SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
cancer
RFK Jr. Will Need a Miracle Cure to Fight Cancer on Trump’s Budget
At the same time Trump is pledging to reverse childhood cancer rates, he and his attack doge Elon Musk are gutting federal health agencies to help pay for huge tax breaks for corporations and the uber rich.
Mar 11, 2025
During his marathon, fact-free speech to Congress last week, President Donald Trump announced that his administration plans to address the growing incidence of childhood cancer.
“Since 1975, rates of child cancer have increased by more than 40%,” Trump said. “Reversing this trend is one of the top priorities for our new presidential commission to make America healthy again, chaired by our new Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. …Our goal is to get toxins out of our environment, poisons out of our food supply, and keep our children healthy and strong.”
As usual, Trump got the statistic wrong. In fact, childhood cancer rates increased 33% since 1975, according to a study published in the journal PLOS One in January (and verified by the American Cancer Society), and the uptick in cases can be at least partly attributed to improved detection technology.
What would a major loss of federal scientific expertise mean for HHS Secretary Kennedy’s childhood cancer commission? Given that Kennedy, a prominent anti-vaccine activist, is not known for paying attention to scientific evidence, it may not matter much.
That said, the PLOS One study did find that some childhood cancers—notably leukemia, lymphoma, brain tumors, liver tumors, and gonadal tumors—are on the rise, so by all means, the federal government should do more to try to reduce them.
But at the same time Trump is pledging to reverse childhood cancer rates and “get toxins out of our environment,” he and his attack doge Elon Musk are gutting federal health agencies to help pay for huge tax breaks for corporations and the uber rich.
Indiscriminate Cuts Across the Board
All of the agencies that protect public health are on the chopping block.
Just a few weeks ago, for example, his administration illegally fired some 5,200 employees at Kennedy’s Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), including nearly 1,300 staff members at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), roughly a tenth of the agency’s workforce.
Meanwhile, over at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the new administrator, Lee Zeldin, is threatening a budget cut of at least 65%. That would leave the agency with an annual budget of about $3.2 billion, less than a third of its budget in fiscal year (FY) 1970—the year it began—in inflation-adjusted 2024 dollars. Such a meager budget would destroy the agency, exactly what the fossil fuel industry-funded Republican Party has been wanting to do for years.
The Trump administration is also trying to ax a key portion of National Institutes of Health (NIH) biomedical research funding, which would undermine any effort to curtail childhood cancer—not to mention research on other deadly diseases.
On February 7, it announced it will cut an estimated $4 billion from NIH grants by capping funding for “indirect” overhead costs that cover such expenses as facilities, electric utilities, and administrative and janitorial services at 15%, half the current average rate. About $26 billion of NIH’s $35 billion in FY2023 grants that went to more than 2,500 universities, medical schools, and other research institutions covered direct costs—researchers and laboratories. The balance—$9 billion—paid for overhead.
Experts warn that without adequate overhead support, researchers would not be able to do their work.
Three days after the administration announced its intention to cut the NIH budget, five medical associations and 22 states filed lawsuits challenging the plan. Later that day, U.S. District Judge Angel Kelley in Boston granted a temporary restraining order. She followed up on March 5, the day after Trump’s speech to Congress, by filing a preliminary injunction that put the cuts on hold while the lawsuits proceed. “The risk of harm to research institutions and beyond,” Kelley wrote in a 76-page order, “is immediate, devastating, and irreparable.”
It’s 2017 all Over Again (With a Major Difference)
Trump’s zeal to hobble federal medical and scientific research should not come as a surprise. To a great extent, his current budget-chopping campaign reflects the FY2018 budget he proposed in May 2017. That radical proposal called for shrinking the budgets of NIH by 18%; EPA by 31%, the Food and Drug Administration by 31%, and the CDC by 17%, which would have been its lowest budget since 1997. It also called for hacking $610 billion from Medicaid over the following decade on top of an $880-billion cut a Republican healthcare plan advocated.
