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How the alcohol industry is freezing policy
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The American Cancer Society raises hundreds of thousands of dollars each year from the wine and spirits industry through its annual fundraising event, which features bottomless booze like pineapple margaritas. This may seem like an odd turn of events for the health nonprofit, given the growing body of research linking alcohol consumption to cancer risk. But this is just one of many notable examples (“shocking, in fact,” according to one Tufts University professor) that Isa Cueto and Lev Futcher identify in the latest dispatch of The Deadliest Drug series. This time it focuses on the alcohol industry’s behind-the-scenes tactics to influence public policy.
As the industry panics over potential changes to dietary guidelines, read on for details, including which Democratic senator has received more donations from alcohol organizations than any other, and the surprising ties between alcohol companies and Mothers Against Drunk Driving. If you want to know more about Isa and Lev’s hit alcohol series, check out our biggest takeaways so far.
Large new review confirms safety of mRNA vaccines
The mRNA vaccines introduced in response to the Covid-19 pandemic have been met with a lot of misinformation and public distrust, including from some members of the Trump administration. A new review published in The Lancet confirms its safety, finding that “(a) across billions of doses, serious adverse events are rare and well-characterized, and are consistently outweighed by substantial protection against severe disease, hospitalization, and death.”
As an example, the incidence of myocarditis and pericarditis (inflammatory conditions associated with the heart) was approximately 12.6 per million for the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine and 35.6 per million for the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine. And the risk of developing these symptoms from the vaccine was much lower than the risk from COVID-19, especially among high-risk teenage boys. Read the full study.
How Maryland’s governor wants to support youth mental health
Like many people, Maryland Gov. Wes Moore (D) is concerned about the welfare of America’s boys and young adults, but he questions the way they are often discussed. “We need to stop treating young men and boys as problems to be solved and start treating them as people in which to invest,” Moore writes in his new first opinion.
Maryland’s new Youth and Boys Initiative aims to improve the well-being of young men and boys, including a program aimed at recruiting more male teachers who serve as positive role models and a paid service year option for high school graduates. Read about how Moore suggests taking more active care of boys and preventing them from falling into crisis.
Claude the Antropic comes to pick up the scientist.
The first AI giant, Anthropic, shocked the computer programming industry with Claude Code. This is the age of science.
Claude Science, a new application announced Tuesday by Anthropic, is a large-scale language model customized for use in scientific laboratories and pharmaceutical research. Anthropic’s work in biology is “one of the most important things” at the company, Eric Kauderer Abrams, the company’s head of life sciences, told STAT.
Matt Harper and Brittany Tran report that this is the first time a large AI developer has released a separate interface and product for scientists. Read more about what this means for life sciences and which companies are already nervous about how it will affect their bottom lines.
FDA says Zyn can market its pouches as safer than cigarettes
Nicotine pouch brand Zyn (owned by Swedish Match USA, which is owned by Philip Morris International) is rapidly gaining popularity in the United States, selling 794 million cans last year and more than doubling that total by 2023. Now, the FDA has announced that Zyn can also market 20 of its pouches as safer than cigarettes, saying the product “fights oral cancer, heart disease, lung cancer, stroke, emphysema, and chronic bronchitis.”
The move has shocked some health organizations, with American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network President Lisa Ricasse warning of the potential impact on young people. “We know that the tobacco industry continues to target new generations with these highly addictive flavored products,” she said in a statement. “The FDA should increase its oversight and not open the door to further marketing of addictive tobacco products.” This news comes on top of another recent victory for the tobacco industry, particularly for smokeless tobacco products, as the Trump administration opened the door to the resurgence of fruit-flavored e-cigarettes.
what we are reading
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We all test STAT, a new approach to collecting real-world data for research
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Shilajit’s Dilemma, Bloomberg
- What the Ebola outbreak and possible Marburg disease tell us about the next pandemic, STAT
- These church members have different opinions on politics. Together they are wiping out medical debt, KFF Health News
- Marburg disease outbreak reported in Uganda, could complicate the region’s Ebola response, STAT
