Today's Not Sorry Not Sorry

BKjr is a fraud and a raving freak, who has used his fraudulent raving freakishness to bilk tens of thousands of grieving and scared-shitless parents out of tens of millions of dollars.

I fuckin' hate these people.

National Cancer Institute Employees Can’t Publish Information on These Topics Without Special Approval

Vaccines. Fluoride. Autism. Communications involving these and 20 other “controversial, high profile, or sensitive” topics will get extra scrutiny under Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Employees at the National Cancer Institute, which is part of the National Institutes of Health, received internal guidance last week to flag manuscripts, presentations or other communications for scrutiny if they addressed “controversial, high profile, or sensitive” topics. Among the 23 hot-button issues, according to internal records reviewed by ProPublica: vaccines, fluoride, peanut allergies, autism.

While it’s not uncommon for the cancer institute to outline a couple of administration priorities, the scope and scale of the list is unprecedented and highly unusual, said six employees who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to comment publicly. All materials must be reviewed by an institute “clearance team,” according to the records, and could be examined by officials at the NIH or its umbrella agency, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

Staffers and experts worried that the directive would delay or halt the publication of research. “This is micromanagement at the highest level,” said Dr. Georges C. Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association.

The list touches on the personal priorities of HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a longtime anti-vaccine activist who has repeatedly promoted medical conspiracy theories and false claims. He has advanced the idea that rising rates of autism are linked to vaccines, a claim that has been debunked by hundreds of scientific studies. He has also suggested that aluminum in vaccines is responsible for childhood allergies (his son reportedly is severely allergic to peanuts). And he has claimed that water fluoridation — which the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has called “one of the 10 greatest public health achievements of the 20th century” — is an “industrial waste.”

In confirmation hearings in January, Kennedy said that he was not “anti-vaccine,” and that as secretary, he would not discourage people from getting immunized for measles or polio, but he dodged questions about the link between autism and vaccines.

Another term on the list, “cancer moonshot,” refers to a program launched by President Barack Obama in 2016. It was a priority of the Biden administration, which intended for the program to cut the nation’s cancer death rate by at least half and prevent more than 4 million deaths.

The list is “an unusual mix of words that are tied to activities that this administration has been at war with — like equity, but also words that they purport to be in favor of doing something about, like ultraprocessed food,” Tracey Woodruff, director of the Program on Reproductive Health and the Environment at the University of California, San Francisco, said in an email.

A directive on topics requiring prepublication review at the National Cancer Institute was said to be circulated by the agency’s communications team. Credit:Obtained by ProPublica
The guidance states that staffers “do not need to share content describing the routine conduct of science if it will not get major media attention, is not controversial or sensitive, and does not touch on an administration priority.”

A longtime senior employee at the institute said that the directive was circulated by the institute’s communications team, and the content was not discussed at the leadership level. It is not clear in which exact office the directive originated. The NCI, NIH and HHS did not respond to ProPublica’s emailed questions. (The existence of the list was first revealed in social media posts on Friday.)

Health and research experts told ProPublica they feared the chilling effect of the new guidance. Not only might it lead to a lengthier and more complex clearance process, it may also cause researchers to censor their work out of fear or deference to the administration’s priorities.

“This is real interference in the scientific process,” said Linda Birnbaum, a former director of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences who served as a federal scientist for four decades. The list, she said, “just seems like Big Brother intimidation.”

During the first two months of Donald Trump’s second presidency, his administration has slashed funding for research institutions and stalled the NIH’s grant application process.

Kennedy has suggested that hundreds of NIH staffers should be fired and said that the institute should deprioritize infectious diseases like COVID-19 and shift its focus to chronic diseases, such as diabetes and obesity.

Obesity is on the NCI’s new list, as are infectious diseases including COVID-19, bird flu and measles.

The “focus on bird flu and covid is concerning,” Woodruff wrote, because “not being transparent with the public about infectious diseases will not stop them or make them go away and could make them worse.”

AntiVax

Their champion zigged when he was supposed to zag. Now they don't know what the fuck to do.

A Dead Kid In Texas

It's up to 124 cases now. Five of them were vaccinated.

FIVE OUT OF 124 - that's 4%

Measles, once eliminated in the U.S., sickens 99 in Texas and New Mexico

Health authorities warned of further spread. Most U.S. measles cases this year involved people 19 and under and those without a confirmed vaccination.

Nearly 100 people across Texas and New Mexico have contracted measles, state officials say, escalating anxiety over the spread of a potentially life-threatening illness that was declared eliminated in the United States more than two decades ago.

Ninety cases of measles — the majority affecting children under 17 — were detected in Texas’s South Plains, a sprawling region in the state’s northwest, the Texas Department of State Health Services said Friday. The spread marks a significant jump from the 24 cases reported earlier this month. The DSHS said “additional cases are likely to occur in the outbreak area and the surrounding communities.”

Nine other cases were recorded in New Mexico as of Thursday, all in Lea County, which borders the South Plains region. New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham (D) urged those in the county with symptoms to call their local health offices.

Measles, which is most dangerous to children under 5, can cause a fever, cough, runny nose, watery eyes and tiny white spots, called koplik spots. As the disease progresses, some may experience a measles rash, which looks like small raised bumps or flat red spots.

There is no specific cure or treatment for measles. One or two in every 1,000 children who contract measles are projected to die, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in 2019, with pneumonia being the most common cause of death.

The United States declared measles eliminated in 2000, meaning the disease had not spread domestically for more than 12 months. It credited the achievement to widespread immunization campaigns after the vaccine became available in 1963.

However, the national vaccination rate for measles has dropped in recent years, particularly since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic. Even a small decline in vaccination can significantly increase the likelihood of an outbreak. Measles can “easily cross borders” in any community where vaccination rates are below 95 percent, according to the CDC.

Most cases recorded this year have occurred in people who were unvaccinated or whose vaccination status was unknown, the CDC said.

The disease’s comeback has occurred in tandem with the rise of anti-vaccine rhetoric propagated on social media and among some public officials.

President Donald Trump — a longtime vaccine skeptic — has a mixed record on the subject. His choice for health secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., has a history of spreading vaccine misinformation and recently promised to scrutinize childhood vaccination schedules, blaming them as a potential contributor to the rise in chronic diseases, the Associated Press reported this month.

While on the campaign trail, Trump pledged to cut federal funding for schools that required vaccines.

In the decade leading up to the measles vaccine’s introduction in 1963, the disease killed an estimated 400 to 500 people in the United States each year and caused an estimated 48,000 hospitalizations annually, the CDC said. So far, about a quarter of the cases recorded this year have resulted in hospitalizations, either to isolate the infected person or to treat complications.

- and -

Texas child is first confirmed death in growing measles outbreak

The unvaccinated school-age child is the first confirmed fatality in Texas’s worst measles outbreak in three decades.

LUBBOCK, Texas — A child has died of measles in Texas, the first confirmed fatality in the state’s worst outbreak in three decades, state health officials said Wednesday.

The unvaccinated school-age child was hospitalized in Lubbock last week, according to the Texas Department of State Health Services.