That budget was dead on arrival, despite the fact that Republicans controlled the White House, the House, and the Senate, albeit by only a 51 to 49 margin. Oklahoma Republican Tom Cole, then-chair of the House spending subcommittee that funds NIH, toldScientific American that he did not expect Congress to support Trump’s proposed cuts. Other legislators from both sides of the aisle also rejected the president’s NIH budget proposal. (Nevertheless, Trump’s previous administration did a lot of damage by eliminating or weakening over 100 environmental safeguards.)
Today, Republicans have the White House and slim majorities in both houses of Congress. Unlike 2017, however, congressional Republicans are in lockstep with Trump, and thus far have been cheering him and Musk on from the sidelines as they dismantle the federal government.
What would a major loss of federal scientific expertise mean for HHS Secretary Kennedy’s childhood cancer commission? Given that Kennedy, a prominent anti-vaccine activist, is not known for paying attention to scientific evidence, it may not matter much. It’s been widely reported that Kennedy has been telling children and adults in Texas to try Vitamin A, cod liver oil, and other dubious treatments if they get measles instead of urging them to get vaccinated, so one could only imagine what he would recommend that parents give their children to protect them from cancer. Aloe? Emu oil? Kombucha? All of the above?
This column was originally posted on Money Trail, a new Substack site co-founded by Elliott Negin.
Keep ReadingShow Less
'Win for Public Health' as FDA Bans Carcinogenic Red Dye No. 3 in Food and Drinks
"At long last, the FDA is ending the regulatory paradox of Red 3 being illegal for use in lipstick, but perfectly legal to feed to children in the form of candy," said one advocate.
Jan 15, 2025
It's been used to color everything from candy to soft drinks to even watermelon—but after decades of knowing that it causes cancer, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration is finally banning erythrosine, popularly known as Red Dye No. 3, in foods and beverages.
Red Dye No. 3—commonly used to color maraschino cherries, fruit cocktails, toaster pastries, sodas, seasonal candies, cough syrups, and many other orally consumed products—has been known to cause cancer in animals since the 1980s. It has been banned in cosmetics since 1990. Manufacturers have until January 2027 to remove the toxic additive from products subject to the ban.
"This is exactly the action we need to see from the FDA."
"Because the FDA failed to uphold its legal obligation to fully ban cancer-causing additives, Red 3 remained permitted in foods, supplements, and oral drugs more than 34 years later," the Center for Science in the Public Interest said in a statement Wednesday. "That changed on January 16, 2025, thanks to a color additive petition filed by CSPI in 2022."
CSPI called the ban "a win for public health."
"At long last, the FDA is ending the regulatory paradox of Red 3 being illegal for use in lipstick, but perfectly legal to feed to children in the form of candy," Dr. Peter Lurie, president of the Center for Science in the Public Interest, said in a statement. "The primary purpose of food dyes is to make candy, drinks, and other processed foods more attractive. When the function is purely aesthetic, why accept any cancer risk?"
In addition to CSPI, numerous other groups and activists including the Center for Food Safety, Environmental Working Group (EWG), and Food & Water Watch (FWW) had petitioned the FDA for the ban.
"We wouldn't be celebrating this historic decision today without the relentless leadership of public health champions like Michael Jacobson and others who took up this fight decades ago on behalf of consumers," EWG president and co-founder Ken Cook said in a statement hailing the ban. "We all owe a debt of gratitude to Michael and the other early leaders who pushed the FDA to remove toxic chemical ingredients from the nation's food supply."
FWW senior food policy analyst Rebecca Wolf said that "this move by the FDA is long overdue, but represents a step in the right direction for consumer safety from harmful, cancer-causing chemicals."
"This is exactly the action we need to see from the FDA," Wolf added. "If the incoming FDA is serious about food safety and system reform, they should build on this win by endorsing scientifically sound policies and regulatory changes that Food & Water Watch has supported for years. These include ending the GRAS loophole that companies use to pollute our food system, removing antibiotics from animal feed, and supporting a ban on harmful chemicals in food."
