Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Monday announced several initiatives intended to rein in the prescription of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, the most widely prescribed class of antidepressants, which he has described as exceptionally difficult to quit. Mr. Kennedy has long signaled that reducing the use of psychiatric drugs would be an aim of…
The Supreme Court on Monday restored nationwide access to a widely used abortion medication in a temporary order that will, for now, allow women to once again obtain the pill mifepristone by mail. In a brief order, Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. paused a lower-court ruling from Friday that had prevented abortion providers from prescribing…
Since last fall, new and deadly synthetic opioids called orphines have begun appearing in street drugs in the United States. They are far more potent than fentanyl but cannot be detected by standard toxicology tests. Orphines are still much less common than fentanyl, but they are proliferating quickly. As of last month, they have been…
Hantavirus, a rare disease often caused by contact with droppings from infected rodents, is suspected in the deaths of three people who were aboard a cruise ship sailing the Atlantic Ocean. Hantavirus is most commonly transmitted by breathing in particles of dried rodent droppings or urine. In rare cases, it may spread among people, according…
Mindbending may be just the word to describe the Oval Office ceremony on April 18, when President Trump ordered federal agencies to speed up research into the potential therapeutic uses of illegal psychedelic compounds like LSD, peyote and MDMA. Here was a law-and-order Republican and lifelong teetotaler championing the hallucinogenic substances that a previous Republican…
Enough time had passed since the patient’s previous colonoscopy that she met the criteria to undergo another, said Dr. Steven Itzkowitz, a gastroenterologist at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York. She was in “reasonably good health,” and the risks of the procedure — bleeding, reaction to anesthesia, perforation of her…
A federal appeals court issued a ruling on Friday temporarily halting the ability of abortion providers to prescribe pills using telemedicine and send them to patients by mail, blocking what has become a major avenue for women seeking abortions in recent years. The order comes in a case in which the state of Louisiana is…
A National Institutes of Health employee who was put on paid leave after organizing a public letter that criticized the Trump administration said on Friday that she had been reinstated — a move that followed the reinstatement of 14 Federal Emergency Management Agency employees who had signed a critical letter of their own. The employee,…
The Food and Drug Administration said on Friday that it would permit some patients with deadly pancreatic cancer to receive early access to a promising, highly coveted drug. The treatment, daraxonrasib, taken as three pills a day, is not yet approved for use. But many patients have been desperate to try it. The drug recently…
As Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. sets out to rein in the use of psychiatric medications, a group of prominent psychiatrists are developing guidance for helping patients to stop taking them, noting that providers sometimes “park” patients on medications that are no longer necessary or effective. The experts, whose first recommendations appeared in JAMA…