Officials have reported 124 cases in Texas, mostly in west Texas, since late January, and nine cases in a neighboring New Mexico county. Nearly 80 percent are children, who are more susceptible to the vaccine-preventable disease.

“It’s heartbreaking,” said Katherine Wells, Lubbock’s director of public health. “My heart just goes out to the family. And I hope this will help people reconsider getting children vaccinated.”

Summer Davies, a physician who cared for the child when they were first hospitalized this month at Covenant Children’s Hospital here, said the patient arrived with a high fever and struggled to breathe without assistance.

The child’s respiratory symptoms grew progressively worse, and then heart problems were diagnosed. Several days ago, the child was moved to an intensive care unit and placed on a ventilator before dying.

The child was otherwise healthy, Davies said.

The patient “could have lived a long, happy life, and it is really heartbreaking when it’s something you know you could have prevented or that is preventable and ended in something like this,” said Davies, a pediatric hospitalist.

Davies said she has seen about nine measles patients during the current outbreak. She had never previously encountered the disease.

While many children recover from measles, some die of pneumonia caused by the virus or a secondary bacterial infection.

Vaccination rates are below average in rural Gaines County, the center of the outbreak, where 80 cases have been reported. The deceased child’s hometown was not released. Many patients in rural areas with limited health-care options have been treated at hospitals in Lubbock, one of the closest large cities.

During President Donald Trump’s White House meeting with Cabinet officials Wednesday, Trump was asked about the measles outbreak, and turned to his new secretary of health and human services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., one of the country’s most prominent critics of childhood vaccination, to answer the question.

Kennedy said the federal health department is “following the measles epidemic every day.”

Kennedy said he thought there were 124 people who had contracted the disease, mainly in Gaines County, and “mainly, we’re told in the Mennonite community.” He added: “There are two people who have died, but … we’re watching it, and there are about 20 people hospitalized, mainly for quarantine.”

Lara Anton, a spokeswoman for the state health department, said the agency is aware of only one death in the outbreak. She said patients are not being quarantined at hospitals. They are taken there for critical care, she said.

Kennedy added: “We’re watching it. We put out a post on it yesterday, and we’re going to continue to follow it.”

He appeared to play down the seriousness of the outbreak. “Incidentally, there have been four measles outbreaks this year in this country. Last year, there were 16. So it’s not unusual,” he said. “We have measles outbreaks every year.”

A measles outbreak is defined as three or more related cases. The case tally in Texas in the first two months of the year has eclipsed the annual U.S. case count for each year between 2020 and 2023, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In 2024, the country had 285 measles cases.

The CDC recommends children receive two doses of the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine. One dose is 93 percent effective against measles and two doses is 97 percent effective, the agency says.

Public health officials and experts say the Texas outbreak illustrates the consequences of declining vaccination rates. Measles is a highly contagious virus that causes fever and rashes and can also cause long-term neurological complications and death.

In Texas, five of the measles patients were vaccinated; the rest were unvaccinated or their vaccination status was unknown. Eighteen patients have been hospitalized.

“During a measles outbreak, about one in five people who get sick will need hospital care and one in 20 will develop pneumonia,” the Texas health agency said in a news release. “Rarely, measles can lead to swelling of the brain and death. It can also cause pregnancy complications, such as premature birth and babies with low birth weight.”

The outbreak in Texas comes as Trump elevates skeptics of vaccines to the government’s highest health posts.

Kennedy asserts that the risks of the vaccines outweigh the risk of disease.

Kennedy drew criticism for a 2019 trip to Samoa, where he met with activists who were calling for Samoans to skip measles vaccines five months before the island nation experienced a measles outbreak that infected thousands and killed 83.

But during his confirmation hearings, Kennedy said he supports the measles vaccine and would do nothing to discourage people from receiving it.

During his seven terms in the House of Representatives, Dave Weldon, Trump’s nominee to lead the CDC, was a leading proponent of the false claim that vaccines cause autism.

Sicknesses

Measles in Texas (not a lot of cases, but 2 counties now), and TB in Kansas (mostly KC).

So what's the over/under for when we see more than a few more cases because of the Super Bowl?

Or will we? Here's hoping all those fuckin' anti-vax morons dodge the bullets.

KU Medical Center experts work to control tuberculosis outbreak in Kansas

Faculty at KU Medical Center are working with state and local health departments to contain the spread of the disease.

In January, Kansas made headlines across the country for experiencing the largest outbreak of tuberculosis in the United States since the country began tracking TB cases in the 1950s. Since then, that claim has been downgraded to the largest incidence of the disease over the span of one year.

But that doesn’t mean the TB outbreak hasn’t held the attention of public health officials in the two Kansas City-area counties, Wyandotte and Johnson, where the outbreak is located. Those include faculty at the University of Kansas Medical Center who are working with Kansas state and county health departments to identify those at risk, treat people infected and mitigate the spread of the disease.

The United States has an overall low incidence of TB. Why is Kansas experiencing this outbreak?

“I don’t think there’s necessarily anything unique about Kansas, any secret sauce, so to speak,” said Erin Corriveau, M.D., MPH, associate professor in the departments of Family Medicine and Community Health and Population Health at KU Medical Center. Corriveau also serves as medical director of the Johnson County Department of Health and Environment and was the deputy health officer and medical director of the TB division in Wyandotte County until July 2024.

An age-old disease once known as “consumption” because of the weight loss and apparent wasting-away of its victims, TB is caused by a bacteria that most often affects the lungs but can also infect other organs including the brain, skin, spine and kidneys. It is spread through the air when people with TB sneeze, cough or spit. Initial symptoms typically include cough, fever, weight loss and night sweats.

Corriveau cited social factors as potential facilitators of the outbreak in Kansas. “The area has industries and workplaces where people work in close proximity, as well as multigenerational large households,” she said. “And there are many people living with chronic conditions, which may not even be diagnosed, that make them more vulnerable to infectious diseases, including TB. And a lot of people don’t have access to care.” Access to care enables early detection and treatment that can prevent the disease from spreading.

As of February 7, 2025, there have been 67 active cases of TB associated with the outbreak, and 79 latent (inactive) infections diagnosed, according to the Kansas Department of Health and Environment (KDHE). People with latent infections do not have symptoms and are considered not contagious. But without treatment, their infections can develop into active TB weeks or even years after exposure.

WTF - Again?

The good news is that there's been no documented case of human-to-human transmission of Bird Flu.

The bad news is, of course, that we will soon have the worst possible guy in charge if it gets bad.

1st bird flu death in the US reported in Louisiana

The patient was over age 65 and had underlying medical conditions.

The first person has died of bird flu in the United States, the Louisiana Department of Health confirmed on Monday.

H5N1 Avian Flu virus

The patient, who was exposed to non-commercial backyard flock and wild birds, was over age 65 and had underlying medical conditions, officials said.

Last month, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention confirmed the patient was experiencing the first case of severe bird flu in the U.S.

MORE: Could bird flu strain the US public health system as seasonal influenza ramps up?

