health – Page 3

Having that high-deductible health plan might kill you, literally

cancer, deductivels, health, health insurance, survival / Kris Guyer / January 29, 2026

Having a health insurance plan with a high deductible could not only cost you—it could also kill you.

A new study in JAMA Network Open found that people who faced those high out-of-pocket costs as well as a cancer diagnosis had worse overall survival and cancer-specific survival than those with more standard health plans.

The findings, while perhaps not surprising, are a stark reminder of the fraught decisions Americans face as the price of health care only continues to rise, and more people try to offset costs by accepting insurance plans with higher deductibles—that is, higher out-of-pocket costs they have to pay before their health insurance provider starts paying its share.

The issue is particularly critical right now for people who have insurance plans through the Affordable Care Act marketplace. Prices for those plans have skyrocketed this year after Congress failed to extend critical tax credits. Without those credits, monthly premiums for ACA plans have, on average, more than doubled. Early data on ACA enrollments for 2026 not only suggests that fewer people are signing up for the plans, but also that those who are enrolling are often choosing bronze plans, which are high-deductible plans.

In the study, researchers considered plans to be “high-deductible health plans” (HDHPs) if their deductibles were at least $1,200 to $1,350 for individuals or $2,400 to $2,700 for families between 2011 and 2018 (with the cutoffs increasing within the ranges during that time). For context, the average individual deductible for an ACA bronze plan in 2026 is about $7,500, according to KFF.

Risky plans

Based on previous data, such high out-of-pocket costs are known to lead people to delay or decrease health care—they may skip doctor visits, put off diagnostics, and avoid treatments. But for the new study, researchers led by Justin Barnes at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, wanted to know, more directly, if the plans were linked to lower survival— specifically for cancer patients, who obviously need more care than others.

Having that high-deductible health plan might kill you, literally Read More »

She’ll mess with Texas: Nurse keeps mailing abortion pills, despite Paxton lawsuit

Abortion, abortion pills, health, Policy, telehealth, texas / Paul Patrick / January 29, 2026

Texas sues Delaware nurse practitioner shipping out hundreds of abortion pills each month.

A Texas fight with a nurse practitioner may eventually push the Supreme Court to settle an intensifying battle between states with strict abortion-ban laws and those with shield laws to protect abortion providers supporting out-of-state patients.

In a lawsuit filed Tuesday, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton accused Debra Lynch, a Delaware-based nurse practitioner, of breaking Texas laws by shipping abortion pills that Lynch once estimated last January facilitated “up to 162 abortions per week” in the state.

“No one, regardless of where they live, will be freely allowed to aid in the murder of unborn children in Texas,” Paxton’s press release said.

In August, Paxton sent a cease-and-desist letter to shut down Lynch’s website, Her Safe Harbor, which she runs with her husband, Jay, a former communications director for Delaware’s health and social services department, alongside other volunteer licensed prescribers.

Fretting that Her Safe Harbor continues to advertise that Texas patients can get access to abortion pills “within days,” Paxton characterized Her Safe Harbor as an “extremist group” supposedly endangering women and unborn children in the state. To support that claim, Paxton cited two unrelated lawsuits where men allegedly ordered pills from other providers to poison pregnant partners and force miscarriages.

But Lynch told The New York Times that her lawyers advised her to ignore the demand letter, because Delaware’s shield law is one of the strongest in the country. Just before Paxton sent the letter, Delaware’s law was updated to clarify that it specifically “provides protection from civil and criminal actions that arise in another state that are based on the provision of health care services that are legal in Delaware,” the Times noted. And “even before that,” she said her lawyers “advised her that Delaware’s shield law protects her work.”

Paxton seems to expect the court will agree that shield laws cannot overrule state abortion ban laws or laws prohibiting out-of-state health practitioners from operating on Texans without a state license. His lawsuit demands a temporary and permanent injunction shutting down Her Safe Harbor, as well as the highest possible fines.

In a loss, Lynch could owe millions, as each mail order would be considered a violation of the state’s Human Life Protection Act, Paxton alleged, triggering a minimum $100,000 fine per violation. She could also face substantial jail time, the Austin American-Statesman reported, since Texas abortion “providers risk up to 99 years in prison.”

