Health
Justice Clarence Thomas Hospitalized With Flulike Symptoms, Court Says

Justice Clarence Thomas, the longest-serving member of the U.S. Supreme Court docket, was hospitalized with an an infection on Friday after experiencing flulike signs, the court docket mentioned in an announcement on Sunday.
Justice Thomas was being handled with intravenous antibiotics at Sibley Memorial Hospital in Washington, the assertion mentioned. Additional particulars about his sickness have been unavailable.
“His signs are abating, he’s resting comfortably, and he expects to be launched from the hospital in a day or two,” the assertion mentioned, including that he would take part within the “consideration and dialogue of any circumstances” that he can not bodily be current for “on the idea of the briefs, transcripts, and audio of the oral arguments.”
Justice Thomas, 73, was nominated by President George H.W. Bush and was seated on Oct. 23, 1991, making him the court docket’s most senior conservative member.
He and the eight different Supreme Court docket justices have been vaccinated and boosted towards Covid-19, The Related Press reported.
At the least two justices, Amy Coney Barrett and Brett M. Kavanaugh, have beforehand contracted the virus.
The Supreme Court docket reconvenes on Monday, in response to the court docket’s calendar.

Health
Dozens of Clinical Trials Have Been Frozen in Response to Trump’s USAID Order

Asanda Zondi received a startling phone call last Thursday, with orders to make her way to a health clinic in Vulindlela, South Africa, where she was participating in a research study that was testing a new device to prevent pregnancy and H.IV. infection.
The trial was shutting down, a nurse told her. The device, a silicone ring inserted into her vagina, needed to be removed right away.
When Ms. Zondi, 22, arrived at the clinic, she learned why: The U.S. Agency for International Development, which funded the study, had withdrawn financial support and had issued a stop-work order to all organizations around the globe that receive its money. The abrupt move followed an executive order by President Trump freezing all foreign aid for at least 90 days. Since then, the Trump administration has taken steps to dismantle the agency entirely.
Ms. Zondi’s trial is one of dozens that have been abruptly frozen, leaving people around the world with experimental drugs and medical products in their bodies, cut off from the researchers who were monitoring them, and generating waves of suspicion and fear.
The State Department, which now oversees U.S.A.I.D., replied to a request for comment by directing a reporter to USAID.gov, which no longer contains any information except that all permanent employees have been placed on administrative leave. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has said that the agency is wasteful and advances a liberal agenda that is counter to President Trump’s foreign policy.
In interviews, scientists — who are forbidden by the terms of the stop-work order to speak with the news media — described agonizing choices: violate the stop-work orders and continue to care for trial volunteers, or leave them alone to face potential side effects and harm.
The United States is signatory to the Declaration of Helsinki that lays out ethical principles under which medical research must be conducted, requiring that researchers care for participants throughout a trial, and report the results of their findings to the communities where trials were conducted.
Ms. Zondi said she was baffled and frightened. She talked with other women who had volunteered for the study. “Some people are afraid because we don’t know exactly what was the reason,” she said. “We don’t really know the real reason of pausing the study.”
The stop-work order was so immediate and sweeping that the research staff would be violating it if they helped the women remove the rings. But Dr. Leila Mansoor, a scientist with the Centre for the AIDS Programme of Research in South Africa (known as CAPRISA) and an investigator on the trial, decided she and her team would do so anyway.
“My first thought when I saw this order was, There are rings in people’s bodies and you cannot leave them,” Dr. Mansoor said. “For me ethics and participants come first. There is a line.”
In the communities where her organization works, people have volunteered for more than 25 years to test H.I.V. treatments, prevention products and vaccines, contributing to many of the key breakthroughs in the field and benefiting people worldwide.
That work relied on a carefully constructed web of trust that has now been destroyed, Dr. Mansoor said. Building that trust took years in South Africa, where the apartheid regime conducted medical experiments on Black people during the years of white rule. Those fears are echoed in a long history of experimentation by researchers and drug companies in developing countries and in marginalized populations in the United States.
The Times identified more than 30 frozen studies that had volunteers already in the care of researchers, including trials of:
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malaria treatment in children under age 5 in Mozambique
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treatment for cholera in Bangladesh
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a screen-and-treat method for cervical cancer in Malawi
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tuberculosis treatment for children and teenagers in Peru and South Africa
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nutritional support for children in Ethiopia
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early-childhood-development interventions in Cambodia
