*Vinay Prasad memo said at least 10 children had died from Covid vaccination – but offered scant evidence for claim

America’s top vaccines official promised, in a long and argumentative memo to staff on Friday, to revamp vaccine regulation after claiming that at least 10 children died from Covid vaccination – but he offered no evidence for that allegation and scant details on the new approach.

The top-down changes, without input from outside advisers or publication of data, worries experts who fear vaccines such as the flu shot may quickly disappear and that public trust will take a major hit.

“The ultimate outcome will be fewer vaccines and more vaccine-preventable illness,” said Dan Jernigan, former director of the National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases until this year.

There is a recall for more than 260,000 cases of shredded cheese sold in 31 states and Puerto Rico because of the potential for metal fragment contamination, according to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

The FDA said that the various shredded cheeses were recalled by Great Lakes Cheese Co. The cheese products are sold under private store-brand labels at several retailers, including Target, Walmart and Aldi.

Is there any study that compares health effects of an ultra processed diet to a minimally processed one that actually keeps calorie consumption the same? Every study i see ignores this or links UPF intake to weight gain but doesnt go beyond that. Ie if i track my macros, I dont see any reason why i cant eat UPFs besides maybe more hunger.

The city of San Francisco filed a lawsuit against some of the nation’s top food manufacturers on Tuesday, arguing that ultraprocessed food from the likes of Coca-Cola and Nestle are responsible for a public health crisis.

City Attorney David Chiu named 10 companies in the lawsuit, including the makers of such popular foods as Oreo cookies, Sour Patch Kids, Kit Kat, Cheerios and Lunchables. The lawsuit argues that ultraprocessed foods are linked to diseases such as Type 2 diabetes, fatty liver disease and cancer.

“They took food and made it unrecognizable and harmful to the human body,” Chiu said in a news release. “These companies engineered a public health crisis, they profited handsomely, and now they need to take responsibility for the harm they have caused.”

A birth dose of the vaccine, recommended for newborns since 1991, is up to 90% effective in preventing infection from the mother if given in the first 24 hours of life. If babies receive all three doses, 98% of them have immunity from the incurable virus, with the protection lasting at least 30 years.

But on Tucker Carlson's podcast in June, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. falsely claimed that the hepatitis B birth dose is a "likely culprit" of autism.

He also said the hepatitis B virus is not "casually contagious." But decades of research shows the virus can be transmitted through indirect contact, when traces of infected fluids like blood enter the body when people share personal items like razors or toothbrushes.

The committee's recommendations carry weight. Most private insurers must cover the vaccines the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices endorses, and many state vaccination policies are directly linked to its guidelines.

A handful of people with HIV have been cured after receiving HIV-resistant stem cells – but a man who received non-resistant stem cells is also now HIV-free

A man has become the seventh person to be left HIV-free after receiving a stem cell transplant to treat blood cancer. Significantly, he is also the second of the seven who received stem cells that were not actually resistant to the virus, strengthening the case that HIV-resistant cells may not be necessary for an HIV cure.

“Seeing that a cure is possible without this resistance gives us more options for curing HIV,” says Christian Gaebler at the Free University of Berlin.

Five people have previously become free of HIV after receiving stem cells from donors who carried a mutation in both copies of a gene encoding a protein called CCR5, which HIV uses to infect immune cells. This led scientists to conclude that having two copies of the mutation, which completely removes CCR5 from immune cells, was crucial for curing HIV. “The belief was that using these HIV-resistant stem cells was essential,” says Gaebler.

Key excerpts below:

In early November, a resident of Grays Harbor, a county on the south-west Pacific coast of Washington state about 100 miles from Seattle, became severely unwell with flu-like symptoms including high fever, respiratory distress and confusion.

They were admitted to hospital, and on November 14 officials confirmed that tests showed infection with an H5N5 avian influenza virus. The patient, an older adult with underlying conditions, was treated in hospital, but sadly they died on November 21.

This was the first reported human infection with an H5N5 influenza virus.

Where did it come from?

This hasn’t yet been formally confirmed. However, the patient kept a flock of backyard poultry that were exposed to wild birds, which suggests how they might have caught the virus.

H5N5 is found in wild birds around the world, and it is relatively common for it to pass from them into flocks of poultry. This is, however, the first time an H5N5 influenza virus has been found to go one step further and infect a human.

Should we be worried about what happens next?

H5N5 is an ecological and agricultural threat. Although bird flu vaccines exist, at the moment, political and economic factors make it hard to use them in US poultry. Instead, the virus must be controlled by surveillance, housing poultry indoors, increasing farm biosecurity and, as a last resort, by mass culling of infected poultry.

This is challenging enough, but bird flu also demands our attention because the virus is a potential cause of new pandemics.

In the long run, this risk is very significant. However, it is worth remembering that, although influenza is better at changing its host species and creating pandemics than any other virus, that is still an incredibly hard thing for the virus to do.