However, Lynch told the Times on Wednesday that the lawsuit will not stop her from shipping pills into Texas. She’s been anticipating this fight since at least the beginning of last year and remains committed to helping pregnant people in states with strict abortion laws get support from a qualified health provider. She fears that otherwise, they’ll feel driven to take riskier steps that could endanger their lives.

“I don’t fear Ken Paxton,” Lynch told the Statesman last January. “I don’t fear getting arrested or anything like that.”

Nurse plans to defend shield laws

This is the third lawsuit Paxton has filed against an out-of-state abortion pill provider, his press release noted. Legal experts who support abortion ban laws, as well as those supporting abortion shield laws, told the NYT they expect the Supreme Court to eventually weigh the arguments on both sides. If that happened, it could impact law enforcement in about a third of states with “near-total” abortion bans, as well as more than 20 states that enacted abortion shield laws.

To Lynch, abortion ban laws have already proven disastrous, doing more harm than good.

The Statesman cited data from the Society of Family Planning (SFP), showing that after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, medication abortion by telehealth became much more popular in the US. In 2022, this type of service accounted for approximately 1 in 25 abortions; by 2024, the numbers had shot to 1 in 5.

“Nearly half of those prescriptions went to patients in states with abortion bans or restrictions on telehealth abortion,” the Statesman reported, and SFP’s data showed that Texas residents, particularly, were turning more to telehealth. In the first half of 2024, 2,800 Texans per month received abortion medication by mail, which was “more than any other abortion-restricted state,” the data showed.

SFP also found that, overall, abortions had increased following tighter restrictions, totaling more than 1 million in 2023, which SFP noted was “the highest number in more than a decade.”

Lynch told the Statesman that abortion-ban laws “hadn’t stopped her from mailing the medications. They hadn’t stopped patients from receiving them. They just created hundreds of miles between patients and providers,” leaving women “feeling isolated and afraid to access a procedure that’s legal in half the country, and which had been legal everywhere in the US for half a century.”

“They’re truly alone,” Lynch said. “That frightens the hell out of me.”

Lynch’s case, or one of the other Texas lawsuits, could put shield laws to the test and one day clarify for all US residents if medication abortion by telehealth is legal in states with more restrictive laws.

A win could back up shield laws and block Texas from prosecuting providers like Lynch, as well as from enforcing proposed laws like Texas’ House Bill 991. If passed, that law would let Texas residents sue Internet service providers for failing to block abortion pill providers’ websites.

On the Her Safe Harbor website, Lynch and her partners say that patient safety is their priority and that they go beyond what typical providers offer to ensure that people seeking abortions are well cared for. The website details which abortion pills patients will receive (Mifepristone and Misoprostol), while, unlike other abortion providers, also sends pain and nausea medication at no cost. Both the NYT and the Statesman’s reporters confirmed that Her Safe Harbor is also available for patients to check in with any questions or concerns throughout the process.

Paxton seems fixated on Her Safe Harbor’s claims that orders can be shipped to all states, regardless of state laws, which he alleged makes women not seeking abortions vulnerable to attacks by male partners.

However, Her Safe Harbor takes steps to speak directly with patients in states with the most restrictive abortion laws. An Ars test showed that patients seeking consultations from such states are encouraged to call health care providers directly, rather than submit a form that their state could try to subpoena, a step that could prevent the kinds of attacks that Paxton fears. Of course, anyone can still choose to initiate the process using the consultation form, with Her Safe Harbor providing reassurances that the group “has never and will never disclose any private health data to any authority. We will not comply if we are ever subpoenaed.”

“This lawsuit is not about patient safety”

In email comments, Jay Lynch, who helps run Her Safe Harbor with his wife, told Ars that Paxton’s lawsuit is not trying to “protect life” but seeking to “silence medicine.”

“Every day, we provide evidence-based medical care to women who are scared, vulnerable, and often out of options,” Jay said. “We assess medical history. We evaluate risk. We follow clinical guidelines. We act to prevent complications, hospitalizations, infertility, and death. That is what medicine is supposed to do: save lives and reduce harm.”

Jay accused Paxton of “trying to expand state control across borders” and “intimidate providers everywhere.”

“This lawsuit is not about patient safety,” Jay said. “It is about who gets to decide what care is allowed: trained medical professionals—or politicians with no clinical expertise.”