At the time, a spokesperson from the Louisiana Department of Health told ABC News the patient was experiencing severe respiratory illness related to bird flu infection and was in critical condition. The patient remains the only human case of bird flu confirmed in Louisiana.

The U.S. has seen an increase in human cases of bird flu, or avian influenza, since April, when the first human case was reported.

In a statement on Monday, the CDC said the first bird flu death in the U.S. was "not unexpected" given the "known potential for infection with these viruses to cause severe illness and death."

The agency said its risk assessment has not changed, that the risk to the general public remains low and no person-to-person transmission has been identified.

As of Jan. 3, there have been 66 human cases of bird flu reported in the U.S., according to CDC data.

Signs and symptoms of infection in humans often include sore throat, cough, fever, runny or stuffy nose, headache, muscle or body aches, fatigue and shortness of breath, the CDC says. Less common symptoms include nausea, vomiting, diarrhea and seizures.

Infections can range from no symptoms or mild illness, such as flu-like symptoms, to more severe illness, such as pneumonia that could require hospitalizations, the CDC says.

Almost all confirmed cases have had direct contact with infected cattle or infected livestock. Aside from the case confirmed in the Louisiana patient, cases have been mild, and patients had all recovered after receiving antiviral medication, according to the CDC and state health officials.

One previous case in Missouri was hospitalized, but health officials pointed to other health conditions aside from bird flu infection involved in the patient's admission to the hospital.

The Louisiana Department of Health and the CDC say there is no evidence of person-to-person transmission and the risk to the general public is low.

MORE: Updates on the bird flu outbreak, now linked to raw milk products in California

However, those who work with birds, poultry or cows -- or have recreational exposure to them -- are at higher risk.

The CDC recommends staying away from sick or dead wild birds, poultry and other animals and, if contact is unavoidable, using personal protective equipment.

The agency also suggests not touching surfaces or materials contaminated with saliva, mucous or animal feces from wild or domestic birds and animals confirmed or suspected to have bird flu as well as not consuming raw milk or raw milk products.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture issued a new federal order last month that raw milk samples nationwide will be collected and shared with the department in order to test for bird flu.

A few weeks later, the Food and Drug Administration announced that federal health officials had begun collecting samples of aged raw cow's milk cheese across the U.S. to test for bird flu

New World Screwworm

Blame the immigrants in 3 ... 2 ... 1...

Texas on alert for invasive flesh-eating parasite not seen since the 1960s

The flesh-eating fly larvae, which were recently detected in Mexico, were declared eradicated from Texas in the 1960s.

AUSTIN, Texas — Texas hunters and those who enjoy the outdoors are being warned about an invasive parasite not seen in the United States since the 1960s.

The Texas Parks and Wildlife Department is urging those to monitor for animals affected by New World Screwworm, an invasive flesh-eating fly recently detected in Mexico.

Officials said they detected a cow with screwworms at a checkpoint near the Mexico-Guatemala border. According to the department, the latest detection follows a gradual northward movement of screwworms through both South and Central America.

What are screwworms?

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, New World screwworms are fly larvae that infest the tissue or flesh of warm-blooded animals. They're primarily found in South America and the Caribbean.

While screwworms primarily infest livestock, they can also affect humans and wildlife including deer and birds. People who visit those areas and have an open wound are at greater risk of becoming infected.

Infestations start when female flies lay eggs on open wounds or other parts. Wounds can be as small as a tick bite that attracts a female fly to feed and lay her eggs. A female can lay 200 to 300 eggs at once and 3,000 eggs during her short lifespan.

The eggs hatch into maggots that then burrow into the wound to feed on living flesh before emerging as adult screwworm flies.

Symptoms of screwworm

The CDC says infestations are very painful and that maggots could be visible in an open wound. They can also be in your nose, eyes, or mouth.

Symptoms include:

• Unexplained wounds or sores that do not heal
• Skin wounds or sores that worsen over time
• Bleeding from open sores
• Feeling larvae movement within a skin wound or sore, nose, mouth, or eyes
• Seeing maggots around or in open sores
• A foul-smelling odor from the site of the infestation
• Fever or chills from a secondary bacterial infection

Officials say you should clean and cover all wounds in addition to applying insect repellent while outside to prevent infection.

Screwworms in the United States

The invasive parasites became a major problem in the United States by the 1950s.

According to the University of Texas at Austin, screwworms were causing about $200 million a year in devastation to livestock ranchers, equal to about $1.8 billion today. After researchers learned about the flies' mating habits, a technique that would sterilize the flies came to the United States in 1955.

In 1960, Texas and New Mexico became involved in the sterilization process, which led to a South Texas plant producing around 200 million sterile flies a week. Four years later, screwworms were eradicated from Texas. By 1966, officials said the screwworms had been eradicated from the United States.

If you spot an animal you suspect may be infected, contact the Texas Animal Health Commission or the U.S. Department of Agriculture immediately.

Diseased

Coupla things:

• The idea that public health moves in cycles is a brand new one to me. It makes sense - and I hate it.
• Climate Change is a factor in the evolution of pathogens. That one makes sense too - and I hate it.

BKjr

Nerves. A neurological disorder called spasmodic dysphonia.

And yes - it's easy to suspect it ties in with the brain worm thing (prob'ly not), but BKjr has had it for quite a while now, and apparently, one of the things that doesn't help is a strict regimen of diet and exercise, which kinda puts the lie to the guy's insistence that all anybody needs is a better diet, more exercise, and no drugs.

And this is the dude they want to put in charge of America's public health policy?

RFK Jr. says he has spasmodic dysphonia, a voice disorder. What is it?

A neurological movement disorder, it causes difficulty in speaking, and a voice that often breaks and sounds strained or strangled.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., president-elect Donald Trump’s choice to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, has said he has spasmodic dysphonia. It is a voice disorder characterized by involuntary spasms in the muscles that control the vocal cords, or folds. This causes difficulty in speaking, and a voice that often breaks and sounds strained or strangled.

It is known as a focal dystonia, a neurological movement disorder that affects one specific part of the body. Writer’s cramp, where there are spasms in the hands or fingers, or persistent eye spasms or eye closure are others in the same category.

Spasmodic dysphonia most often develops at midlife — in one’s 30s or 40s — and can be life altering, particularly for those whose careers depend on speech.

“Most people take their voice for granted until they don’t have it,” said Pryor Brenner, a otolaryngologist in D.C. “It can be very discouraging. People don’t feel comfortable speaking, or don’t want to speak. They are embarrassed. It has a huge impact because they aren’t able to express themselves.”

Moreover, “it’s an invisible condition, meaning others can’t see it,” said Michael M. Johns, professor of clinical otolaryngology at the Keck School of Medicine of the University of Southern California and director of the USC Voice Center. “It’s not associated with any cognitive impairment, and these people look normal to the eye.”

Scientists agree that the disorder is neurological but don’t know its exact cause, according to Dysphonia International. Researchers are still trying to identify which part of the brain is involved and whether there may be a genetic component, according to the organization.

Some cases also may be triggered by a viral illness such as a cold or influenza, or a traumatic life event such as the death of a loved one, Brenner said. “An incredibly stressful event in life can turn it on,” he said.