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ways to support pregnant and breastfeeding women to reduce malnutrition in Jordan
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an mRNA vaccine technology for H.I.V. in South Africa
It is difficult to know the total number of trials shut down, or how many people are affected, because the swift demolition of U.S.A.I.D. in recent days has erased the public record. In addition to the disabled website, the agency no longer has a communications department. And the stop-work order prohibits any implementing agency from speaking publicly about what has happened.
In England, about 100 people have been inoculated with an experimental malaria vaccine in two clinical trials. Now, they no longer have access to the clinical trial staff if that vaccine were to cause an adverse reaction in their bodies. The trial is an effort to find a next-generation vaccine better than the one now used in Africa; that shot protects children against about a third of malaria cases, but researchers hoped to find a vaccine that offered much more protection. Malaria remains a top global killer of children; 600,000 people died of the disease in 2023, the latest figure available.
Had the trial not been frozen, the participants would be coming to a clinic routinely to be monitored for adverse physical effects, and to have blood and cell samples taken to see whether the vaccine was working. The participants are meant to be followed for two years to assess the vaccine’s safety.
A scientist who worked on the trial said she hoped that partners at the University of Oxford, where it was being conducted, were shuffling staff to respond if any participant fell ill. But she was fired last week and no longer has access to any information about the trial. She spoke on condition of anonymity because she feared jeopardizing her ability to work on malaria research the U.S. might conduct in the future.
“It’s unethical to test anything in humans without taking it to the full completion of studies,” she said. “You put them at risk for no good reason.”
Had the stop-work order come later this year, the newly-vaccinated volunteers might have been in an even more precarious position. They were scheduled to be deliberately infected with malaria to see if the experimental vaccine protected them from the disease.
Dr. Sharon Hillier, a professor of reproductive infectious diseases at the University of Pittsburgh, was until this week director of a five-year, $125 million trial funded by U.S.A.I.D. to test the safety and efficacy of six new H.I.V. prevention products. They included bimonthly injections, fast-dissolving vaginal inserts and vaginal rings.
With the study suspended, she and her colleagues cannot process biological samples, analyze the data they have already collected, or communicate findings to either participants or the partnering government agencies in countries where the trials were conducted. These are requirements under the Helsinki agreement.
“We have betrayed the trust of ministries of health and the regulatory agencies in the countries where we were working and of the women who agreed to be in our studies, who were told that they would be taken care of,” Dr. Hillier said. “I’ve never seen anything like it in my 40 years of doing international research. It’s unethical, it’s dangerous and it’s reckless.”
Even trials that were not funded in whole or part by U.S.A.I.D. have been thrown into turmoil because they were using medical or development infrastructure that was supported by the agency and is no longer operational. Millions of dollars of U.S. taxpayer funds already spent to start those trials will not be recouped.
The shutdowns have business consequences as well. Many of those trials were partnerships with U.S. drug companies, testing products they hoped to sell overseas.
“This has made it impossible for pharmaceutical companies to do research in these countries,” Dr. Hillier said.
Another H.I.V. trial, called CATALYST, has thousands of volunteers in five countries testing an injectable drug called long-acting cabotegravir. Participants were receiving bimonthly injections to maintain a sufficient level of the drug in their bodies to prevent H.I.V. infection. Without regular injections, or a carefully-managed end to use of the drug, the participants will not have enough cabotegravir to stop a new infection, but there will be enough in their systems that, if they were to contract the virus, it could easily mutate to become drug-resistant, said Dr. Kenneth Ngure, president-elect of the International AIDS Society.
This is a significant threat to the trial volunteers and also to the millions of people living with H.I.V. because cabotegravir is closely related to a drug that is already used worldwide in standard treatment of the virus. Development of resistance could be catastrophic, Dr. Ngure said: “It’s wrong on so many levels — you can’t just stop.”
A clinical trial run by the development organization FHI 360, which implemented many U.S.A.I.D.-funded health programs and studies, was testing a biodegradable hormonal implant to prevent pregnancy. Women in the Dominican Republic had the devices in their bodies when U.S.A.I.D. funding was cut off. A spokeswoman for the organization, which furloughed more than a third of its staff this week, said that it had pulled together other resources to ensure that participants continue to receive care.
Another trial, in Uganda, was testing a new regimen of tuberculosis treatment for children. The stop-work order cuts those children off from potentially lifesaving medication.
“You can’t walk away from them, you just can’t,” a researcher in that trial said.
Health
Seafood samples contain high levels of microplastics in US state, say researchers

