Health
Caroline Kennedy Calls RFK Jr. a ‘Predator’ in Letter to Senators
![Caroline Kennedy Calls RFK Jr. a ‘Predator’ in Letter to Senators Caroline Kennedy Calls RFK Jr. a ‘Predator’ in Letter to Senators](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2025/01/28/multimedia/28RFK-CAROLINE-bqgp/28RFK-CAROLINE-bqgp-facebookJumbo.jpg)
Caroline Kennedy wrote a scathing letter to key senators on Tuesday, calling her cousin, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a “predator” addicted to attention from airing dangerous views on vaccinations and someone who is unfit to be the nation’s health secretary.
She urged lawmakers, who will be questioning Mr. Kennedy at his confirmation hearings Wednesday and Thursday, to reject his nomination. She cited his lack of experience, misinformed views on vaccines and personal attributes. In the letter, she described how he led other family members “down the path of drug addiction.”
“His basement, his garage, and his dorm room were the centers of the action where drugs were available, and he enjoyed showing off how he put baby chickens and mice in the blender to feed his hawks,” Ms. Kennedy wrote. “It was often a perverse scene of despair and violence.”
Her letter was first reported in The Washington Post.
Ms. Kennedy expressed particular outrage over the new disclosures in his ethics agreement filed with the Senate, which she described as outlining how his “crusade against vaccination has benefited him in other ways.”
She cited Mr. Kennedy’s decision to keep a financial stake in litigation against Merck, which makes a key vaccine against the human papillomavirus (HPV) that is administered to protect against cervical cancer.
“In other words, he is willing to enrich himself by denying access to a vaccine that can prevent almost all forms of cervical cancer and which has been safely administered to millions of boys and girls,” Ms. Kennedy wrote.
As President Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s ambassador to Australia, Ms. Kennedy was actively involved in promoting the HPV vaccine, which has put Australia on a path to eliminate cervical cancer. She was instrumental in persuading Mr. Biden to expand his “cancer moonshot” initiative to the Indo-Pacific region.
In her role as ambassador, Ms. Kennedy said, she was reluctant to make public comments against Mr. Kennedy, who launched his presidential campaign in 2023 as a primary challenger to Mr. Biden before running as an independent candidate. When Mr. Kennedy dropped his presidential bid, he endorsed Mr. Trump, who, after winning the election, named Mr. Kennedy as his choice for health secretary.
After that, she broke with her cousin, saying his views about vaccination were dangerous.
Her letter painted Mr. Kennedy as a charismatic figure, “willing to take risks and break the rules,” and able to attract others through the strength of his magnetic personality. Then she traced a tragic history of Mr. Kennedy’s influence over other family members.
“But siblings and cousins who Bobby encouraged down the path of substance abuse suffered addiction, illness and death,” she wrote, “while Bobby has gone on to misrepresent, lie and cheat his way through life.”
Mr. Kennedy’s younger brother David died in Palm Beach County in May of 1984 of “multiple ingestion” of three drugs found in his body fluids, authorities said at the time.
Other relatives have also spoken out against Mr. Kennedy, including his brother Joseph Kennedy II and his sister Kerry Kennedy, who described his comments on race and vaccines as “deplorable and untruthful.”
On Tuesday, Jack Schlossberg, Ms. Kennedy’s son, who has also been critical of Mr. Kennedy, posted a video on social media of his mother reading the letter she had written.
“I’m so proud of my courageous mother, who’s lived a life of dignity, integrity and service,” Mr. Schlossberg wrote.
Ms. Kennedy, in the letter sent Tuesday, gave her cousin credit for overcoming his drug addiction, which Mr. Kennedy has discussed extensively. By his own account, Mr. Kennedy became addicted to heroin when he was 14, in 1968, as he struggled to cope with the assassination of his father. In 1984, he pleaded guilty to a felony charge of possessing heroin, and entered treatment.
But Ms. Kennedy was harsh in criticism of her cousin’s advocacy against vaccines, describing it as part of an addiction to attention and power.
“Bobby preys on the desperation of parents of sick children — vaccinating his own children while building a following by hypocritically discouraging other parents from vaccinating theirs,” she wrote.
