{"id":423427,"date":"2026-01-22T18:52:16","date_gmt":"2026-01-22T18:52:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/423427\/"},"modified":"2026-01-22T18:52:16","modified_gmt":"2026-01-22T18:52:16","slug":"who-autism-treatment-milk-mustache-morning-rounds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/423427\/","title":{"rendered":"WHO, autism treatment, milk mustache: 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

As blistering cold and snow threaten\u00a0the eastern half of the U.S. this week, I have\u00a0an important question: what household\u00a0material should I fashion into an\u00a0impromptu\u00a0sled?<\/p>\n

Also, Sex and the City fans, I have a treat for you if you read to the end. (I have seen two episodes of the show, let me know if I nailed the tone.)<\/p>\n

What the U.S. exiting WHO means for global health \u2014 and WHO\u2019s bottom line<\/p>\n

By the time you read this, the U.S. will have formally ended<\/a>\u00a0its decades-long membership in the World Health Organization.<\/p>\n

Global health experts warn that the move, announced a year ago, could make the world less secure and more poorly equipped to respond to health emergencies such as ebola outbreaks or the Covid pandemic.\u00a0<\/p>\n

When the U.S. served notice it was withdrawing from WHO in Trump\u2019s first term, other countries stepped into the void to increase funding for the organization. That hasn\u2019t happened this time. Wars, the abrupt cancellation of U.S. international assistance with the dismantling of USAID, and increased defense spending have led to funding challenges across the board for organizations like the WHO, which is already facing staff shortages.<\/p>\n

The U.S. is leaving WHO with a parting gift, too: an unpaid $278 million bill.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The U.S. has effectively stiffed the WHO on its contributions in the last few years, and has also reneged on several hundred million dollars in promised voluntary contributions. Will the U.S. pay the bill before it leaves? Could a resolution block its withdrawal? Read Helen\u2019s story from yesterday<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The FDA cleared<\/a> a new AI tool yesterday that can triage up to 14 findings in a single abdominal CT scan, everything from bowel obstruction to appendicitis.<\/p>\n

The news is less notable for the specific tool \u2014 the FDA\u00a0approved hundreds of AI-based medical devices in radiology before approving Aidoc\u2019s offering \u2014 than it is a signal of how the agency will approach this regulatory issue. For now, the FDA is using its traditional piecemeal approach while sometimes expanding the number of indications it will authorize.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Real-world performance of AI tools can be lower than claimed in the materials submitted to FDA, some hospitals say. And the more conditions AI can detect, the greater the chance for false positives \u2014 and the more useless a tool can become, especially in the context of a fast-paced emergency department.<\/p>\n

But the trend of bundling and aggregating multiple findings in one tool seems here to stay. Read more<\/a> from STAT\u2019s Katie Palmer.<\/p>\n

The rise of unproven, potentially dangerous\u00a0autism treatments<\/p>\n

Nearly a year into Kennedy\u2019s tenure as health secretary, misinformation from the federal government about the cause and treatment of autism is starting to pile up.\u00a0<\/p>\n

At the end of 2025, the FDA quietly took down<\/a> a page that talked about the harms of administering a controversial therapy for autism. Proponents of chelation therapy \u2014 including Kennedy\u2019s right-hand man on autism David Geier<\/a>, who\u2019s long clung to debunked assertions about autism<\/a> \u2014 say it can help remove heavy metals from a person\u2019s blood and \u201ccure\u201d autism, despite little evidence and serious side effects. A five-year-old boy died<\/a> after receiving chelation therapy in 2005. Officials said the article was \u201cretired<\/a>\u201d along with other articles.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, two researchers in the New England Journal of Medicine discussed the dangers of expanding the use of leucovorin without proper protocols in a new article<\/a> published Wednesday. Top health officials touted the cancer medication as a potential treatment<\/a> for autism in September, despite limited evidence<\/a> showing its efficacy. The researchers worry that leucovorin will be prescribed off-label at high doses that can persist for long times in the blood. Scientists don\u2019t know how this will affect a person\u2019s body. If the FDA wants to expand leucovorin\u2019s use, it needs more large-scale studies studying the\u00a0long-term effects, they say.<\/p>\n