Keep ReadingShow Less
'Out of Control': Insurance Giant UnitedHealth Calls in Middle of Cancer Surgery to Question Necessity
Dr. Elisabeth Potter shared "another horror story from a doctor dealing with United Healthcare's terrible authorization process."
Jan 09, 2025
A month after the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson prompted many Americans to share personal horror stories of the company's coverage denials and other practices, a doctor in Austin, Texas on Wednesday shared her own experience that she said exemplified how the for-profit health system "just keeps getting worse."
In a video posted to TikTok, Dr. Elisabeth Potter said she recently received an unprecedented phone call from UnitedHealthcare about a patient—one who was already under anesthesia and having surgery.
Potter, a plastic surgeon who specializes in reconstructive surgery for breast cancer patients who have had mastectomies, said she was performing a bilateral deep inferior epigastric perforator [DIEP} surgery when UnitedHealthcare called her in the operating room.
The call was urgent, she was told, and needed to be returned right away.
"So I scrubbed out of my case and I called UnitedHealthcare, and the gentleman said he needed some information about her," said Potter. "Wanted to know her diagnosis and whether her inpatient stay should be justified."
Potter found that the person calling wasn't aware that the patient whose care he was questioning had breast cancer and was in the operating room—that information was known by "a different department" at UnitedHealthcare.
Potter's account, said Nidhi Hegde, managing director at the American Economic Liberties Project, was "another horror story from a doctor dealing with United Healthcare's terrible authorization process."
"Ridiculous that doctors/nurses are spending time explaining their work to an insurance company instead of being able to focus on care," said Hegde.
As Common Dreams reported last month, cancer patients have become disproportionately affected by "prior authorizations" demanded by for-profit health insurers, which require doctors to get approval for treatments. Prior authorization can delay lifesaving care and one survey of oncologists in 2022 found that patients experienced "disease progression" 80% of the time an insurance company's bureaucratic requirements delayed their treatment.
Potter had to inform the UnitedHealthcare staffer that the company had already given her approval for the surgery.
She said she told him, "I need to go back and be with my patient now" and was able to continue the procedure.
"But it's out of control," she said. "Insurance is out of control. I have no other words."
Even before Thompson's killing, UnitedHealthcare has garnered outrage for the numerous methods it uses to deny healthcare coverage to patients.
A Senate investigation found the company intentionally denied claims submitted by nursing home patients who suffered strokes and falls, in order to increase profits. The company also faces a class-action lawsuit for using an AI algorithm with a 90% error rate to deny coverage to senior citizens with Medicare Advantage plans,
In December, ProPublica published an investigation that found the company is one of several insurers who repeatedly relied on the advice of company doctors who have wrongly recommended denying care.
In a follow-up video, Potter said on Wednesday that insurance companies have created "a fear-based system where, if an insurance company calls me and says I've got to call them right back, I'm afraid they're not going to pay for my patient's surgery, that patient is going to get stuck with a bill."
Potter toldNewsweek that the experience confirmed for her that "there is no room in healthcare where the pressure of insurance isn't felt by both patients and doctors. Not even the operating room."
UnitedHealthcare suggested in a comment to Newsweek that it did not call Potter during surgery, saying, "There are no insurance related circumstances that would require a physician to step out of surgery and it would create potential safety risks if they were to do so. We did not ask nor would ever expect a physician to interrupt patient care to answer a call and we will be following up with the provider and hospital to understand why these unorthodox actions were taken."
Potter joined many Americans in speaking out against the for-profit health insurance system in the days after Thompson's killing, offering a doctor's perspective.
"I want you to know that insurance companies are affecting the kind of care that you're getting, because they're applying pressures to physicians through their policymaking," said Potter in one video posted on TikTok. "This is a dark, dark time for healthcare, and we have to fix this or we're gonna go down a path that we can't get back from."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular