird flu?

According to the USDA, the agency is investing $1 billion to fight bird flu, including $500 million for biosecurity measures, $400 million in financial relief for affected farmers and $100 million for vaccine research.

Between March 2024 and now, the CDC said it — along with state and local health departments — have monitored at least 16,600 people exposed to infected animals and tested at least 880. Meanwhile, USDA is responsible for testing livestock herds.

Moody said ramping up testing on both sides would give public health workers better situational awareness.

“I think the real question comes down to: how much do we want to test animals and people in order to be able to nail down transmission events and really understand how frequently this is happening?” Moody said, “I would personally like to see better surveillance and more coordinated surveillance.”

He said he understands this might not be possible due to the allocation of limited resources, but it would provide a better national picture.

“I think that the problem we have right now is that we have an incomplete view because testing of animals falls under one department, testing of people falls under a different department,” Moody said. “They don’t necessarily communicate in real time with accurate information and, the two agencies in question here, they’ve got very different purposes.”

Dr. Dean Blumberg, chief of the division of pediatric infectious diseases at the University of California, Davis Health, said he is worried that there has been a curtailing of testing and surveillance.

“If we don’t have the data then we don’t know what next steps to take,” he told ABC News. “There is increased likelihood that there will be increased spread among animals and humans and, by the time we become aware of increased transmission, then it may be too late for successful mitigation.”Under the USDA’s National Milk Testing Strategy to test raw milk samples for bird flu, the agency has identified at least seven affected states.

Meanwhile, the Food and Drug Administration announced last year it was beginning to sample aged raw cheese to test bird flu, with early results showing most samples were negative.

On the vaccine front, the U.S. has licensed three bird flu vaccines, targeting the H5N1 strain, which are being held in a national stockpile. They are not available to the public and would only be distributed in case of an emergency.

Last year, the World Health Organization it launched an initiative to help accelerate the development of a human bird flu vaccine using messenger RNA (mRNA) technology.

Earlier this year, Moderna was awarded approximately $590 million from the federal government to help speed up the development of an mRNA-based bird flu vaccine, alongside other influenza vaccines.

What we don’t know

Although there is no evidence of human-to-human transmission yet, or that the virus has mutated to become more infectious, Moody said he still worried about mutations and adaptations.

Earlier this year, a dairy cow was found to be infected with another type of bird flu for the first time, which experts have previously said is evidence that the virus is adapting.

“The thing about this virus is that it mutates every time somebody gets infected, right?” Moody said. “We know that there is an intrinsic rate of mutation that the virus has, and as with most mutations, the vast majority … don’t lead to any additional pathogenicity or transmissibility.”

He went on, “But the more cases that you have, whether that is in chickens or cows or people, the more of those random events are occurring and we know that eventually the virus will probably find a way to increase its transmissibility to people or increase some other property that makes it a problem.”

Moody said he is also concerned about reassortment, which is when a hybrid — or recombinant — virus, is formed. An example is an individual getting infected with bird flu and seasonal influenza at the same time and a hybrid virus forming as a result.

He clarified that there is no evidence this has happened yet, and that he believes the U.S. is in a better position to respond today if a pandemic-like situation arises, “but nature has a way of surprising us.”

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(WASHINGTON) — Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. will require new vaccines to undergo placebo testing, marking what a department spokesperson called “a radical departure from past practices.”

The policy change would force vaccines, in order to be approved for human use, to undergo studies in which half of individuals in a study receive a placebo – typically a saline shot – to compare results against the vaccine.

Placebo-controlled trials are already used to test new drugs or vaccines for safety and efficacy, but some experts consider it unethical to conduct such trials when a vaccine or treatment is already considered safe and efficacious. For example, they say, giving half of the kids in a trial a placebo for the measles vaccine when an already proven vaccine exists would put those participants unnecessarily at risk for the virus.

It remains unclear what HHS considers a “new” vaccine and whether that includes the flu and COVID vaccines, which are updated on an annual basis to better protect against currently circulating strains.

“FDA Commissioner Dr. Marty Makary has indicated that significant updates to existing vaccines—such as those addressing seasonal strain changes or antigenic drift—may be considered ‘new products’ requiring additional clinical evaluation,” the department spokesperson told ABC News.

But the spokesperson indicated the yearly flu vaccine might not be affected by the policy, calling it “tried and tested for more than 80 years.”

It appears, instead, that the policy could impact the rollout of future COVID vaccines, which are updated annually.

When asked to elaborate on what the department considers a “new” vaccine, the spokesperson said that federal health agencies would follow the “Gold Standard of Science”.

Kennedy has long questioned the safety of vaccines and argued that placebo-based trials are needed to ensure vaccines aren’t doing more harm than good.

