HEALTH AND SCIENCE HIGHLIGHTS

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July 14, 2025 (San Diego's East County) -- Our Health and Science Highlights provide cutting edge news that could impact your health and our future.

HEALTH

SCIENCE AND TECH

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HEALTH

Major medical associations sue Kennedy, Trump administration health leaders for Covid-19 vaccine changes (CNN)

Medical associations representing hundreds of thousands of doctors, medical professionals and scientists in the United States are suing the leaders of US health agencies for limiting who can get Covid-19 vaccines and for undermining overall vaccine confidence.

Supreme Court preserves Obamacare coverage of preventive healthcare (Politico)

The Supreme Court has preserved the provision of the Affordable Care Act that requires insurance companies to cover preventive health services like colonoscopies and HIV prevention drugs at no cost to patients. It’s the fourth time in the past 13 years that the high court has rejected major challenges to the 2010 health law. This time around, the vote was 6-3, with three of the court’s conservative justices dissenting.

Gates Foundation commits $1.6B for global vaccine effort after US cuts funding (10 News)

The Gates Foundation is Gavi’s largest private donor, having contributed $7.7 billion over the past 25 years... “I don’t know of anything with a higher impact per dollar in terms of saving and improving lives," Gates said.

Trump administration restores funds for HIV prevention following outcry (LA Times)

The Trump administration has lifted a freeze on federal funds for HIV prevention and surveillance programs, officials said, following an outcry from HIV prevention organizations, health experts and Democrats in Congress.

Measles on the rise in California: More cases so far this year than all of 2024 

California has already reported more measles cases this year than in all of 2024, a worrisome development that comes as the nation is suffering its largest outbreak of the super-infectious disease in decades. The extent of the national outbreak has rocketed measles from a back-of-mind issue — one rarely, if ever, encountered by a whole generation of Americans — to a pressing public health concern.

'Where's our money?' CDC grant funding is moving so slowly layoffs are happening (NPR)

...the CDC has yet to receive its full funding for the 2025 fiscal year… CDC staffers say the funding is now months late, and it will soon be too late to disperse the agency's grants that local health departments are waiting on. In the interim, the CDC has been operating with just 30-days of funding at a time. The staffers say this amounts to impounding the agency's funding. One of them called it "rescission by inertia."

Many forget the damage done by diseases like whooping cough, measles and rubella. Not these families (AP)

In the time before widespread vaccination, death often came early.   Devastating infectious diseases ran rampant in America, killing millions of children and leaving others with lifelong health problems. These illnesses were the main reason why nearly one in five children in 1900 never made it to their fifth birthday.   Over the next century, vaccines virtually wiped out long-feared scourges like polio and measles and drastically reduced the toll of many others. Today, however, some preventable, contagious diseases are making a comeback as vaccine hesitancy pushes immunization rates down.…

RFK Jr. singled out one study to cut funds for global vaccines. Is that study valid?  (NPR)

Last week, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. made a pronouncement that stunned the global health world. Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance — which has vaccinated more than half the world's children in many of the world's lowest-income countries — was hosting a major event to solicit donations for its global vaccination efforts. RFK Jr. decided to take the opposite stance. He said the U.S. would cut off more than a billion dollars that had previously been promised over the next few years.

US has reclosed its southern border after a flesh-eating parasite is seen further north in Mexico (AP)

The U.S. has closed its southern border again to livestock imports, saying a flesh-eating parasite has moved further north in Mexico than previously reported…. / American officials worry that if the fly reaches Texas, its flesh-eating maggots could cause large economic losses, something that happened decades ago. The U.S. largely eradicated the pest in the 1970s by breeding and releasing sterile male flies to breed with wild females, and the fly had been contained in Panama for years until it was discovered in southern Mexico late last year.

Northern Arizona resident dies from plague  (AP)

A resident of northern Arizona has died from pneumonic plague, health officials said Friday. 

 

SCIENCE AND TECH

Defense Department will stop providing crucial satellite weather data (NPR)

For more than 40 years, the Defense Department has operated satellites that collect information about conditions in the atmosphere and ocean. A group within the Navy, called the Fleet Numerical Meteorology and Oceanography Center, processes the raw data from the satellites, and turns it over to scientists and weather forecasters who use it for a wide range of purposes including real-time hurricane forecasting and measuring sea ice in polar regions.  This week, the Department of Defense announced that it would no longer provide that data, according to a notice published by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, NOAA.

Elon Musk's AI chatbot, Grok, started calling itself 'MechaHitler'  (NPR)

We have improved @Grok significantly," Elon Musk wrote on X last Friday about his platform's integrated artificial intelligence chatbot. "You should notice a difference when you ask Grok questions."  Indeed, the update did not go unnoticed. By Tuesday, Grok was calling itself "MechaHitler." ... one user asked Grok to name a 20th-century historical figure "best suited to deal with this problem," referring to Jewish people.Grok responded by evoking the Holocaust: "To deal with such vile anti-white hate? Adolf Hitler, no question. He'd spot the pattern and handle it decisively, every damn time."

Trump says he has a TikTok buyer. Here are the players who have been vying to buy the app (CNN)

President Donald Trump teased over the weekend that there is a buyer for Tik-Tok,  whom he will announce in two weeks, which could secure the app’s long-term future in the United States.



 

 


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