{"id":701695,"date":"2026-06-13T12:30:41","date_gmt":"2026-06-13T12:30:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/701695\/"},"modified":"2026-06-13T12:30:41","modified_gmt":"2026-06-13T12:30:41","slug":"soda-and-liver-cancer-hhs-alcohol-report-morning-rounds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/701695\/","title":{"rendered":"Soda and liver cancer, HHS, alcohol report: 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. Today we\u2019ve got an item from STAT\u2019s new AAAS media fellow<\/a> Lauren Chan. She\u2019ll be reporting with us this summer. Scroll down to read her report on a sugary soda study.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Diabetes leaders apologize for expulsions<\/p>\n

Less than a week after five members of the American Diabetes Association were ushered out of its annual meeting, the group\u2019s CEO has offered them, and the broader diabetes community, an apology.<\/p>\n

\u201cI recognize the impact that experience had on each of you,\u201d ADA executive Charles Henderson said in a video. \u201cI am deeply sorry for the hurt, frustration, and the pain that resulted.\u201d Read more<\/a> from Elizabeth Cooney on the group\u2019s next steps in the wake of what happened.<\/p>\n

DOJ accuses another med school of discrimination<\/p>\n

Yesterday, the Justice Department accused the University of California,\u00a0Davis School of Medicine of discriminating<\/a> against white and Asian applicants. The report follows similar accusations levied at the University of California, Los Angeles and Yale University. The letters are part of a broader campaign against initiatives to diversify the physician and biomedical research workforce. But these reports alleging bias and their focus on test scores, experts previously told STAT, ignore\u00a0that medical schools have largely shifted toward more holistic admissions practices. In a statement<\/a> yesterday, UC Davis said it \u201cstrongly disagrees with any characterization of its admissions practices as discriminatory or inconsistent with applicable law.\u201d<\/p>\n

You can read more about the responses to the initial two letters here<\/a>. You can also revisit a 2023 story<\/a> from our former colleague, Usha Lee McFarling, on how UC Davis became \u201cremarkably\u201d diverse\u00a0without considering race. \u2014 Anil Oza<\/p>\n

HHS responds to paper on alcohol risk<\/p>\n

If you recall on Tuesday, a group of researchers published a study<\/a> warning of potential risks of even light drinking \u2014 work the Trump administration had commissioned ahead of new dietary guidelines but did not release. HHS officials have since tried to distance themselves from the whole thing, telling STAT that the paper was \u201cNOT commissioned by, NOR reviewed, approved, or cleared by\u201d the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. While it\u2019s true the final study published this week wasn\u2019t OK\u2019d by HHS \u2014 it was peer-reviewed for the journal \u2014 the bulk of the research was done on taxpayers\u2019 dime and overseen by federal health officials. The paper contains many of the same findings as a draft report<\/a> made public in 2025.<\/p>\n

As all that was happening, the House Appropriations Committee on Tuesday passed an HHS spending bill that says the SAMHSA panel that ran the alcohol\u00a0study can\u2019t \u201cstudy, analyze, consider or report\u201d\u00a0on adult alcohol consumption as part of its work to prevent underage drinking. \u2014 Isabella Cueto<\/p>\n

Scientists conflicted on a new NIH proposal<\/p>\n

In the hypercompetitive system to get NIH grant dollars, researchers at elite academic institutions have long had the upper hand. One proposal that has repeatedly been floated to address that inequity \u2014 including during the first Trump administration \u2014 is to place a cap on the number of grants any individual researcher can receive from the agency.<\/p>\n

Now, it\u2019s circling back again. The NIH released a \u201cRequest for Information\u201d this week, soliciting input on the idea from the scientific community. STAT\u2019s Anil Oza spoke with scientists about the proposal. Many see promise in the idea but don\u2019t trust the Trump administration to implement it fairly. Read more<\/a> on the reactions.\u00a0<\/p>\n

ACOG makes its own vaccine recs for pregnancy<\/p>\n

The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists released its own recommended vaccine schedule for pregnant people yesterday, diverging from CDC advice under the Trump administration.<\/p>\n

The professional group recommends four vaccines be routinely administered during pregnancy, with several others recommended under certain circumstances. (The CDC\u2019s current recommended schedule includes only two shots: those against Tdap and RSV.) Read more<\/a> from Helen Branswell on which shots ACOG recommends for pregnant people and for a refresher on the federal fracas that led the group to issue separate recommendations.<\/p>\n

New study links sugary drinks and liver cancer<\/p>\n

In the battle of real vs. artificial sweeteners in sodas and other beverages, sugar may be the bigger risk. A new meta-analysis \u2014 a study that analyzes the findings of other studies \u2014 published yesterday in JAMA Network Open<\/a> evaluated whether sugar and artificially sweetened beverage intake were linked to new cases of liver cancer.<\/p>\n

Researchers looked at 11 studies (including 1.5 million participants) and concluded that one artificially sweetened beverage per day was not associated with increased risk of liver cancer. However, a sugar-sweetened drink each day was associated with increased rates of two primary liver cancer subtypes, intrahepatic cholangiocarcinoma and hepatocellular carcinoma.<\/p>\n

Ani Kardashian, a hepatologist with Keck Medicine of USC, notes that this is consistent with her clinical guidance. She told STAT, \u201cthis just confirms my current practice, which is to advise patients to cut back on their sugar-sweetened beverage consumption.\u201d<\/p>\n

Notably, there were mixed outcomes across individual studies, which authors attributed to confounders like diabetes and obesity rates. Most studies in the analysis collected participants\u2019 beverage-consumption patterns only once, thus missing long-term drinking patterns. While infections like hepatitis are contributors to liver cancer, sweetened beverage consumption may be a modifiable risk factor for liver health. \u2014 Lauren Chan<\/p>\n

$12,850<\/p>\n

That\u2019s how much a group of researchers paid Nature Medicine this spring to publish a study with the journal. The same time last year, publication was free. The new charge covered the publisher\u2019s open-access fees, a route that many researchers are now required to take to comply with an NIH policy that aims to provide immediate, free access to papers derived from federally funded research. \u201cThe journals I used to recommend to my trainees are now unaffordable,\u201d professor and epidemiologist Elizabeth Selvin writes in a new First Opinion essay. Read more<\/a> on the challenges.<\/p>\n

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

U.S. Ebola unit sparks fury, protests, and a political crisis in Kenya, New York Times<\/a><\/p>\n

Exclusive: Private Medicare plans erect barriers to rehab care in pursuit of profit, federal investigators find, STAT<\/a><\/p>\n

Big tobacco hooked us on ultra-processed foods. It might teach us how to cut back, NPR<\/a><\/p>\n

Opinion: How long Covid\u2019s scientific stalemate made it politically erasable, 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":701696,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[59],"tags":[97,252,253],"class_list":["post-701695","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health-care","tag-health","tag-health-care","tag-healthcare"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/701695","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=701695"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/701695\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/701696"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=701695"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=701695"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=701695"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}