Even as thousands were dying during the COVID-19 public health emergency, COVID vaccines still underwent placebo-controlled studies with more than 100,000 volunteers from diverse populations. Experts say the practice is necessary to determine if a vaccine is not only effective, but also safe.

Many childhood vaccines were originally tested with placebo trials. Others have been available for decades, providing data from millions of people showing those vaccines are overwhelmingly safe and effective.

Once a vaccine for a disease is approved safe and effective, future versions of the shot are tested in clinical trials against the already approved shot. Clinical trials test whether the updated vaccines generate an immune response that’s comparable to or better than previous versions of the vaccine.

Even after vaccines are made available to the public, scientists continue to monitor them for safety. They also review any reports of side effects or reactions and share these facts with the public.

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(NEW YORK) — Measles cases in the U.S. have surpassed 900 as outbreaks continue to spread across the county, according to new Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data published Friday.

A total of 935 cases have been confirmed in 29 states including Alaska, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Texas, Vermont, Virginia and Washington.

At least six states including Indiana, Kansas, Michigan, New Mexico, Ohio and Texas are reporting outbreaks, meaning three or more related cases.

The CDC says 13% of measles patients in the U.S. this year have been hospitalized, the majority of whom are under age 19.

Among the nationally confirmed cases, CDC says about 96% are among people who are unvaccinated or whose vaccination status is unknown.

Meanwhile, 2% are among those who have received just one dose of the measles, mumps, rubella (MMR) vaccine and 2% are among those who received the required two doses, according to the CDC.

Dr. Conrad Fischer, chief of infectious diseases at One Brooklyn Health in New York City, told ABC News he is concerned about the growing number of cases in the U.S.

“This is a disease that was at the level of complete eradication; this should not be happening,” he said. “It’s very sad to have an enormously safe vaccine that has been used in billions of people and to have a sort of cultural societal amnesia about what these illnesses were like in the past.”

In the decade before the measles vaccine became available, the CDC estimates that 3 to 4 million in the U.S. were sickened by measles every year, about 48,000 were hospitalized and about 400 to 500 people died. About 1,000 people suffered encephalitis, which is swelling of the brain.

Measles was declared eliminated from the U.S. in 2000 due to a highly effective vaccination program, according to the CDC. But vaccination rates have been lagging in recent years, leading to an increase in cases.

In Texas, where an outbreak has been spreading in the western part of the state, at least 663 cases have been confirmed as of Tuesday, according to the Texas Department of State Health Services.

Meanwhile, officials in Denton County — in the eastern part of the state outside Dallas and Fort Worth — reported its first measles case this week in a patient who attended a Texas Rangers game.

The infected individual, an adult with unknown vaccination status, visited Globe Life Field and a handful of restaurants and other locations, Denton officials said.

Additionally, Chicago reported its first measles cases this week, one in a suburban Cook County resident with unknown vaccination status and another in an adult Chicago resident who traveled internationally and received one dose of the MMR vaccine, according to the Chicago Department of Public Health and Cook County Department of Public Health.

It comes as a WHO report this week found that cases in the Americas are 11 times higher this year than they were at the same time last year.

Six countries, including the U.S., Canada, Mexico, Argentina, Belize and Brazil, have reported a total of 2,318 cases so far this year. Last year had 205 cases at the same time.

Fischer said measles is not a benign virus and can cause serious complications, especially among vulnerable individuals such as young children and immunocompromised people.

“Measles has a chance to literally destroy your brain, to cause pneumonia, ear infections and, although it is only fatal in a relatively small number of people, it spreads so amazingly easily that even if it’s only a few percentages, it’s something extremely dangerous,” he said.

Fischer emphasized that measles is the most contagious infectious disease known to humans, even compared to other dangerous diseases like tuberculosis.

“For instance, tuberculosis will spread only to two or 3% of the people exposed,” he said. “But if you are not vaccinated and you’re exposed to someone with measles, you have a 90% chance of getting that infection.”

Dr. Whitney Harrington, a physician in the division of infectious diseases at Seattle Children’s Hospital, told ABC News the U.S. is at risk of measles becoming endemic again unless vaccination rates increase.

The CDC currently recommends that people receive two doses of the MMR vaccine, the first at ages 12 to 15 months and the second between 4 and 6 years old. One dose is 93% effective, and two doses are 97% effective against measles, the CDC says.

“We really know that vaccines are the single most important public health intervention for preventing infectious disease,” Harrington said. “And we know that they’ve dramatically decreased really the number of cases and the severity of cases of many infections, including measles.”

She encouraged parents who have not vaccinated their children yet to speak with a doctor or a health care provider about vaccination and the benefits of vaccination.

ABC News Youri’ Benadjaoud contributed to this report.

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(FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla.) — A case of active tuberculosis has been confirmed at a Florida high school, according to state health officials.