Microplastics were detected in almost every seafood sample found off the coast of the western U.S. in a recent study, researchers claim.
The study, led by Portland State University (PSU), identified “anthropogenic particles” — which are materials produced or modified by humans — in the edible tissue of six different species of fish.
Those included black rockfish, lingcod, Chinook salmon, Pacific herring, Pacific lamprey, and pink shrimp, according to a PSU press release.
MICROPLASTICS FOUND IN OVERWHELMING MAJORITY OF AMERICAN MEAT, WATER, PLANTS: STUDY
Specifically, the peer-reviewed study found microplastics — “tiny particles that shed from clothing, packaging and other plastic products” — in 180 out of 182 samples of seafood that were either purchased at a store or obtained from a fishing boat in Oregon, the release stated.
Microplastics were detected in almost every seafood sample found off the coast of the western U.S. in a recent study, researchers claim. (iStock)
The highest concentration of particles occurred in pink shrimp, and Chinook salmon contained the lowest.
“We found that the smaller organisms that we sampled seem to be ingesting more anthropogenic, non-nutritious particles,” said microplastics researcher and study co-author Elise Granek in the release.
BOTTLED WATER FOUND TO CONTAIN TENS OF THOUSANDS OF ‘TINY PLASTIC PARTICLES’ IN NEW STUDY
“Shrimp and small fish, like herring, are eating smaller food items like zooplankton. Other studies have found high concentrations of plastics in the area in which zooplankton accumulate, and these anthropogenic particles may resemble zooplankton and thus be taken up for animals that feed on zooplankton.”
“What we put out into the environment ends up back on our plates.”
Susanne Brander, an ecotoxicologist and associate professor in Oregon State University’s College of Agricultural Sciences, added, “It’s very concerning that microfibers appear to move from the gut into other tissues such as muscle. This has wide implications for other organisms, potentially including humans.”
The findings were published in the journal Frontiers in Toxicology.
Is it safe to eat seafood?
The study authors do not recommend that people specifically avoid seafood, as microplastics have been widely found in other food products, Granek noted in the release.
“If we are disposing of and utilizing products that release microplastics, those microplastics make their way into the environment, and are taken up by things we eat,” she said.

Microplastics — “tiny particles that shed from clothing, packaging and other plastic products” — were found in 180 out of 182 samples of seafood. (iStock)
“What we put out into the environment ends up back on our plates.”
The high prevalence of microplastics in the seafood samples does not automatically mean that consuming seafood poses an immediate health risk, according to Bing Wang, PhD, associate professor of food safety risk assessment at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
“’Safe’ is a relative term in toxicology,” Wang told Fox News Digital. “Toxicity depends on dose and exposure duration — and currently, we lack a definitive understanding of linkage between the oral intake of microplastics and nanoplastics and the adverse effects in human health.”
STUDY LINKS MENTAL HEALTH RISKS TO THIS TOXIN FOR THOSE BORN IN ’60S OR ’70S
Experts agree that the nutritional benefits of seafood, such as high-quality protein and omega-3 fatty acids, play a crucial role in a healthy diet, according to Wang.
“There is no current evidence to suggest that seafood consumption poses an immediate danger to human health,” she added.
Sources of contamination
For this study in particular, Wang said it’s crucial to recognize that beyond microplastics, nanoplastics are also present in the environment and food supply.
“Unlike microplastics, which may pass through the digestive system with minimal absorption, nanoplastics are small enough to cross biological barriers, including the intestinal lining, potentially reaching the bloodstream and accumulating in organs,” she cautioned.
In PSU’s findings, 80% of microplastics detected among the samples were derived from clothing or textile fibers, but there are other sources of contaminants.
Since the 1960s, plastic production has increased by approximately 8.7% annually, according to Andrew Ortiz, a PhD student in the department of food science and technology at University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

The study authors do not recommend that people specifically avoid seafood, as microplastics have been widely found in other food products. (iStock)
“Much of the contamination comes from everyday human activities, such as improper disposal of plastic products, littering, and inadequate waste management systems, which lead to plastics entering waterways and eventually reaching the oceans,” Ortiz told Fox News Digital.
Completely avoiding microplastics is challenging, Wang emphasized.
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“They are pervasive in the environment and present in various food sources, not just seafood,” she said.
“While this study is the first of its kind in the Oregon region, its findings align with global research on microplastic contamination in seafood,” said Wang. “In fact, the levels reported in this study are within the global average.”
“There is no current evidence to suggest that seafood consumption poses an immediate danger to human health.”
“Given that humans already consume microplastics from multiple sources — including water, air and packaged foods — the presence of microplastics in seafood should be considered within this broader context rather than as an isolated risk,” she added.
For more Health articles, visit www.foxnews.com/health
The PSU study was funded by Oregon Sea Grant at Oregon State University.
Health
Ernest Drucker, Public-Health Advocate for the Scorned, Dies at 84

