Health
Citing ‘Biological Truth,’ Kennedy Issues Guidance Recognizing Only Two Sexes
Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced on Wednesday that the Trump administration had adopted a set of official government “sex-based definitions” to give the public and federal agencies precise terms with which to describe categories including “male,” “female,” “woman” and “man.”
The definitions are listed in a one-page “guidance” that is aimed, in part, at keeping transgender women and girls out of female sports, discouraging gender-affirming care for young people and fulfilling President Trump’s pledge that the federal government will recognize only two sexes: male and female.
“This administration is bringing back common sense and restoring biological truth to the federal government,” Mr. Kennedy said in a statement. “The prior administration’s policy of trying to engineer gender ideology into every aspect of public life is over.”
A male is defined under the guidance as “a person of the sex characterized by a reproductive system with the biological function of producing sperm.” A female is “a person of the sex characterized by a reproductive system with the biological function of producing eggs (ova).”
But many medical experts, including the American Academy of Pediatrics, recognize that not everyone fits into neat categories of male and female. Some individuals are intersex and have sexual anatomy or chromosomes that do not fit typical definitions of male and female.
Some children do not identify with either gender, or identify with a gender that does not correspond to their biological sex. The Academy has published its own set of definitions that include transgender youth, described as “a subset of gender-diverse youth whose gender identity does not match their assigned sex.”
As part of the Trump administration initiative, the Health and Human Services Department has launched a new web page for the federal Office on Women’s Health, whose portfolio includes reproductive health, maternal and behavioral health for women.
The new page, entitled “Protecting Women and Children,” features a video with Riley Gaines, the conservative activist and former University of Kentucky all-American swimmer who says she was put at a competitive disadvantage when competing against a transgender woman.
The page links to the guidance and the definitions. “Recognizing the immutable and biological nature of sex is essential to ensure the protection of women’s health, safety, private spaces, sports and opportunities,” the guidance states, adding that the move was “critical to scientific inquiry, public safety, morale, and trust in government itself.”
Mr. Kennedy’s announcement was in response to an executive order Mr. Trump issued on Jan. 20 that gave the health department 30 days to issue “clear guidance” to the public on how to interpret sex-based definitions.
On Tuesday, Mr. Kennedy delivered a welcome address to department employees in which he said his agency would work toward helping Americans “discover our own paths to living our fullest lives, unleashing the potential in every one of us to make good personal choices that allow us to nourish, to heal and to develop ourselves.”
On Wednesday, opponents of the Trump administration and Mr. Kennedy rallied outside the offices of the Department of Health and Human Services to protest job cuts that have rid the department and its agencies of thousands of workers, including up-and-coming young scientists.
As a presidential candidate, Mr. Kennedy, who once counted himself a Democrat, did not make rolling back transgender rights a central part of his political persona. He once said it was not among “the issues that really matter to you, to me, to our children.”
But he has also made clear he would follow Mr. Trump’s lead. He has said he favors a ban on gender-affirming care, including puberty blockers and hormone therapy, for minors. He has also made unsubstantiated claims, based on a study in frogs, that the chemical atrazine in drinking water is causing sexual dysphoria in children.
Advocates for transgender rights called Mr. Kennedy’s nomination for health secretary “particularly alarming.” In a statement opposing his confirmation, Sinead Murano-Kinney of the group Advocates for Trans Equality called Mr. Kennedy “a conspiratorial figurehead, a yes-man, enabling the worst impulses of a president with a clear agenda to remove trans people from participating in public life.”
Conservatives cheered Wednesday’s announcement. “It took many years of effort but we are finally back to science and common sense,” Roger Severino, who wrote the health section of the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 blueprint for overhauling the federal government, said on social media.
There are roughly 1.6 million youths and adults in the United States who identify as transgender, according to an estimate by the Williams Institute at the U.C.L.A. School of Law. Mr. Trump’s predecessor, President Joseph R. Biden Jr., made protecting transgender people a cornerstone of federal policy.
Mr. Biden’s assistant secretary for health, Dr. Rachel Levine, a pediatrician, made history by becoming the first transgender person to be confirmed by the Senate to a federal position.
Mr. Trump has rapidly reversed Biden administration policies. He has followed up his Jan. 20 executive order with a string of others aimed at stripping away the rights of transgender people in almost every corner of American life — including schools, hospitals, prisons, the military and housing.
Critics have objected not only to the substance of the orders, but to their harsh language. The order barring taxpayer dollars from financing medical interventions for transgender children is headlined “Protecting Children from Chemical and Surgical Mutilation.”