The vast majority of “spillover” infections of bird flu into humans are one-off events. They can vary unpredictably in their effects. Most are quite mild (for example, causing conjunctivitis), but some can be very severe, as was the case in this first recorded case of H5N5. But after infecting one human, most avian influenza viruses go no further.

Scientists will watch for several warning signs that a virus may be adapting to humans, especially any hint of person-to-person spread. There is no sign that this has happened here.

At the moment, the wider risk to humans from H5N5 is still low, and there is no reason to think this was anything other than a tragic one-off case. However, there will be plenty of opportunities for influenza viruses to try again. As H5N5 and other subtypes of avian influenza virus continue to circulate, it is important we continue to monitor this virus carefully.

As 2025 winds down amid concerns about “affordability,” Americans have added incentives to wish family, friends and themselves a “healthy New Year.” An AP-NORC poll reports that 60 percent of respondents are “extremely” or “very” worried about health care cost increases. 

Substantial cuts to Medicaid in the Trump administration’s One Big Beautiful Bill and a refusal by Republicans to renew Affordable Care Act tax credit subsidies will bring the total of uninsured Americans to about 31 million by 2027. Tens of millions more will experience sticker shock when they get their health insurance bills from the ACA, Medicaid, Medicare and private companies. 

Over the next decade, federal government spending on Medicaid in FY 2026.), which serves 72 million Americans, accounting for 20 percent of expenditures on health care in the United States and 50 percent of long-term care, will go down by $911 billion in FY 2026.)

Research finds OpenAI’s free chatbot fails to identify risky behaviour or challenge delusional beliefs

ChatGPT-5 is offering dangerous and unhelpful advice to people experiencing mental health crises, some of the UK’s leading psychologists have warned.

Research conducted by King’s College London (KCL) and the Association of Clinical Psychologists UK (ACP) in partnership with the Guardian suggested that the AI chatbotfailed to identify risky behaviour when communicating with mentally ill people.

A psychiatrist and a clinical psychologist interacted with ChatGPT-5 as if they had a number of mental health conditions. The chatbot affirmed, enabled and failed to challenge delusional beliefs such as being “the next Einstein”, being able to walk through cars or “purifying my wife through flame”.

Lead FDA vaccine regulator announced new approval process after claiming Covid vaccine had killed 10 children

The leading vaccine regulator at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has announced a far stricter course for federal vaccine approvals, following claims from his team that Covid vaccines were linked to the deaths of at least 10 children.

Experts suggest the announcement will make the vaccine approval process significantly more difficult.

A PBS NewsHour correspondent first reported on the memo's contents in a post on X. The New York Times noted that the document did not include identifying details such as the children's ages, any existing health conditions, or how the causal relationship between vaccination and death was determined. The vaccine manufacturers involved were also not named.

Dr Paul Offit of Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, who reviewed the memo, told MedPage Today that it was a "dangerous and irresponsible thing to do".

"[Prasad] says he has evidence that this vaccine killed 10 children, but that's not the way it works," Offit said. "If you think you have an extraordinary claim, you should back it up with extraordinary evidence. He should have submitted it to an excellent journal where it can be reviewed by subject matter experts who can say, 'Yes, this is clear evidence,' then it can be published. That's the way it works."

In trial, 82% saw weight rebound and cardiovascular health reverse after withdrawal.

Tezepelumab treatment may mean asthmatics for whom inhalers are ineffective can reduce or stop taking steroids

monthly injection could allow people with severe asthma to stop taking daily steroid tablets, a clinical trial has found.

More than 260 million people are thought to have asthma worldwide. While most can control their asthma with inhalers to treat immediate symptoms and preventive ones to reduce inflammation, those with the most severe asthma often take daily doses of oral corticosteroids as well.

But long-term use is associated with serious health conditions, including osteoporosis, diabetes and increased vulnerability to infections.

Now an international clinical trial has found that participants who received injections of tezepelumab every four weeks were able to reduce or even stop taking their steroids entirely with no ill effects.

In trial, 82% saw weight rebound and cardiovascular health reverse after withdrawal.

The popularity of GLP-1 weight-loss medications continues to soar—and their uptake is helping to push down obesity rates on a national scale—but a safe, evidence-based way off the drugs isn’t yet in clear view.

An analysis published this week in JAMA Internal Medicine found that most participants in a clinical trial who were assigned to stop taking tirzepatide (Zepbound from Eli Lilly) not only regained significant amounts of the weight they had lost on the drug, but they also saw their cardiovascular and metabolic improvements slip away. Their blood pressure went back up, as did their cholesterol, hemoglobin A1c (used to assess glucose control levels), and fasting insulin.

In an accompanying editorial, two medical experts at the University of Pittsburgh, Elizabeth Oczypok and Timothy Anderson, suggest that this new class of drugs should be rebranded from “weight loss” drugs to “weight management” drugs, which people may need to take indefinitely.