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Next week is Earth Day. That means it’s time to listen to one of my favorite traditions: the annual 24-hour livestream from the wetlands in British Columbia’s unceded Wisnay region.
You can hear birds, frogs, insects, and an airplane or two. You can also add your own calls to the swamp chorus.
Now, here’s the news.
Trump nominates new CDC director
President Trump announced on social media that former Deputy Surgeon General Erica Schwartz will be his nominee for the next director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The former public health leader will fill a key role that was primarily filled on a part-time or interim basis during the second Trump administration.
Schwartz spent much of his career in health care for the U.S. military and later served as deputy military surgeon general in the first Trump administration, where he helped coordinate the government’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
It’s unclear whether Schwartz will have enough support in the Senate to be confirmed, but his background as a federally trained doctor is likely to make him popular among lawmakers. President Trump also announced appointments to other positions at the CDC and FDA. Read more from STAT’s Helen Branswell and Chelsea Cirruzzo.
Deadly Consequences of ICE Detention
A new JAMA analysis of federal records from 2004 to 2026 finds that people in Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody died at record rates during President Trump’s second term.
The report’s authors found that at least 272 people have died in ICE custody over the past 22 years, but note that these numbers are often underestimated. The death rate for the latest fiscal year, which begins Oct. 1, 2025, and ends Sept. 30, 2026, is higher than any year so far in nearly two decades and even exceeds the spike seen during the coronavirus pandemic.
Perhaps the most worrying thing? Almost half of these deaths in custody are said to be due to “unknown causes.”
If you pay attention to the news, this finding shouldn’t come as a surprise. The recent increase in mortality rates occurred in conjunction with major changes in 2025, including fewer surveillance mechanisms, increased detention, and delayed medical care.
The study provides more details, including how adopting medical standards during the Bush and Obama administrations led to fewer deaths in the agency’s early years. Read the data analysis and accompanying editorial.
Should researchers stop using the GLP-1 hormone for weight loss goals?
Should we target the GLP-1 hormone to achieve effective weight loss? Probably not, say researchers who helped develop powerful anti-obesity drugs like Eli Lilly’s Zepbound.
This group of researchers developed an experimental drug that activates receptors for other hormones, based on research data in rodents and monkeys. This drug has fewer side effects and may result in weight loss comparable to that experienced by patients with drugs that target GLP-1.
A peer-reviewed draft published this week calls for its provocative hypothesis to be replicated in humans, but the paper questions several key principles of the development of approved obesity products. Read STAT’s Elaine Chen to learn which famous scientists are upending the field they helped found.
New way liver transplant patients can avoid organ rejection
Researchers are trying to train the immune system to tolerate transplanted organs. A small, early-stage study published today shows that harvesting cells from a living donor (someone who donates part of their liver) has the potential to teach the recipient’s immune system to accept the foreign organ as its own.
Immune tolerance has long been the holy grail of transplant medicine, as anti-rejection therapy for patients can be extensive and associated with many side effects. In the Nature Communications study, 13 patients received an infusion of cells taken from a donor one week before transplantation. After one year, eight of them met the criteria to stop taking immunosuppressive drugs, and four stopped immunosuppression completely (although one had to start taking the drug again).
What were the results after 3 years? STAT’s Elizabeth Cooney has the full study.
Tetanus Story, Part 2
Earlier this week, the CDC reported that more than 400 tetanus cases occurred in the United States from 2009 to 2023, most of them in unvaccinated or undervaccinated people. On Thursday, the agency released another report on four tetanus cases in children in 2024. None of them had been vaccinated.
In two of the cases, parents brought their children to a medical facility after an accident that likely led to the onset of tetanus. When both families were told that their children should receive preventive treatments such as a tetanus vaccine and immunoglobulin, they refused. All four children had to be hospitalized for 8 to 45 days. Two required inpatient rehabilitation care after admission. All received tetanus immune globulin and at least one tetanus vaccine during hospitalization, but only one child received the recommended three doses.
The report does not detail what these children experienced during their illness. However, reports of similar hospitalizations in 2017 painted a grim picture of an agonizing illness for children, families and the medical professionals who provided care. The child had to be sedated for several weeks because any noise or stimulation caused bone-tightening spasms. — Helen Branswell
Don’t believe headlines about widespread vaccine skepticism
That viral Politico poll that supposedly captured Americans’ enthusiastic support for vaccines? “Be skeptical,” says David Higgins, a physician who focuses on vaccination, health policy and communications. Or at least read the fine print.
A Politico poll article suggests that “nearly half” of American adults think the science around vaccines is still debatable, a sentiment echoed by many other news outlets. But a deeper dive into the questions that generated this data point reveals that attitudes toward vaccines are more obscured than clarified. The much-touted findings also contradict a number of recent studies showing that confidence in vaccines has declined but remains strong.
“How this type of information is collected and interpreted has a profound impact on people’s beliefs and attitudes…it can change what clinicians say in the office, the decisions policy makers and leaders make, and ultimately become a self-fulfilling prophecy,” Higgins said. read more.
what we are reading
- Kennedy focuses on affordability, fights fraud at Capitol hearing, STAT
- HHS Introduces Axios, the King of Affordability
- Alcohol crisis is quietly hitting high-stress, ‘high-status’ workers, Vox
- Utah’s measles outbreak exceeds 600 cases, now the most active in the United States, CIDRAP