Government agencies, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which is under the health department, were ordered to delete any language mentioning “gender ideology” from their websites. A judge has since ordered the C.D.C.’s page restored. Some are still down.
Other sites — including the C.D.C.’s Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System — now carry a disclaimer.
“This page does not reflect biological reality and therefore the administration and this department rejects it,” the disclaimer says, adding that the information presented is “extremely inaccurate.”
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One woman’s uncomfortable reaction to alcohol led to a grave discovery.
Hollie Thursby, 28, a mother of two from the U.K., told Kennedy News and Media that after giving birth to her second son, Jack, she began experiencing unusual symptoms.
At a checkup for her son, who was a couple of months old, Thursby mentioned that she was experiencing “unbearably itchy skin,” which is known to be a post-partum symptom. The doctor suggested it was due to changing hormones.
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Thursby added that she occasionally drank a couple glasses of wine. Although she kept the drinking to a minimum, she described having “a lot of pain” down the side of her neck.
“Really quite painful and uncomfortable,” she said, according to the report.
A U.K. mom reported experiencing pain in her neck after drinking a glass or two of wine, which turned out to be one of the first signs that she had cancer. (Kennedy News and Media)
The mother also reported feeling extremely exhausted, which she assumed was due to caring for her children throughout the day.
“I also felt like when I got to bed that someone was sitting on my chest,” she shared.
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In July 2025, Thursby discovered a lump on the side of her neck that she described as “really quite big,” but wasn’t painful, Kennedy News and Media reported.
“It was hard, it didn’t move, but it was there,” she said. “When I turned my neck to the side, you could see it.”
Thursby reportedly began chemotherapy for Stage 2 Hodgkins lymphoma. (Kennedy News and Media)
Thursby’s symptoms turned out to be a form of blood cancer — Stage 2 Hodgkins lymphoma, which means it is in two or more lymph nodes, according to Cancer Research U.K.
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Common symptoms include swelling of the lymph nodes, heavy sweating, weight loss, itching, persistent cough or shortness of breath, high temperatures, and pain in the stomach or lymph nodes after drinking alcohol.
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“Pain when you drink alcohol is actually a known side effect of Hodgkin lymphoma,” she said, per the report. “It’s something about the acidity in the wine and not when you drink other alcohol.”
While alcohol-related pain in Hodgkins lymphoma patients has been “an accepted scientific consensus” since the 1950s, cases are rare, Healthline confirmed.
Hollie Thursby, 28, and her two sons are pictured above. The mother reported feeling extremely exhausted, which she assumed was due to caring for her children throughout the day. (Kennedy News and Media)
Thursby reportedly began chemotherapy in November, noting that the hardest part is not being able to care for her kids after losing her own mother to a blood disorder called myelodysplasia.
“I grew up without a mum, and it was horrendous. I can’t do that to the boys,” she told Kennedy News and Media. “We’re all devastated, but we all know now, and we’ve got a treatment plan, which is what we need.”
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“I’m just doing everything I can to get better for them. I keep telling myself this is only temporary, I just need to keep going.”
Anyone experiencing pain or other concerning symptoms after consuming alcohol should consult a doctor for guidance.
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Red light therapy has been shown to reduce brain inflammation, protecting people who experience head trauma from long-term health consequences, a University of Utah study has shown.
Brain damage from repeated impact over the years is known to cause cognitive symptoms, ranging from memory issues to full-blown dementia, particularly affecting soldiers and athletes.
Chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) is a progressive, degenerative brain disease linked to repeated head impacts rather than a single injury, according to Mayo Clinic.
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More than 100 former NFL football players have been posthumously diagnosed with CTE, according to the new study, which was published in the Journal of Neurotrauma.
Other research has shown that military personnel in active combat suffer from similar issues, as do first responders and veterans.
The treatment was administered three times a week for 20 minutes using specialized headsets and intranasal devices designed to penetrate the skull. (iStock)
In the new study, the researchers recruited 26 current football players to understand more about the impact of red-light therapy on brain injuries.
The participants received either red light therapy delivered by a light-emitting headset and a device that clips into the nose, or a placebo treatment with an identical device that doesn’t produce light. Players self-administered the therapy three times a week, 20 minutes each time, for 16 weeks.
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“My first reaction was, ‘There’s no way this can be real,’” said first author Hannah Lindsey, Ph.D., in the university press release. “That’s how striking it was.”
Specific wavelengths of light are believed to enter the brain and reduce molecules that trigger inflammation, potentially halting the path toward dementia and other cognitive conditions. (iStock)
Players using the placebo treatment experienced increased brain inflammation over the course of the season. Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans taken at the end of the season showed significantly more signs of inflammation than at the beginning of the season, the study found.
