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Looks like summer has arrived, as the air conditioner at STAT’s New York bureau broke. Happy Friday.
Latest information on Hantavirus cruise ship story
Hantavirus outbreaks on cruise ships will likely take weeks or months to resolve. The latest update from STAT’s Helen Branswell.
Some takeaways from the World Health Organization’s latest briefing: The MV Hondius has moved to the Canary Islands, WHO officials are working to remove people from the ship, and the United States (which famously completed its withdrawal from the international health organization earlier this year) is cooperating. But for the latest news on the origins of the epidemic, read Helen’s story.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the Atlantic, the top U.S. official responsible for public health on cruise ships is resigning, according to an internal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announcement obtained by STAT’s Daniel Payne.
Luis Rodriguez has been part of the Ship Hygiene Program since 2010 and has been its director since 2023. The sudden departure comes after a tumultuous year for the department, where full-time employees in the program were laid off. The administration did not respond to questions about Rodriguez’s replacement. Read more from Daniel.
(Sorry) State of Science
STAT’s Anil Oza published two articles yesterday about the state of science, both of which are alarming.
First, the researchers discovered an underlying reason for the long-term decline in discoveries that could dramatically advance the field: the aging of the workforce. Most researchers start their careers doing more disruptive research, but as they get older, they tend to abandon path-breaking research in favor of more accessible work.
A new analysis published Thursday in the journal Science looked at the work of 12.5 million scientists who published at least three papers between 1960 and 2020, and tracked how those papers cited earlier work and how they were subsequently cited. As scientists get older, they cite older and older studies.
But the slow pace of discovery is not the only scientific headwind. The rise of AI may be behind a simultaneous boom in fabricated citations found in medical journals, according to research published Thursday.
A new analysis found 4,000 fabricated citations out of 2,800 papers. Although the number is small, the number is rapidly increasing. In the first seven weeks of 2026, this number reached 1 in 277 newspapers.
Read more from Anil.
“The FDA has abandoned me”
If you haven’t read Lizzie Lawrence’s incredible story about what the FDA lost in the second Trump administration, Alex Hogan dedicates a weekly video to the story. Alex and Lizzie drove around Washington, D.C., and sat down with six former FDA employees to discuss their love for the agency and why months of turmoil ultimately spurred their departure.
Children in poor countries are six times more likely to die during emergency surgery
Global stratification in health status is a reality. Children from poorer countries with severe abdominal injuries were six times more likely to die after undergoing emergency surgery than children from richer countries.
The findings, published Thursday in The Lancet Child and Adolescent Health, tracked the outcomes of 237 pediatric patients who underwent traumatic laparotomy from 85 hospitals in 32 countries. The majority of patients were male (82.3%) and had suffered blunt trauma such as being hit by a car (57.0%) or other forms of violence. The global pediatric mortality rate 30 days after surgery was 8%, but the risk was more severe for patients in low-resource settings.
Although the sample size of this study was small and the origins were very diverse, it is still alarming, as traffic accidents are a major cause of death and disability worldwide.
We need more men in nursing
Demand for qualified nurses is increasing, with approximately 200,000 job openings expected annually due to the mass exodus of nurses who have reached retirement age. Who should fill this gap?
Nicholas A. Giordano, a nurse and assistant professor at Emory University’s Nell Hodgson Woodruff School of Nursing in Atlanta, writes:
Currently, only 12% of nurses nationwide are male, but the profession often offers stability, and median salaries for registered nurses routinely approach six figures. However, the proportion of men in the industry has stagnated for years.
To close the gender gap, health leaders need to expand support for men and continue to recruit and deploy more male faculty to teach male students early in their training, Giordano wrote. read more.
what we are reading
- President Trump’s immigration crackdown has harmed scores of children with tear gas, pepper spray, and ProPublica
- Republicans’ mid-term health care dilemma, Axios
- Employees with medical conditions challenge CDC office work requirements, New York Times
- Becerra’s rise embarrasses Biden’s former colleagues, Politico
