Health and science highlights

January 22, 2026 (San Diego's East County) -- Our Health and Science Highlights provide cutting edge news that could impact your health and our future.

HEALTH

• Pediatricians group sues federal government over cuts to child health funding (10 News)
• Health insurance CEOs to appear before House committees as premiums soar (NBC)
• County Public Health Lab Starts Testing Local Wastewater for Diseases (County News Center)

SCIENCE AND TECH

• In a warming world, freshwater production is moving deep beneath the sea (AP)
• How Trump Spun a Social Network Into a Nuclear-Fusion Company (Wall Street Journal)
• Apple, Google tell workers on visas to avoid leaving the U.S.  (NPR)
• Report: The risks of AI in schools outweigh the benefits  (NPR)
• Grok blocked from undressing images in places where it's illegal, X says (AP)

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

HEALTH

Pediatricians group sues federal government over cuts to child health funding (10 News)

The American Academy of Pediatrics said the funding was terminated shortly after it publicly criticized federal health officials over changes to vaccine policy.

Health insurance CEOs to appear before House committees as premiums soar (NBC)

The CEOs of five major health insurers are set to face a grilling from members of Congress on Thursday as House Republicans seek to place blame for rising health care costs. The back-to-back hearings before the Energy and Commerce and the Ways and Means committees come after Republicans allowed enhanced Affordable Care Act subsidies to expire at the end of last year, a move that led to sharp premium increases for millions of Americans.

County Public Health Lab Starts Testing Local Wastewater for Diseases (County News Center)

For the first time, the County’s public health lab today began routine in-house wastewater testing, with the results available on an online public dashboard.  Routine wastewater testing gives public health officials a snapshot of what diseases are circulating locally and the ability to track trends often before they are detected through the medical community’s robust testing…. People can view wastewater data on a new dashboard available online on the County’s public health website. 

SCIENCE AND TECH

In a warming world, freshwater production is moving deep beneath the sea (AP)

Some four miles off the Southern California coast, a company is betting it can solve one of desalination’s biggest problems by moving the technology deep below the ocean’s surface.  OceanWell’s planned Water Farm 1 would use natural ocean pressure to power reverse osmosis — a process that forces seawater through membranes to filter out salt and impurities — and produce up to 60 million gallons (nearly 225 million liters) of freshwater daily. 

How Trump Spun a Social Network Into a Nuclear-Fusion Company (Wall Street Journal)

First there was Truth Social. Then a streaming platform. A suite of financial products came later, as did a multibillion-dollar deal to stockpile cryptocurrency.  Now, a merger with a fusion-energy company aims to capitalize on the latest sizzling—and speculative—market: the AI boom’s insatiable appetite for power.

Apple, Google tell workers on visas to avoid leaving the U.S.  (NPR)

U.S. consulates and embassies have been reporting lengthy, sometimes months-long delays, for visa appointments following new rules from the Department of Homeland Security requiring travelers to undergo a screening of up to five years' of their social media history — a move criticized by free speech advocates as a privacy invasion.

Report: The risks of AI in schools outweigh the benefits  (NPR)

The risks of using generative artificial intelligence to educate children and teens currently overshadow the benefits, according to a new study by the Brookings Institution's Center for Universal Education. The sweeping study includes focus groups and interviews with K-12 students, parents, educators and tech experts in 50 countries, as well as a literature review of hundreds of research articles. It found that using AI in education can "undermine children's foundational development" and that "the damages it has already caused are daunting," though "fixable."

Grok blocked from undressing images in places where it's illegal, X says (AP)

Elon Musk’s AI chatbot Grok won’t be able to edit photos to portray real people in revealing clothing in places where that is illegal, according to a statement posted on X. The announcement late Wednesday followed a global backlash over sexualized images of women and children, including bans and warnings by some governments.  The pushback included an investigation announced Wednesday by the state of California into the proliferation of nonconsensual sexually explicit material produced using Grok.