Escaped monkeys and who to know in the MAHA world

Get your daily dose of health and medicine every weekday with STAT’s free newsletter Morning Rounds. Sign up here.

If you’re in the market for a heartwarming story, look no further than this “real life rom com” as related on Threads. (My heart, like the person who posted it, is about to burst).

Speaking of, if you’re looking to diversify your social media platforms, you can follow STAT on Threads or Bluesky, as well as many STATians, including me!

And of course, you can subscribe to STAT to get your news straight from the source. A subscription also gives you email alerts for your favorite reporters and exclusive newsletters. We’re 40% off right now; grab a subscription, and enjoy your weekend as we take care of the news.

Maiya hi, Maiya hu, Maiya MAHA

With President-elect Trump saying that he’s going to let Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. ‘go wild’ on health care and the quest to eradicate chronic disease in his new administration, we turn to look at who might be influential in that mission.

Among chronic disease reporter Isa Cueto’s 10 people to know in the “Make America Healthy Again” movement:

• Calley and Casey Means: The sibling duo — one trained as a doctor at Stanford, both entrepreneurs — has recently risen to MAHA fame, as Isa chronicled last month. Casey Means, who dropped out of her residency program to become a functional medicine doctor, is on his short list for leading a national health agency, Kennedy said earlier this year.

• Del Bigtree: If there is a man behind the MAHA machine, Isa writes, it’s Bigtree, the former communications director for Kennedy’s presidential campaign and CEO of the MAHA Alliance super PAC.

• Vani Hari: Better known as “Food Babe,” the Instagram influencer with over 2 million followers has railed against companies like Kellogg’s for including ingredients in U.S. foods that aren’t allowed in other countries and stormed the company’s headquarters in Battle Creek, Mich. She spoke at the Senate roundtable on chronic disease.

Read on for more MAHA figures to know, including current members of Congress and other online personalities.

What can Trump and RFK Jr. actually do to vaccines?

Though it’s unclear what official role RFK Jr. will play in Trump’s health administration, he and other members of the Trump-aligned MAHA movement have a history of anti-vaccine advocacy. Trump transition team co-chair Howard Lutnick questioned the safety of vaccines on CNN just a week before the election.

But what avenues does the Trump administration have for actually changing the way the U.S. regulates and distributes vaccines?

From the makeup of the committee that makes recommendations to the CDC on vaccines, to the power of the courts and the role Congress plays, STAT’s Lizzy Lawrence and Timmy Broderick have a must-read reality check on the potential future of public health in the U.S.

Girls’ night out: Escape from the monkey facility

On Wednesday evening, the police department of Yemassee, South Carolina posted on Facebook: “Several primates have escaped from the Alpha Genesis facility on Castle Hall Rd.”

Since then, the police have confirmed that the escapees were 43 young female rhesus macaques that weigh six to seven pounds. A spokesperson for the company confirmed that “these animals are too young to carry disease,” the police said.

Alpha Genesis “currently have eyes on the primates and are working to entice them with food,” the police department said yesterday around noon.

Alpha Genesis is a biomedical primate research company that breeds monkeys both at its Yemassee location and on South Carolina’s “Monkey Island,” the primate colony run by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, which contracts out to private companies like Alpha Genesis for care of the monkeys.

This isn’t the first time monkeys have escaped from Alpha Genesis in Yemassee — the company was fined by the USDA in 2018 for violations between December 2014 and February 2016, which included four escapes involving a total of 30 monkeys.

Scientists’ and public health experts’ reactions to a second Trump presidency

Earlier in the week, we brought you biotech and pharma’s reactions to the presidential election results. A great team of STAT reporters now brings you reactions from a span of scientists and health experts. A few highlights:

• “This is an opportunity to reform the agencies that failed the American people from the NIH to CDC to FDA and others within HHS and beyond. From the massive obesity epidemic, to rampant drug overdose, to lagging life expectancy, these agencies proved to be inefficient, laden/shackled with bureaucracy and delivered very little to the American people.” — Ziyad Al-Aly, senior clinical epidemiologist at Washington University
• “It sends a sobering reminder that the scientific establishment and higher education and knowledge creation in general has not captured the imagination of a lot of the coalition that Trump has built…We have to do a better job of explaining how science works and acting with the values that we all embrace, in terms of self-correction and in terms of standing up for science when it’s correct.” —  Holden Thorp, editor-in-chief of the Science family of journals

Read more from these experts and others here.

FDA proposes ending use of ineffective nasal decongestant

Yesterday, the FDA proposed removing phenylephrine as an active ingredient that can be used in oral over-the-counter drugs for treating nasal congestion. Phenylephrine is used in medications like Sudafed PE, but an FDA panel last year found that the drug, while safe, is ineffective.

The current order is only proposed and open for comment; no manufacturers will have to pull products from shelves until the order is finalized. Some products use phenylephrine in combination with other active ingredients like acetaminophen or dextromethorphan, but it doesn’t affect the effectiveness of the other compounds, the agency noted. The agency also said that phenylephrine is used in some nasally administered drugs, and this order would not affect those products — only the oral versions.

The FDA recommended that consumers should always read the “Drug Facts” label on medications to check the active ingredients, especially because phenylephrine is sold under so many names and brands.

Trial to study mpox vaccines in pregnant/breastfeeding women and infants

Pregnant women are rarely included in clinical trials because of fears the vaccine will hurt their fetuses. But that leaves them, and their babies, unprotected when it comes to dangerous diseases. STAT’s Helen Branswell wrote about this Catch-22 when pregnant people were denied access to the Ebola vaccine.

Now a new trial in the Democratic Republic of the Congo will test the Bavarian Nordic MVA-BN mpox vaccine in pregnant women and children aged two and younger in a study starting in early 2025.

In the study’s first stage, pregnant women will get two doses of the vaccine before or after birth, and blood and breast milk will be collected from the mothers and infants to see whether maternal antibodies are passed down to the newborns via either route. In the trial’s second stage, infants aged 6-24 months will get a full or half dose of the vaccine. 

What we’re reading

• A letter from the executive editor: A seminal moment for science journalism, STAT

• Amid the uncertainty, here’s what Trump’s victory might mean for U.S. science, Science

• America has an onion problem, The Atlantic

• How a Newfoundland scientist solved the mystery of the white blobs washing ashore, The Globe and Mail

• You may not be able to outrun a vampire bat, New York Times

• Bird flu infections in farmworkers are going undetected, study shows, STAT