To Jay, a win for Paxton would put patients in a risky place, forcing doctors and nurses to choose between “doing what is medically right, or doing what is politically ‘safe.’”

“That is a dangerous place for any healthcare system to be,” Jay said, noting that “when politicians override clinicians, patients pay the price” through delayed treatment, worsening injuries, preventable emergencies, lost fertility, or their lives.

Working with her husband and other providers, Lynch told the NYT that Her Safe Harbor is currently shipping out hundreds of packages a month. She vowed that as long as threats to abortion access continued to risk women’s lives, the shipments would never stop.

“Women are losing their lives and children are winding up orphans, and babies are being born with non-life-sustaining medical conditions” due to abortion bans and restrictive laws, Lynch told the NYT. “As long as that is happening, there’s absolutely nothing or nobody that will deter us from our mission to bring health care to women.”

Ashley is a senior policy reporter for Ars Technica, dedicated to tracking social impacts of emerging policies and new technologies. She is a Chicago-based journalist with 20 years of experience.

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Dozens of CDC vaccination databases have been frozen under RFK Jr.

CDC, Data, Database, health, robert f kennedy jr, vaccination / Kris Guyer / January 27, 2026

“Damning”

Overall, a lack of updated data can make it more difficult, if not impossible, for federal and state health officials to identify and rapidly respond to emerging outbreaks. It can also prevent the identification of communities or demographics that could benefit most from targeted vaccination outreach.

In an accompanying editorial, Jeanne Marrazzo, CEO of the Infectious Disease Society of America and former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, stated the concern in starker terms, writing: “The evidence is damning: The administration’s anti-vaccine stance has interrupted the reliable flow of the data we need to keep Americans safe from preventable infections. The consequences will be dire.”

The study authors note that the unexplained pauses could be direct targeting of vaccine-related data collection by the administration—or they could be an indirect consequence of the tumult Kennedy and the Trump administration have inflicted on the CDC, including brutal budget and staff cuts. But Marrazzo argues that the exact mechanism doesn’t matter.

“Either causative pathway demonstrates a profound disregard for human life, scientific progress, and the dedication of the public health workforce that has provided a bulwark against the advance of emerging, and reemerging, infectious diseases,” she writes.

Marrazzo emphasizes that the lack of current data not only hampers outbreak response efforts but also helps the health secretary realize his vision for the CDC.

Kennedy, “who has stated baldly that the CDC failed to protect Americans during the COVID-19 pandemic, is now enacting a self-fulfilling prophecy. The CDC as it currently exists is no longer the stalwart, reliable source of public health data that for decades has set the global bar for rigorous public health practice.”

Emily Hilliard, a spokesperson for the Department of Health and Human Services, sent Ars Technica a statement saying: “Changes to individual dashboards or update schedules reflect routine data quality and system management decisions, not political direction. Under this administration, public health data reporting is driven by scientific integrity, transparency, and accuracy.”

Dozens of CDC vaccination databases have been frozen under RFK Jr. Read More »

A weird, itchy rash is linked to the keto diet—but no one knows why

case report, dermatology, health, ketogenic, New England Journal of Medicine, rash, weight loss / Rejus Almole / January 24, 2026

Diet downsides

Otherwise, the keto diet is popular among people trying to lose weight, particularly those trying to lose visceral fat, like the man in the case study. Anecdotal reports promote the keto diet as being effective at helping people slim down relatively quickly while also improving stamina and mental clarity. But robust clinical data supporting these claims are lacking, and medical experts have raised concerns about long-term cardiovascular health, among other things.

There are also clear downsides to the diet. Ketones are acidic, and if they build up too much in the blood, they can be toxic, causing ketoacidosis. This is a particular concern for people with type 1 diabetes and for people with chronic alcohol abuse. For everyone else, there’s a list of common side effects, including nausea, vomiting, constipation, diarrhea, bad breath, headache, fatigue, and dizziness. Ketogenic diets are also linked to high cholesterol and kidney stones.

But there’s one side effect that’s well established but little known and still puzzling to doctors: the “keto rash” or prurigo pigmentosa. This rash fits the man’s case perfectly—red, raised, itchy bumps on the neck, chest, and back, with areas of hyperpigmentation also developing.

