{"id":890012,"date":"2026-09-10T03:34:17","date_gmt":"2026-09-10T03:34:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/890012\/"},"modified":"2026-09-10T03:34:17","modified_gmt":"2026-09-10T03:34:17","slug":"quel-glp-1s-for-addiction-cdc-fauci-rfk-jr-morning-rounds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/890012\/","title":{"rendered":"Quel GLP-1s for addiction, CDC, Fauci, RFK Jr.: Morning Rounds"},"content":{"rendered":"

Get your daily dose of health and medicine every weekday with STAT\u2019s free newsletter Morning Rounds.\u00a0Sign up here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Good morning. I didn\u2019t have space to mention it yesterday, but can you believe Nathan Fielder made an Elizabeth Holmes documentary? Variety called it shameless and fascinating<\/a>. I may need to see for myself.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Can AI fix health care?<\/p>\n

It depends who you ask! But in the current chaos of emergency rooms, the technology has not yet changed the status quo, STAT\u2019s Brittany Trang reports. While AI documentation may help a physician focus on the patient in front of them and figure out what\u2019s wrong, scribes are doing \u201calmost nothing\u201d to improve care, one ER doctor told her. Think about it: ERs are loud, the workflow is fragmented, the patients are waiting longer for more urgently needed care. Read more<\/a> from Brittany on what AI can and can\u2019t do to help. <\/p>\n

Still, some people are optimistic about AI. We\u2019ve got a pair of First Opinion essays offering a point\/counterpoint on whether or not AI will replace doctors. The first, written by bioethicist and oncologist Ezekiel Emanuel with researcher Abe Baker-Butler, argues<\/a> that AI is far more capable than skeptics think. John Whyte, CEO of the American Medical Association, counters<\/a> that while AI can master medical tasks, practicing medicine is about much more than that.<\/p>\n

In CDC restructuring, Covid now part of flu division\u00a0<\/p>\n

The CDC\u2019s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases is undergoing a reorganization, with Covid-19 and other respiratory diseases operations being consolidated under the influenza division. The change, which went into effect on Sept. 4, was revealed Tuesday in the Federal Register<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Though anything related to Covid is politically charged with the current administration, former CDC staffers \u2014 including Demetre Daskalakis, a former director of the NCIRD \u2014 say this change had been in the planning since the Biden administration and makes organizational sense. Funding for Covid has dropped as the disease burden from the virus has declined; putting its operations into the flu division will leverage resources both use. Daskalakis and others, though, warned that the consolidation itself could be rocky; NCIRD has had a series of acting directors since Daskalakis quit<\/a> in August 2025. And the change is coming into effect when the country is heading toward the flu and respiratory virus season. \u201cNot my favorite timing,\u201d Daskalakis said. \u2014 Helen Branswell<\/p>\n

Telemedicine company offers GLP-1s for addiction<\/p>\n

A new company, Quel, announced<\/a> yesterday that it is launching as the first telemedicine venture built around GLP-1s for addiction. The services, available in 41 states, are an extension of a treatment program first tested at Caron Treatment Centers in Pennsylvania. STAT\u2019s Lev Facher wrote last summer about the elite center\u2019s use of semaglutide for addiction, describing it as a journey into uncharted territory<\/a>. Only a handful of clinical trials existed at the time to test the ability of GLP-1s to reduce substance use. Dozens more such studies exist now, many of which focus on alcohol use disorder.<\/p>\n

The FDA has not approved GLP-1s for substance use, so the medications will be prescribed off-label. \u201cWe\u2019re using something off-label under the umbrella of addiction, whether that be food, sex, alcohol, or opioids,\u201d physician Steven Klein told Lev last year. Klein is a co-founder and chief medical officer at Quel. Reread Lev\u2019s great story<\/a>. <\/p>\n

Residue on walls and open-toed sandals?<\/p>\n

Shoolin Pharma in Gujarat, India, makes active pharmaceutical ingredients for more than a dozen medicines that are sold to compounding pharmacies in the U.S., according to the FDA, which sent a warning letter to the company last month regarding unsanitary conditions. The letter cited stains on production walls, floors, and manufacturing equipment, corrosion on a product line, and an employee who wore open-toed sandals.<\/p>\n

The fact of the warning letter isn\u2019t particularly notable. What is different: This letter included several photos to demonstrate the extent of the problem, STAT\u2019s Ed Silverman writes. Read more<\/a> on the warning and what it portends for compounding pharmacies. <\/p>\n

WHO leader will not run for director-general<\/p>\n

Jeremy Farrar, a global health leader who was long rumored as a potential candidate to become the next director-general of the World Health Organization, is definitely not entering the race. PATH, a leading global health NGO, announced Wednesday that Farrar is joining its staff<\/a> on Oct. 1 to serve as chief of the Asia, Middle East, and Europe regional division, based in Geneva.<\/p>\n

Farrar has a long history in global health work. He headed Oxford University\u2019s Clinical Research Unit in Vietnam for 18 years \u2014 including during the 2003 SARS outbreak \u2014 before being named director of the Wellcome Trust<\/a>, the London-based charity that funds biomedical research. Farrar left Wellcome in 2023 to become WHO\u2019s chief scientist, later transitioning to assistant director-general for health promotion, disease prevention and care. The move to the WHO was perceived by some in global health circles as setting the stage to run for director-general when the term of the incumbent, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, expires on Aug. 15, 2027. But the PATH appointment confirms what Farrar has said in the recent past; he is not running. There are currently four candidates<\/a> in the race; the nomination period closes Sept. 24. \u2014 Helen Branswell<\/p>\n

Trust in Fauci is changing, but still higher than RFK Jr.<\/p>\n

Fewer Americans view Anthony Fauci as a source of trustworthy public health information after his appearance before the Senate Homeland Security committee in which he invoked the Fifth Amendment<\/a>, according to a survey of more than 1,900 people by the Annenberg Public Policy Center<\/a>. Fifty percent of respondents (who were surveyed in August about a week after the hearing) said they are somewhat or very confident that Fauci provided the public with trustworthy information on public health. That\u2019s down from 55% in April and similar rates in surveys from the year before. The survey first asked about Fauci and trust in 2021, and confidence levels ranged from 63% to 71%. <\/p>\n

The 5% decline is statistically significant, per Annenberg, but the proportion of Americans who trust Fauci is still far above the 38% who said they\u2019re confident that health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is providing trustworthy information. That number has remained essentially unchanged since early 2025, per the polling. <\/p>\n

What we\u2019re reading<\/p>\n

School vaccination rates reveal hidden measles outbreak risks. But access depends on where you live, Healthbeat<\/a><\/p>\n

FDA names acting heads of drug and vaccine centers to permanent roles, STAT<\/a><\/p>\n

Can humans get pregnant in space? National Geographic<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Get your daily dose of health and medicine every weekday with STAT\u2019s free newsletter Morning Rounds.\u00a0Sign up here.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":890013,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[49,48,84,5432,377],"class_list":["post-890012","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-medication","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-health","tag-health-care","tag-medication"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/890012","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=890012"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/890012\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/890013"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=890012"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=890012"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=890012"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}