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So did you know that Teresa said yesterday that in order to keep NIH Director Jay Bhattacharyya in an acting role at the CDC, the White House needs to appoint someone by Wednesday? That didn’t happen.
What did Mr. Bhattacharya say at his first all-hands meeting with CDC staff? See details below.
White House misses deadline to appoint CDC director
Jose Luis Magana/AP
The White House has not named a new director for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention despite Wednesday’s deadline, meaning National Institutes of Health Director Jay Bhattacharyya will continue to oversee the agency, although not in his official capacity as acting director.
The news comes after Bhattacharyya said in his first all-hands meeting with CDC staff that a leader would likely be announced by today. Mr. Bhattacharyya received points from staff for supporting measles vaccination. He also vowed to replace windows that still have bullet holes in them after a gunman fired a barrage of gunfire at the CDC in August, forcing staff to go on lockdown for hours. And he told staff there are no plans for additional layoffs at the agency, which has lost about 20% of its workforce in the last year.
But there were also some awkward moments. Without this all-hands-on video, we can’t fully recreate the iconic clip of Jeb Bush asking the audience to “clap, please” at a 2016 New Hampshire town hall. But apparently at one point during the meeting, Mr. Bhattacharya paused for barely audible applause.
STAT’s Helen Branswell has more details about the conference.
California considers adding seal of approval to ultra-unprocessed foods
California wants to further crack down on ultra-processed foods, and one Democratic lawmaker is proposing a bill that would create a sticker that manufacturers could put on their products to indicate they’re not ultra-processed.
The hope is that this voluntary label will help people make healthier choices at the grocery store and encourage companies to reformulate to meet eligibility requirements. The bill, introduced in the fall by the architects behind California’s landmark bill against certain food colorings and additives and last year’s bill targeting ultra-processed foods in schools, was signed into law in the fall.
But what exactly are ultra-processed foods? And what foods does this apply to? Read more from STAT’s Sarah Todd.
Heart scans may improve health outcomes
Scientists may have discovered a faster, less invasive way to quantify how much oxygen the heart is using, which could prove important in treating heart failure, according to a new study published yesterday.
There are many ways to test the amount of oxygen in the heart, including electrocardiograms, echocardiograms, stress tests, and chest X-rays, but an experimental MRI scan could eliminate some of the hassles of these methods after showing promise in pigs and 22 patients who suffered heart attacks.
Being able to measure oxygen is very important. STAT’s Elizabeth Cooney spoke with one of the co-authors of the Science Translational Medicine paper about what the findings imply about heart disease and researchers’ ability to measure oxygen.
Endometriosis is more than just a gynecological disease
New clinical guidelines finally acknowledge that endometriosis has a broader impact on the body than previously thought, and is more like a systemic inflammatory condition than a purely gynecological disease, writes Sarah Berg, MD.
Earlier this month, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists released updated clinical guidance for diagnosing endometriosis that challenges the field’s concepts. The most notable change is that clinical diagnosis, based on symptoms and tests, rather than just surgical confirmation, is now sufficient to initiate treatment.
Endometriosis has long been stigmatized, patients’ pain is often explained by other diagnoses, and the average delay in diagnosis of endometriosis lasts 4 to 11 years. But Berg sees a shift in the public’s understanding of the disease.
Read more about Berg’s readings about the latest guidelines and the patients who changed her perspective.
Is it hormones? Or is it just aging?
Since marketing blockbuster products to menopausal women, the women’s health field has pivoted to a new buzzword: menopause. The movement sells women the “lie” that they are controlled by hormones, write Patricia Bencivenga and Adrienne Few-Berman, who work at PharMedOut, a rational prescribing project at Georgetown University Medical Center.
The authors aim to extend the “medicalization” of menopause to women in their 30s with their new film, The M Factor 2: Before the Pause, arguing that hormones impair cognitive function, physical and mental health. Although hormonal fluctuations are very common in the years leading up to menopause, not every symptom a woman experiences has to be due to perimenopause. Perimenopause is already difficult to define.
Read Bencivenga and Fugh-Berman’s paper to understand why they suggest that symptoms caused by perimenopause may simply be due to aging.
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