On the last day of March, surgeons at Massachusetts General Hospital began an operation that they hoped might lead to a permanent change in how kidneys are transplanted in people. That morning’s patient was not a person. It was a pig, lying anesthetized on a table. The pig was missing one kidney and needed an…
During his Senate confirmation hearings to be health secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. presented himself as a supporter of vaccines. But in office, he and the agencies he leads have taken far-reaching, sometimes subtle steps to undermine confidence in vaccine efficacy and safety, public health experts say. The National Institutes of Health halted funding for…
To stop the spread of an infectious disease like measles, you don’t have to vaccinate everyone. But you do have to vaccinate many. Just how many? To let you discover for yourself, we simulated an outbreak of a hypothetical disease, about as contagious as the flu. (A lot less contagious than measles.) We’d like you…
In a speech broadcast to the Food and Drug Administration’s Maryland campus on Friday morning, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. introduced himself as the nation’s health secretary with a meandering speech touching on everything from birds of prey to pollution in Lake Erie to the C.I.A. Mr. Kennedy told the agency staff members, in the throes…
The mayor of Miami-Dade County on Friday said she vetoed legislation that would remove fluoride from the drinking water in Florida’s most populous county, pushing back on a growing campaign against the mineral used to prevent cavities. The veto by Mayor Daniella Levine Cava, a Democrat, comes at a moment when critics of adding fluoride…
Surgeons removed a genetically engineered pig’s kidney from an Alabama woman after she experienced acute organ rejection, NYU Langone Health officials said on Friday. Towana Looney, 53, lived with the kidney for 130 days, which is longer than anyone else has tolerated an organ from a genetically modified animal. She has resumed dialysis, hospital officials…
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the nation’s health secretary, pledged on Thursday to seek out experts globally to discover the reasons for the increasing rates of autism in the United States. “We’ve launched a massive testing and research effort that’s going to involve hundreds of scientists from around the world,” Mr. Kennedy announced at a cabinet…
A shift in the atmosphere Ms. Petrova’s return flight from Paris landed in Boston on the evening of Feb. 16. As the plane sat on the tarmac, she texted back and forth with Dr. Peshkin, trying to confirm how she should handle the package in customs. But by then, the passengers were already filing off…
Companies can set such high prices because of a quirk in Medicare pricing rules, industry experts said. For the first six months of a new bandage product’s life, Medicare will set the reimbursement rate at whatever price a company chooses. After that, the agency adjusts the reimbursement to reflect the actual price paid by doctors…
The emergency department waiting room was jammed, as it always is, with patients sitting for hours, closely packed on hard metal chairs. Only those with conditions so dire they needed immediate care — like a heart attack — got seen immediately. One man had had enough. He pounded on the glass window in front of…