Andrew Tritter, a laryngologist at UTHealth Houston, said such cases are rare, but they do occur. “I’ve seen them from a traumatic experience to going in for routine surgery,” he said. “I had one patient who woke up with it after she had a hysterectomy. Her voice was terrible, and it became chronic.”

Tritter said for people with spasmodic dysphonia, it “can be frustrating and upsetting to not be understood or heard, or be asked to constantly repeat yourself.”

There also are idiopathic cases, which occur spontaneously with no obvious cause. “It just happens,” Brenner said.

There are three kinds of spasmodic dysphonia.

Adductor spasmodic dysphonia is the most common type, which accounts for 80 percent of cases, including Kennedy’s, experts said. It causes sudden involuntary spasms that trigger the vocal cords to stiffen and close. The spasms disrupt the vibration of the vocal cords and the ability to make sounds.

Abductor spasmodic dysphonia is less common — accounting for about 20 percent of cases, experts said. It results in involuntary spasms that trigger the vocal cords to open, making vibration impossible and forming words difficult. Also, the open position lets air escape during speech, making the person sound weak, quiet and breathy.

Mixed spasmodic dysphonia is very rare and has symptoms common to the other two types.

How is spasmodic dysphonia diagnosed?

An otolaryngologist and speech-language pathologist will evaluate a patient’s symptoms and medical history and visualize their vocal cord movement through a stroboscopy exam, which is an endoscopy through the nose or mouth with a special camera and light that provides a detailed visual of vocal cord vibration to diagnose the condition.

They also will rate voice quality, record the voice to obtain acoustic measures and may palpate the neck to determine the presence of tension in and around the larynx. They may also ask the patient to read or repeat several specific sentences.

At times, the condition can be confused with other vocal issues such as a vocal tremor, Brenner said. But there is a distinction.

“Someone who has a vocal tremor can’t hold a pitch.” he said, describing a wavering that occurs when the person tries. Someone with spasmodic dysphonia, on the other hand, “can usually hold a single pitch but has trouble forming and articulating words.

How is spasmodic dysphonia treated?

Spasmodic dysphonia can’t be cured, experts said. Usually, once someone has it, “it doesn’t fluctuate over time,” Brenner said. “It levels off fairly quickly, with not a lot of variation over the years.”

Also, “I’ve never seen a child with it,” he added.

But there are several treatments, including surgery and voice therapy, though injections with botulinum toxin (Botox) is the gold standard in providing temporary relief, usually for several months, experts said.

It’s an office-based procedure using local anesthesia. Needles are passed into the neck and through the vocal cords, Johns said, and “it helps the vast majority of people become more functional in their lives.”

Botox works by blocking nerve impulses at the muscle receptor site, which normally signal the muscle to contract, and must be repeated periodically. The response varies, but the average relief lasts for about three to four months, according to Dysphonia International.

There can be some side effects, including breathiness, difficulty swallowing and pain at the injection site. Still, “it is a great treatment for most people,” Brenner said.

There also are at least two surgeries available, experts said. “Both are operations on the larynx and vocal cords to try to separate and relax them,” Johns said. “But they are fraught with complications and not considered standard treatment for the condition.”

Sign Of The Times

Because of course.

Trump told the Dirty Fuels Cartel that if they "donated" a billion dollars to his "campaign", he'd make sure they got to do whatever they wanted.

Now apparently, he's made the same kinda deal with the Pro Lung Disease Consortium.

Why Big Tobacco is betting on Trump

As the industry fights a ban on menthol cigarettes, a Reynolds American subsidiary has become the largest corporate donor to the main pro-Trump super PAC.

America’s top tobacco regulator was on a work trip in the Netherlands in September 2019 when he got wind of President Donald Trump’s plan to take abrupt action on vaping, the booming business offering a substitute for smokers but presenting hazards of its own.

“This was coming out of left field,” said Mitch Zeller, at the time the director of the Food and Drug Administration’s tobacco center.

Zeller supported the plan Trump put forward the next day in the Oval Office: removing mouthwatering flavors, such as mango and mint, that were making e-cigarettes so popular with teenagers. But he feared that Trump’s hasty rollout would doom the effort, he said in a recent interview.

Indeed, Trump soon shelved the proposal amid pressure from lobbyists and political advisers who warned the move could endanger his 2020 reelection campaign because of the popularity of vaping, the heating of nicotine to make an inhaled aerosol.

Four years later, the tobacco industry is banking on Trump’s chaotic approach to public health — and pliable views on policy — as it confronts a new challenge to its bottom line: efforts by regulators in the Biden administration to ban menthol cigarettes, which represent 36 percent of the cigarette market.

The top corporate donor to the main pro-Trump super PAC is a subsidiary of Reynolds American, the second-largest tobacco company in the United States and the maker of Newports, the No. 1 menthol brand in the country. The subsidiary, RAI Services Company, has given $8.5 million to the super PAC, called Make America Great Again Inc., federal records show. The company does not appear to have contributed money to groups backing Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee.

Big Tobacco’s bet on Trump shows how corporate interests believe the former president can be swayed by campaign donations — and brought into line even on issues where he has shown some independence from GOP orthodoxy, said former U.S. officials and industry lobbyists. The contributions represent a muscular move by the company into presidential politics. A Reynolds PAC funded by employee contributions donated just $25,000 to a Trump campaign committee in 2016, and the company contributed $1 million to Trump’s inauguration in 2017. These entities do not appear to have made contributions in the presidential race in 2020. A Reynolds representative did not respond to detailed questions about the company’s political giving or its interactions with Trump.

Over the past three decades, political contributions by the industry have declined, especially at the federal level, as companies focused their efforts on state and local controversies over higher cigarette taxes and smoking prevention. Reynolds’s major pro-Trump move bucks that trend.

Brian Ballard, a prominent Trump-aligned lobbyist whose firm has represented Reynolds since 2017, suggested the company make the donations, according to a person familiar with the activity. Reynolds executives have met with Trump on multiple occasions in 2023 and 2024, including a lengthy meeting earlier this year in New York where they emphasized their concerns about a menthol ban, said the person, who, like some others interviewed for this story, spoke on the condition of anonymity to reveal sensitive details. The executives also raised other subjects with the former president, especially counterfeit vaping pens they said were flooding in from China through the Port of Los Angeles and cutting into their profits. Ballard did not respond to an email seeking comment.

Former company employees and lobbyists, as well as former Trump aides, said Reynolds sees Trump as its best hope of achieving a range of objectives, including fending off a proposed ban on menthol cigarettes, which is in limbo. The Biden administration has delayed a final decision after political advisers warned the president that it could cost him votes among Black smokers who studies show favor the products. The delay may give Trump authority over the ultimate policy if he returns to the White House.

The issue is now a thorny one for Harris. She has previously supported efforts to limit the products, though her campaign did not respond to questions about her current position. A Trump spokesman also did not respond to questions about his view. Conservatives believe the issue can be used to erode Black support for Harris: A Republican-aligned group is spearheading a $10 million ad campaign tying her to the administration’s proposed ban.

