Year: 2023

The Food and Drug Administration on Tuesday finalized a rule change that allows women seeking abortion pills to get them through the mail, replacing a long-standing requirement that they pick up the medicine in person.  The Biden administration implemented the change last year, announcing it would no longer enforce the dispensing rule. Tuesday’s action formally updates the drug’s labeling to allow women to get a prescription via telehealth consultation with a health professional, and then receive the pills through the mail, where permitted by law.  Still, the rule change’s impact has been blunted by numerous state laws limiting abortion broadly and the pills specifically. Legal experts foresee years of court battles over access to the pills, as abortion-rights proponents bring test cases to challenge state restrictions.  For more than 20 years, the FDA labeling had limited dispensing to doctor’s offices and clinics, due to safety concerns. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the FDA temporarily suspended the in-person requirement. The agency later said a new scientific review by agency staff supported easing access, concurring with numerous medical societies that had long said the restriction wasn’t necessary.  Two drugmakers that make brand-name and generic versions of abortion pills requested the latest FDA label update. Agency rules require a company to file an application before modifying dispensing restrictions on drugs.  Danco Laboratories, which sells branded Mifeprex (mifepristone), said in a statement the change “is critically important to expanding access to medication abortion services and will provide healthcare providers” another option for prescribing the drug.  …

Walter Cunningham, the last surviving astronaut from the first successful crewed space mission in NASA’s Apollo program, died Tuesday in Houston. He was 90. NASA confirmed Cunningham’s death in a statement but did not include its cause. Spokespersons for the agency and Cunningham’s wife, Dot Cunningham, did not immediately respond to questions. Cunningham was one of three astronauts aboard the 1968 Apollo 7 mission, an 11-day spaceflight that beamed live television broadcasts as they orbited Earth, paving the way for the moon landing less than a year later. Cunningham, then a civilian, crewed the mission with Navy Capt. Walter M. Schirra and Donn F. Eisele, an Air Force major. Cunningham was the lunar module pilot on the space flight, which launched from Cape Kennedy Air Force Station, Florida, on October 11 and splashed down in the Atlantic Ocean south of Bermuda. NASA said Cunningham, Eisele and Schirra flew a near perfect mission. Their spacecraft performed so well that the agency sent the next crew, Apollo 8, to orbit the moon as a prelude to the Apollo 11 moon landing in July 1969. The Apollo 7 astronauts also won a special Emmy award for their daily television reports from orbit, during which they clowned around, held up humorous signs and educated earthlings about space flight. It was NASA’s first crewed space mission since the deaths of the three Apollo 1 astronauts in a launch pad fire January 27, 1967. Cunningham recalled Apollo 7 during a 2017 event at the Kennedy Space …

A top health official in China has said that the fatalities from the latest surge in COVID-19 cases are “increasing” but within the normal range for mortality. In an interview with state broadcaster China Central Television (CCTV), Jiao Yahui, a National Health Commission official, said, “We have a huge base, so what people feel is that the severe cases, the critical cases or the fatalities are increasing. “Relative to the rest of the world, the infection peaks we are faced with across the country are not unusual,” she added.  The contrast between statements by Chinese officials assessing the COVID situation and social media footage of crowded hospital hallways and long lines at clinics prompted leading scientists advising the World Health Organization to call Tuesday for a “more realistic picture” about what China is experiencing after the pivot from “zero-COVID.” Normal mortality is the number of deaths authorities expect for a specific period based on long-term population data. Excess mortality reveals the difference between the number of deaths caused during the current wave of COVID and the number of fatalities expected had the pandemic not occurred. The excess mortality number has been used worldwide during the pandemic to provide a better sense of how many people have died of COVID. Tong Zhaohui, vice president of Chaoyang Hospital in Beijing, agreed that while the actual number of deaths is growing, the fatalities remain a small percentage of China’s population. “Think how many people around you have been infected but how many have …

Advocates for education and health care in Malawi are criticizing the government’s decision to close schools in two cities to try to contain a cholera outbreak.  The Presidential Taskforce on Coronavirus and Cholera said in a statement Monday that the suspension is applied to all primary and secondary schools in the capital, Lilongwe, and commercial hub, Blantyre. Khumbize Kandodo Chiponda, co-chairperson of the taskforce and Malawi’s minister of health, told a press conference Tuesday the decision is a result of the continuing increase in the number of cholera cases in the two cities. As of Monday, the bacterial disease, spread by dirty water, had killed more than 620 people out of 18,222 cases since the outbreak began in March.  Chiponda expressed fear for the safety of students and others if the schools remain open, adding that in just seven days, Blantyre recorded 792 cases with 36 deaths, and Lilongwe recorded 536 cases with 36 deaths. But Malawian education and health rights campaigners say the timing of the suspension was wrong. Hastings Moloko, trustee of the Private Schools Association of Malawi, told a press conference Monday that there is no logic in suspending learning in only two out of the 28 affected districts.  “The playing field is not leveled,” he said. “It is schools in Blantyre and Lilongwe that have been affected. While other students are not learning, students everywhere else in the country are learning. And yet these students will sit for exactly the same exams, exactly at the same …

A new report by the Africa Center for Strategic Studies says “once in a hundred years” floods will become more common in coastal communities due to rising sea levels caused by climate change. As a stretch of West Africa’s coast is set to become the world’s largest megalopolis and an economic powerhouse, academics worry rising sea levels will stymie growth and impact the continent and the world. Henry Wilkins reports from Ganvie, Benin. …

A new year is around the corner. And many use this time to make New Year’s resolutions. Why do people do that, you might ask? “It’s a new calendar year,” said Mandy Doria, a certified counselor at the University of Colorado, speaking with The Associated Press. ‘We have a chance to leave behind all of the old stuff, good and bad, from the previous year and move forward and start to make new plans, new goals, and we may feel excited and recharged by that.” That feeling of hope can dissipate amid day-to-day stressors but there are ways to set goals without feeling like you’re setting yourself up for failure, said Doria. “There is a concept called smart goals,” she said. “So smart goals should be specific. They should be measurable. They should be attainable. And they should be reliable as well as time-based. So, for example, I might want to move my body more, and so I might start by going to the gym or going to yoga once a week. And then after three weeks, maybe I build on that so I can make time specific goals as well. And then it’s measurable and it’s specific.” Knowing why helps Christine Whelan, a clinical professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and the author of an Audible Original 10-lecture series called “Finding Your Purpose,” said if people know why they’ve set goals, they’re more likely to reach them. “Why is it that you want to make a change?” she asked. …

Howard Fischer, a 63-year-old investor living north of New York City, has a wish for when he dies. He wants his remains to be placed in a vessel, broken down by tiny microbes and composted into rich, fertile soil. Maybe his composted remains could be planted outside the family home in Vermont, or maybe they could be returned to the earth elsewhere. “Whatever my family chooses to do with the compost after it’s done is up to them,” Fischer said. “I am committed to having my body composted and my family knows that,” he added. “But I would love for it to happen in New York where I live rather than shipping myself across the country.” Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul signed legislation Saturday to legalize natural organic reduction, popularly known as human composting, making New York the sixth state in the nation to allow that method of burial. Washington state became the first state to legalize human composting in 2019, followed by Colorado and Oregon in 2021, and Vermont and California in 2022. For Fischer, this alternative, green method of burial aligns with his philosophical view on life: to live in an environmentally conscious way. The process goes like this: the body of the deceased is placed into a reusable vessel along with plant material such as wood chips, alfalfa and straw. The organic mix creates the perfect habitat for naturally occurring microbes to do their work, quickly and efficiently breaking down the body in about a month’s time. The …