For players who used red-light therapy during the season, their brain inflammation didn’t increase at all.
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Previous studies have shown that red light, if powerful enough, can penetrate the skull and reach the brain, where it may reduce inflammation-related molecules.
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“When we first started this project, I was extremely skeptical,” said Elisabeth Wilde, Ph.D., the senior author on the study. “But we’ve seen consistent results across multiple of our studies, so it’s starting to be quite compelling.”
Study limitations
The study was conducted using a small sample size, which led to different levels of inflammation in the treatment and control groups, the researchers acknowledged.
While the placebo group showed increased brain inflammation during the football season, those receiving red light therapy showed no increase in inflammatory markers. (iStock)
Future large randomized clinical trials will be “crucial to back up the results” in larger populations, they noted.
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“We’ve been trying to figure out how to make sports safer, so that our kids, friends and family can participate in sports safely for the long term while they’re involved in activities that give them happiness and joy,” Carrie Esopenko, Ph.D., second author of the study, said in the release.
“And this really feels like part of the hope for protecting the brain that we’ve been searching for.”
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The team plans to recruit 300 people with persistent symptoms from TBI or concussion for a randomized controlled trial in 2026, with a focus on first responders, veterans and active-duty service members.
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Drinking heavily and consistently over an adult’s lifetime could lead to a higher risk of colorectal cancer, according to a study published in the journal Cancer by the American Cancer Society (ACS).
The study analyzed 20 years of data from more than 88,000 U.S. adults to determine how long-term drinking impacted the risk of developing colorectal cancer (CRC) or precancerous colorectal adenomas (polyps).
The participants reported their average weekly intake of beer, wine and liquor intake during four age periods — 18 to 24, 25 to 39, 40 to 54, and 55 and older.
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“Heavy drinkers” were identified as having more than 14 drinks per week and “moderate drinkers” had between seven and 14 drinks per week.
The observational research revealed that consistent heavy drinking over adulthood was linked to a higher risk of colorectal cancer, especially rectal cancer.
Researchers found a major association between colorectal cancer diagnosis and heavy lifetime drinking. (iStock)
Heavy lifetime drinking was associated with a 25% higher overall CRC risk and nearly double the risk of rectal cancer. Moderate lifetime drinking had a lower overall CRC risk.
Compared to light drinkers, the consistently heavy drinkers had about a 91% higher risk of CRC.
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For colorectal adenomas (precancerous polyps), higher current lifetime drinking did not show a strong pattern, although former drinkers showed a significantly lower risk of non-advanced adenoma compared to current light drinkers.
Out of the 88,092 participants, 1,679 were diagnosed with colorectal cancer.
Out of the 88,092 participants in the study, 1,679 were diagnosed with colorectal cancer. (iStock)
The authors noted that the research was limited, as it was observational and not based on a clinical trial. It also hinged on self-reported alcohol use.
The findings suggest that consistently heavy alcohol intake and higher average lifetime consumption “may increase CRC risk, whereas cessation may lower adenoma risk,” the researchers stated. Associations “may differ by tumor site,” they added.
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The link between drinking alcohol and cancer is not a new discovery, according to health experts.
In a recent episode of the podcast “The Dr. Mark Hyman Show,” Dr. Mark Hyman, chief medical officer of Function Health in California, detailed how even moderate drinking can impact “nearly every organ system in the body,” due to metabolic stress, inflammation, impaired detoxification and its effect on hormones.
The link between drinking alcohol and cancer is not a new discovery, according to health experts. (iStock)
Drinking has been found to increase the risk of many cancers, metabolic dysfunction, gut microbiome disturbances and mitochondrial toxins, Hyman said.
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“Bottom line, alcohol taxes every major system in your body, especially your liver, your brain, your gut, your hormones,” he warned.
Reducing or eliminating alcohol can lower the risk of several cancers, according to medical experts. (Getty Images)
In a previous interview with Fox News Digital, Dr. Pinchieh Chiang, a clinician at Circle Medical in San Francisco, shared that taking a break from drinking alcohol for longer periods of time can “reshape health more profoundly.”
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“Over months to a year, we see sustained improvements in blood pressure, liver function and inflammation,” she said. “Those changes directly affect long-term heart disease and stroke risk.”
Chiang added, “Reducing or eliminating alcohol lowers the risk of several cancers, including breast and colorectal, over time.”
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Fox News Digital reached out to the study researchers for comment.
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