The advertising blitz is a further illustration of the political significance of Big Tobacco and its causes this November. The industry’s influence could carry over into policymaking next year.

Stephanie Grisham, who witnessed the back-and-forth over tobacco regulation as an aide to both Trump and his wife, Melania, said the GOP standard-bearer will see the Reynolds donations as a sign of “loyalty” and look to return the favor if elected.

“It would absolutely weigh on his thinking,” said Grisham, who has publicly disavowed Trump.

‘Bully him’

Trump is no fan of smoking.

“I tell people, ‘No drugs, no drinking, no cigarettes,’” he said in a podcast interview last month.

For years, he has expressed revulsion for the habit. “I watch people smoke; it looks terrible to me,” Trump said on the campaign trail in 2015. “It’s terrible.”

When he was elected, the teetotaling, cigarette-averse president seemed like a natural ally for antismoking advocates. In 2017, Trump’s FDA commissioner, Scott Gottlieb, put forward a comprehensive tobacco strategy calling for reduced nicotine levels in cigarettes.

A year later, health officials received alarming new data that focused their attention on e-cigarettes. Vaping by minors was skyrocketing, driven by the popularity of products offered by Juul Labs that came with a range of flavors, such as mango and menthol. In 2018, Gottlieb labeled teen vaping an “epidemic” and proposed ways of curbing flavored e-cigarettes, saying he wanted to ban menthol cigarettes and flavored cigars as well.

The issue caught the attention of Kellyanne Conway, senior counselor to the president and Trump’s onetime campaign manager, according to Grisham, Trump’s press secretary at the time and also an aide to the first lady.

According to Grisham, Conway brought her concerns about flavored e-cigarettes to Melania Trump, knowing the first lady wanted to work on issues involving children.

“She knew Mrs. Trump would be able to influence her husband,” Grisham said.

Conway said she never favored banning flavors but “protecting kids,” including a proposal to raise the age to 21 for e-cigarette sales and other tobacco products, which Trump signed into law in December 2019. Conway said she doesn’t favor prohibiting products including vapes and menthol cigarettes, adding, “The Democrats are the party of bans.”

But when Trump gathered his top health officials in the Oval Office in September 2019 to act on the issue of teenage vaping at the urging of his wife and Conway, senior officials framed their action as a sweeping ban. Alex Azar, the health secretary, said the aim was to “clear the market” of flavored e-cigarettes, including mint and menthol, allowing the products to be sold only once they gained formal approval from federal regulators.

Zeller, the top tobacco regulator, who was in the Netherlands when the hasty meeting was called back in Washington, said he believed right away that Trump’s approach was a mistake. His staff hadn’t drafted anything, Zeller said; they weren’t prepared with regulations or policies to make good on the announcement.

“I knew there would be a vacuum in the aftermath of the announcement that would be filled by all those who oppose a flavor ban, creating a political nightmare for the White House,” said Zeller, who is now retired from government and advising a pharmaceutical start-up developing technology to treat tobacco dependence.

Within two months, Zeller’s prediction had come to pass. As health officials readied plans to take most flavors off the market, Trump’s campaign advisers presented him with data showing that vaping was popular among his supporters. On Nov. 4, the day before a planned news conference to launch the decisive action, Trump balked, refusing to approve a one-page memo advancing the policy.

Conway was frustrated, as was the first lady, recalled Grisham, though she said Melania Trump understood how her husband would view the matter. “I think Mrs. Trump threw up her hands because she knew that if anything was going to impact a potential second term, he wasn’t going to do it.”

A Trump spokesman did not respond to questions about the former first lady.

Looking back, Grisham added, the policy was bound to fail because of the chaotic way it came about.

“We rarely did things through a process with agencies as you should,” she said. “So this was more of, ‘Let’s get him in a room, let’s convince him or bully him with his wife there, let’s get him to say yes and say it publicly.’”

Early the following year, the Trump administration moved forward with a scaled-back plan to limit flavored e-cigarettes, notably exempting the popular menthol flavor from the regulation. Public health groups were incensed. The American Lung Association said the lack of more decisive action would “compromise the health of our nation’s children.”

Alienating the base

Public health experts turned their hopes to Joe Biden, who had emerged as a major advocate for cancer prevention in the waning days of the Obama administration.

“If I could be anything, I would have wanted to have been the president that ended cancer, because it’s possible,” Biden said in October 2015, as he announced that he would not seek the presidency that cycle while grieving his son Beau’s death from brain cancer.

Biden oversaw the Obama administration’s cancer moonshot and, after leaving office, stood up his own cancer initiative in 2017, in which he repeatedly warned about the risks of smoking. Biden also signaled that fighting cancer would be a presidential priority, vowing on the 2020 campaign trail to renew his efforts to address the disease.

“Once we beat covid, we’re going to do everything we can to end cancer as we know it,” Biden said in February 2021, several weeks after taking office. Two months later, federal regulators announced their intention to ban menthol products, and, in April 2022, the FDA released its proposed rule.

The political sensitivities of banning menthol were immediately apparent, with some Black lawmakers and advocates saying it represented an unfair crackdown on products favored by the Black community. White House aides, meanwhile, stressed that Biden was deferring to public health experts, as the administration asserted that the planned ban could prevent as many as 654,000 deaths in the United States — including as many as 238,000 among African Americans — over the next 40 years.

Menthol, a chemical found in mint plants that can also be made in a lab, provides a cooling sensation when added to cigarettes, making smoking less harsh. A study based on Canada’s experience outlawing menthol cigarettes in 2017 concluded that a similar ban in the United States would lead 1.3 million Americans to quit smoking and save hundreds of thousands of lives.

According to two current U.S. officials and one former senior official, Biden had support for his cancer efforts inside the White House from Harris, the daughter of a cancer researcher, who as a senator had signed a 2018 letter supporting a ban on menthol cigarettes. Fighting cancer “is an issue of personal significance to so many and for me,” Harris said in February 2022 remarks, reflecting on her mother’s death from breast cancer. “You see, after a lifetime working to end cancer, cancer ended my mother’s life.”

The vice president’s office declined to address her position on the menthol ban. A Harris aide said that the issue “is being taken very seriously” but that no decision had been reached.

But as regulators worked to finalize the administration’s menthol rule, warnings of the political blowback became more acute. Cornell Belcher, a Democratic pollster, issued a memo last year arguing that a ban risked alienating Biden’s “base supporters” in the 2024 election, citing his own polling in battleground states. Belcher’s poll and analysis were funded by Altria, a tobacco company. Neither Belcher nor Altria responded to requests for comment.

There has been effectively no progress on the menthol ban over the past year, officials said, with the White House repeatedly missing its self-imposed deadlines to finalize it. In April, Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra released a terse, two-sentence announcement that the administration needed “significantly more time” to consider debate over the ban. Asked this month about the status of the ban, federal officials referred back to Becerra’s statement.

Even if Biden belatedly moves to finalize the rule, it could now be blocked or rolled back by a newly elected Trump because it requires one year to be fully implemented.

Meanwhile, Harris is already facing well-funded attacks over the administration’s proposed ban.