Ernest Drucker, a pioneering public-health researcher who approached drug addiction with compassion, invigorated needle-exchange programs to stem the AIDS epidemic and diagnosed the destructive impact of what he called a “plague” of mass incarceration, died on Jan. 26 at his home in Manhattan. He was 84.
The cause was complications of dementia, his son, Jesse Drucker, said.
For more than three decades, Dr. Drucker, primed with epidemiological evidence, waged cutting edge campaigns to improve the lot of prison inmates; the homeless; patients with tuberculosis; workers exposed to asbestos; and HIV-infected drug users and their families, who had been ravaged by the repercussions of AIDS. He was an early and vocal proponent of rethinking the country’s approach to illicit drugs, advocating “harm reduction” — a strategy that prioritizes reducing negative consequences over criminal prosecution.
A clinical psychologist by training, he was professor emeritus of family and social medicine at Montefiore Medical Center/Albert Einstein College of Medicine in the Bronx and had been a senior research associate and scholar in residence at John Jay College of Criminal Justice of the City University of New York in Manhattan, where he biked to work from the Upper West Side.
Dr. Helene Gayle, an epidemiologist and a former president of Spelman College in Atlanta, described Dr. Drucker this way in an email to his son: “Unapologetic about taking on issues that others wouldn’t touch. Unapologetic about the humanity in all including those who had suffered the most injustice.”
Having run a drug rehabilitation program in the Bronx, Dr. Drucker knew firsthand the destructive capabilities of addictive drugs. But the criminal prosecution of addicts, he argued, only compounded the problem, forcing addicts underground, where dangerous practices like sharing needles resulted in the spread of H.I.V., and saddling them with criminal records that could make them unemployable.
“Our demonization of heroin has transformed otherwise benign and controllable patterns of its use into a lethal gamble and has raised the threshold for seeking help when problems do arise,” he wrote in a letter to The New York Times in 1995. “Other countries are adopting ‘harm reduction’ strategies that (without legalizing drugs) acknowledge their widespread use and employ methods (such as needle exchange) to make even injectable use safer.”
He added that “our stubborn failure to acknowledge the enduring appeal of drugs, and learn how to control (rather than prohibit) their use” had tragic consequences.
Instead, he contended in his book “A Plague of Prisons: The Epidemiology of Mass Incarceration in America” (2011), that for the 90 percent of drug crimes that are nonviolent “criminalization can be replaced with a public health and therapeutic model.”
Dr. Drucker established some of the world’s first syringe exchange programs and in 1991, after he testified in favor of them, four members of the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power, known as Act Up, were acquitted in Jersey City, N.J., of charges related to running a needle exchange program to prevent the spread of AIDS.
He warned that the AIDS epidemic was not only afflicting gay men but was also increasingly devastating poor, nonwhite families. He said that heterosexual relations in certain Bronx neighborhoods had become a form of “sexual Russian roulette” that was orphaning children.
“No one, by a long shot, spun out more novel ideas for research, policy and advocacy, many of which resulted in influential publications, new organizations and changes in policy on all aspects of harm reduction as well as drug treatment, public health and criminal justice reform,” Ethan A. Nadelmann, the founder of the Drug Policy Alliance, which has opposed the war on drugs, said in an email.
Dr. Drucker was a founder and chairman of Doctors of the World/USA from 1993 to 1997, was the founding editor in chief of Harm Reduction Journal, and a founder of the International Harm Reduction Association.
In his eulogy, Professor David Michaels of George Washington University’s Milken Institute School of Public Health and a former administrator of the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration, said Dr. Drucker was “a true public health Renaissance man, driven by a deep commitment to fairness, and justice. He cared deeply about people — you can see it in his work on harm reduction, insisting we should not punish people for who they are and the decisions they make, but instead we should help them become healthier and more fulfilled.”
Ernest Mor Drucker was born on March 29, 1940, in Brooklyn. His father, Joseph, was a machinist for ITT. His wife, Beatrice (Strull) Drucker, managed the household.
Ernest was raised in the borough’s Brighton Beach section, and graduated from Brooklyn Technical High School with plans to become an engineer, but he gravitated toward psychology as a major at City College of New York, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in 1962 followed by a doctorate.
At Montefiore/Einstein, where he was a disciple of Drs. H. Jack Geiger and Victor Sidel, two proponents of health care for the poor, he was the director of Public Health and Policy Research and the founding director of a 1,000-patient drug treatment program, where he served until 1990.
He would periodically reinvent himself professionally, shifting his focus to and from heroin addiction, public health, occupational safety, AIDS and alternatives to prison.
In addition to his son, Jesse, an investigative reporter for The New York Times, he is survived by his wife, Jeri (Rosner) Drucker, an artist; his brother, Alan Drucker; and two grandchildren.
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