President Trump’s newest vaccine ‘demands’ repeat old misinformation
This is STAT's Morning Rounds newsletter, a weekday roundup of health and medicine news. The lead item concerns new vaccine "demands" from President Trump that repeat old misinformation, and the issue also highlights a relatively simple way to gather more information on drug safety during pregnancy.
On politics, STAT reporter Chelsea Cirruzzo examined whether Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. can help Republicans win in November, focusing on Iowa, where he campaigned with gubernatorial candidate Zach Lahn. Lahn, who is trailing in the polls, has touted Kennedy's visit, saying "RFK Jr.'s story is one that I have long admired." Kennedy has campaigned in other states as well — a strategy that makes sense because he is one of Trump's most popular cabinet secretaries, and his Make America Healthy Again agenda could resonate with voters dissatisfied over the economy and the war in Iran. Kennedy has made clear his mission could be threatened by the upcoming elections, and he has been trying to bring his message directly to voters.
The newsletter also reports on kratom, a drug sold at gas stations, typically as a powder made from dried leaf that promises better mood and pain relief. A new, more potent version is now sweeping the streets, engineered to act more directly on the brain's opioid receptors, producing a far more addictive substance with more intense withdrawal symptoms. "We're basically treating it as if it's fentanyl or oxycodone or heroin," said Myles Jen Kin, who runs two inpatient recovery centers, describing an "explosion" in new cases at clinics.
Finally, reporter Nick Florko contributes a personal essay. He writes that when Kennedy talks about the chronic disease epidemic among young Americans, "I am one of the people he is speaking about" — at 34 he is overweight and already has high cholesterol, high blood pressure, and "ADHD so bad I often forget to brush my teeth in the morning." His own sometimes desperate search for answers, he says, helped him understand what drives people to become skeptical of and alienated from the health system, arguing that the more illuminating question is not whether people trust scientists, but what happens when scientific knowledge collides with emotions like fear, confusion, and frustration.