Janice Hopkins Tanne

For the first time, more US women are accessing abortions through telehealth, according to new data from the Guttmacher Institute.The research and policy organisation reported1 that the total number of abortions in the US in 2025 remained largely unchanged from 2024—an estimated 1.126 million terminations compared with 1.124 million in 2024—despite total bans in 13 states and early gestational limits in several others.2What has changed is how women are accessing abortions. In 2024 about 154 000 women travelled from states that banned abortion to get care, but that number dropped to 142 000 in 2025.Instead, the number of women in states that had banned …

Rates of whooping cough (pertussis) are rising in the US as fewer children are being vaccinated.Official data showed 35 493 cases of the disease in the US in 2024, a fivefold increase from 7063 in 2023. In the first three months of 2025 alone 6600 cases were recorded.1Outbreaks of the potentially deadly respiratory infection have been reported in Texas, Florida, California, Oregon, and other states. State data showed that Texas reported 1928 cases of pertussis in 2024, but by October 2025 it had more than 3500.The increase in prevalence has come hand in hand with falling uptake of the whooping cough vaccine, in a trend experts warn is being driven by antivaccination misinformation and laws that make it easier for parents to …

The US has launched a multimillion dollar five year campaign to measure, study, and seek ways to remove microplastics from the human body.1The $144m (£106m; €122m) Stomp (Systematic Targeting of Microplastics) programme has been launched by the US Department of Health and Human Services and the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (Arpa-H), which is part of the department.Separately, the US Environmental Protection Agency has proposed adding microplastics,2 as well as pharmaceutical drugs that enter water systems through human waste and improper disposal, to its latest draft of the contaminant candidate list.The list identifies contaminants not regulated by the 1974 Safe Drinking Water Act. It helps prioritise research, …

President Donald Trump has nominated Erica Schwartz, a former deputy surgeon general, to head the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).1 She will need to be confirmed by the Senate, however, which may take months.Schwartz, a board certified preventive medicine physician and lawyer, also has a master’s degree in public health. She spent most of her career in the US Public Health Service Commissioned Corps, one of the nation’s eight uniformed services, which has more than 6000 officers serving at about 800 locations. She became chief medical officer of the Coast Guard in 2015 …

Family planning groups, women's organisations, obstetricians and gynaecologists, legislators, and national newspapers in the United States protested last week at the Food and Drug Administration's refusal to permit sales over the counter (without a prescription) of an emergency contraceptive.In making his decision, Dr Steven Galson, acting director of the FDA's Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, overruled the organisation's own scientific advisory committee and its professional staff.Many experts said it was an attack on contraception by the anti-abortion Bush administration. But Dr Galson defended …

Martin Makary has resigned as commissioner of the US Food and Drug Administration.Makary’s temporary replacement at the FDA will be Kyle Diamantas, a lawyer who is currently deputy commissioner for foods at the agency. As a lawyer, Diamantas represented Abbott Nutrition, a firm in the infant nutrition industry.US health secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr said on X, “Marty, you took on entrenched interests, challenged the status quo, and never lost sight of the American people we serve. You pushed forward critical reforms and helped advance our mission to Make America Healthy Again. I’m grateful for your courage and your friendship. Wishing you the very best in your next chapter.”1Kennedy thanked Diamantas for stepping in as acting commissioner: “His leadership has already delivered remarkable wins on the MAHA [Make America Healthy Again] food agenda, and I …

Yale University's medical school discriminates against white and Asian students in admissions and favours less qualified Hispanic and black applicants, the US Department of Justice has claimed.1After a year long investigation into the medical school's admission data for the classes of 2023, 2024, and 2025, the justice department said that Yale had violated federal law against discrimination and intentionally selected applicants on the basis of race.The department issued similar discrimination findings against the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA on 6 May 2026.2 Separately, in March it opened investigations into the medical schools of Stanford, Ohio State, and the University of California, San Diego,3 demanding admission data.Discrimination based on race is forbidden by US federal law. and the Supreme Court ruled in 2023 that race could not be considered in admitting students to colleges and …

Police in New Orleans forcibly removed1 five diabetes experts from the American Diabetes Association (ADA) annual conference for distributing an editorial2 published in the association's journal. The paper criticised US President Donald Trump for dismantling and destroying biomedical research in the country.Louisiana State Police confiscated the doctors' conference identification and forbid them from returning to the meeting. They escorted the protesters from the event peacefully. No one was arrested.“They physically grabbed us, forced us out of the conference centre, and now are telling us we can no longer attend this meeting,” said Aaron Kelly, co-director of the Centre for Paediatric Obesity Medicine and professor of paediatrics at the University of Minnesota, who was one of those ejected.“It really has come to this in America. Censorship is real,” he told the Washington Post , adding that his comments did not represent the …

Three studies linking vaccines to autism cited by US health secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr to support his policies have been retracted or are being investigated by the journals that published them.1 All three papers suggested that vaccinated children had a higher risk of health problems than unvaccinated children.The Journal of Toxicology and Environmental Health, Part A , retracted one paper on 21 May because of “fundamental methodological flaws” and a small number of children (n=31) studied.2The paper, published in 2010, had suggested that boys given the hepatitis B vaccine in their first month of life had three times the risk of receiving an autism diagnosis.Another paper, published in Toxicology Reports in 2021, was removed from that journal’s database after the publisher determined that the study had serious …

The president elect of the American Diabetes Association (ADA) has resigned following uproar at the association’s annual meeting, when five doctors were forcibly ejected after handing out copies of an editorial criticising the administration of the US president, Donald Trump.1Jennifer Green, professor of medicine at the Duke Clinical Research Institute, was due to lead the ADA from January 2027. But multiple sources cited by the MedPage Today news site,2 which broke the story, said that Green had resigned after the incident.Mark Atkinson, chair of the ADA’s Scientific Sessions Planning Committee, has also reportedly resigned over the incident.Dozens of experts had walked out of the presidential address session at the annual meeting on …