The rash was first identified in Japan in 1971, where it was mostly seen in women. While it has been consistently linked to metabolic disorders and dietary changes, experts still don’t understand what causes it. It’s seen not only in people on a keto diet but also in people with diabetes and those who have had bariatric surgery or are fasting.

In a review this month, researchers in Saudi Arabia noted that a leading hypothesis is that the high levels of ketones in the blood trigger inflammation around blood vessels driven by a type of white blood cell called neutrophils, and this inflammation is what causes the rash, which develops in different stages.

While the condition remains poorly understood, effective treatments have at least been worked out. The most common treatment is to get the person out of ketosis and give them an antibiotic in the tetracycline class. Antibiotics are designed to treat bacterial infections (which this is not), but they can also dampen inflammation signals and thwart the activity of neutrophils.

In the man’s case, doctors gave him a two-week course of doxycycline and told him to ditch his keto diet. A week later, the rash was gone.

A weird, itchy rash is linked to the keto diet—but no one knows why Read More »

US officially out of WHO, leaving hundreds of millions of dollars unpaid

health, trump administration, WHO, World Health Organization / Kris Guyer / January 22, 2026

“The United States will not be making any payments to the WHO before our withdrawal on January 22, 2026,” the spokesperson said in an emailed statement. “The cost [borne] by the US taxpayer and US economy after the WHO’s failure during the COVID pandemic—and since—has been too high as it is. We will ensure that no more US funds are routed to this organization.”

In addition, the US had also promised to provide $490 million in voluntary contributions for those two years. The funding would have gone toward efforts such as the WHO’s health emergency program, tuberculosis control, and the polio eradication effort, Stat reports. Two anonymous sources told Stat that some of that money was paid, but they couldn’t provide an estimate of how much.

The loss of both past and future financial support from the US has been a hefty blow to the WHO. Immediately upon notification last January, the WHO began cutting costs. Those included freezing recruitment, restricting travel expenditures, making all meetings virtual, limiting IT equipment updates, and suspending office refurbishment. The agency also began cutting staff and leaving positions unfilled. According to Stat, the WHO staff is on track to be down 22 percent by the middle of this year.

In a recent press conference, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the US withdrawal is a “lose-lose situation” for the US and the rest of the world. The US will lose access to infectious disease intelligence and sway over outbreak responses, and global health security will be weakened overall. “I hope they will reconsider,” Tedros said.

US officially out of WHO, leaving hundreds of millions of dollars unpaid Read More »

mRNA cancer vaccine shows protection at 5-year follow-up, Moderna and Merck say

cancer, clinical trial, health, melanoma, moderna, mRNA, skin cancer, vaccine / Mike M. / January 21, 2026

mRNA’s potential

Previous data from the trial reported that 107 participants received the mRNA vaccine and Keytruda treatment, while the remaining 50 only received Keytruda. At the two-year follow-up, 24 of the 107 (22 percent) who got the experimental vaccine and Keytruda had recurrence or death, while 20 of 50 (40 percent) treated with just Keytruda had recurrence or death, indicating a 44 percent risk reduction. The companies did not report the breakdown of the two groups in the press release this week for the five-year follow-up, but said the risk reduction was 49 percent, which is also what the companies reported for the three-year follow-up.

As for side effects, the companies reported that little had changed from previous analyses; adverse events were similar between the two groups. The top side effects linked to the vaccine were fatigue, injection site pain, and chills.

The results “highlight the potential of a prolonged benefit” of the vaccine combined with Keytruda in patients with high-risk melanoma,” Kyle Holen, a senior vice president at Moderna, said.

They also “illustrate mRNA’s potential in cancer care,” he said, noting that the company has eight more Phase 2 and Phase 3 trials going for mRNA vaccines against a variety of other cancers, including lung, bladder, and kidney cancers.

Marjorie Green, a senior vice president at Merck, called the five-year follow-up data a “meaningful milestone” and “encouraging.”

“[W]e look forward to late-stage data from the INTerpath clinical development program with Moderna, across a range of tumor types where significant unmet needs remain,” she said.