Ms. Kennedy also highlighted “the conspiratorial half-truths he has told about vaccines,” in connection with the 2019 measles outbreak in Samoa, which she said “cost lives.”
The letter was addressed to senators who lead the committees that will be reviewing his nomination this week, including Mike Crapo, a Republican from Idaho; Ron Wyden, a Democrat from Oregon; Bill Cassidy, a Republican of Louisiana and Bernie Sanders, an Independent of Vermont.
She noted that the family is close and that speaking out was difficult. Still, she faulted her cousin for using the family’s legacy of tragedy for political gain. Mr. Kennedy’s father, Robert F. Kennedy, was assassinated during a campaign for president in 1968. Her father and his uncle, President John F. Kennedy, was fatally shot in Dallas in 1963.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. “distorted President Kennedy’s legacy to advance his own failed presidential campaign — and then groveled to Donald Trump for a job,” the letter said. “Bobby continues to grandstand off my father’s assassination, and that of his own father.”
She suggested that her father John F. Kennedy, her uncle Robert F. Kennedy and another uncle, the long-serving lawmaker Ted Kennedy, “would be disgusted.”
She closed the letter with a plea for the senators to reject her cousin’s nomination on behalf of the doctors, nurses, scientists and caregivers who fuel the American health care system.
“They deserve a secretary committed to advancing cutting-edge medicine to save lives, not rejecting the advances we have already made,” Ms. Kennedy wrote. “They deserve a stable, moral and ethical person at the helm of this crucial agency. They deserve better than Bobby Kennedy — and so do the rest of us.”
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Health
Foreign Aid Freeze Leaves Millions Without H.I.V. Treatment
![Foreign Aid Freeze Leaves Millions Without H.I.V. Treatment Foreign Aid Freeze Leaves Millions Without H.I.V. Treatment](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2023/01/11/multimedia/05pepfar/05pepfar-facebookJumbo.jpg)
Two weeks into President Trump’s sweeping freeze on foreign aid, H.I.V. groups abroad have not received any funding, jeopardizing the health of more than 20 million people, including 500,000 children. Subsequent waivers from the State Department have clarified that the work can continue, but the funds and legal paperwork to do so are still missing.
With the near closure of the American aid agency known as U.S.A.I.D. and its recall of officers posted abroad, there is little hope that the situation will resolve quickly, experts warned.
H.I.V. treatment and services were funded through the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, or PEPFAR, a $7.5 billion program that was frozen along with all foreign aid on Mr. Trump’s first day in office.
Since its start in 2003 during the George W. Bush administration, PEPFAR has delivered lifesaving treatment to as many as 25 million people in 54 countries and had enjoyed bipartisan support. The program was due for a five-year reauthorization in 2023; it survived an effort by some House Republicans to end it and was renewed for one year.
Without treatment, millions of people with H.I.V. would be at risk of severe illness and premature death. The loss of treatment also threatens to reverse the dramatic progress made against H.I.V. in recent years and could spur the emergence of drug-resistant strains of H.I.V.; both outcomes could have a global impact, including in the United States.
The pause on aid and the stripping down of U.S.A.I.D. have delivered a “system shock,” said Christine Stegling, a deputy executive director at UNAIDS, the United Nations’ H.I.V. division.
“Now you need to see how you can work with the system as it is, to make sure that what is theoretically possible will actually happen,” she said.
On Jan. 28, Secretary of State Marco Rubio issued a waiver for lifesaving medicines and medical services, ostensibly allowing for the distribution of H.I.V. medicines. But the waiver did not name PEPFAR, leaving recipient organizations awaiting clarity.
On Sunday, another State Department waiver said more explicitly that it would cover H.I.V. testing and treatment as well as prevention and treatment of opportunistic infections such as tuberculosis, according to a memo viewed by The New York Times. The memo did not include H.I.V. prevention — except for pregnant and breastfeeding women — or support for orphaned and vulnerable children.
Although PEPFAR is funded by the State Department, roughly two-thirds of its grants are implemented through U.S.A.I.D. and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Neither organization has released funds to grantees since the freeze was initiated.
In an interview with The Washington Post, Mr. Rubio appeared to blame the recipient organizations for not acting on the waiver, saying he had “real questions about the competence” of the groups. “I wonder whether they’re deliberately sabotaging it for purposes of making a political point,” he said.
