Policy

FDA
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s health department has consistently touted radical transparency as being key to its mission. Recent instances—the FDA’s decision not to disclose the recipients of three Commissioner’s National Priority Vouchers and FDA and CDC choices not to publish vaccine-related papers—call this intent into question.
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FDA
BioSpace looks back at 2025 and where the FDA is going in 2026.
While requests by government officials for anonymity when speaking to the media are nothing new, the practice attracts more scrutiny when the Department for Health and Human Services has pledged a commitment to “radical transparency.”
TrumpRX and DTC sales may expand prescription drug access, but they will not solve the affordability crisis by themselves.
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Regulations aiming to lower the cost of vital medicines will instead end up restricting access and disincentivizing R&D.
The CDC no longer recommends COVID-19 vaccines for healthy children and healthy pregnant women, a position that has been opposed by leading medical societies.
The Trump administration’s ever-changing tariffs and Most Favored Nation drug pricing are part of a blizzard of unclear, potentially illegal tactics that leave observers throwing their hands in the air.
A new study in JAMA contradicts a series of statements made by HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. that paint vaccine advisory committees at the CDC and FDA as hopelessly corrupt.
FDA
A draft copy of the Make America Healthy Again Commission’s latest report, obtained by Politico, focuses on vaccine-related injuries and expediting access to investigational medicines for children—even though the FDA has recently rejected several of them.
The move comes after Robert F. Kennedy Jr. received pressure from the Children’s Health Defense, an anti-vaccine non-profit that he co-founded, which last month sued him over his failure to run the “statutorily required Task Force on childhood vaccine,” according to the lawsuit.
The Department of Health and Human Services’ mRNA pullback only applies to their use in upper respiratory disease, according to Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
As Trump has pressured drugmakers to lower the cost of medicines in the U.S., the pharma industry has coalesced behind a message of rebalancing what nations pay to better reflect the innovation and value of drugmaking.
The HHS secretary recently canceled $500 million worth of BARDA contracts around mRNA vaccine research. But the U.S. government has already spent billions on this work, which has saved millions of lives.
Citing other priorities—such as the upcoming U.S.-Russia summit—four anonymous sources claim that pharma tariffs could still be weeks away, according to Reuters.