The Florida Department of Health in Broward County (DOH-Broward) identified the infected individual, who was recently on campus at Dillard High School in Fort Lauderdale, John J. Sullivan, chief of communications and legislative affairs for Broward County Public Schools (BCPS), told ABC News in a statement.

“In collaboration with DOH-Broward, Broward County Public Schools has identified and notified individuals who may have been in close contact. With parental consent, DOH-Broward will be on-site to provide testing. Impacted students and staff have been directly contacted,” the statement read.

Additionally, the school principal sent a letter to the community on Tuesday, making them aware of the case, BCPS told ABC News.

“No further action is needed unless you are contacted directly. Once again, if you have not been contacted directly or your child has received a letter to present to you, there is no action required at this time,” the letter read, in part. “We certainly thank you for your understanding as we continue to navigate through this.”

It’s unclear if the individual is a student, faculty member or staff member.

It comes after Kansas health officials and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said the state experienced one of the largest recorded tuberculosis outbreaks in U.S. history earlier this year.

Tuberculosis (TB) is a disease caused by a type of bacteria called Mycobacterium tuberculosis, according to the CDC. It is one of the world’s leading infectious disease killers, the federal health agency says.

TB is spread in the air from one person to another. When a person with TB coughs, speaks or sings, germs are expelled into the air — where they can linger for several hours — before another person breathes in the air and becomes infected.

Signs and symptoms include a cough that lasts for three weeks or longer, coughing up blood or phlegm, chest pain, weakness, fatigue, weight loss, loss of appetite, fever, chills and night sweats, according to the CDC.

Some people become infected with TB germs that live in the body for years without causing illness. This is known as inactive TB or latent TB.

People with inactive TB do not feel ill, do not have symptoms and cannot spread germs to other people, the CDC says. However, without receiving treatment, people with inactive TB can develop an active infection.

Last year, the U.S. saw more than 8,700 cases of TB, according to CDC data. Although TB cases have been steadily declining since the mid 1990s, rates increased in 2021, 2022 and 2023, with 2023 matching pre-pandemic levels.

There are several treatment regimens for TB disease that may last anywhere from four months to nine months depending on the course of treatment. Health care providers may consider specific regimens for patients with co-existing medical conditions such as diabetes or HIV.

A vaccine, known as Bacille Calmette-Guérin (BCG), is commonly given to children in countries where TB is common, although it is generally not recommended in the U.S. due to the low risk of infection with the bacteria, variable vaccine effectiveness among adults, and the vaccine’s potential interference with TB tests, the CDC notes. The BCG vaccine often leaves a scar where the recipient was given the shot.

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(NEW YORK) — Measles cases are continuing to spread throughout the U.S. with outbreaks in at least six states.

Public health experts have previously said lagging vaccination rates are to blame for the rise in cases, at least partly due to vaccine hesitancy and vaccine fatigue left over from the COVID-19 pandemic.

However, even a small uptick in MMR (measles, mumps and rubella) vaccination could prevent millions of infections, according to new research.

The study, published in JAMA last week, used a model to simulate the spread of vaccine-preventable infectious diseases across the U.S., evaluating different scenarios with different vaccination rates over a 25-year period.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) currently recommends that people receive two vaccine doses — the first at 12 to 15 months and the second between 4 and 6 years old. One dose is 93% effective and two doses are 97% effective against measles, the CDC says. Most vaccinated adults don’t need an additional dose.

At current vaccination rates, the model predicts measles could once again become endemic — constantly present — in the U.S. with an estimated 851,300 cases over 25 years. If vaccination rates decline by just 10%, the model estimates 11.1 million cases of measles over 25 years.

CDC data show vaccination rates have been lagging in recent years. During the 2023 to 2024 school year, 92.7% of kindergartners received the MMR vaccine, according to data. This is lower than the 93.1% seen the previous school year and the 95.2% seen in the 2019 to 2020 school year, prior to the COVID-19 pandemic.

“That result — that we’re already at this tipping point for measles in the U.S. — was a really striking finding that somewhat surprised us as well,” Dr. Nathan Lo, study co-author and an infectious diseases physician at Stanford Medicine, told ABC News.

“We continue to see measles outbreaks, but, by doing the study … you start to crystallize that result that even under the current levels of vaccine decline, there is a very feasible scenario where, over time, our country has measles return where it’s a common household disease again.”

Dr. William Schaffner, a professor of preventive medicine at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, who was not involved in the study, said the findings are a “well-thought-out worst-case scenario.”

“I’m not entirely sure that would actually happen because … the general level of vaccination remains pretty high, but there are pockets of unvaccinated children, and what you’re seeing now is the fact that this virus has been reintroduced several times from other parts of the world,” he told ABC News. “I think it’s a bit of a worst-case scenario but, as a worst-case scenario, it’s scary and, in that sense, reasonable.”

