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There was so much news yesterday, so I’m linking to the latest article about the FDA selecting Vinay Prasad’s interim successor.
President Trump withdraws Casey Means’ general nomination as surgeon general
The White House withdrew its nomination of Casey Means to be the next Surgeon General and replaced her with radiologist and Fox News contributor Nicole Safier.
The exchange shows the limits of the Trump administration’s power in the Senate and is a blow to the months-long “Make America Healthy Again” movement seeking revenue approval. But Safier’s focus on personal health and skepticism about vaccine mandates suggest she could appeal to both MAHA and more mainstream Republican senators.
President Trump announced the change in a social media post, accusing Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-Louisiana), who heads the committee tasked with reviewing general surgeon general nominations, of attacking Means. Remember, it was Cassidy who cast the deciding vote to confirm Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as Secretary of Health. Read more from our colleagues at STAT. Includes reflections on Saphier in her own words.
If the model outperforms physicians, should clinical practice change?
OpenAI’s large-scale language model outperformed doctors in mock diagnostic assessments, according to research published Thursday in the journal Science.
In one experiment, the model was fed historical cases from the emergency department at Beth Israel in Boston. A patient came to the ER with a blood clot that had traveled to his lungs, but in front of two doctors who reviewed the case file, the model correctly determined that it was due to the patient’s history of lupus.
However, the paper’s authors and colleagues in the field were quick to caution that the results should not be taken as evidence that AI should be used in clinical care. They said AI models still need to be reviewed for safety and effectiveness in supporting healthcare.
In her usual fashion, STAT’s Katie Palmer offers a stunning analysis of the ethics of the study’s findings and their implications. What do you think of the many healthcare professionals reading this newsletter? Read the story and respond to this email.
PFAS are still in some infant milk
Most infant formula in the United States is safe, but experts and health officials say regulators can take steps to make the products safer.
The Food and Drug Administration recently announced the results of a study of more than 300 baby formula samples tested for the presence of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), also known as the “forever chemicals.” The FDA detected five types of PFAS, with the most common PFAS found in half of all samples, albeit in trace amounts.
The FDA’s analysis doesn’t spell out the PFAS findings in much detail, so STAT’s Sarah Todd spoke to two experts to determine what exactly that means. read more.
Architect of modern genetics dies
J. Craig Venter, the ambitious scientist who helped transform genetics from an artisanal job into an industrialized information machine, died Wednesday of cancer at age 79.
The logline of Venter’s life is remarkable. He fought against the first government-funded human genome sequencing project, sailing around the world to collect genetic information about sea creatures, removing bacterial genomes, and restarting the creatures with an identical set of genes that he and his team had synthesized.
STAT’s Matt Harper wrote a poignant eulogy about Venter’s life and work and how he shaped the modern system of science and biotechnology. read more.
Her daughter got custom medicine. Now she is starting a new biotechnology to produce more.
If you don’t succeed at first, why not dust yourself off and try again? Giulia Vitarello is certainly trying to do that.
Eight years ago, Vitarello’s daughter Mila received a custom-made drug designed for the specific mutation that causes the disease. This week, Vitarello revealed that he is in the process of starting a new company to develop these personalized treatments at scale.
Vitarello’s previous effort, EveryONE Medicines, was recently discontinued after the FDA issued guidance that investors deemed less incentivizing the development of customized treatments. EveryONE had sponsored a trial in the UK that treated 10 patients with fatal or life-threatening neurological conditions and aimed to accumulate enough evidence to ultimately gain regulatory approval.
Read STAT’s Andrew Joseph’s article to understand why Vitarello thinks it’s different this time.
America is once again concerned about its birth rate. But it’s not really about family.
America’s fertility concerns were by no means limited to, or even centered on, family support. It’s about power, control, and deciding who exactly can have children, write Sonya Borrello and Rachel Logan, authors of the forthcoming book “Reproductive Control: The Family Planning Framework’s Collision with Reproductive Autonomy.”
Throughout U.S. history, they argue, reproduction policy has been less about individual decisions and more about ensuring national strength and economic growth. Although it was repackaged as “family planning” in the 20th century, its focus on preventing “unwanted pregnancies” made it clear that reproductive freedom was never the goal.
This underlying logic remains unchanged, even though the United States now faces the opposite problem of declining birthrates. read more.
what we are reading
- Guns and bulletproof vests: How federal agents arrested Fauci aide, science
- Natural disasters create new crises for people recovering from opioid addiction, KFF Health News
- FDA wants weight loss drugs removed from combination list, STAT
- Department of Justice Elevance Spar over access to executives in Medicare Advantage fraud case, STAT