A memo circulated by a group called Building America’s Future — which is staffed by veterans of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’s unsuccessful bid for the Republican presidential nomination — describes menthol as “The Niche Message That Can Reverse Harris’ Consolidation of Black Voters.” The nonprofit is part of an effort to spend $10 million on ads linking her to the stalled rule and targeting Black voters in the battleground states of Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, North Carolina and Wisconsin.

Changing the debate

Black smokers have similarly been at the heart of a lobbying campaign undertaken by Reynolds, according to internal documents obtained by The Washington Post.

One document, marked “confidential,” outlined the “objectives” of the company’s influence efforts. Among them: “Change the debate on menthol in DC.”

Advocates for prohibition say banning menthol would reduce chronic disease and save lives, especially among Black Americans. Reynolds has sought to flip that argument on its head. In another memo circulated to company lobbyists, Reynolds argued that a ban would weaken relations between communities of color and law enforcement. The one-page memo bluntly warns of an “increased likelihood the police will use force on a person of color” if police were required to enforce a ban, which it calls “counter to progressive policing principles.”

The memo includes statements from prominent civil rights activists, including the Rev. Al Sharpton, who is quoted in the memo arguing that any consideration of banning menthol cigarettes must “include a candid discussion about racial disparities and selective prosecution in communities of color.” The National Action Network, which Sharpton founded, has received donations from Reynolds, as both the civil rights leader and the company have acknowledged. They have declined to detail the amount. Sharpton’s organization did not respond to a request for comment.

The company has used a similar argument on Capitol Hill, telling lawmakers that a menthol ban would “create another Eric Garner situation,” said a former Reynolds lobbyist, referring to the 43-year-old Black man killed in 2014 by police after he was stopped on suspicion of illegally selling single cigarettes.

Public health advocates and policymakers have dismissed those arguments as false and inflammatory, noting that the crackdown targets retailers, wholesalers, distributors and other businesses — not individual smokers.

Claims that a menthol ban would lead to abusive policing in Black communities are “unfounded,” 21 attorneys general wrote to Biden in January. “The FDA plainly states that federal authorities will not enforce the proposed menthol ban against individual consumers.”

At the same time, Reynolds has been eyeing what the former lobbyist said the company views as a more potent tool to prevent prohibition of menthol cigarettes: putting Trump back in the White House.

When he was first elected in 2016, Trump wasn’t seen as friendly to the industry, said a former Reynolds executive. “We all knew his profile: doesn’t drink, never smoked,” the former executive said.

The company gave little to his campaign but donated to Trump’s inauguration, which secured executives a spot at a dinner with the newly minted president, said a person who attended. In 2017, Reynolds also put $1.5 million into the pro-Trump nonprofit America First Policies, according to a corporate disclosure.

Though the company has made bipartisan political donations, senior leaders appreciate that Republicans are more lenient with the industry than are Democrats, said a former longtime employee. “The mindset of the organization was, ‘If we can get a conservative leader in place — at the local level, at the state level and at the federal level — it would benefit the industry,’” this person said.

That preference became more pronounced as the Biden administration pursued its menthol ban, said the former lobbyist. The issue is critical for Reynolds: A ban would spoil one of the company’s most significant recent ventures — the acquisition in 2015 of the Lorillard Tobacco Company, which makes the Newport brand of menthol cigarettes.

“The whole reason they bought this company is about to be banned,” said the former lobbyist.

Reynolds executives feel they narrowly escaped a ban under Biden and can’t count on their good fortune should Harris win the presidency, said the former lobbyist and other former employees. They said the aim now is not just to help elect Trump but also to deepen the company’s relationship with him.

Zeller, the former top tobacco regulator, said the company’s plan could work. Trump’s expressed disinterest in the fine points of public policy and the anti-regulatory agenda of the people likely to staff his potential second term would make him “susceptible to outside interests, financial or otherwise,” he argued.

Regulators made modest but surprisingly significant gains in antismoking efforts when Trump was last in the White House, Zeller said. A second Trump term, he predicted, would be different.

“Those days are long gone,” Zeller said.

Hot Air

“It all started with an enquiry from a nurse,” Dr Karl Kruszelnicki told listeners to his science phone-in show on the Triple J radio station in Brisbane. “She wanted to know whether she was contaminating the operating theatre she worked in by quietly farting in the sterile environment during operations, and I realised that I didn't know. But I was determined to find out.”

Dr Kruszelnicki then described the method by which he had established whether human flatus was germ-laden, or merely malodorous. “I contacted Luke Tennent, a microbiologist in Canberra, and together we devised an experiment. He asked a colleague to break wind directly onto two Petri dishes from a distance of 5 centimetres, first fully clothed, then with his trousers down. Then he observed what happened. Overnight, the second Petri dish sprouted visible lumps of two types of bacteria that are usually found only in the gut and on the skin. But the flatus which had passed through clothing caused no bacteria to sprout, which suggests that clothing acts as a filter.

“Our deduction is that the enteric zone in the second Petri dish was caused by the flatus itself, and the splatter ring around that was caused by the sheer velocity of the fart, which blew skin bacteria from the cheeks and blasted it onto the dish. 

It seems, therefore, that flatus can cause infection if the emitter is naked, but not if he or she is clothed. But the results of the experiment should not be considered alarming, because neither type of bacterium is harmful. In fact, they're similar to the ‘friendly’ bacteria found in yoghurt.

“Our final conclusion? Don't fart naked near food. All right, it's not rocket science. But then again, maybe it is?”

🚨 Breaking 🚨

Researches have established a direct link

between kids getting measles

and their parents being dumbass gullible rubes

Live Long And Prosper (?)

Sweat work and raw output are all that matters to the plutocrats.

They don't give half a rat's ass about the labor force because they think they can always go back to the well and bucket up some more suckers to work themselves to death in order to get one more dime to drop to the bottom line on their Monthly Net Revenue Report.

But we are - at once - aging faster and dying sooner. That's a bad combination if you want workers who can show up and last long enough to get good at what you need them to do.

America has a life expectancy crisis. But it’s not a political priority.

The commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration had an urgent message last winter for his colleagues, brandishing data that life expectancy in the United States had fallen again — the biggest two-year decline in a century.

Robert Califf’s warning, summarized by three people with knowledge of the conversations, boiled down to this:

Americans’ life expectancy is going the wrong way. We’re the top health officials in the country. If we don’t fix this, who will?

A year after Califf’s dire warnings, Americans’ life expectancy decline remains a pressing public health problem — but not a political priority.

President Biden has not mentioned it in his remarks, according to a review of public statements; his Republican challengers have scarcely invoked it, either. In a survey of all 100 sitting senators, fewer than half acknowledged it was a public health problem. While recent federal data suggests that life expectancy ticked up in 2022, a partial rebound from the ravages of the coronavirus pandemic, no national strategy exists to reverse a years-long slide that has left the United States trailing peers, such as Canada and Germany, and rivals, such as China.

“I wish that life expectancy or health span were a fundamental political issue in the 2024 presidential campaign,” said Dave A. Chokshi, a physician and public health professor who formerly served as health commissioner of New York. “We’re not living the healthiest lives that we possibly could.”