However, the model estimated that just a 5% increase in vaccination would lead to only 5,800 cases over the same 25-year period.

This is because when more than 95% of people in a community are vaccinated, most are protected from measles through community immunity, also known as herd immunity, according to the CDC.

“My hope is that this study can provide that data to parents to say, ‘This is the benefit of continuing to vaccinate your child. This is the kind of alternate reality that we’re preventing. And yes, the risks aren’t here right now, but perhaps not too far off,'” Lo said.

Schaffner said there are pockets of the U.S. where MMR vaccination rates are 80% or less and vaccination rates would need to increase substantially in those areas to reduce the number of cases long-term.

However, “if we increase the level of vaccination by a small amount that would reduce the risk of other small outbreaks here and there,” Schaffner said.

The study also found that a 50% drop in vaccinations would lead to an estimated 51.2 million cases over 25 years, but Lo thinks that would only occur if there were a large-scale policy change by the Department of Health and Human Services or the CDC to reduce or remove the childhood vaccine recommendation.

As of Friday, the CDC has confirmed nearly 900 measles cases in at least 29 states. That number is likely an undercount due to delays in states reporting cases to the federal health agency.

In western Texas, an outbreak has been spreading with 663 reported cases of measles, according to new data published Tuesday by the state Department of State Health Services. At least 87 people have been hospitalized over the course of the outbreak.

Measles was declared eliminated from the U.S. in 2000 due to the highly effective vaccination program, according to the CDC. However, an outbreak lasting 12 months or more would threaten to end measles elimination status in the U.S. The Texas outbreak began in January of this year.

To drive vaccination rates up, Lo and Schaffner recommend that parents who haven’t vaccinated their children yet speak to their pediatrician to address their concerns.

“We have to provide recommendations and let people know the facts that these vaccines are very effective and that they are safe,” Schaffner said. “But we have to do more to try to reach out and provide reassurance, and this has to be done very much on a local basis.”

For example, when it comes to the community affected in Texas, Schaffner said they need local influencers they trust to turn to.

“Speak with your local physician, health care provider, the person who cares for your children,” Schaffner said. “Have a conversation with them, and that’s our best hope for regaining some of this trust which public health had and which has slipped away.”

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(WASHINGTON) — For John Robinson, a retired coal miner who spent his career in the Virginia mines helping to power America into the 21st century, not a moment passes that he isn’t feeling the full effects of his black lung diagnosis.

With the support of a burdensome oxygen machine, Robinson joined a handful of other retired Central Appalachian miners to sit down with ABC News’ Jay O’Brien in the heart of coal country.

“You are suffocating. You are suffocating. And that’s what’s going to kill you,” Robinson told O’Brien. “I got a wife and two kids and two grandbabies, you know, and I want to live.”

Black lung, the debilitating respiratory illness common in coal miners, has made a staggering resurgence in the past 25 years, particularly among the younger generation of miners as they cut through more rock to access deeper, hard-to-reach coal seams, exposing them to harmful dust particles called silica — which experts say is about 20 times more toxic to the lungs than pure coal dust.

And even as President Donald Trump vows to reinvigorate America’s coal industry, critics say his administration has stripped away key protections for the miners. In his first 100 days in office, Trump’s administration has decimated the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health, or NIOSH, the federal agency that protects miners from black lung, and paused enforcement of a new safety rule that would lower the level of silica dust in the mines.

“You don’t take care of the miners, you ain’t going to mine coal,” another miner told O’Brien. “The machine don’t run by itself, you know what I’m saying?”

“There is no block of coal worth any man’s life,” said another miner.

Some of the more than 800 NIOSH employees placed on administrative leave — around two-thirds of the entire workforce, sources said — have taken matters into their own hands, setting up a guerilla “war room” around a Morgantown, West Virginia, dining table to do what little federal work they can before they’re officially laid off in June, while campaigning for their important work to continue.

“So, what is going to happen now to the average coal miner if this work isn’t being done?” O’Brien asked Dr. Scott Laney, a veteran NIOSH epidemiologist who was placed on administrative leave.

“It’s going to lead to premature mortality and death in these miners,” Laney said. “There’s just no getting around it.”

A spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services said in a statement to ABC News that “the Trump Administration is committed to taking care of coal miners, who play a vital role in supporting America’s energy,” and that a black lung surveillance program previously run by NIOSH would be folded into a new bureau called the Administration for a Healthy America.

But the spokesperson did not say when the program’s work would fully resume or how the work would continue without any of the experienced employees who have been laid off.

“Somebody has to continue to do the work to protect the coal miners, to protect U. S. workers — the work that NIOSH does,” said Dr. Noemi Hall, another NIOSH epidemiologist on administrative leave. “They can’t just stop everything. Yeah, we just can’t stand for that.”

