Health and Science Highlights

September 3, 2025 (San Diego's East County) -- Our Health and Science Highlights provide cutting edge news that could impact your health and our future.

HEALTH

• Medicare Will Require Prior Approval for Certain Procedures (New York Times)
• New CDC chief picked without medical credentials as vaccine panel faces shake-up (AP/Scripps News)
• Sen. Cassidy calls for vaccine advisory meeting to be postponed amid CDC departures  (CBS)
• Trump and RFK Jr. to Ban COVID-19 Vaccine 'Within Months' (Daily Beast)
• San Diego County loses $40M in funds just before new public health lab opens (Fox 5)
• Meat, dairy allergies from tick bites "skyrocketing" on Martha's Vineyard, expert says (CBS News)

SCIENCE-TECH

• Dredging Mobile Bay in Alabama has found unlikely allies 
• These brain implants speak your mind — even when you don't want to (NPR)

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

HEALTH

Medicare Will Require Prior Approval for Certain Procedures (New York Times)

A pilot program in six states will use a tactic employed by private insurers that has been heavily criticized for delaying and denying medical care... Private insurers often require a cumbersome review process that frequently results in the denial or delay of essential treatments that are readily covered by traditional Medicare. This practice, known as prior authorization, has drawn public scrutiny, which intensified after the murder of a UnitedHealthcare executive last December.

New CDC chief picked without medical credentials as vaccine panel faces shake-up (AP/Scripps News)

 The White House is replacing the CDC director with HHS deputy Jim O’Neill, who has no medical background, sparking bipartisan alarm.

Sen. Cassidy calls for vaccine advisory meeting to be postponed amid CDC departures  (CBS)

 Sen. Bill Cassidy, a Louisiana Republican who chairs the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, called on the Department of Health and Human Services Thursday to "indefinitely postpone" its vaccine advisory committee meeting next month amid a slew of departures from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.  "If the meeting proceeds, any recommendations made should be rejected as lacking legitimacy given the seriousness of the allegations and the current turmoil in CDC leadership," Cassidy said in a statement.

Trump and RFK Jr. to Ban COVID-19 Vaccine 'Within Months' (Daily Beast)

The Trump administration will move to pull the COVID vaccine off the U.S. market “within months,” one of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s closest associates has told the Daily Beast.



San Diego County loses $40M in funds just before new public health lab opens (Fox 5)

San Diego County will not receive $40 million of public health funding promised by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) ...

Meat, dairy allergies from tick bites "skyrocketing" on Martha's Vineyard, expert says (CBS News)

There's a new medical issue on Martha's Vineyard, and it's impacting the way people eat. It's known as "alpha-gal syndrome," and is not a tick-borne illness, but rather an allergy in response to a tick bite. .. The allergy can come in response to a bite from a Lone Star tick, which are common in the south but have recently shown up in large numbers on the Vineyard - due to a combination of climate and an unusually large deer population, experts say. 

SCIENCE-TECH

Dredging Mobile Bay in Alabama has found unlikely allies 

NPR - Dredging waterways for navigation is a centuries-old practice, but this project is drawing controversy because the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has a permit to put the material they dig out of the channel into other parts of the expansive Mobile Bay, which critics say is choking the estuary with dredging mud.

These brain implants speak your mind — even when you don't want to (NPR)

Surgically implanted devices that allow paralyzed people to speak can also eavesdrop on their inner monologue. That's the conclusion of a study of brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) in the journal Cell. The finding could lead to BCIs that allow paralyzed users to produce synthesized speech more quickly and with less effort. But the idea that new technology can decode a person's inner voice is "unsettling," says Nita Farahany, a professor of law and philosophy at Duke University and author of the book: The Battle for Your Brain.