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Category: Health

Mitochondria can sense bacteria and trigger your immune system to trap them – revealing new ways to treat infections and autoimmunity

Mitochondria can sense bacteria and trigger your immune system to trap them – revealing new ways to treat infections and autoimmunity

Neutrophils (yellow) eject a NET (green) to ensnare bacteria (purple). Other cells, such as red blood cells (orange), may also get trapped. CHDENK/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA By Andrew Monteith, University of Tennessee Mitochondria have primarily been known as the energy-producing components of cells. But scientists are increasingly discovering that these small organelles do much more than just power cells. They are also involved in immune functions such as controlling inflammation, regulating cell death and responding to infections. Research from my…

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Open door to discrimination: New rules allow VA doctors to refuse to treat Democrats, unmarried veterans

Open door to discrimination: New rules allow VA doctors to refuse to treat Democrats, unmarried veterans

The Guardian reports: Doctors at Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) hospitals nationwide could refuse to treat unmarried veterans and Democrats under new hospital guidelines imposed following an executive order by Donald Trump. The new rules, obtained by the Guardian, also apply to psychologists, dentists and a host of other occupations. They have already gone into effect in at least some VA medical centers. Medical staff are still required to treat veterans regardless of race, color, religion and sex, and all…

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People’s racial and ethnic identities don’t reflect their genetic ancestry

People’s racial and ethnic identities don’t reflect their genetic ancestry

Live Science reports: The racial and ethnic groups people identify with may not accurately represent their genetic backgrounds or ancestries, a new study of people in the United States suggests. This discrepancy between people’s self-reported identities and their genetics is important for scientists to acknowledge as they strive to develop medical treatments tailored to different patients, the researchers behind the study say. “This paper is very important because it clarifies at the highest resolution the relationship between genomic diversity and…

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MAHA report fabrications dismissed by White House as ‘formatting issues’

MAHA report fabrications dismissed by White House as ‘formatting issues’

USA Today reports: Citation errors and phantom research used as scientific evidence to bolster Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s landmark “Make America Healthy Again” commission report were apparently due to “formatting issues,” according to White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt. President Donald Trump signed an executive order to establish a commission that was tasked with investigating chronic illnesses and childhood diseases, which culminated in the “Make Our Children Healthy Again” assessment that was published May 22. However, researchers listed…

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UnitedHealth, one of America’s biggest companies, is imploding

UnitedHealth, one of America’s biggest companies, is imploding

CNN reports: UnitedHealth Group, one of America’s biggest corporations and a member of the exclusive Dow Jones Industrial Average, is suddenly unraveling. The crisis engulfing UnitedHealth hit a crescendo this week when CEO Andrew Witty stepped down abruptly for “personal reasons.” UnitedHealth also swiftly abandoned its financial guidance, blaming skyrocketing medical costs. And then The Wall Street Journal dropped the hammer, revealing that UnitedHealth is under federal criminal investigation for possible Medicare fraud. The developments have stunned investors, triggering a…

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The risks from chemicals in our food may be even worse than Kennedy suggests

The risks from chemicals in our food may be even worse than Kennedy suggests

Julia Belluz writes: The health secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., believes toxic chemicals in food are behind the U.S. explosion in rates of obesity and a range of other chronic illnesses. “A facade of normalcy has masked this meteoric rise in chronic disease, and we can no longer ignore it,” he said recently. He intends to rid the U.S. food supply of nine chemicals — all petroleum-based, synthetic food dyes — in as soon as 18 months. Mr. Kennedy has…

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Bill Gates accuses Elon Musk of ‘killing the world’s poorest children’

Bill Gates accuses Elon Musk of ‘killing the world’s poorest children’

The Guardian reports: Bill Gates announced plans on Thursday to shutter the Gates Foundation in 2045 and also strongly criticized Elon Musk for slashing funding to the US Agency for International Development (USAID), accusing the Tesla CEO of “killing the world’s poorest children” in new interviews. In an interview with the Financial Times published on Thursday, Gates condemned the sudden funding cuts to USAID by Musk’s so-called “department of government efficiency” (Doge), saying the cuts had led to life-saving food…

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Every American child is born pre-polluted with synthetic chemicals

Every American child is born pre-polluted with synthetic chemicals

Mariah Blake writes: During the crucial early weeks of pregnancy, when fetal cells knit themselves into a brain and organs and fingers and lips, a steady flow of man-made chemicals pulses through the umbilical cord. Scientists once believed that the placenta filtered out most of these pollutants, but now they know that is not the case. Along with nutrients and oxygen, numerous synthetic substances travel to the womb, permeating the fetus’s blood and tissues. This is why, from their very…