But experts familiar with PEPFAR’s requirements said his comments belied the complexity of its system of approvals.
“The messaging and guidance from the State Department expose an ignorance of how these programs function — and an alarming lack of compassion for the millions of lives at risk,” said Jirair Ratevosian, who served as chief of staff for PEPFAR in the Biden administration.
For instance, the stop-work orders compelled each program to cease immediately. The organizations are now legally required to wait for equally explicit instructions and cannot proceed on the basis of a general memo, according to a senior official at a large global health organization that receives PEPFAR funds.
“We have to wait till we get individual letters on each project that tell us not only we can start work, but tell us which work we can start up and with how much money,” the official said. The official asked not to be named for fear of retaliation; 90 percent of the organization’s money comes from PEPFAR.
The freeze is also disrupting the network of smaller organizations that deliver H.I.V. treatment and services in low-income nations.
In a survey of 275 organizations in 11 sub-Saharan countries conducted over the past week, all reported that their programs or services had shut down or were turning people away, said Dr. Stellah Bosire, executive director of the Africa Center for Health Systems and Gender Justice.
At least 70 organizations reported disruptions in H.I.V. prevention, testing and treatment services, and 41 said that some programs had closed. “Without immediate intervention, these funding suspensions could lead to devastating reversals in public health progress,” Dr. Bosire said in an email.
In Kenya, 40,000 doctors, nurses and other health workers have been affected by the freeze, according to Mackenzie Knowles-Coursin, who was deputy chief of communications at the American mission in Nairobi until Monday. In South Africa, the halt in funding will affect the salaries of more than 15,000 health workers and operations across the country, the nation’s health minister, Aaron Motsoaledi, said during a televised news conference last week.
Some organizations rely on a patchwork of grants, with a stream of funding from one donor applied to purchasing medications and another stream applied to paying staff. Interruption of even one source can hobble the clinics, leaving them without medications to dispense or workers to dispense them.
The Uganda Key Populations Consortium, an umbrella organization that provides H.I.V. treatment and other services, has lost 70 percent of its funding. It has shuttered 30 of the 54 drop-in centers around the country that dispense medications, and it terminated the contracts of 28 of its 35 staff members.
The organization received about $200,000 per year from the C.D.C. via the Infectious Diseases Institute at Makerere University, as well as an $8 million grant over five years from U.S.A.I.D. The latter provided housing and employment assistance, including to gay and transgender people, and has been shut down to comply with Mr. Trump’s executive order on diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility.
In 2023, Uganda enacted a sweeping law that criminalized consensual sex between same-sex adults and made same-sex relations while having H.I.V. punishable by death. It has caused scores of Ugandans to be evicted from homes and fired from jobs.
“Cases of human rights violations haven’t really slowed, and now it’s really concerning,” said Richard Lusimbo, director general of the Uganda Key Populations Consortium.
“We don’t even have the capacity or even the tools that we need to actually respond to some of these issues,” he said.
Some organizations dispense medicines to children, which requires more skill than treating adults. Children’s medications are tailored to their age, weight and prior exposure to antiretroviral drugs, and the children must be carefully monitored for drug resistance.
In children who acquired H.I.V. at birth, the infection can progress very quickly to illness, with death occurring as early as eight to 12 weeks after birth — shorter than the 90-day pause on foreign aid.
On Tuesday night, the Trump administration put nearly all of U.S.A.I.D.’s global work force on leave and recalled those posted abroad to return to the United States within 30 days.
“There’s a loss of institutional memory, which may be purposeful, but it’s also creating just a backlog of paperwork, and it’s paralyzing the whole system,” said Elisha Dunn-Georgiou, the president of Global Health Council, a membership organization of health groups.
“Who do you ask questions to?” she said. “How do you move to the next step?”
Without U.S.A.I.D. staff to process waiver applications, organizations fear they will not see funds anytime soon. Even large global health organizations are struggling to stay afloat; some have already cut programs and staff.
Even if the funds return quickly, it may not be easy to restart programs and return to something resembling normalcy, Ms. Dunn-Georgiou said.
“It costs a lot to restart something, so I don’t think we really know yet if that’s even possible,” she said.
