Jim O’Neill, acting director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, called for drastic changes to the measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine that aren’t supported by medical research, intensifying the Trump administration’s criticism of a shot that’s a cornerstone of the childhood vaccination schedule.  “I call on vaccine manufacturers to develop safe monovalent vaccines […]

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Below is a lightly edited, AI-generated transcript of the “First Opinion Podcast” interview with Morgan McSweeney. Be sure to sign up for the weekly “First Opinion Podcast” on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Get alerts about each new episode by signing up for the “First Opinion Podcast” newsletter. And don’t forget to sign […]

In a first-in-the-nation move, a Colorado panel has voted to limit what health plans in the state will pay for a costly arthritis treatment, a step that may encourage other states to pursue similar strategies to contain spending on prescription medicines. The landmark vote by the Colorado Prescription Drug Affordability Board creates an upper payment […]

WASHINGTON — Federal officials have approved another generic version of the abortion pill mifepristone, a regulatory formality that quickly triggered pushback from anti-abortion groups and politicians aligned with the Trump administration. Drugmaker Evita Solutions announced on its website that the Food and Drug Administration signed off on its low-cost form of the pill, which is approved to end pregnancies through 10 […]

The U.K.’s antitrust regulator has been asked by patient advocacy groups to investigate several large drugmakers and their U.K. lobbying organization for “suspected” and “coordinated” efforts to drive up the prices of medicines. The backdrop to the complaint has been an ongoing row between the pharmaceutical industry and the U.K. government over mandatory rebates that […]

WASHINGTON — The federal government is headed for a shutdown at midnight after the Senate again failed to pass a stopgap government funding bill.  On Tuesday, Senate Democrats and Republicans offered up competing measures, both of which were defeated.  The bill offered by Democrats would have funded the government until Oct. 31. It would have […]

Adam Feuerstein is a senior writer and biotech columnist, reporting on the crossroads of drug development, business, Wall Street, and biotechnology. He is also a co-host of the weekly biotech podcast The Readout Loud and author of the newsletter Adam’s Biotech Scorecard. You can reach Adam on Signal at stataf.54. Is George Tidmarsh, the Food […]

Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health is bracing for the possibility of losing as much as half of its federal research funding in the coming years, some $100 million annually, prompting the school to take extraordinary measures, such as asking corporations to underwrite the tuition of PhD candidates. The school has already laid off an […]

First Opinion is STAT’s platform for interesting, illuminating, and provocative articles about the life sciences writ large, written by biotech insiders, health care workers, researchers, and others. To encourage robust, good-faith discussion about issues raised in First Opinion essays, STAT publishes selected Letters to the Editor received in response to them. You can submit a […]