While the top-line results appear positive, conclusions can’t be drawn until the full data from the trial are published. The vaccines are also being developed amid a political environment hostile to mRNA vaccines. Anti-vaccine Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has railed against mRNA COVID-19 vaccines, making false claims about their safety and efficacy. In August, Kennedy unilaterally canceled $500 million in grant funding for the development of mRNA-based vaccines against diseases that pose pandemic threats.

mRNA cancer vaccine shows protection at 5-year follow-up, Moderna and Merck say Read More »

Flesh-eating flies are eating their way through Mexico, CDC warns

CDC, flies, HAN, health, new world screwworm, parasites, screwworm, USDA / Tim Belzer / January 20, 2026

Across Central America and Mexico, there have been 1,190 human cases of NWS reported and seven deaths. More than 148,000 animals have been affected.

Close calls

In September, the USDA warned that an 8-month-old cow with an active NWS infection was found in a feedlot in the Mexican state of Nuevo León, just 70 miles from the border. The finding prompted Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller to step up warnings about the threat.

“The screwworm is dangerously close,” Miller said at the time. “It nearly wiped out our cattle industry before; we need to act forcefully now.”

According to the USDA’s latest data, Nuevo León has seen three cases in the outbreak, with none that are currently active. But, its neighboring state, Tamaulipas, is having a flare-up, with eight animal cases considered active. The Mexican state shares a border with the southern-most portion of Texas. Mexico overall has reported 24 hospitalizations among people and 601 animal cases.

For now, the NWS has not been detected in the US, and the CDC considers the risk to people to be low.

“However, given the potential for geographic spread, CDC is issuing this Health Advisory to increase awareness of the outbreak and to summarize CDC recommendations for clinicians and health departments in the United States on case identification and reporting, specimen collection, diagnosis, and treatment of NWS, as well as guidance for the public,” the agency said.

Generally, the agency advises being on the lookout for egg masses or fly larvae in wounds or infection sites, especially if there’s destruction of living tissue or feelings of movement. Once discovered, health care workers should report the case and promptly remove and kill all larvae and eggs, preferably by drowning in a sealed, leak-proof container of 70 percent ethanol. “Failure to kill and properly dispose of all larvae or eggs could result in the new introduction and spread of NWS in the local environment,” the CDC warns in bold. At least 10 dead larvae should then be sent to the CDC for confirmation.

The USDA is currently releasing 100 million sterile male flies per week in Mexico to try to establish a new biological barrier.

This isn’t the fly’s first attempt at a US comeback since the 1960s. In 2016, the flies were somehow reintroduced to the Florida Keys, where they viciously attacked Key Deer, an endangered species and the smallest of North America’s white-tailed deer. The flies were eliminated again in 2017 using the sterile fly method.

Flesh-eating flies are eating their way through Mexico, CDC warns Read More »

This may be the grossest eye pic ever—but the cause is what’s truly horrifying

antibiotic resistance, bacteria, brain, eye, Features, health, hypervirulent Klebsiella pneumoniae, infection, liver, lungs, New England Journal of Medicine / Tim Belzer / January 16, 2026

Savage microbe

Whatever was laying waste to his eye seemed to have come from inside his own body, carried in his bloodstream—possibly the same thing that could explain the liver mass, lung nodules, and brain lesions. There was one explanation that fit the condition perfectly: hypervirulent Klebsiella pneumoniae or hvKP.

Classical K. pneumoniae is a germ that dwells in people’s intestinal tracts and is one that’s familiar to doctors. It’s known for lurking in health care settings and infecting vulnerable patients, often causing pneumonia or urinary tract infections. But hvKP is very different. In comparison, it’s a beefed-up bacteria with a rage complex. It was first identified in the 1980s in Taiwan—not for stalking weak patients in the hospital but for devastating healthy people in normal community settings.

An infection with hvKP—even in otherwise healthy people—is marked by metastatic infection. That is, the bacteria spreads throughout the body, usually starting with the liver, where it creates a pus-filled abscess. It then goes on a trip through the bloodstream, invading the lungs, brain, soft tissue, skin, and the eye (endogenous endophthalmitis). Putting it all together, the man had a completely typical clinical case of an hvKP infection.