Kennedy\u2019s milk mustache and dairy\u2019s domination<\/p>\n

The Trump administration\u2019s new social media campaign encouraging Americans to #DrinkWholeMilk feels a bit like an AI-generated fever dream, but the U.S. government has a long history<\/a>\u00a0of promoting dairy consumption \u2014 with some unsavory ties.<\/p>\n

If you\u2019re a millennial, it\u2019s hard to forget the famous \u201cGot Milk?\u201d campaign of the 1990s and 2000s with notable celebrities and athletes sporting milk mustaches. What\u2019s new and notable with this recent push from health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is the emphasis on whole milk and the fact that government officials are jumping in to advertise milk directly.\u00a0<\/p>\n

A recently passed law allows schools to serve whole milk<\/a> after being off the menu for over a decade, and new dietary guidelines recommend full-fat dairy<\/a> over nonfat and low-fat options. Even among foods with powerful lobbies and checkoff programs of their own, dairy seems to be in its own special category when it comes to explicit government endorsements, said one expert.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Why dairy? And what does the government\u2019s promotion of it say about our current cultural moment? Read more<\/a>\u00a0from STAT\u2019s Sarah Todd.<\/p>\n

What are you grateful for?<\/p>\n

At the end of every visit, infectious disease physician Joseph Tucker asks his patients in North Carolina a simple question: what are you grateful for<\/a>?\u00a0<\/p>\n

He asks this question because research suggests that simple expressions of gratitude can build trust and connection and\u00a0lighten the conversation. But this year, some of the responses surprised him \u2014 tears, full-bodied sobbing, from three adult patients. This had never happened before.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe tears I saw were not a rejection of gratitude. They were grief for what gratitude used to rest upon \u2014 an expectation that basic protections would hold,\u201d writes Tucker, who practices at University of North Carolina Chapel Hill. Read more of his story about the power of gratitude<\/a> in health care settings.<\/p>\n

Health news roundup<\/p>\n

Texas, vaccines: Last year, Texas was ground zero for the country\u2019s largest measles outbreak in 30 years. Now, Attorney General Ken Paxton will investigate<\/a> medical providers, insurance companies, vaccine manufacturers, or other entities for \u201cfailing to disclose financial incentives connected to their administration of childhood vaccines.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Gluten, Carrie Bradshaw: The Food and Drug Administration published yesterday a request for information<\/a> to improve transparency in ingredient disclosure for foods that might contain gluten in a bid to help those with celiac disease. As Kennedy\u2019s MAHA movement reshapes the dietary guidelines<\/a> in ways that clash\u00a0with some nutrition experts\u2019 recommendations, I couldn\u2019t help but wonder: which health disparities does the MAHA movement care most about?<\/p>\n

NIH, depoliticized: Rep. Diana DeGette (D\u2013Colo.) introduced Wednesday a bill to \u201cshield the National Institutes of Health from political interference\u201d by capping the number of NIH political appointees, prohibiting appointees from participating in NIH grant review processes, and prohibiting NIH from terminating grants without documented scientific cause.<\/p>\n

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

Doctors in Minnesota decry fear and chaos amid Trump administration\u2019s immigration crackdown, AP<\/a><\/p>\n

Illinois faces federal defunding for state law requiring abortion referrals, The Washington Post<\/a><\/p>\n

Missourians gather to support alpha-gal reporting legislation, STLPR<\/a><\/p>\n

Why consciousness is the hardest problem in science, Scientific American<\/a><\/p>\n

Is there such a thing as eating too much protein? Vogue<\/a><\/p>\n

What\u2019s the word? Test your knowledge with today\u2019s STAT Mini crossword<\/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":423428,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[59],"tags":[97,252,253],"class_list":{"0":"post-423427","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-health-care","8":"tag-health","9":"tag-health-care","10":"tag-healthcare"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/423427","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=423427"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/423427\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/423428"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=423427"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=423427"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=423427"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}