In other news:
The Senate HELP subcommitte Approved RFK Jr.’s advancement to the full Senate for approval. The key vote was from Republican Senator Bill Cassidy (a physician) after receiving several assurances from Kennedy and the Trump administration. These assurances include:
1. Commitments on Vaccine Policy: Kennedy pledged to maintain existing vaccine approval and safety frameworks, keep the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices intact, and ensure no removal of CDC statements affirming that vaccines do not cause autism.
2. Collaborative Oversight: Cassidy was promised an “unprecedentedly close collaborative working relationship,” with Kennedy agreeing to meet or speak with him multiple times a month, provide input on HHS hiring decisions, and give 30 days’ notice before altering vaccine safety monitoring programs.
3. Senate Health Committee Role: Kennedy agreed to allow the Senate HELP Committee, chaired by Cassidy, to appoint representatives to any new vaccine safety boards and to appear before the committee quarterly if requested.
Cassidy emphasized his belief in vaccine safety, despite Kennedy’s controversial anti-vaccine stance, and cited these commitments as critical to his decision. Political pressures, including lobbying by Vice President JD Vance and grassroots supporters of Kennedy’s “Make America Healthy Again” agenda, also influenced Cassidy’s vote.
The question remains whether those assurances are genuine.
N.Y. Moves to Shield Doctors Who Send Abortion Pills to States With Bans “The newly signed law comes days after a New York doctor was indicted in Louisiana for prescribing and sending abortion pills to someone in the state. The charges represented an escalation in the fractious battle between mostly Republican-led states that ban abortion and Democratic-led states seeking to protect or expand abortion access.
The law, which takes effect immediately, will allow health-care practitioners to avoid putting their names on prescriptions for medications used in abortions, and instead use the names of their medical practices.”
C.D.C. Site Restores Some Purged Files After ‘Gender Ideology’ Ban Outcry Read the full article to understand what was restored and what is still missing.
Key Findings From New Polling on Public Opinion on Vaccines Read this short report. Americans are still overwhelmingly pro-vaccines and think the U.S. should maintain its leadership role in their development.
Loretta Ford, ‘Mother’ of the Nurse Practitioner Field, Dies at 104 “Loretta Ford, who co-founded the first academic program for nurse practitioners in 1965, then spent decades transforming the field of nursing into an area of serious clinical practice, education and research, died on Jan. 22 at her home in Wildwood, Fla. She was 104.”
FDA approves pig organ transplant trials for patients with kidney failure “The Food and Drug Administration has given two biotechnology companies approval for clinical trials that will transplant organs from genetically modified pigs into patients with kidney failure, an experimental but potentially groundbreaking innovation for thousands of Americans on the waiting list for organ transplants.”