It's the Midday Healthwatch with former Baltimore City Health Commissioner and Washington Post columnist, Dr. Leana Wen.
The next step in Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F Kennedy, Jr.'s continued assault on vaccines appears to be an effort to do away with aluminum salts as a component in several commonly used vaccines.
Dr. Wen wrote about this troubling move last month in the Washington Post, observing that Kennedy’s claims that aluminum salts cause a variety of conditions have been, quote, “rigorously studied and discredited.”
And, in an extraordinary rebuke of HHS, last month, the director general of the World Health Organization called a proposed study by HHS about a vaccine for Hepatitis B, “unethical.”
The cover of the most recent edition of The Lancet, a highly regarded medical journal, states bluntly that:
“The destruction that Kennedy has wrought in 1 year might take generations to repair, and there is little hope for US health and science while he remains at the helm.”
Plus, Maryland has the mumps. As of February 20, there were more than two dozen cases of mumps in Maryland. That’s more than six times the number of cases in all of 2025.
There’s new research about how to screen for breast cancer, and a large study about the benefits of coffee drinking indicates that those cups of java may be good for brain health.
Dr. Leana Wen is the former Baltimore City Health Commissioner, a professor at George Washington University's Milken Institute School of Public Health, a columnist for the Washington Post and the author of Lifelines: A Doctor’s Journey in the Fight for Public Health.
Dr. Wen joins us on Zoom.
