Anonymous ID: 2acd0b March 5, 2019, 11:57 a.m. No.5522374   🗄️.is 🔗kun   >>2424 >>2720

President Trump on Tuesday signaled the White House will not comply with a barrage of congressional investigations, accusing Democrats in the House of launching the probes to hurt his chances of winning reelection in 2020.

 

“It's a disgrace to our country. I'm not surprised that it's happening. Basically, they've started the campaign. So the campaign begins,” Trump told reporters at the White House after signing an executive order on veterans’ suicide prevention.

 

“Instead of doing infrastructure, instead of doing health care, instead of doing so many things that they should be doing, they want to play games,” he continued.

 

Trump suggest he was unwilling to comply with the House Judiciary Committee’s requests for documents related to 81 of his associates, citing what he said was former President Obama’s handling of congressional probes during his time in office.

 

“They didn't give one letter. They didn't do anything. They didn't give one letter of the requests,” he said.

 

https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/432695-trump-signals-white-house-wont-comply-with-democratic-probes

Anonymous ID: 2acd0b March 5, 2019, 12:07 p.m. No.5522513   🗄️.is 🔗kun   >>2556 >>2557 >>2622 >>2720

>>5522487

Food and Drug Commissioner Scott Gottlieb, who used his post to tackle difficult public health issues from youth vaping to opioid addiction – surprising early skeptics worried about his drug industry ties – resigned Tuesday, effective in about a month, according to an administration official.

 

Gottlieb, who has been commuting weekly to Washington from his home in Connecticut, wants to spend more time with his family, the official said. The 46-year-old physician, millionaire venture capitalist and cancer survivor known for a self-assured, sometimes brash, manner lives in Westport, with his wife and three daughters – nine-year-old twins and a five-year-old.

 

A senior White House official said Gottlieb had spoken to the president, who liked the FDA chief and did not want him to leave. While Gottlieb had some policy disagreements with the White House, he is well respected, two officials said. The move came as a surprise to some FDA officials, because he has recently hired senior staff and was aggressively pushing a host of new initiatives.

 

The resignation comes as Gottlieb’s signature issue – youth vaping – is being reviewed by the White House Office of Management and Budget. The plan, detailed by Gottlieb last fall, would sharply restrict the sale of flavored e-cigarettes to curb a surge in underage vaping, which he argues could lead to a whole new generation addicted to nicotine.

 

His initiative has won praise for shining a spotlight on a national problem. But it has also been criticized by some anti-tobacco activists as being too weak and by e-cigarette supporters as being too aggressive. Some libertarians and conservatives recently complained his approach represented “regulatory panic” and went against Trump’s anti-regulatory agenda.

 

The blueprint is expected to move forward, but Gottlieb’s departure could throw into question other controversial tobacco initiatives he championed which have not yet emerged from the FDA, including proposals to ban menthol cigarettes and to reduce nicotine levels in cigarettes to “minimally addictive” levels.

 

In his resignation letter to Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar, Gottlieb, who took office in May 2017, ticked off a list of accomplishments, including accelerating the approval of generic drugs and modernizing the process for handling novel gene and precision therapies to treat those with cancer and other dread diseases. He said the agency was “strong in moments of crisis,” including its work in Puerto Rico to remedy drug and medical device shortages after Hurricane Maria in 2017.

 

Gottlieb was a former top FDA official during the George W. Bush administration. When he was out of government, he worked as a venture capitalist and consultant to drug and health care companies. He stood out in the anti-regulatory Trump administration, where some officials such as Scott Pruitt, the former head of the Environmental Protection Agency, appeared intent on reducing the clout of the departments and agencies they headed. For nearly two years, Gottlieb has avidly promoted the FDA and inserted the agency into important health issues.

 

A frequent user of social media, Gottlieb from policy pronouncements to updates on the government shutdown to safe cooking tips. He raises chickens in his back yard and appeared on the cover of Backyard Poultry in the fall of 2017.

 

He spoke frequently about taking steps to combat escalating drug prices – venturing into an area that is not traditionally regarded as part of the FDA’s portfolio – and pressed as a partial remedy faster generic-drug approvals to foster competition with pricey brand-name products. Last year, the agency approved a record 971 generic drugs. He also began posting lists of drugs that aren’t protected by patents, inviting applications from generic manufacturers, and sharply criticized brand-name companies for thwarting generic competition.

 

More:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2019/03/05/fda-commissioner-gottlieb-who-raised-alarms-about-teen-vaping-resigns/?utm_term=.32f68bb59ffd

Anonymous ID: 2acd0b March 5, 2019, 12:12 p.m. No.5522564   🗄️.is 🔗kun   >>2610

Sen. Rand Paul said Tuesday that he does not think the government should require people to receive vaccinations, amid a heated debate over the growing influence of anti-vaccine groups and as Washington state experiences its worst measles outbreak in more than two decades.

 

Paul (R-Ky.) made similar comments ahead of his unsuccessful White House bid in 2016. On Tuesday, he was the sole lawmaker at a hearing of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee to question whether the benefits of vaccinations outweigh the risks for the general population.

 

Paul said that while he and his children have been vaccinated, he believes in “persuasion” rather than government-mandated vaccines.

 

“It is wrong to say that there are no risks to vaccines. Even the government admits that children are sometimes injured by vaccines. . . . I still don’t favor giving up on liberty for a false sense of security,” Paul said.

 

The rise of the anti-vaccine movement, facilitated in part by social media, has prompted an alarming resurgence of measles in states across the country. The deadly disease was declared eliminated from the United States in 2000, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. But public health officials are now scrambling to keep the highly contagious virus from once again spreading out of control, particularly among under-vaccinated populations in states such as Washington, Oregon and Idaho.

 

At Tuesday’s hearing, Paul acknowledged that those who are not vaccinated could spread diseases to the immunocompromised community. But he claimed that “there doesn’t seem to be enough evidence of this happening to be reported as a statistic.”

 

The recent measles outbreak in the Pacific Northwest has sickened at least 75 people, most of them unvaccinated children under 10. Globally, cases of measles are surging to alarmingly high levels, UNICEF recently warned.

 

But Paul appeared to play down the seriousness of the situation, asking, “If the fear of this is valid, are we to find that next we’ll be mandating flu vaccines?”

 

In 2015, as he was mulling a presidential bid, Paul said in interviews on CNBC and with conservative radio host Laura Ingraham that he believed the choice to vaccinate should be up to parents rather than mandated by the government.

 

In the CNBC interview, he claimed to have “heard of many tragic cases of walking, talking normal children who wound up with profound mental disorders after vaccines.”

 

“I’m not arguing vaccines are a bad idea; I think they’re a good thing,” Paul, who is an ophthalmologist, said at the time. “But I think the parent should have some input. The state doesn’t own your children. Parents own the children, and it is an issue of freedom.”

 

The notion that vaccines might cause autism has its roots in fraudulent research that was debunked nearly a decade ago and was recently refuted again in a study of more than half a million people.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/sen-rand-paul-says-government-should-not-force-people-to-receive-vaccinations/2019/03/05/bfae6534-3f6e-11e9-9361-301ffb5bd5e6_story.html?utm_term=.459abdc55f1e