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RFK Jr. Vows to Halt ‘Attack' on Fats in Whole Milk and Cheese

RFK Jr. Vows to Halt ‘Attack' on Fats in Whole Milk and Cheese

Bloomberg13 hours ago
Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and other top public health officials said Monday that saturated fats, long blamed for increased risk of heart disease, have been unfairly demonized by the medical community, indicating a pivot on government health guidelines is taking shape.
'There's a tremendous amount of emerging science that talks about the need for more protein in our diets, more fats in our diets,' Kennedy said Monday at a US Department of Agriculture event.
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How states should spend all that opioid settlement money
How states should spend all that opioid settlement money

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How states should spend all that opioid settlement money

State and local governments are about to get a lot of money to combat the opioid epidemic. They could fritter it away on nice-sounding programs — or save the most lives. Last month, attorneys general from 55 U.S. states and territories as well as the District of Columbia approved a $7.4 billion settlement with Purdue Pharma, the maker of opioid painkiller OxyContin. If the settlement is finalized, the vast majority of that money would, over the next 15 years, flow to states, local governments and Native American tribes for opioid abatement. The deal would also shut down Purdue and replace it with a public-benefit company committed to combating the crisis, to be run by a court-approved board.

What ‘The Pitt' Can Teach Us About Hospital Deaths
What ‘The Pitt' Can Teach Us About Hospital Deaths

Medscape

timean hour ago

  • Medscape

What ‘The Pitt' Can Teach Us About Hospital Deaths

When The Pitt first hit the airwaves last winter, it started a lot of conversations among clinical professionals, including the show's clinically accurate and emotionally nuanced portrayal of the death. In particular it was the death of the character known as Mr. Hayes, whose adult children wrestled with whether or not to intubate him over the course of several episodes. The interaction among and between the fictional family and Noah Wyle's character, Dr. Michael 'Robby' Robinavitch, are unflinching and honest — and they were informed by, among other things, resources developed by Shoshana Ungerleider, MD, and the End Well Project. Ungerleider, an internal medicine physician and the host and producer of the podcast Before We Go and the TED Health Podcasts, founded End Well in 2017 with the mission of making the end of life more dignified and human centered. When considering how death is portrayed in the media — on television, at least — Ungerleider and her team discovered that it is anything but: more than 80% of the deaths we see on the small screen are the result of violence, and that trend is only increasing. Depictions of gun violence on popular primetime dramas doubled from 2000 to 2018, while illness accounted for only 4.3% of deaths shown. 'We looked at over 141,000 scripted TV episodes from 2010 to 2020 and found that what's shown on screen rarely reflects how most people actually die,' Ungerleider said. 'Most people will actually die in hospitals or other healthcare facilities or other institutions, isolated. But you wouldn't know that from watching TV.' Shoshana Ungerleider, MD Not only is this overly violent TV landscape unrealistic but also it leaves audiences in the dark about what they themselves may encounter when met with the eventual decline of a loved one, Ungerleider said. 'When we overrepresent violent deaths and really inaccurately portray the end of life experience, I think that this leaves audiences really of all ages unprepared for some of the decisions that they may one day face for themselves and the people that they love,' she said. 'Shows like The Pitt , who really get it right with all the urgency that you see in a hospital setting, but also nuance and ethical complexity, helps close the gap between kind of the fiction of television and real life.' The team at End Well worked with the Hollywood, Health & Society program at the Norman Lear Center, USC Annenberg, Los Angeles, for more than 3 years to produce the report and accompanying guidelines for the media to assist in portraying natural death accurately. Kate Langrall Folb, program director for Hollywood, Health & Society, said that while the program has been consulting on TV shows and movies since 2001 on 'everything from diabetes to HIV to cancer and beyond,' they had never worked with shows on how to depict the end of life. Kate Langrall Folb 'We were delighted to partner with End Well to develop tools and resources for writers on that topic,' Langrall Folb said. 'Hollywood was not asking for these tools, but I believe that is mainly because they didn't know they needed them. Now that we have brought this topic to their attention, they're all in.' Langrall Folb highlighted a second storyline from The Pitt for its relevance and realistic portrayal, driven by the tools developed by End Well and the Norman Lear Center group — an arc about a patient who is brain dead due to an overdose. 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When stories reflect the complexity of serious illness, families, caregivers, and patients at home feel seen,' Ungerleider said. 'When a character on TV gets support from a palliative care team, it gives viewers permission to ask for the same in their real lives.' The Executive Director of End Well, Tracy Wheeler, who was also integral to the development of the report and the tools, framed the resources like a map to this fairly unexplored territory. 'By helping Hollywood portray serious illness and death more accurately, we're not just improving representation — we're giving people the language and perspective to better navigate these experiences in real life,' Wheeler said. 'This work reflects our shared belief that storytelling has the power to shift culture.'

Does Benadryl Do More Harm Than Good?
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  • New York Times

Does Benadryl Do More Harm Than Good?

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