For current miners, the stakes couldn’t be higher — or more urgent.

Sources said hundreds of unread X-rays conducted as part of the Coal Workers’ Health Surveillance Program, the NIOSH program that screens and monitors the respiratory health of miners, remain in limbo, with no doctors to analyze the results and report them to patients.

“[Those miners] will go on continuing to be exposed at the rates that they are,” Laney said. “Their disease will progress more quickly than it ever should have.”

ABC News obtained a letter sent by HHS this month to coal mine operators telling them the Coal Workers’ Health Surveillance Program was paused, saying, “We cannot accept any miner’s respiratory health screenings (x-ray, spirometry, or forms) at this time.”

“Nobody else in the federal government does the work that we do to protect U.S. workers,” Hall said. “Nobody else, you know, specifically at CDC, nobody else at NIH, nobody else in the United States does what we do. When we are gone, when our work is gone, our research is gone — nobody steps up to take our place.”

Amanda Lawson, who works at a health center in West Virginia, told ABC News that last week three miners came in and had horrible X-rays. She says she’s already feeling the effects of the NIOSH cuts.

“There’s nobody to send them to get them some protection and get them moved out of the dust,” Lawson said. Without NIOSH’s right-to-transfer program, those miners will remain working in the mines, rather than being transferred to safer working conditions.

On Capitol Hill, even some of Trump’s most fervent supporters have rebuked Trump and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for their removal of those positions.

Sen. Shelly Moore Capito, R-W.V., said earlier this month that she harbors “strong disagreements with the administration,” and Rep. Riley Moore, a congressman who represents the West Virginia’s Morgantown area, said the NIOSH cuts were a “mistake that we are working to roll back.”

“I believe in the President’s vision to right size our government, but I do not think eliminating the NIOSH coal programs and research will accomplish that goal,” Capito wrote in a letter to Kennedy earlier this month, urging him to reinstate NIOSH employees, whose work she called a “vital health program.”

The HHS spokesperson did not answer a question about Capito’s concerns.

Robinson’s wife Vonda says she’s spoken to members of Congress about the Coal Workers’ Health Surveillance Program cuts.

“If we’re going to have coal and we’re going to have to produce it for America and we’ll have a coal industry, we’ve got to have coal miners and we have to take care of our coal miners,” Vonda Robinson told ABC News.

“I don’t think the people in Washington have any, well, had any idea what the Coworkers Health Surveillance Program even did,” Anita Wolfe, who was the director of the program for 20 years, told ABC News. She says she’s also spoken to members of Congress.

Wolfe says a critical part of the program has been its state-of-the-art mobile unit that’s equipped with an X-ray machine. She said the vehicle would often be parked in easily accessible locations to make it easier for the miners to get screenings. It’s now parked at the NIOSH facility in Morgantown.

“It breaks my heart,” Wolfe said. “I mean, the miners liked that mobile.”

In deep red coal country, several of the miners who met with ABC News have faith that Trump will reinstate protections for coal miners.

“If they’ll give Trump time and let him work out his — he’s got a plan,” Robinson told O’Brien. “I mean, he knows what he’s doing. He’s a smart man.”

“What if he doesn’t?” O’Brien asked.

“I feel sorry for the miners,” Robinson replied.

ABC News’ Cheyenne Haslett contributed to this report.

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(WASHINGTON) — The first 100 days of President Donald Trump’s second term have been filled with mass firings, cancellations of research grants, university funding cuts and questions over what should be studied.

Thousands of people have been let go at federal agencies and critical research has been put on hold. Additionally, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has questioned the safety and efficacy of vaccines and antidepressant medications despite dozens of studies proving they are safe and effective.

Doctors and public health specialists critical of the administration tell ABC News they view these actions as an “attack” on science, damaging the reputation of respected agencies and by questioning what is believed to be established science.

“It’s completely unprecedented,” Steve Cohen, senior vice dean of Columbia University’s School of Professional Studies and a professor of public affairs at Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs, told ABC News. “It’s frankly a little unhinged. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

The White House did not respond to ABC News’ request for comment.

An HHS official told ABC News that framing the actions of the admiration as an “attack” is “fundamentally dishonest.”

“Further reviewing pharmaceutical products with gold standard science and common sense is not an'”attack on science’ — it’s what the American people have asked for and deserve,” the official said. ” Let’s be clear: Secretary Kennedy is not anti-vaccine — he is pro-safety, pro-transparency, and pro-accountability.”

Thousands of layoffs

Earlier this month, HHS began to lay off 10,000 workers as part of a massive restructuring plan.

Sources previously told ABC News that affected offices included most of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Office on Smoking and Health, key offices in the Center for Tobacco Products, most of the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, and the entire assisted reproductive technology team at the CDC.

There have also been local impacts in communities due to federal layoffs. ABC News previously reported in March, the CDC was poised to send its lead ‘disease detectives’ to Milwaukee amid an ongoing lead crisis in schools, but the entire division was cut under sweeping HHS layoffs, leaving local health officials without help they were relying on.

Erik Svendsen, the director of the division that oversaw the CDC’s Childhood Lead Poisoning Prevention branch, previously told ABC News that what’s happening in Milwaukee is a real world example of the impact of their absence.

“Without us, there is no other unit at the federal level that is here to support them in doing what they need to do,” he said.

On Monday, officials in Milwaukee announced two additional schools are closing due to this crisis

Despite Kennedy saying some programs and employees would soon be reinstated because they were mistakenly cut, it still leaves thousands of federal employees without jobs.

Scientists have also been laid off at NASA, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Agriculture and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Cohen said these firings have put studies on hold and have greatly reduced the capacity of the federal government to review research.

“Scientists inside agencies, whether they’re environmental scientists or medical scientists or people focusing on vaccines or drugs, are being fired, and so some of the research capacity in Washington, in the federal government is being eliminated, and also their ability to judge proposals from universities,” he said.

“The only place I haven’t seen [firings] happen yet are the laboratories,” Cohen added.

Cuts that are currently proposed or have already been implemented include the elimination of the Office of Infectious Disease and HIV Policy, created by Brett Giroir, the former U.S. assistant secretary for health.

Giroir, who helped convince Trump in his first term to set a goal to end the HIV epidemic in the U.S., wrote in a post on social media last week that the president could ruin his legacy and mission with such cuts.

Canceling research grants, funding cuts to universities

Millions of dollars’ worth of grants have been terminated at the National Institutes of Health related to studies involving LGBTQ+ issues, gender identity and diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) because they do not “effectuate” the “priorities” of President Donald Trump’s administration, according to copies of termination letters sent to grant recipients and viewed by ABC News.

Dr. Harold Varmus, a cancer researcher at Weill Cornell Medicine in New York City and former director of the NIH, said these terminations are “detrimental” because they may be affecting people in the middle of clinical trials, or affecting the early stages of experimental work.

Research projects focusing on minority populations have major benefits, Varmus noted.

“The purpose of health research in this country is to address problems faced by everybody and to explore every facet of a population that may affect their health,” he said. “To single out certain categories of individuals who would not be appropriate to study seems ludicrous to me … one of the great strengths of America is that we are diverse.”

Universities have also been threatened with funding cuts — or have seen funds frozen — if they don’t fulfill their obligations under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act to protect Jewish students on campus and to end race-based programs.

Cohen believes universities are at odds with the administration because some on the political right view universities as “left wing.” By “weakening the finances of universities, they can force them to change the ideologies that they believe are being promoted in the classrooms,” he argued.

The problem with this idea, according to Cohen, is that the administration’s actions are hurting the least ideological parts of universities, such as engineering schools or medical centers. At Columbia, for example, several institutes and centers are conducting Alzheimer’s research, he said.

“Those are the places that are being attacked,” Cohen said. “It’s pretty ironic, but the greatest danger, actually, is that one of America’s fundamental economic strengths is the creativity and the innovation of our scientists, and that is now under attack by the Trump administration.”

Questioning safety, efficacy of vaccines

Kennedy has shared vaccine skepticism in the past and has continued to do so as HHS secretary.

In the wake of several ongoing measles outbreaks and over 800 cases so far this year, Kennedy has shared contradicting views about vaccines.

In a post on X on April 6, he said that “most effective way to prevent the spread of measles” is to receive the measles, mumps, rubella (MMR) vaccine. However, in a post later that evening, he said more than 300 children have been treated with an antibiotic and a steroid, neither of which are cures for measles.

Dr. Peter Hotez, a professor of pediatrics and molecular virology at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, said the statements Kennedy has made in support of the MMR vaccine are “half-hearted.”

“The reason I say ‘half-hearted’ or insufficient is because each time he talks about using the MMR vaccine, he qualifies it,” Hotez told ABC News. “He then draws this false equivalency between either getting the MMR vaccine or this cocktail of interventions that would do absolutely nothing.”

Last month, HHS confirmed that the CDC will study “all the potential culprits” including whether vaccines cause autism despite numerous existing studies already showing there is no link.

Hotez said epidemiologic studies show that children who received either the MMR vaccine, or vaccines containing thimerosal — a compound used as a preservative in vaccines — are not more likely to be diagnosed autism than kids who didn’t receive those vaccines.

Additionally, Hotez said about 100 genes have been identified that are involved in the development of autism, many by the Broad Institute at Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

He believes rising rates of autism diagnoses are likely due to wider testing and expanding diagnostic criteria. Hotez added that there could be an environmental exposure influencing autism genes, but that it’s not vaccines.

In 2017, he discussed with Kennedy an investigation looking at “about half a dozen chemical exposures” in early pregnancies but Kennedy “had no interest,” according to Hotez, who later documented these conversations in a book he published in 2018.

“He apparently seems to not understand the science or doesn’t care about the science. He’s got his fixed beliefs and doesn’t want to let any of the facts or scientific findings get in the way of his fixed belief,” Hotez said. “And it’s completely irresponsible having someone like that as Health and Human Services secretary.”

Claims around antidepressant use

Earlier this year, Trump issued an executive order to study the use of several medications including antidepressants and antipsychotics.

The order called for the formation of the “Make America Healthy Again” commission — to be chaired by Kennedy — with an aim to understand chronic diseases.

Among the goals of the commission is to “assess the prevalence of and threat posed by the prescription of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, antipsychotics, mood stabilizers, stimulants, and weight-loss drugs.”

Dr. Joseph Saseen, associate dean for clinical affairs and a professor in the departments of clinical pharmacy and family medicine at the Skaggs School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences at the University of Colorado, said there are plenty of studies and analyses in the medical literature looking at the prevalence of SSRIs.

“We have an overwhelming amount of information,” he told ABC News. “These medicines, particularly SSRIs, are the most frequently prescribed antidepressants for patients with major depressive disorder. There is a plethora of information evaluating efficacy in a broad range of patient populations for which these medicines are indicated.”

Saseen says these medications do have side effects, just like any drug, but the benefits significantly outweigh the risks for most people in the general population who have major depressive disorder and anxiety disorders.

Kennedy has also falsely linked the use of antidepressants to school shootings and claimed during his Senate confirmation hearings that members of his family had a harder time stopping SSRI use than heroin use.

Experts have said there is no evidence that equates ending the use of antidepressants to ending the use of heroin or to suggest that people on SSRIs are more likely to be violent.

Saseen said it’s reasonable to question scientific research, either to reaffirm or dispute findings, but it must be done following the scientific method.

“Question it the real way, not the cowardly way,” he said. “The cowardly way is labeling things as threats or as bad without taking a scientific approach. The key is you need to use appropriate methodologies, not vocal inflections and very triggering and polarizing words to create an uprising.”

ABC News’ Dr. Jade Cobern, Cheyenne Haslett, Will McDuffie and Sony Salzman contributed to this report.

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(NEW YORK) — New treatments and simple blood tests could change how doctors detect and treat Alzheimer’s disease, according to a new report from the Alzheimer’s Association.

Blood tests to detect Alzheimer’s are not yet approved for everyday use, but in research studies, they have improved the accuracy of diagnosis by up to 91%. Right now, doctors rely on brain scans called PET scans to find amyloid plaques or do a spinal tap to check for abnormal levels of proteins like beta-amyloid and tau.

These tests are expensive, invasive and not always easy to access. Blood tests could make it much simpler to find early signs of the disease and be more widely available.

“If you get a diagnosis early, you’re actually able to access treatments that you cannot take later on in the disease process,” Elizabeth Edgerly, PhD, a clinical psychologist and Alzheimer’s Association spokesperson, said in an interview with ABC News.

The report highlights that diagnosing Alzheimer’s earlier could open the door to treatments when they have the best chance of working, helping people stay mentally sharper for longer and giving families more time to plan for the future.

In the past two years, the FDA has approved two new drugs — Leqembi and Kisunla — that can slow the progression of early Alzheimer’s. While they are not cures, they can help people preserve memory and thinking skills longer, offering more time with a better quality of life.

This marks a major shift from older Alzheimer’s treatments, which could only manage symptoms without slowing down the disease much. However, these new drugs carry significant challenges, including high costs, the need for frequent brain scans to monitor serious side effects and the risk of swelling or bleeding in the brain. In addition, only people in the early stages of Alzheimer’s are eligible to receive these treatments.

“Ultimately, we would love to see an array of treatments that are available that tackle different aspects of Alzheimer’s, different factors that are contributing to it,” Edgerly said.

She noted that more than 140 different treatments are now in development, aiming to target different symptoms and stages of the disease.

The report also lays out an updated understanding of Alzheimer’s risk factors, dividing them into two categories. Some risks — like age, genetics and family history — cannot be changed. Others — including diet, exercise, blood pressure, cholesterol, hearing and vision health — are within a person’s control. Addressing the modifiable risks can have a significant impact on a person’s Alzheimer’s risk, the report noted.

In fact, Edgerly said that nearly half of all dementias could be preventable by taking better care of modifiable risks earlier in life.

“I could help reduce my risk of getting Alzheimer’s in later life if I’m really good about treating high blood pressure in my 40s and 30s,” she explained.

