Virginia moved closer Monday to shielding doctors from extradition if they provide reproductive or gender-affirming healthcare to out-of-state patients, advancing legislation that underscores the deepening divide over healthcare access and state sovereignty. The Senate narrowly passed Senate Bill 1098, sponsored by Ghazala Hashmi, D-Chesterfield, which would block the extradition of healthcare providers facing criminal charges in other states for performing medical services that are legal in Virginia. Every Republican opposed the measure.
A bill Gov. Kathy Hochul signed Monday aims to make it harder for authorities in other states to prosecute New York doctors who prescribe abortion medication online. The new law allows doctors to keep their names off of prescription labels for mifepristone and misoprostol, drugs commonly used to terminate early pregnancies. Instead, they'll be allowed to list their practices or — once lawmakers approve an agreed-upon tweak in the coming days — the addresses of the practices instead, according to Hochul’s approval message. Hochul approved the legislation three days after a Louisiana grand jury hit Dr. Margaret Carpenter, a doctor from the Hudson Valley town of New Paltz, with a criminal abortion charge alleging she prescribed abortion medication to a resident of the state. Abortions are banned in Louisiana, with limited exceptions.
HHS is investigating four unnamed medical schools over alleged antisemitism that took place during graduation ceremonies last year. "The review will specifically examine whether the institutions acted with deliberate indifference regarding events that may have impacted Jewish students' rights to access educational opportunities and benefits," HHS Office for Civil Rights said Monday.
Within a large group of more than 700 patients treated with CAR T cell therapy, researchers found no evidence that the therapy itself caused any type of secondary cancer in the modified T cells, according to new analysis reported in Nature Medicine.
The nomination of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to lead HHS has concerned doctors and public health experts across the world who are alarmed by Kennedy's decades-long mission to sow distrust in vaccines. But key groups representing physicians in Washington have stayed silent in the face of what their members call a threat to public health.