Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is distancing himself from his anti-vaccine work as he seeks to become the leader of the nation’s top health agency under President Donald Trump, according to government ethics documents released Wednesday. Kennedy has pulled in roughly $10 million in income from his work over the past year, which includes speaking fees, leading an anti-vaccine nonprofit and legal fees, government ethics forms filed for his nomination show. ... If confirmed, he has promised to stop collecting fees on some of his vaccine lawsuits involving the U.S. government.
A VA study on the relationship between GLP-1 weight-loss drugs and 175 diseases and conditions supports a lot of what scientists already suspected about potential benefits, but contains a few surprises, too. The findings, published Monday in the journal Nature Medicine and based on an analysis of medical records from about 2.5 million patients in the VA system, support the idea that the medications might be able to help patients with Alzheimer’s disease and who are suffering from substance abuse involving alcohol, cannabis and narcotics.
The DOJ has accused Walgreens Boots Alliance of contributing to the U.S. opioid epidemic by filling millions of unlawful prescriptions for addictive painkillers and other drugs. The department intervened in a whistleblower lawsuit filed in federal court in Chicago and accused Walgreens of ignoring "red flags" and filling prescriptions for opioids and other controlled substances that lacked a legitimate medical purpose.
HHS will award $590 million to Moderna to accelerate the development of influenza vaccines, including to protect against bird flu. The Massachusetts-based pharmaceutical company had previously developed a COVID-19 vaccine. Since 2023, Moderna has been working to create a 'pandemic influenza vaccine' which would help protect against certain viruses, including the H5N1 bird flu. The new funds build on the $176 million that HHS gave to Moderna last July. Moderna says the additional funding will help pay for late-stage development, licensure of the vaccines and expanding clinical studies for additional subtypes of pandemic influenza to prevent other potential public health emergencies.
A federal appeals court temporarily paused drugmaker MSN Pharmaceuticals' launch of a generic version of Novartis' blockbuster heart-failure drug Entresto late on Wednesday. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit halted the launch, which could have begun as early as Thursday, while it considers Novartis' emergency request for a longer pause. A separate ruling on Wednesday from U.S. District Judge Dabney Friedrich in Washington had cleared a hurdle for MSN to introduce the first U.S. generic of Switzerland-based Novartis' best-selling drug, which brought the company more than $6 billion in revenue in 2023.
President-elect Trump's threat to tariff Denmark if it resists his acquisition plans for the island territory of Greenland could disrupt one export that is wildly popular in America: Ozempic. ... Danish multinational pharmaceutical giant Novo Nordisk is the sole owner of semaglutide, the active ingredient in both Ozempic and Wegovy. A month's supply of Ozempic is close to $1,000 without insurance, though manufacturer coupons and patient assistance programs are available. Novo Nordisk was estimated to be responsible for half of Denmark's gross domestic product growth in 2024.