Beauty Wellness Collective, Володимирська вулиця, 12В, Київ, Kyiv (2025)

08/01/2024

Kacsmaryk ruled in favor of the plaintiff in a 2022 lawsuit from a group of anti-abortion rights groups called the Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine who sued the FDA in 2022. The plaintiffs in the Texas case are also targeting misoprostol, which is used to treat multiple medical conditions including stomach ulcers.

In Kacsmaryk’s 67-page decision, he ruled that the FDA “improperly” approved the abortion pill mifepristone more than two decades ago. Kacsmaryk wrote that the FDA overstepped its authority in approving the drug partially by using a specialized review process reserved for drugs to treat “serious or life-threatening illnesses.”

FDA regulations state that pregnancy is a medical condition that can be serious and life threatening, but Kacsymaryk, who is not a scientist, argues it is a “natural process essential to perpetuating human life.” According to a report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the US had one of the worst rates of maternal mortality in the country’s history in 2021. The study found 32.9 maternal deaths per 100,000 live births, which is more than 10 times the estimated rate of other high income countries.

United States Health Secretary Xavier Becerra told CNN on Sunday that the ruling threatening the availability of the drug was “not America.” He did not rule out defying the judge’s order if necessary. “We want the courts to overturn this reckless decision,” Secretary Becerra said. “We want, yes, that women continue to have access to a drug that’s proven itself safe. Millions of women have used this drug around the world.”

[Related: What science tells us about abortion bans.]

Becerra added that Kacsmaryk’s order could have incredibly serious ramifications for the legality of any future or current FDA-approved drug.

08/01/2024

On April 7, US District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk from Texas put the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) approval of the abortion pill mifepristone on hold. This drug is known to be safe when used properly, and has a death rate of only 0.0005 percent, according to the FDA. The medication has been FDA approved since 2000. The ruling could suspend the use of the most commonly used form of medication abortion in the United States, even in states with robust reproductive rights protections.

Kacsmaryk paused his ruling for seven days. This pause allows the federal government time to appeal the decision, an option that both the Justice Department and the drug manufacturer quickly said it would take. For now, the drug should remain readily available.

[Related: Abortion bans are impeding access to ulcer, arthritis, and cancer medications.]

At nearly the same time on the same day, US District Judge Thomas O. Rice, of Washington State by essentially ordering the opposite decision. Rice advised US authorities not to make any changes to mifepristone in at least 17 states where Democrats sued in a legal effort to protect the medication’s availability.

Mifepristone is the most widely used abortion medication in the United States. It works by blocking the pregnancy hormone progesterone, which makes the uterus unable to support a pregnancy and expels the uterus’ contents. It is the first pill that can be taken in a medication abortion. It is followed by another medication called misoprostol which can be obtained with a traditional prescription.

08/01/2024

This article was originally featured on Hakai Magazine, an online publication about science and society in coastal ecosystems. Read more stories like this at hakaimagazine.com.

Microplastics wreak havoc on fish in myriad ways, disrupting everything from eating behavior to brain development. While it’s clear these pesky particles can cause animals a world of trouble, scientists have found it much harder to pin down exactly how they cause so many problems.

“We know that if you expose animals to plastics, then oftentimes we’ll see pathology,” says Andrew Wargo, a disease ecologist at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science (VIMS). “But what we don’t really know are the secondary effects.”

That, however, is starting to change.

In controlled laboratory experiments, Wargo and his VIMS colleagues have shown how microplastics leave rainbow trout more vulnerable to a common salmonid disease, infectious hematopoietic necrosis virus (IHNV). The effect can be dramatic: by exposing trout to a high concentration of either polystyrene beads or nylon microfibers for one month and then subjecting them to IHNV, the scientists found that fish were three to six times more likely to die, respectively, than IHNV-infected fish that hadn’t been exposed to plastics.

As well as increasing the lethality of IHNV, the microplastics also caused the exposed fish to have higher viral loads and shed more virus.

Taking tissue samples from the fish at different points in the experiment, the scientists found that the plastics were damaging the fish’s gills and provoking an inflammatory response. This likely makes it easier for the virus to invade the fish’s body, leading to more severe disease.

“There’s this kind of priming happening with some plastics,” says Meredith Evans Seeley, an environmental chemist at the National Institute of Standards and Technology and the study’s lead author. “That allows the pathogens to be more successful at colonizing the host.”

“Understanding the mechanism of how microplastics can increase the virulence of a virus? That’s pretty new,” says Bettie Cormier, an aquatic ecotoxicologist at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology who was not involved in the work.

The deadly synergy between microplastics and viruses could be especially troubling in aquaculture operations, Wargo says. Infections spread easily on fish farms, and farmed fish frequentl

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08/01/2024

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