Lynsey Chutel and Stephanie Nolen contributed reporting.
Health
New bird flu strain detected in Nevada dairy worker, CDC says
![New bird flu strain detected in Nevada dairy worker, CDC says New bird flu strain detected in Nevada dairy worker, CDC says](https://static.foxnews.com/foxnews.com/content/uploads/2025/02/gettyimages-1185843533.jpg)
A new type of bird flu has been detected in a human dairy worker in Nevada.
This strain is different from the version that’s been spreading in herds since last year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
The case was apparently mild, as the Churchill County dairy worker was not hospitalized and has recovered, the Associated Press reported, citing health officials.
BIRD FLU UPTICK IN US HAS CDC ON ALERT FOR PANDEMIC ‘RED FLAGS’: REPORT
The person mainly experienced eye redness and irritation, similar to most bird flu cases associated with dairy cows, according to the AP.
While the new bird flu strain, D1.1, has been reported in more than a dozen humans exposed to infected poultry, this is the first cow-to-human case.
This new strain is different from the version that’s been spreading in herds since last year, the AP noted. (iStock)
In a press release addressing the situation, the Central Nevada Health District (CNHD) confirmed there is no evidence of this virus being spread from the infected individual to other people.
The CDC noted on its website that bird flu’s risk to the general public remains low.
But those who are in constant and close contact with cows, poultry and other animals are at a higher risk — and are encouraged to wear protective equipment and take necessary precautions.
BIRD FLU PATIENT HAD VIRUS MUTATIONS, SPARKING CONCERN ABOUT HUMAN SPREAD
Jacob Glanville, PhD, CEO of Centivax in San Francisco, commented in a statement to Fox News Digital that within a week of the D1.1 strain being detected in Nevada cows, there was already a human infection.
“This isn’t the first D1.1 human infection: It has already resulted in an American death, a severe illness, and some other infections in five other states,” the expert said.
“The significance of this new infection is to reveal how quickly we go from cattle infections to human spillover.”
![Person wearing personal protective equipment (PPE) while spraying disinfectant in cattle farm.](https://a57.foxnews.com/static.foxnews.com/foxnews.com/content/uploads/2025/02/1200/675/5ea2f729-gettyimages-1338891162.jpg?ve=1&tl=1)
Those in constant and close contact with cows, poultry and other animals are encouraged to wear protective equipment. (iStock)
Glanville confirmed that the cattle infections of the D1.1 strain prove that it contains mammalian adaptive mutations.
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“While we have yet to see human-to-human transmission, with such rapid progression from cattle to human cases, it may only be a matter of time before an H5N1 pandemic,” he said.
Sam Scarpino, director of AI and life sciences and professor of health sciences at Northeastern University in Boston, also expressed to Fox News Digital the severity of this new case.
For more Health articles, visit www.foxnews.com/health
“While it’s fortunate that this most recent human infection was mild, it highlights the serious nature of the ongoing outbreak in the US,” he told Fox News Digital.
“We now have at least two distinct H5N1 strains (akin to variants if we were discussing COVID-19) that have infected dairy cattle, poultry, and humans. The H5N1 situation in the U.S. continues to get worse, not better.”
![A test tube labeled "Bird Flu" with an X in the checkbox labeled "positive" is seen in front of a U.S. flag in this illustration taken, June 10, 2024.](https://a57.foxnews.com/static.foxnews.com/foxnews.com/content/uploads/2024/12/1200/675/first-severe-case-of-bird-flu-in-us.jpg?ve=1&tl=1)
The Central Nevada Health District (CNHD) confirmed there is no evidence of the virus being spread from the infected individual to other people. (Reuters/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo)
Scarpino shared his approval of the recent choice of Dr. Gerald Parker to run the White House Office of Pandemic Preparedness and Response Policy.
“His appointment signals that the federal government is giving the H5N1 situation the attention it needs,” he said.
“From the perspective of both the building agricultural costs and continued risk of human infection, we have to bring this H5N1 outbreak under control.”
Fox News Digital reached out to the CDC for further comment.
The Associated Press contributed reporting.
Health
How to Boil an Egg? Scientists Claim to Have Cracked the Recipe.