The report also announced the launch of ALZ-NET, a new nationwide tracking system that follows patients in real time to collect data on the long-term safety and effectiveness of the new medications, and to better understand who benefits most from early intervention.

Alzheimer’s disease, the most common cause of dementia, is a neurodegenerative condition that can start developing 20 years before symptoms appear. It is the seventh leading cause of death in the U.S.

Currently, more than 7 million Americans are living with Alzheimer’s, many of whom remain undiagnosed, according to the report. By the year 2060, that number is expected to grow to more than 13 million.

Edgerly said she hoped that faster diagnosis and earlier access to treatment will improve care for Alzheimer’s and other dementia patients.

“The opportunities it would present to find people earlier in the process without having to go through six months or a year to get to that diagnosis would make a huge difference in helping people access treatments during the timeframe where they could be helpful,” she said.

Dr. Allen Chang is the chief resident of the Geriatric Medicine Subspecialty Residency Program at Dalhousie University and a member of the ABC News Medical Unit.

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(NEW YORK) — A new study in the New England Journal of Medicine suggests that some people with early-stage cancers may be able to skip surgery after being treated with the immunotherapy drug dostarlimab.

In the study, 82 out of 103 participants responded so well to the drug that they no longer needed an operation.

While the results are promising, the study was conducted at a single hospital — Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York City — and some patients have not been followed long enough to know if their cancer might return over time.

And because the study included many different types of cancer, there were relatively few patients with each specific cancer type, making it difficult to interpret the results for larger groups of patients.

It also focused on a very select type of patient whose tumors had a “mismatch repair defect,” a genetic problem that prevents cells from fixing DNA damage and makes it more likely they would respond to immunotherapy.

“They kind of selected themselves, in that they had a specific genetic alteration, and that genetic alteration occurs about 2% to 3% of all cancer patients,” said Dr. Luis Diaz, one of the study’s authors and head of the Division of Solid Tumor Oncology at MSK.

When people are diagnosed with early-stage cancers that form a lump or mass, they often need major surgery to try to remove it — and despite surgery, they can also face aggressive treatments like chemotherapy or radiation.

Because these cancers often affect organs in the belly or digestive system, surgery can have a major impact on a patient’s life. Some people lose part or all of their esophagus or stomach, making it hard or impossible to eat normally. Others may need a bag to collect stool or lose the ability to get pregnant.

All 49 patients with early-stage rectal cancer who received six months of immunotherapy were able to avoid surgery.

“And it’s after six months of treatment, their tumors were completely gone,” said another one of the study’s authors, Dr. Andrea Cercek, head of the Colorectal Section at MSK. “They didn’t need any other treatment.”

Two years later, 92% remained cancer-free. Among the first group to reach the five-year mark, all four patients were still disease-free — and two of them had gone on to have two children each.

“The amazing thing is they would not have been able to conceive or carry children had they gone through standard therapy,” Diaz said.

As for patients with other early-stage cancers, 35 of 54 were cancer-free after undergoing immunotherapy and were able to avoid surgery. However, two patients still chose to proceed with surgery — one for peace of mind and the other to remove medical hardware related to the cancer.

Of the five patients whose cancers came back, most were successfully treated again.

Cercek explained that, while immunotherapy alone may not yet help most cancer patients avoid surgery, their work opens the door for the future.

“Just close your eyes and just imagine that one day you’re diagnosed with cancer and you don’t have your esophagus or your stomach or your rectum or your bladder, and you can avoid that,” Diaz said. “For these 3% we can completely eliminate the need for surgery. It’s quite transformational.”

By combining different approaches with this type of immunotherapy, Cercek hoped they can replicate their success in more types of cancer.

“So, we are continuing this trial and we are working on expanding the study outside of Memorial with more patients so that we can offer this therapy as a standard of care,” Cercek said.

Luis Gasca — an internal medicine resident at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Michigan, and a member of the ABC News Medical Unit — contributed to this report.

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(NEW YORK) — The number of measles cases in the U.S. has risen to 884, according to new Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data published Friday.

Cases have been confirmed in 29 states including Alaska, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Texas, Vermont, Virginia and Washington.

At least six states including Indiana, Kansas, Michigan, New Mexico, Ohio and Texas are reporting outbreaks, meaning three or more related cases.

In Texas, where an outbreak has been spreading in the western part of the state, at least 624 cases have been confirmed as of Tuesday, according to the Texas Department of State Health Services.

Dr. Marschall Runge, dean of the University of Michigan Medical School and CEO of Michigan Medicine, said the number of cases — at the national level and in Texas — is likely an undercount.

“I think it’s likely that there are a lot of unreported cases in children who weren’t particularly sick or didn’t come to medical attention,” he told ABC News.

This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.

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