Still, definitively identifying hvKP is tricky. Mucus from the man’s respiratory tract grew a species of Klebsiella, but there’s not yet a solid diagnostic test to differentiate hvKP from the classical variety. Since 2024, researchers have worked out a strategy of using the presence of five different virulence genes found on plasmids (relatively small, circular pieces of DNA, separate from chromosomal DNA, that can replicate on their own and be shared among bacteria.) But the method isn’t perfect—some classical K. pneumoniae can also carry the five genes.

A string test performed on the rare growth of *Klebsiella pneumoniae* from the sputum culture shows a positive result, with the formation of a viscous string with a height of greater than 5 mm. Credit: NEJM 2026

Another much simpler method is the string test, in which clinicians basically test the goopy-ness of the bacteria—hvKP is known for being sticky. For this test, a clinician grows the bacteria into a colony on a petri dish, then touches an inoculation loop to the colony and pulls up. If the string of attached goo stretches more than 5 mm off the petri dish, it’s considered positive for hvKP. This is (obviously) not a precise test.

This may be the grossest eye pic ever—but the cause is what’s truly horrifying Read More »

“I am very annoyed”: Pharma execs blast RFK Jr.’s attack on vaccines

anti-vaccine, health, pharmaceutical, Robert F Kenned Jr. / Rejus Almole / January 15, 2026

Waiting for the midterms

But pharmaceutical executives don’t appear comforted by the pushback. “Today it may be childhood vaccines or mRNA, but tomorrow it’s everything,” Noubar Afeyan, co-founder and chairman of Moderna, maker of mRNA vaccines, said. “We have to say not just ‘why is this happening?,’ but ‘Where will it stop?’”

As a bad flu season is underway, Dean Li, president of Merck Research Laboratories, noted that the anti-vaccine rhetoric is hitting seasonal flu shots. “With the pressure on vaccination, I cannot foresee flu vaccination increasing in this country over the next three years,” he said in a presentation.

Sanofi Chief Executive Paul Hudson had a similarly pessimistic outlook. “It’s clear this administration has a particular sensitivity around vaccination, and indeed pediatric vaccination,” Hudson said. “I’m asked all the time ‘what are you going to do to fix this?,’ and the truth is we just need to stay extremely objective and continue presenting the evidence. There’s really very little else we can do,” except wait for the midterm elections, he said.

“We will have to maintain a steely focus on the long-term future of vaccines and deal with any uncertainty around vaccine coverage rates in the short-term based on misinformation, Facebook posts, and statements from the top,” he said.

Bourla also worried about the conditions Kennedy is creating to attack drug makers. Kennedy, who is an environmental lawyer with no scientific or medical background, has profited from lawsuits against vaccine makers, as have many of his allies and advisors. “There is also a lot of plaintiffs’ playbook there,” Bourla said. “Everybody will start litigating.”

“I am very annoyed”: Pharma execs blast RFK Jr.’s attack on vaccines Read More »

SC measles outbreak has gone berserk: 124 cases since Friday, 409 quarantined

health, Infectious disease, measles, outbreak, South Carolina, vaccination / Kris Guyer / January 14, 2026

A measles outbreak in South Carolina that began in October is now wildly accelerating, doubling in just the past week to a total of 434 cases, with 409 people currently in quarantine.

Amid the outbreak, South Carolina health officials have been providing updates on cases every Tuesday and Friday. On Tuesday, state health officials reported 124 more cases since last Friday, which had 99 new cases since the previous Tuesday. On that day, January 6, officials noted a more modest increase of 26 cases, bringing the outbreak total at that point to 211 cases.

With the 3-month-old outbreak now doubled in just a week, health officials are renewing calls for people to get vaccinated against the highly infectious virus—an effort that has met with little success since October. Still, the health department is activating its mobile health unit to offer free measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccinations, as well as flu vaccinations at two locations today and Thursday in the Spartanburg area, the epicenter of the outbreak.

Officials are also warning that they’re losing the ability to trace cases, and exposures are continuing. Last Friday, someone contagious with measles was in the South Carolina State Museum in Columbia between 1 pm and 5 pm ET. Anyone in the museum during that time and unvaccinated is at risk of contracting the infection. The virus spreads through the air and can linger in a room’s airspace for up to two hours after an infected person has left. Measles is so contagious that up to 90 percent of unvaccinated people exposed will fall ill.