The Washington Post spoke with more than 100 public health experts, lawmakers and senior health officials, including 29 across the past three presidential administrations, who described the challenges of attempting to turn around the nation’s declining life expectancy. Those challenges include siloed operations that make it hard for public and private-sector officials to coordinate their efforts, a health-care payment system that does not reward preventive care and White House turnover that can interrupt national strategies.

Many suggested the nation needed an effort that would transcend political administrations and inspire decades of commitment, with some comparing the goal of improving life expectancy to the United States’ original moonshot.

“We’re no longer an America that talks about building a national highway system or sending a man to the moon, and yet it’s that kind of reach and ambition that we need to have to tackle the declining longevity problem,” said Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.).

Experts, officials and lawmakers acknowledged that a political pledge to reverse the nation’s life expectancy slide could quickly backfire, given the need to focus on long-term goals that might not be reflected in short-term progress reports. A politician attempting to improve life expectancy could be out of office by the time improvements were detected.

“Politicians, in general, haven’t wanted to engage on this because it feels kind of squishy and the solutions don’t seem clear,” said Ashish Jha, the dean of Brown University’s public health school who this year stepped down as the White House’s coordinator of the national covid response.

In an interview, Califf confirmed he’d urged colleagues in “so many” meetings to take action on America’s eroding life expectancy.

The trend is “quite alarming,” the FDA commissioner said, sitting in his office in White Oak, Md., where he oversees the nearly $7 billion agency that regulates drugs, food and other common products used by Americans. “All of the leaders within the [Department of Health and Human Services] I’ve talked with about this.”

White House officials said the president and his team were focused on combating the “drivers” of life expectancy declines, pointing to efforts to reduce drug overdoses, create an office to prevent gun violence and other initiatives. A senior health official in the Biden administration said pledging to improve life expectancy itself “would have to be viewed as something for a legacy.”

“Maybe a second-term priority for Biden,” said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to speak frankly about internal White House operations.

No single reason explains why America’s life expectancy has declined, with chronic disease, poor nutrition, insufficient access to care and political decisions all linked to premature deaths. There also is no single strategy to turn it around — and no agreement on how to do it. Some public health leaders and policymakers have called for sweeping reforms to how the health-care system operates, while others home in on discrete factors such as lethal drug overdoses, which have spiked in recent years and received considerable attention but are not solely responsible for the decline in life expectancy.

The paralysis over how to address the nation’s declining life expectancy extends to Congress, where a handful of lawmakers — mostly Democrats — have repeatedly portrayed the slide as a crisis, but most other lawmakers have said little or nothing.

“We don’t talk about life expectancy, because it just makes it clear what kind of failed system we currently have,” said Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who has repeatedly warned about the rise in premature deaths, including organizing a July 2021 Senate hearing on the issue. Just 11 of the panel’s 18 senators attended, several only briefly; just five asked questions.

“I talk to other senators about life expectancy data and watch their eyes glaze over,” Warren said.

The Post submitted questions about life expectancy to all 100 sitting senators, sending emails, placing calls and making visits to their offices. Forty-eight senators — including 35 Democrats, 11 Republicans and two Independents — said they agreed that declining life expectancy was a problem. Many of those lawmakers pointed to their own legislation intended to combat opioid misuse and address conditions such as cancer and other factors linked to causes of premature death. All told, the 48 senators cited more than 130 separate bills focused on health-care issues.

Despite the flurry of legislation, the nation’s progress on life expectancy has stalled, with the United States increasingly falling behind other nations well before the pandemic. No senator has crafted a bill specifically intended to improve life expectancy or create goals for health leaders to reach.

Lawmakers have also worked at cross purposes, with Republicans fighting Democrats’ efforts to enact legislation linked to gains in life expectancy, including efforts to expand access to health coverage and curb access to guns. Sen. John Neely Kennedy (R-La.), whose state had the third-worst life expectancy in 2020, about 73 years, recently suggested that life expectancy would even go up for young Americans.

“I mean, the life expectancy of the average American right now is about 77 years old. For people who are in their 20s, their life expectancy will probably be 85 to 90,” Kennedy said on “Fox News Sunday” in March. His office did not respond to requests for comment.

Other Republican senators or their staff suggested they did not have a view on the issue because the senator did not sit on a relevant committee.

Sen. Jerry Moran (R-Kan.) has “no jurisdiction over this issue,” his office wrote in response to questions about whether Moran had views on declining life expectancy. Moran, who sits on the Senate panel that determines funding for health agencies, has cast votes on numerous health-care matters, including repeatedly voting to repeal the Affordable Care Act.

In the absence of national solutions, some officials pointed to local efforts such as a new initiative in New York, which has repeatedly pioneered public health improvements later copied across the country. City leaders in November pledged to raise New Yorkers’ life expectancy to a record 83 years, saying a coordinated approach could prevent premature deaths. Ashwin Vasan, the city’s health commissioner, testified in front of the city council, urging members to pass a law requiring the city’s health commissioner — including his successors — to work toward shared public health goals.

“This is a test for government. And I really am hopeful that New York City can pass that test,” Vasan said after his testimony, standing outside New York’s city hall.

‘Further and further behind’

Life expectancy in the United States was once a source of national pride — a reflection of civic improvements, medical advances and other investments that set the nation apart from other countries.

“The future of human longevity, especially for Americans, seems bright indeed,” then-Sen. Larry Craig (R-Idaho) proclaimed at a 2003 congressional hearing, where expert witnesses listed scientific and technological breakthroughs that they expected would soon push U.S. life expectancy past 80 years.

But even the most optimistic expert at the panel warned that America’s prospects could dim. James Vaupel, director of the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, urged federal officials to immediately prioritize a “real mystery”: the emerging international gap in life expectancy.

“The United States is doing so well on so many fronts, but it’s falling further and further behind on this critically important [measure], life itself,” Vaupel warned the Senate panel, imploring officials to “really start worrying about this.”

It would take about a decade before Vaupel’s warning was heeded. Policymakers instead were focused on a more urgent political priority related to life expectancy: the growing cost of having so many older Americans seeking services through programs such as Medicare and Social Security.

So when the Obama administration and congressional Democrats hammered out legislation that would become the Affordable Care Act — the sweeping 2010 law that expanded health coverage to millions of Americans and made other changes to the health system — there was little fear life expectancy would decline.

Bob Kocher, a venture capitalist who worked in the Obama White House as a health-care and economic aide, said one reason the crafters of the Affordable Care Act were so intent on “bending the curve” on health spending “was our belief that life expectancy was going to keep going up for the foreseeable future.”

By 2013, public health experts had begun issuing more prominent warnings about life expectancy, pointing to the rising number of opioid overdoses, suicides and other preventable deaths. Senior officials across the Obama, Trump and Biden administrations said they were aware of those concerns but that their focus was on improving discrete factors linked to life expectancy, not on the overall number.

“Every meeting at the VA was about ‘life expectancy,’ but I can’t tell you we put charts on the wall of ‘what’s the life expectancy of a veteran,’” said Robert A. McDonald, secretary of veterans affairs under President Barack Obama.

