TV News LIES

One evening in 2019, Janice Blanock was scrolling through Facebook when she heard a stranger mention her son in a video on her feed. Luke, an outgoing high school athlete, had died three years earlier at age 19 from Ewing’s sarcoma, a rare bone cancer.

Blanock had come across a live stream of a community meeting to discuss rare cancers that were occurring with alarming frequency in south-western Pennsylvania, where she lives.

Between 2009 and 2019, five other students in Blanock’s school district were also diagnosed with Ewing’s sarcoma. (The region saw about 30 overall cases of the cancer during that time.) In the video, health experts and residents were talking about whether the uptick in illnesses was related to fracking. Blanock was riveted.

More...

Two years after erasing the constitutional right to an abortion, the Supreme Court went the other direction Thursday and tossed out a challenge to the widely used abortion drug mifepristone that would have curbed access to the drug and jeopardized the independence of the Food and Drug Administration.

The unanimous court said the anti-abortion doctors who challenged the FDA’s loosening of rules for how mifepristone can be prescribed and dispensed lacked a legitimate basis to bring their suit.

The challengers’ “sincere legal, moral, ideological and policy objections” to mifepristone don't give them standing to sue, Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote in the majority opinion.

Instead, he said, the anti-abortion doctors can raise objections through the FDA’s regulatory process, or to Congress. And they can express their views through he political and electoral processes.

More...

 

New cancer diagnoses in the U.S. are expected to top 2 million for the first time in 2024, driven in large part by an alarming increase in cancers among younger Americans, according to new American Cancer Society da

 

Why it matters: There have been major improvements in cancer survival, but there's a worrying rise in some cancers at the same time doctors are trying to figure out why they're seeing more young patients with cancer.

What they're saying: This demographic shift comes with psychological, physical and financial burdens that are less common with older patients, experts say.

• Patients under 50 are more likely to be uninsured, juggling career and caregiving responsibilities, and face a higher lifetime risk of treatment-related side effects like second cancers.
• "It's overwhelming for anybody, but especially for these younger patients who are going on with their daily lives and then suddenly get this life-altering diagnosis and really don't know where to turn," Robin Mendelsohn, co-director of the Center for Young Onset Colorectal and Gastrointestinal Cancers at Memorial Sloan Kettering, told Axios.
• "Many feel alone because they're younger, their friends, many haven't had to deal with this.

Florida’s restrictions on gender-affirming care for minors and adults are unconstitutional, a federal judge ruled Tuesday.

Johnson & Johnson will pay $700 million to settle a lawsuit by dozens of states that accused the pharmaceutical industry giant of intentionally misleading customers about the safety of its talc-based baby powder, officials announced Tuesday.

J&J sold products with talc for more than 100 years before discontinuing them globally in 2023 after facing thousands of lawsuits. The coalition of 43 attorneys general found Johnson & Johnson failed to disclose that the talc sometimes contained asbestos, and that asbestos is harmful and can lead to cancer.

Johnson & Johnson baby powder is now largely made from corn starch rather than talc. The company did not admit guilt as part of the settlement.

More...

A Food and Drug Administration advisory panel on Monday endorsed the experimental Alzheimer's drug donanemab, which studies showed slowed early stages of the fatal mind-robbing disease.

The recommendation came despite pointed questions from advisory committee members about the potential side effects of Eli Lilly's drug, an antibody that removes beta-amyloid that accumulates in the brains of patients with Alzheimer's disease.

The FDA is not compelled to follow the recommendation of the advisory committee of outside experts, but it often does so. A notable exception was when the advisory committee recommended the agency reject Biogen's amyloid-clearing drug aducanumab, nevertheless, the FDA in 2021 approved the drug. Biogen halted sales and gave up ownership of the drug earlier this year.

More...