![How to Boil an Egg? Scientists Claim to Have Cracked the Recipe. How to Boil an Egg? Scientists Claim to Have Cracked the Recipe.](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2025/02/06/multimedia/06-EGGS-promo-hmpq/06-EGGS-promo-hmpq-facebookJumbo.jpg)
A colleague approached Ernesto Di Maio, a materials scientist in Naples, Italy, and an expert in plastic foams, with a blunt suggestion: “You should do something cooler.” The colleague had a project in mind, Dr. Di Maio recalled. He wanted a perfectly boiled egg.
The task was harder than it might seem, as many home cooks know. The yolk and the egg white, or albumen, have different chemical compositions, which call for different heating temperatures. Dr. Di Maio and his colleagues also welcomed the chance to one-up the Michelin-star chef Carlo Cracco, an egg evangelist who charges $52 for an egg yolk dish at his restaurant in Milan.
The scientists devised a way of cooking an egg that requires no special culinary skill or fancy gadgets. It took about 300 eggs, though the researchers “didn’t eat all of them,” said Pellegrino Musto, a polymer expert at the National Research Council of Italy.
The researchers said their method, published on Thursday, preserves the distinct textures of the egg as well as its nutritional value.
The two parts of the egg require different cooking temperatures because they have different chemical components. “The albumen is mainly composed of water and proteins,” said Emilia Di Lorenzo, a graduate student in Dr. Di Maio’s lab at the University of Naples Federico II who recently published a paper on foaming pizza. “Yolk, on the other hand, is much richer in nutrients.”
Hard-boiling an egg is a popular approach that calls for at least 10 minutes of immersion in boiling water. That is long enough for the yolk to be thoroughly cooked. But it’s also plenty of time for the albumen’s proteins to unfold and clump, expelling water molecules as they become heated. The approach can also create a green ring around the yolk, which indicates the presence of smelly ferrous sulfide.
“Many times people say that they don’t like the rubberiness of the egg white, or the graininess of the yolk in a hard-boiled egg,” said Nelson Serrano-Bahri, a chef and the director of innovation at the American Egg Board, the egg industry’s main trade association, which has lately been dealing with soaring prices and worries about the bird flu.
A soft boil, on the other hand, needs a much shorter cooking period. That keeps the albumen from turning hard — but may also keep the yolk too soft. Ms. Di Lorenzo explained that the yolk is rich in lipids which, when heated, become more fluid. Though some people prefer a runny yolk, others find it revolting.
A third method, known as sous vide, cooks an egg for an hour in a water bath of 150 degrees Fahrenheit. That’s the ideal temperature for the yolk, but the prolonged exposure is less optimal for the albumen because the water is not hot enough to denature its proteins.
Ms. Di Lorenzo was blunt about the sous vide approach: “It’s runny. I am not a big fan.”
The scientists’ new method, derived with the help of fluid dynamics software, calls for alternating between boiling and lukewarm water: The egg gets two minutes in 212-degree water, followed by two minutes at 86 degrees, with the cycle repeated eight times. Dr. Di Maio explained that the average temperature of the two immersions, 150 degrees, is ideal for the yolk, while the hotter bath is sufficient to cook the albumen.
“The very key of our method is to have a well-cooked albumen without wasting the yolk,” Dr. Di Maio said.
Relative to the other methods, the periodic baths did a better job of preserving the egg’s nutrients, the study found. The authors noted a higher concentration of polyphenols, compounds that protect against DNA damage.
“It’s probably brilliant — but who is the method for?” asked Deb Perelman, who runs the popular Smitten Kitchen blog. “For home cooking, there’s always a necessary balance of perfect versus a reasonable effort.”
Her preferred foolproof method involves a long ice bath after the egg is cooked. In a recipe for The New York Times, J. Kenji López-Alt proposed steaming the egg in a single inch of water.
“It’s a matter of taste,” Ms. Di Lorenzo said. If science is universal, food is deeply personal. Some people even eat raw eggs.
There is one big drawback to the new Italian technique. “It’s more difficult to peel the periodic egg because everything is softer,” Dr. Di Maio said.
But Mr. Serrano-Bahri said that the Egg Board was on the case. “We are running a study to figure out that,” he said. “I could have an answer for you in the coming months.”
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