Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the nation’s health secretary, has said that tackling a chronic disease “epidemic” would be a cornerstone of his Make America Healthy Again agenda, often invoking alarming statistics as an urgent reason for reforming public health in this country. On Friday, President Trump released a proposed budget that called for cutting the…
New research shows that semaglutide, the compound in the weight-loss drug Wegovy, could treat an increasingly common liver disease. The study, published Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine, included 800 adults with a severe form of liver disease known as metabolic dysfunction-associated steatohepatitis, or MASH. People develop MASH after fat builds up in…
The Latest The news made for an alarming headline this week: Research showed that common chemicals in plastics were associated with 350,000 heart disease deaths across the world in 2018. The statistic came from a study published Monday in the journal eBioMedicine. The authors, a group of researchers at New York University’s Grossman School of…
The sun was bursting through the sandstone arch of Window Rock in northeastern Arizona, and Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., in bluejeans, was finally in his element: on a hike. It was the last day of his multistate Make American Healthy Again tour, designed to highlight various aspects of Mr. Kennedy’s plan to fight…
A day after attending the funeral of an unvaccinated child who died of measles, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. will kick off a tour through Southwestern states on Monday, spotlighting initiatives that emphasize nutrition and lifestyle choices as tools for combating disease. The Make America Healthy Again tour, which will take Mr. Kennedy through…
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has spoken of an “existential threat” that he said can destroy the nation. “We have the highest chronic disease burden of any country in the world,” Mr. Kennedy said at a hearing in January before the Senate confirmed him as the secretary of Health and Human Services. And on Monday he…
Kilmer S. McCully, a pathologist at Harvard Medical School in the 1960s and ’70s whose colleagues banished him to the basement for insisting — correctly, it turned out — that homocysteine, an amino acid, was being overlooked as a possible risk factor for heart disease, died on Feb. 21 at his home in Winchester, Mass….
Betsy Arakawa, the wife of Gene Hackman, died from the effects of hantavirus, a rare disease often caused by contact with droppings from infected rodents. Hantavirus does not spread among people in the cases found in the United States. It can be transmitted through rodent saliva. But it is most commonly transmitted by breathing in…
Dangerous pathogens left unsecured at labs across Africa. Halted inspections for mpox, Ebola and other infections at airports and other checkpoints. Millions of unscreened animals shipped across borders. The Trump administration’s pause on foreign aid has hobbled programs that prevent and snuff out outbreaks around the world, scientists say, leaving people everywhere more vulnerable to…
