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This is a MedPage Today story. More than 80 domestic cats, among many other types of mammals, have been confirmed to have had bird flu since 2022 — generally barn cats that lived on dairy farms, as well as feral cats and pets that spend time outdoors and likely caught it by hunting diseased rodents or wild birds. Now, a small but growing number of house cats have gotten sick from H5N1, the bird flu strain driving the current U.S. outbreak, after eating raw food or drinking unpasteurized milk. Some of those cats died. The strain of bird flu currently circulating has not adapted to efficiently spread among people. And there have been no known cases of cat-to-human transmission during the current outbreak of H5N1. Still, there’s always been the risk that cats, which are arguably only semi-domesticated, could bring home a disease from a midnight prowl. "Companion animals, and especially cats, are 100% a public health risk in terms of the risk of zoonotic transmission to people,"…

This is a MedPage Today story. A new journal purports to improve the publishing process through open access and public peer review, but it was co-founded by researchers who challenged the U.S. response to COVID-19 — including President Trump’s pick to lead the NIH, Jay Bhattacharya, MD, PhD. Bhattacharya and Martin Kulldorff, PhD, have founded the Journal of the Academy of Public Health, where "good scientists can publish whatever their studies conclude," Kulldorff said in a post on X. Kulldorff reported the backdrop for launching the journal in a perspective, charging that commercial publishers have a corner on the market, with universities paying "an enormous amount of money for journals that contain articles that are both written and peer reviewed by their own scientists, which they provide to journals for free." "As a result, scientific journal publishers have huge profit margins reaching almost 40%," Kulldorff stated in the perspective. Unlike traditional publishing,…

This is a MedPage Today story. Cleveland Clinic officials fired back at a conservative organization’s "Woke Alert" attack ad that asked if the large health system was "the wokest hospital in America," saying the ad’s claims are "riddled with inaccuracies and lies." The ad, by Consumers’ Research, says clinic officials "prioritize care based on skin color, perform child sex changes, push transgender propaganda on vulnerable kids, insert DEI [diversity, equity, and inclusion] into everything they do, and spend millions on climate activism." The organization also seized on a sentence in a 2023 statement from clinic CEO Tom Mihaljevic, MD, in which he said "providing high-quality healthcare is only part of our mission." Consumers’ Research said Mihaljevic’s statement is evidence "the Cleveland Clinic is prioritizing woke policies over patients." The 30-second ad, titled "Exposed," is reportedly running on mobile billboards at the Ohio state capitol building, the Cleveland Clinic’s…

This is a MedPage Today story. Artificial intelligence (AI) could be used to prescribe medications to patients — if a new bill makes its way through Congress. The proposed legislation, sponsored by Rep. David Schweikert (R-Ariz.), would amend the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act to clarify that AI and machine learning technologies can qualify as a practitioner eligible to prescribe drugs if authorized by the state involved and approved by the FDA. The bill was introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives and referred to the House Committee on Energy and Commerce in January. But Adam Rodman, MD, MPH, a hospitalist and director of AI programs at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and assistant professor at Harvard Medical School in Boston, told MedPage Today that the technology is not nearly where it needs to be for this kind of prescribing. However, "[t]hings are accelerating so quickly," he added, "I don’t doubt that we will be having this conversation," at some…