Health and Science Highlights

September 18, 2025 (San Diego's East County) -- Our Health and Science Highlights provide cutting edge news that could impact your health and our future.

HEALTH

• West Coast states issue joint vaccine guidelines in shift away from CDC (ABC)
• CDC panel votes to push back MMRV vaccine recommendation to 4 years old  (The Hill)
• A common nasal spray may block Covid infection, trial results indicate (CBS)
• RFK. Jr's family members say he is a 'threat' to Americans' health and call for his resignation
• Ghost viruses in our DNA can come back to haunt us (KPBS)
• Poll: Amid multi-state measles outbreak, 79% of Americans support routine childhood vaccine requirements (Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health)
• Rural hospitals band together instead of selling to big networks  (NPR)
• Whatever happened to mpox? Is it still a threat? (NPR)
• What causes stuttering? It might be in your DNA
• TB deaths projected to rise due to aid cuts, study says  (NPR)

SCIENCE AND TECH

• Trump Is Targeting Broadcast Networks. The FCC Is Poised to Help Him. (NOTUS)
• Anthropic to pay authors $1.5 billion in settlement over chatbot training material  (NPR)
• After 10 years of black hole science, Stephen Hawking is proven right (NPR )
• In a major antitrust ruling, a judge lets Google keep Chrome but levies other penalties (NPR)

For excerpts and links to full stories, click “read more” and scroll down.

HEALTH

West Coast states issue joint vaccine guidelines in shift away from CDC (ABC)

The move came a day ahead of a meeting of CDC vaccine advisers. Four Western U.S. states have come together to issue unified vaccine recommendations for the upcoming respiratory illness season, and California has enacted a new law to base the state's immunization guidance on independent medical organizations, rather than the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

CDC panel votes to push back MMRV vaccine recommendation to 4 years old  (The Hill)

The vaccine advisory panel for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on Thursday voted in favor of delaying the administration of the vaccine for measles, mumps, rubella and varicella (chickenpox), commonly called the MMRV... Members of the committee who opposed the motion argued that changing the recommendation took away parents’ right to choose when and how to vaccinate their children.

Jason Goldman, president of the American College of Physicians, lambasted the motion as lacking supporting evidence and causing more confusion than benefits.

A common nasal spray may block Covid infection, trial results indicate (CBS)

The over-the-counter antihistamine azelastine works against a range of respiratory infections, including the flu and RSV, according to German researchers.

RFK. Jr's family members say he is a 'threat' to Americans' health and call for his resignation

“Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is a threat to the health and wellbeing of every American,” Joseph P. Kennedy III said in a post on X. The former congressman added: “None of us will be spared the pain he is inflicting.” His aunt echoed those claims, saying “medical decisions belong in the hands of trained and licensed professionals, not incompetent and misguided leadership.”

Ghost viruses in our DNA can come back to haunt us (KPBS)

 8% of our DNA are viruses our ancestors caught one day and passed down to us. These retroviruses have been called ghost viruses, or viral detritus….  Typically, we carry the viruses in our genomes and somehow we manage to silence them. But it turns out those ghosts can be reawakened when we get sick.

Poll: Amid multi-state measles outbreak, 79% of Americans support routine childhood vaccine requirements (Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health)

In the midst of a multi-state measles outbreak, a new poll by Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and the de Beaumont Foundation finds that most U.S. adults (79%) say parents should be required to have children vaccinated against preventable diseases like measles, mumps, and rubella to attend school. This includes a majority of adults across party lines—90% among Democrats and 68% among Republicans—as well as 66% of those who support the “Make America Great Again” (MAGA) movement. It also includes 72% of all parents.

Rural hospitals band together instead of selling to big networks  (NPR)

 Independent rural hospitals are increasingly joining what are called clinically integrated networks, collaborative groups that allow them to avoid selling out to larger health systems while sharing resources to save money and improve patient care. Many are motivated by the chance to combine their patient rolls for value-based care contracts, a growing reimbursement model in which insurers pay providers based on the quality of care they provide and the health outcomes of their patients.

Whatever happened to mpox? Is it still a threat? (NPR)

Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention declared mpox a public health emergency of continental concern. The very next day, the World Health Organization followed suit elevating the mpox outbreak to its highest threat level….  Today, 26 African countries are in the midst of mpox outbreaks, up from 13 a year ago according to Africa CDC. Critics say the global response has fallen dangerously short

What causes stuttering? It might be in your DNA

NPR - Geneticists Piper Below…recently identified 57 genetic regions linked to stuttering in the human genome. Their findings represent a new breakthrough in how researchers think about speech conditions, genetics and the conditions that are linked to them.

TB deaths projected to rise due to aid cuts, study says  (NPR)

While it may seem like a disease from the past, this airborne illness kills more people than any other infectious disease worldwide, roughly 1.2 million a year. That number could increase dramatically because of the Trump administration's cuts to foreign assistance, according to a new study co-authored by Ditiu.  As many as 10 million additional people could get TB, and 2.2 million could die by 2030 in high-burden countries under the worst-case funding scenario over the next five years, researchers report in the journal PLOS Global Public Health.

SCIENCE AND TECH

Trump Is Targeting Broadcast Networks. The FCC Is Poised to Help Him. (NOTUS)

Federal Communications Commission decisions “were meant to be beyond the reach of the current occupant of the White House,” the agency’s sole Democratic commissioner told NOTUS.

Anthropic to pay authors $1.5 billion in settlement over chatbot training material  (NPR)

 Artificial intelligence company Anthropic has agreed to pay $1.5 billion to settle a class-action lawsuit by book authors who say the company took pirated copies of their works to train its chatbot. The landmark settlement, if approved by a judge as soon as Monday, could mark a turning point in legal battles between AI companies and the writers, visual artists and other creative professionals who accuse them of copyright infringement.

After 10 years of black hole science, Stephen Hawking is proven right (NPR )

Researchers say their ability to analyze gravitational waves has improved so much over the past decade that they were recently able to verify a key idea about the growth of black holes — one put forth by Stephen Hawking back in 1971.

In a major antitrust ruling, a judge lets Google keep Chrome but levies other penalties (NPR)

  In a ruling aimed at restoring competition in the search engine market, U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta refrained from ordering Google to sell off Chrome, the world's most popular browser, but ordered the tech company to end exclusive deals that make Google the default search engine on phones and other devices.  The company will not, however, be barred from paying device makers to preload its products, including its search engine and its Gemini AI chatbot.