{"id":378170,"date":"2026-04-06T16:52:10","date_gmt":"2026-04-06T16:52:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/378170\/"},"modified":"2026-04-06T16:52:10","modified_gmt":"2026-04-06T16:52:10","slug":"peptide-health-risks-vaccines-unitedhealth-morning-rounds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/378170\/","title":{"rendered":"Peptide health risks, vaccines, UnitedHealth: 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. You have until 9 pm ET tonight to vote<\/a> in the final round of STAT Madness! Make your voice heard, and then make sure to read Sarah Todd\u2019s great story on the inverse Fannee Doolee<\/a> attitude that RFK Jr. and others seem to take on peptides vs. vaccines.<\/p>\n

12%<\/p>\n

That\u2019s how much the White House wants Congress to cut spending on the Department of Health and Human Services by, according to its proposed 2027 federal budget, released Friday. It\u2019s broadly similar to what the administration proposed last year, including deep cuts to the National Institutes of Health, the elimination of a health research agency, and the creation of a new agency devoted to chronic diseases called the Administration for a Healthy America.<\/p>\n

STAT\u2019s Chelsea Cirruzzo and John Wilkerson have the rundown on the proposal<\/a>, as well as how likely Congress is to go along with it. Megan Molteni and Anil Oza have specifics on the NIH<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Ethical questions remain re: Guinea-Bissau hep B trial<\/p>\n

The University of Southern Denmark is still looking for help in assessing the ethics of a clinical trial some of its scientists have proposed to conduct in Guinea-Bissau using CDC funding. Ole Sk\u00f8tt, dean of health sciences, told STAT on Sunday that the university has asked the European Network of Research Ethics Committees if it would be willing to conduct or advise on an independent ethical assessment of the proposed study; EUREC has not yet responded. The WHO and others have deemed the trial to be unethical<\/a>, prompting the university to put it on hold while it looks into the critiques. Both the Danish National Committee on Health Research Ethics and the WHO Research Ethics Review Committee have said they don\u2019t have jurisdiction to conduct such an assessment.<\/p>\n

The proposed trial would randomize babies to get a first dose of hepatitis B vaccine at birth or at two months of age, which is the current standard of care in Guinea-Bissau. (The country plans to adopt a birth-dose strategy, recommended by the WHO, in 2028.) The goal is to see if there are previously undetected negative consequences of giving the first dose of hepatitis B vaccine at birth. The vaccine has been used in infants for more than 40 years and is considered both safe and highly effective at preventing chronic hepatitis B infection in young children, a condition that carries a high risk of liver disease and premature death. \u2014\u00a0Helen Branswell<\/p>\n

A big company makes a big push for AI<\/p>\n

UnitedHealth Group is hiring: among hundreds of job openings, there are AI positions related to cybersecurity, claims review and editing, fraud detection, roles on the \u201cprovider digital technology team,\u201d and more. Folks in these jobs will join the 22,000 software engineers the company already has worldwide, more than 80% of whom use AI to write code or build new agents.<\/p>\n

This sort of rapid transformation is happening across American health care. In a new STAT examination, chief investigative reporter Casey Ross lays out the potential benefits of such panoramic adoption of AI, along with the risks for patients, who may not be fully aware of what\u2019s happening. \u201cIt\u2019s become this war of algorithms and we forget that there is a life in the middle of all that,\u201d Grace Cordovano, an advocate for patients with terminal cancer, told Casey. Read more<\/a>.<\/p>\n

RFK Jr. boosts peptides,\u00a0but is skeptical of vaccines. Why?<\/p>\n

Health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and his supporters like to make health choices that feel natural \u2014 think \u201ceat real food\u201d and the overall emphasis on nutrition and vitamins over vaccines. But one of Kennedy\u2019s favored interventions is not like the others: experimental drugs known as peptides.<\/p>\n

Mainstream public health experts warn that peptides haven\u2019t been sufficiently studied for efficacy or potential side effects like cancer risk. Kennedy, on the other hand, said he\u2019s used them himself and indicated that the FDA would make them more accessible. STAT\u2019s Sarah Todd dug into this apparent contradiction. Read more<\/a> from her on medical libertarianism, powerful podcast bros, folk pharmacology, and more. And if you aren\u2019t sure exactly what peptides even are? Sarah\u2019s got you covered there, too. \u00a0<\/p>\n

Children in psychosis need more help<\/p>\n

As Liz Koch\u2019s 13-year-old son descended into psychosis, the health care he received often felt less like treatment than like a temporary transfer of responsibility. And the direction of the transfer, consistently, shifted from professionals and experts toward her. \u201cAsking parents to generate solutions after exhausting all known options is not partnership,\u201d Koch writes in a new First Opinion essay. \u201cIt is system failure disguised as collaboration.\u201d<\/p>\n

Read more<\/a> on Koch\u2019s frustrating, scary experience within a flawed pediatric health care system, and what she thinks needs to change.<\/p>\n

Raw Farm finally issues a recall<\/p>\n

Remember last week, when I told you about the raw dairy farm that was refuting its connection<\/a> to an E. coli outbreak? The FDA asked the business, Raw Farm, for weeks to recall its unpasteurized cheese products while the agency investigated the outbreak. The farm refused until last Thursday. Cheddar cheese products are the focus of the recall, as federal health agencies noted that raw milk from last year should no longer be on shelves.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis Voluntary Recall is being performed under protest,\u201d a company announcement<\/a> posted Friday by the FDA read. If you take a scroll through Raw Farm\u2019s Instagram stories, you can tell they mean it. The business continues to share posts from customers buying its (non-cheese) products. On Friday, it also reposted a political cartoon of a bumbling, sweating man wearing an \u201cFDA agent\u201d pin examining a block of raw cheese, while a fuel truck dumps out orange Kraft Heinz \u201cpasteurized cheese product\u201d full of wrenches, screws, and forks behind him. A masked journalist labeled both Ars Technica<\/a> and \u201cschooled media\u201d takes notes by the truck.<\/p>\n

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

The endless goodbye, The Atlantic<\/a><\/p>\n

How a four-month FDA delay forced a small biotech company to close its doors, STAT<\/a><\/p>\n

Tax time brings surprises for some who receive ACA subsidies, KFF Health News<\/a><\/p>\n

First Opinion: \u2018Medical nutrition\u2019 helps keep my son, and many others, healthy. But insurance won\u2019t cover it, STAT<\/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":378171,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[163,1541,521,85,46],"class_list":{"0":"post-378170","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-healthcare","8":"tag-health","9":"tag-health-care","10":"tag-healthcare","11":"tag-il","12":"tag-israel"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/378170","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=378170"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/378170\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/378171"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=378170"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=378170"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=378170"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}