SC measles outbreak has gone berserk: 124 cases since Friday, 409 quarantined Read More »

FDA deletes warning on bogus autism therapies touted by RFK Jr.‘s allies

anti-vaccine, autism, fda, fraud, health, Robert F Kenned Jr., Scams, treatment / Kris Guyer / January 13, 2026

For years, the Food and Drug Administration provided an informational webpage for parents warning them of the dangers of bogus autism treatments, some promoted by anti-vaccine activists and “wellness” companies. The page cited specifics scams and the “significant health risks” they pose.

But, under anti-vaccine Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.—who has numerous ties to the wellness industry—that FDA information webpage is now gone. It was quietly deleted at the end of last year, the Department of Health and Human Services confirmed to Ars Technica.

The defunct webpage, titled “Be Aware of Potentially Dangerous Products and Therapies that Claim to Treat Autism,” provided parents and other consumers with an overview of the problem. It began with a short description of autism and some evidence-based, FDA-approved medications that can help manage autism symptoms. Then, the regulatory agency provided a list of some false claims and unproven, potentially dangerous treatments it had been working to combat. “Some of these so-called therapies carry significant health risks,” the FDA wrote.

The list included chelation and hyperbaric oxygen therapy, treatments that those in the anti-vaccine and wellness spheres have championed.

Dangerous detoxes

Chelation is a real treatment for heavy metal poisoning, such as lead poisoning. But it has been co-opted by anti-vaccine activists and wellness gurus, who falsely claim it can treat autism, among other things. These sham treatments can come in a variety of forms, including sprays, suppositories, capsules, and liquid drops. Actual FDA-approved chelation therapy products are prescription only, the agency noted, and chelating certain minerals from the body “can lead to serious and life-threatening outcomes.”

Many anti-vaccine activists promote the false and thoroughly debunked claim that vaccines cause autism, and more specifically, that trace metal components in some vaccines cause the neurological disorder. For years, anti-vaccine activists like Kennedy focused on thimerosal, a vaccine preservative that contains ethylmercury. Thimerosal was largely removed from childhood vaccines by 2001 amid unfounded concerns. The removal made no impact on autism rates, and many studies have continued to show that it is safe and not a cause of autism. Anti-vaccine activists moved on to blame other vaccine components for autism, including aluminum, which is used in some vaccines to help spur protective immune responses. It too has been found to be safe and not linked to autism.

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Google removes some AI health summaries after investigation finds “dangerous” flaws

AI, AI hallucination, ai overviews, Biz & IT, generative ai, Google, health, machine learning, misinformation, search engines, the guardian / Paul Patrick / January 12, 2026

Why AI Overviews produces errors

The recurring problems with AI Overviews stem from a design flaw in how the system works. As we reported in May 2024, Google built AI Overviews to show information backed up by top web results from its page ranking system. The company designed the feature this way based on the assumption that highly ranked pages contain accurate information.

However, Google’s page ranking algorithm has long struggled with SEO-gamed content and spam. The system now feeds these unreliable results to its AI model, which then summarizes them with an authoritative tone that can mislead users. Even when the AI draws from accurate sources, the language model can still draw incorrect conclusions from the data, producing flawed summaries of otherwise reliable information.

The technology does not inherently provide factual accuracy. Instead, it reflects whatever inaccuracies exist on the websites Google’s algorithm ranks highly, presenting the facts with an authority that makes errors appear trustworthy.

Other examples remain active

The Guardian found that typing slight variations of the original queries into Google, such as “lft reference range” or “lft test reference range,” still prompted AI Overviews. Hebditch said this was a big worry and that the AI Overviews present a list of tests in bold, making it very easy for readers to miss that these numbers might not even be the right ones for their test.

AI Overviews still appear for other examples that The Guardian originally highlighted to Google. When asked why these AI Overviews had not also been removed, Google said they linked to well-known and reputable sources and informed people when it was important to seek out expert advice.

Google said AI Overviews only appear for queries where it has high confidence in the quality of the responses. The company constantly measures and reviews the quality of its summaries across many different categories of information, it added.

This is not the first controversy for AI Overviews. The feature has previously told people to put glue on pizza and eat rocks. It has proven unpopular enough that users have discovered that inserting curse words into search queries disables AI Overviews entirely.

Google removes some AI health summaries after investigation finds “dangerous” flaws Read More »