Rachel Feltman: Happy Monday, listeners! For Scientific American’s Science Quickly, I’m Rachel Feltman. Let’s kick off the week by catching up on the latest science news.
First, we’ve got a brief update from Tanya Lewis, a senior editor covering health and medicine at Scientific American. She’s here to unpack the news that President-elect Donald Trump plans to put Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., in charge of the Department of Health and Human Services. What follows is a brief conversation Tanya and I recorded a couple days back.
Tanya, what is RFK, Jr.’s background in regard to health?
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Tanya Lewis: RFK, Jr., is an environmental lawyer by training, but he has no medical background, and he has very strong anti-vaccine views. He’s argued that vaccines cause autism—which is, of course, debunked.
He’s also made lots of false and exaggerated claims about the dangers of water fluoridation. He’s argued for unproven and potentially dangerous therapies like hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin for COVID and chelation, which is a method of removing heavy metals from the body for autism and, of course, it doesn’t work for that.
He also wants to end what he calls the [Food and Drug Administration’s], quote, “war on public health,” which includes regulation of raw milk and some unproven stem cell treatments. He also wants to stop the, quote, “revolving door” between industry and government and regulate ultra-processed foods, although it’s not really clear how he would actually do those things.
Feltman: And so what does it actually mean that he’s been nominated into this role?
Lewis: I think his nomination suggests that the Trump administration has very little regard for established medical science. His views on vaccines and fluoride just really go against the consensus of most public health experts and decades of research on their safety and efficacy.
And it’s not yet clear that he will even be confirmed by the Senate, so he may not even have a chance to implement this agenda.
Feltman: Assuming that, you know, he does get to step into this role, what kinds of power would he actually have?
Lewis: So as head of HHS, the Department of Health and Human Services, he will be in charge of the FDA, the [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention], the [National Institutes of Health] and pretty much all other health departments, so he would have enormous power to fire people, to hire people and totally restructure these agencies. He could also fill FDA and CDC advisory panels with vaccine skeptics, which would be, obviously, probably a bad thing because these agencies are supposed to be tasked with protecting people’s health and vaccines are a huge part of that.
One interesting thing about RFK, Jr., is that he actually has a very long-standing record of being pro-abortion. He has said in the past that he would support abortion through the ninth month, although I think he’s backtracked on that a little bit. But his pro-abortion stance could actually get in the way of him getting confirmed by a pretty conservative Congress.
Feltman: What kinds of decisions and restrictions and allowances can this group of agencies make?
Lewis: So as head of HHS, the Department of Health and Human Services, RFK Jr. would oversee the FDA, the agency responsible for making sure that every medication that is on the market has been tested rigorously for safety and efficacy. And he’d be in charge of CDC, which has a huge role in protecting Americans’ public health, not just in pandemics but in, you know, everyday life, constantly alerting the public. So that’s a very important role. He’d also be in charge of NIH, the National Institutes of Health, which is our primary source of government funding for biomedical research. And he would also be in charge of other smaller government health agencies that also have very important roles.
Feltman: Tanya, thanks so much for coming on to unpack all this for us.
Lewis: Yeah, thanks so much for having me.
Feltman: In other national health news the U.S. surgeon general released a new report on tobacco use and secondhand smoke exposure last Tuesday. The report states that although smoking has declined by more than 70 percent in the U.S. since 1965, that drop hasn’t benefited all Americans equally. American Indian and Alaska Native people have higher smoking rates than other ethnic and racial groups, and people who identify as gay, lesbian or bisexual are more likely to smoke than their straight counterparts. The report also noted that people living in poverty are almost twice as likely to smoke as those living above the poverty line. What’s worse is that some of those disparities have actually increased since 2000. The story is similar when it comes to secondhand smoke exposure. While the number of related deaths has dropped by more than half since 2006, secondhand tobacco exposure remains disproportionately high for Black people, adults with lower education levels, children and people with lower incomes.
The report pins these disparities on several likely factors, including tobacco marketing campaigns that target specific groups and neighborhoods as well as stress and financial barriers to treatment. So, in addition to your standard smoking cessation policies, the report calls for policies that address disparities in access to health care and education overall. If you or someone you care about is ready to cut down on tobacco use, you can find resources to help by calling 1-800-QUIT-NOW or visiting the website SmokeFree.gov.
Okay, now it’s time to zoom way out—and then back in again—to catch up on some space news. Last Thursday astronomers unveiled the first-ever close-up image of a star from outside the Milky Way galaxy. This distant celestial body is about 2,000 times bigger than our sun, and it sits inside a galaxy that orbits our own. Don’t get too excited about the visual: it looks like a glowing blob surrounded by a slightly-less-glowing oval. But scientists are pretty psyched about that ring, which they think could be tied to a burst of ejected material just before the star goes supernova. The new imaging reveals that the star has gotten dimmer over the last decade, which tracks with the theory that it could be shedding material and reaching the end of its life.
To end things on a playful note, let’s check out a pair of new studies on one of our closest animal relatives: chimpanzees, of course. Though, side note, I actually hated when people forget that bonobos are also our other closest animal cousins, but these studies are about chimps, so I won’t go on my full bonobo rant.
The first study, which came out last Wednesday, focuses on the phenomenon known as social contagion. That’s when a behavior, idea or emotion spreads through a social network—like, an infectious laugh for example. Researchers spent hundreds of hours observing chimps to catch them executing so-called affiliative behaviors: those are things they do that promote positive social engagement. In this case, those affiliative behaviors were grooming each other and engaging in play. The study suggests that both activities are subject to social contagion: individuals were more likely to initiate these behaviors after watching other chimps do the same. The researchers hope that building a better understanding of how contagious behaviors impact the social cohesion of a group can help us wrap our heads around how and why this copycat phenomenon evolved.
Another study, published last Thursday, investigated adult social play in chimps. While kids obviously play more than adults in the human world, most grown-ups do still play—whether that comes in the form of a local softball league or a Dungeons & Dragons campaign. The researchers behind the new study say that adult play in nonhuman animals is generally assumed to be rare, but their work studying these chimps suggests otherwise. The scientists studied 57 wild adult chimps and found that the animals played with one another on a regular basis. They did things like wrestle and chase each other while making what chimp researchers call “play faces.” This expression is often compared to a smile, though it doesn’t look like a human grin. In fact, if you ever see a chimp baring all its teeth at you, assume they’re in distress. A happy chimp will cover their top teeth while letting their mouth hang open, exposing just their bottom chompers.
What’s really cool about this study is that the adult chimps had a tendency to play together before doing things requiring group cooperation, like defending their territory from outsiders or going hunting. They were also more likely to play when things got tense due to in-group competition or fighting. In other words, it seems like horsing around is an important part of keeping this chimp community together. While the researchers can’t be sure that this is how the entire species uses play, they’re hoping to study other wild groups to find out. But I don’t think you need to wait for that follow-up before planning your next game night.
That’s all for this week’s news roundup. We’ll be back on Wednesday to talk about the psychology behind your Black Friday shopping spree—and how to keep all that marketing from hijacking your brain. And just to give you a quick heads up, we’ll be taking a break from posting new episodes on Friday and next Monday.
Science Quickly is produced by me, Rachel Feltman, along with Fonda Mwangi, Kelso Harper, Madison Goldberg and Jeff DelViscio. This episode was edited by Anaissa Ruiz Tejada. Shayna Posses and Aaron Shattuck fact-check our show. Our theme music was composed by Dominic Smith. Subscribe to Scientific American for more up-to-date and in-depth science news.
For Scientific American, this is Rachel Feltman. Have a great week!