The nation’s current top health official, Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra, told The Post he’s acutely aware of the life expectancy decline, calling it the “byproduct of some very serious problems” such as gun violence and drug overdoses. But he downplayed the need for a national strategy, saying there was no reason to declare a public health emergency as he has done with the coronavirus and opioid deaths, adding his agency lacked the power to reverse the trend.

“We are so disjointed as a health system in the country,” Becerra said, suggesting that the responsibility to address life expectancy fell on “many of us,” including state health directors.

While Biden hasn’t directly addressed declining life expectancy, some of his rivals have invoked it on the campaign trail.

“We used to think that life expectancy was just going to keep going up, and that’s just not been the case,” Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) said in a CNBC interview in August, linking the decline to the pandemic, drug overdoses and other causes that began years ago. The DeSantis campaign did not respond to a request for comment about how the Florida governor would reverse the trend if elected president.

“If we had regulatory agencies that were actually interested in looking at data, we would be trying to figure out why the all-cause mortality [for Americans] has increased,” Robert F. Kennedy Jr., running as an independent in the 2024 campaign, said in an interview with The Post this summer. “These aren’t covid deaths.”

Political commentator Matthew Yglesias says America’s life expectancy decline reveals systemic problems that leave the country at risk. (Marvin Joseph/The Washington Post)
Political commentator Matthew Yglesias has repeatedly urged politicians to focus on life expectancy, saying that America’s decline reveals systemic problems that leave the country at risk. “Tackling America’s weirdly short life expectancy should be a priority,” Yglesias wrote in one 2022 post.

Although Yglesias has fans within the Biden administration who have sought his counsel after he has written about traffic safety and crime, his appeals on life expectancy haven’t led to similar invitations.

“I think it winds up being a harder topic for politicians to get their heads around,” he said, noting the array of factors that span agencies and administrations.

Califf said he’s keenly aware of his agency’s limits when confronting life expectancy.

FDA is one of the nation’s most powerful regulatory bodies — its staff often tout that they oversee about 20 cents of every dollar spent by U.S. consumers — and Califf is pursuing initiatives, such as banning menthol cigarettes and improving access to generic drugs, that fall in his agency’s purview. But FDA can’t control how hospitals and doctors get paid. It can’t craft legislation, such as curbing access to firearms.

“The highest cause of death in children is guns. That’s a fact,” Califf said. “That’s not something FDA can do something about.”

‘It’s a hard sell’

In Congress, a handful of members have insisted that lawmakers must focus on life expectancy, saying it’s a core responsibility.

“Sometimes, we may, in the midst of our work, lose sight of the big picture … to create a nation in which the people in the United States can live long, healthy, happy and productive life,” Sanders said at the 2021 Senate hearing he convened on lagging life expectancy.

There is a notable partisan split in how members of Congress view life expectancy and whether they say urgent action is needed. Just 11 of the Senate’s 49 Republicans told The Post they believed that declining life expectancy was a public health problem.

The lawmakers who portray the recent decline as a crisis are often Democrats from states with the highest life expectancy — such as Massachusetts (79 years in 2020, according to federal data) and Vermont (78.8 years). Meanwhile, GOP lawmakers representing some of the states with the lowest life expectancy — Mississippi (71.9 years), West Virginia (72.8 years) and Kentucky (73.5 years) — declined to comment or did not respond to repeated questions about whether the issue represents a public health problem.

“It’s a hard sell with senators who live in some of the lowest longevity states. And it breaks my heart,” Warren said.

A further complication: Senators concerned about declining life expectancy offer radically different prescriptions for fixing it.

Alabama Sen. Tommy Tuberville — one of the few Republicans whose office said he was “deeply concerned about this trend” — linked America’s decline to drug overdoses, suicides and alcoholism.

“The facts show clearly that this is being driven largely by an increase in deaths of despair, with fentanyl overdoses being the leading cause of death for Americans 18 to 45,” Tuberville spokesman Steven Stafford said in a statement, pointing to legislation to improve mental health funding and secure the Southern border.

In comparison, Sanders has repeatedly called for sweeping reforms, insisting in an interview that “a failed health-care system is tied into a corrupt political system dominated by enormously powerful corporate interests.”

Even Democrats in neighboring states offered significantly different diagnoses. In the eyes of Rhode Island Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D), the No. 1 cause of America’s life expectancy problem is clear: broken payment incentives for doctors and hospitals.

But Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) traced the life expectancy decline to loneliness.

“Americans are just much less physically and spiritually healthy than they have been in a long time,” said Murphy, who has proposed a bill to create a White House office of social connection.

Ten senators singled out the burden of chronic disease, echoing The Post’s own review, which found that among people younger than 65, chronic illness erases more than twice as many years of life as all the overdoses, homicides, suicides and car accidents combined.

New York’s state of mind

In New York, officials are trying to put a framework around those often abstract challenges. Vasan urged the City Council in November to support HealthyNYC, his agency’s initiative backed by Mayor Eric Adams (D) that seeks to avert about 7,300 premature deaths by 2030.

“We want New Yorkers to experience more birthdays, weddings and graduations, more holidays and holy days, more life lived,” Vasan told the lawmakers, citing targets for reducing chronic diseases, cancers and other drivers of premature death. Council members are considering legislation to ensure that future leaders stick to the commitments — a suddenly urgent need with Adams embroiled in a fundraising scandal.

“We wanted this to be something that outlives us, that actually helps people,” said Lynn Schulman, chair of the City Council’s health committee.

Vasan and Schulman said HealthyNYC can be a template for other cities — the latest effort in New York’s long history of trying to tackle life expectancy. Under former mayor Mike Bloomberg, the city raised cigarette taxes, banned smoking in workplaces and attempted to limit sale of large sugary drinks. When Bloomberg left office in 2013, New Yorkers’ projected life expectancy was 81.1 years — more than two years longer than the national average — compared with 77.9 years when he took office in 2001.

“If you want to live longer, you could move to New York — or just vote for me,” Bloomberg said in a speech to Democratic voters during his short-lived 2020 presidential campaign. (Public health experts have cautioned that it may take decades to fully understand the link between Bloomberg’s initiatives and longer life expectancy.)

But Bloomberg’s efforts provoked backlash from food-makers, industry groups and some elected officials. Even as New York took steps a decade ago to limit salt and soda consumption, GOP lawmakers in other states crafted legislation to prevent their own local leaders from taking similar steps.

The Bloomberg legacy “is not a torch anyone has really wanted to carry,” said Yglesias, warning that the former mayor’s public heath agenda would be politically difficult to replicate elsewhere. “Conservatives really don’t like it. … I think it’s fallen out of style on the left as well.”

Sanders, who has spent years pushing for sweeping changes to America’s health system and economy, said Washington’s work to boost life expectancy could begin with a simple framing device.

“The administration, the Congress should have upon their wall, a chart which says … ‘What’s our life expectancy now [and] how do we get up to the rest of the world?’” Sanders said. He pointed to Norway’s life expectancy of more than 83 years. “That should be our goal.”