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Orangutan healed his own wound using a known medicinal plant

Orangutan healed his own wound using a known medicinal plant

Smithsonian magazine reports: In June 2022, a team of researchers observed a behavior never before witnessed in the animal world: A Sumatran orangutan named Rakus self-treated an injury using a medicinal plant. At Gunung Leuser National Park, a rainforest reserve on the western Indonesian island of Sumatra, scientists heard from the treetops a series of “long calls,” a behavior that usually preempts assertions of male dominance or aggression. The next day, they saw Rakus with an open wound on his…

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Efficiency? RFK Jr says 20% of DOGE’s health agency job cuts were mistakes

Efficiency? RFK Jr says 20% of DOGE’s health agency job cuts were mistakes

The Guardian report: Around a fifth of the 10,000 jobs cut from the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) were done in error and will need to be corrected, the US health secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr, has admitted. Mass layoffs from the health department began this week amid a push by Donald Trump’s administration to shrink the size of the federal government workforce. Union representatives were told around 10,000 people were to lose their jobs ahead of…

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After RFK Jr.’s ‘radical transparency’ pledge, HHS shutters much of its communications, FOIA operations

After RFK Jr.’s ‘radical transparency’ pledge, HHS shutters much of its communications, FOIA operations

STAT reports: The Department of Health and Human Services made major cuts to teams across its agencies that handle communications, media relations, and Freedom of Information Act requests as part of mass layoffs Tuesday, a move that workers say will impair the department’s ability to relay critical health information to the public and run counter to secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s vow to promote “radical transparency.” At the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the majority of the media relations…

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Finland is again ranked the happiest country in the world as the U.S. falls to its lowest-ever position

Finland is again ranked the happiest country in the world as the U.S. falls to its lowest-ever position

The Associated Press reports: Finland is the happiest country in the world for the eighth year in a row, according to the World Happiness Report 2025 published Thursday. Other Nordic countries are also once again at the top of the happiness rankings in the annual report published by the Wellbeing Research Centre at the University of Oxford. Besides Finland, Denmark, Iceland and Sweden remain the top four and in the same order. Aino Virolainen, a digital commerce director, has lived…

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In the name of efficiency, Kennedy backs off ‘radical transparency’ in favor of secrecy

In the name of efficiency, Kennedy backs off ‘radical transparency’ in favor of secrecy

CNN reports: The US Department of Health and Human Services has reversed an obscure requirement called the Richardson Waiver, which requires a period of notice and an opportunity for public comment on a wide range of decisions related to “agency management or personnel or to public property, loans, grants, benefits, or contracts.” The Richardson Waiver has been in force at the department since 1971 and imposes notice-and-comment periods above and beyond those required under something called the Administrative Procedures Act….

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The Trump administration said these aid programs saved lives. It canceled them anyway

The Trump administration said these aid programs saved lives. It canceled them anyway

By Anna Maria Barry-Jester and Brett Murphy This story was originally published by ProPublica After the Trump administration moved to freeze nearly $60 billion in foreign aid in January, officials like Secretary of State Marco Rubio repeatedly assured Americans that lifesaving operations would continue. “We don’t want to see anybody die,” he told reporters in early February. Aid organizations the world over scrambled to prove their work saved lives, seeking permission from the State Department and the U.S. Agency for…

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Project 2025 is gutting medical funding that helped Russell Vought’s own daughter

Project 2025 is gutting medical funding that helped Russell Vought’s own daughter

Mother Jones reports: The National Institutes of Health, the federal government’s leading medical research agency, came under attack by Project 2025 well before its architect, Russell Vought, was confirmed to Donald Trump’s second-term cabinet as head of the Office of Management and Budget. Vought’s pet project—the playbook for the Trump presidency—asserts that “funding for scientific research should not be controlled by a small group of highly paid and unaccountable insiders” and encourages “more modest federal funding through” NIH. Last Friday,…

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Trump’s gutting of foreign aid is a threat to global health

Trump’s gutting of foreign aid is a threat to global health

Jeremy Youde writes: In its chaotic first few weeks, one of the new Trump administration’s many targets has been global health. With a few strokes of a Sharpie, President Donald Trump halted nearly all U.S. foreign assistance programs, including those for global health, and started the process of pulling the United States out of the World Health Organization. Trump made a range of false claims about foreign aid to support his moves, including spreading the lie that the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) sent…

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