Good morning, everyone, and how are you today? We are doing just fine, thank you, despite the incredibly soggy skies hovering over the otherwise placid Pharmalot campus. After all, the Morning Mayor once advised us that “every new day should be unwrapped like a precious gift.” So go ahead, tug on the ribbon while we will brew yet another cuppa stimulation. For the full experience, we are now hawking replicas — take a look. Meanwhile, here are a few tidbits to help you along. We hope your day is productive and peaceful. As always, do keep in touch and do feel free to send along secret dossiers and internal memos. …
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is cracking down on telehealth marketing of compounded versions of weight loss drugs and, in recent months, the agency has warned them against implying their products are FDA approved, or that they themselves manufacture the products. But those companies may not be the only ones under the microscope, STAT explains. The telehealth companies that have been warned do not directly prescribe the medicines, which are not approved by the FDA or evaluated for safety and efficacy. That falls to the clinicians in medical groups affiliated with the companies and an analysis shows that cited companies can share clinical DNA. Among more than 70 telehealth companies warned by the FDA in the last six months, at least 30% have publicly stated affiliations with just four nationwide medical groups: Beluga Health, OpenLoop, MD Integrations, and Telegra.
A key U.S. federal vaccine advisory panel has dropped a push against COVID mRNA vaccines, The Washington Post reports. Some vaccine advisers under U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. had been seeking to potentially stop recommending mRNA shots, but that plan is no longer moving forward. A panel of vaccine advisers last September scrapped a broad recommendation for Covid shots and said that Covid-19 shots should be administered only through shared decision-making with a health care provider. The advisers to the CDC are slated to meet next week and are expected to make recommendations on which vaccines Americans should receive and when. Under the leadership of Kennedy, a longtime anti-vaccine activist, the HHS decided in August last year to wind down mRNA vaccine development activities under its biomedical research unit.Continue to STAT+ to read the full story…