Jay Peters
Former X CEO Linda Yaccarino has a new job.
After stepping down from X in July, Yaccarino is taking the CEO job at eMed Population Health, which makes a digital health platform for managing GLP-1 weight loss drugs.
Health
Google dubbed an error from its Med-Gemini model a typo. Experts say it demonstrates the risks of AI in medicine.
Hayden Field
Justine Calma
Suddenly, the EPA no longer thinks greenhouse gas emissions “endanger” public health.
The Trump administration proposed tossing out the landmark 2009 “endangerment finding” that allows the Environmental Protection Agency to regulate greenhouse gas pollution under the Clean Air Act.
Greenhouse gases including carbon dioxide and methane cause climate change, of course. Climate change is projected to lead to roughly 250,000 additional deaths each year from malnutrition, malaria, diarrhea and heat illness between 2030 and 2050, according to the World Health Organization.
Whoop’s FDA notice is a reminder that it’s harder to tell what’s a medical feature and what’s “just for fun.”
Victoria Song
Marina Galperina
FDA’s AI tool “hallucinates confidently.”
U.S. Food and Drug Administration employees told CNN that Elsa — the AI model that’s supposed to help speed up approvals of pharmaceuticals and medical devices — isn’t working great. Instead, it cites nonexistent studies, misrepresents research, fails to access crucial documents, and wastes a bunch of their time. Not quite the “AI revolution” RFK Jr. promised.
Mia Sato
UnitedHealth is keeping tabs on its critics.
What do a filmmaker in Wisconsin, billionaire investor Bill Ackman, The Guardian, and a doctor who posted on TikTok all have in common? UnitedHealth has targeted them in an effort to clamp down on criticism. The company’s legal tactics have only intensified after the murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, The New York Times reports.
UnitedHealth’s Campaign to Quiet Critics
[nytimes.com]
Gemini’s on the wrist, there’s a new Antioxidant Index, and a slightly updated Ultra, too.
Victoria Song
Justine Calma
A science fair of “things we’ll never know.”
House Democrats are holding a science fair of canceled grants in Washington, DC today to call attention to research projects that the Trump administration has defunded.
Justine Calma
The Trump administration stopped paying for scientific journal subscriptions.
Publishing giant Springer Nature is losing millions as a result, Axios reports.
President Trump is also working to slash funding for research institutions in the US, while hundreds of scientists and engineers have accused his administration of censorship.
Justine Calma
Make asbestos OK again?
The Trump administration is thinking about scrapping a ban on white asbestos, a material used in roofing, chlorine manufacturing, and more. White asbestos is banned in many countries; exposure to it has been linked to lung cancer and other serious health risks.
“By siding with corporate polluters and willfully ignoring decades of public health evidence, they are dismantling life-saving protections,” Michelle Roos, executive director of the Environmental Protection Network, said in a press release today.
Elizabeth Lopatto
How is Peter Thiel’s all-drug Olympics going?
You may remember, he funded a literal version of a Saturday Night Live sketch. Well, first of all, it turns out shattering world records in sports like swimming is a little more complicated than just adding steroids. But second: The Enhanced Games are a fancy way to sell supplements.
‘This is going to cost lives. Children are going to suffer.’
Lauren Leffer
Justine Calma
Victoria Song
Putting on my ‘health tech wet blanket’ hat because contactless blood pressure isn’t really a thing yet.
It’s been brought to my attention that the Trump Mobile Telehealth Information site seemingly claims contactless blood pressure are things you can get through its third-party Doctegrity services. This is a health tech red flag. While the other metrics mentioned are generally possible through a camera, contactless blood pressure is an emerging technology that hasn’t been widely adopted. Most blood pressure tech still requires calibration with a cuff. I’m more inclined to think this is a marketing copy snafu.
Trump Mobile | Telehealth
[trumpmobile.com]
Jess Weatherbed
Elizabeth Lopatto
Wow, there sure is a lot of news about Elon Musk’s companies all of a sudden.
Were you feeling left out by the terrible economics of Musk’s Twitter buyout? Great news! xAI, which now owns Twit — I mean, X — is selling shares. Also, Neuralink, newly freed from those pesky FDA staffers overseeing its applications, raised more money. has raised $650 million. Plus, there will be a public demo in two weeks! You know, if I were a cynical person, I might think Musk was trying to publicly distance himself from his time at DOGE.
Justine Calma
Devastating wildfires in Canada are creating an air quality disaster in the US.
The worst wildfires in decades are tearing through Saskatchewan, Canada, and at least two people have been killed in blazes in the neighboring province of Manitoba.
Smoke from those fires has triggered air quality warnings in Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota. It’s the kind of climate change-driven disaster that led young people from Minnesota to file suit against the Trump administration last week. Wildfire smoke can be 10 times as toxic as other air pollutants.
Marina Galperina
“It’s persecution.”
On Wednesday, the House of Representatives passed President Donald Trump’s “One Big, Beautiful Bill” which would ban gender-affirming care for Medicaid recipients as well as those insured under the Affordable Care Act. House Republican leadership struck the phrase “for minors” with an amendment last night. Some Democrats are pushing back. Rep. Maxwell Frost (D-FL) told The Independent, “It’s horrible, and obviously the fight doesn’t end here.”
The bill now heads to Senate.
Andrew Liszewski
No, not those sorts of drugs, the kinds that could save your life.
Tim Stevens
Thomas Ricker
Flattery will get you everywhere.
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang’s recent embrace of the infamously transactional US president has already secured a Huawei AI chip clampdown and a reversal of limits placed on Nvidia’s AI chip exports. Now, according to Reuters, The UAE could be allowed to import 500,000 of Nvidia’s most advanced AI chips per year starting in 2025. It’s all part of a US deal to build a massive artificial intelligence campus in the UAE — measuring 10 square miles with 5 gigawatts of power for AI data centers — something that wouldn’t have been allowed previously over concerns that China would gain access to the tech.
Jess Weatherbed
Jay Peters
Trump is nominating a wellness influencer for surgeon general.
The president announced on Truth Social that he’s nominating Dr. Casey Means, who The New York Times says “frequently casts doubt on the American medical system,” for the position.
Dr. Janette Nesheiwat, who had been the previous nominee, will work in “another capacity” at the Department of Health and Human Services, Trump said.
Justine Calma
Your weather forecast depends on federal research.
More than 90 percent of Americans rely on federal science information, from weather forecasts to food safety warnings, according to a recent poll by the Association of Science and Technology Centers. Many of those resources are in jeopardy now as the Trump administration slashes the federal workforce and funding for health and science research.
Under RFK Jr., ‘Make America Healthy Again’ means junk science like ‘survival of the fittest.’
Lauren Leffer
Justine Calma
The Trump administration’s new HHS report on treating trans youth is just harmful ‘pseudoscience.’
“The report reads less like a medical analysis and more like an anti-trans screed—politicized, inflammatory, and devoid of scholarly grounding,” writes journalist Erin Reed in comprehensively fact-checking the 400-page document.
The HHS report has also been repudiated by the medical community. “This report misrepresents the current medical consensus and fails to reflect the realities of pediatric care,” Susan Kressly, president of the American Academy of Pediatrics, said in a statement yesterday.
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