Biden’s physician met with Parkinson’s disease specialist in White House

 A top Washington D.C. neurologist had a meeting with President Biden’s personal doctor at the White House earlier this year, visitor logs reviewed by The Post show.

Dr. Kevin Cannard, a Parkinson’s disease expert at Walter Reed Medical Center, met with Dr. Kevin O’Connor, and two others at the White House residence clinic on Jan. 17, according to the records, which emerge as questions continue to swirl about the 81-year-old president’s mental health in the wake of his debate debacle last week with former President Trump.

Dr. John E. Atwood, a cardiologist are Walter Reed, was also in the 5 P.M. meeting, the White House visitor logs show.

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President Biden walks with his physician Dr.Kevin O’Connor along the colonnade towards the Oval Office at the White House.REUTERS

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Dr. Kevin Cannard, a Parkinson’s disease specialist, met with President Biden’s personal physician at the White House in January.

The fourth person has not been identified in the logs from that day, when Biden was at the White House and hosted House and Senate leaders to press them for more Ukraine funding, according to his official schedule.

Cannard is an authority on Parkinson’s who has worked at Walter Reed for nearly 20 years.

Since 2012, he has served as the “neurology specialist supporting the White House Medical Unit,” according to his LinkedIn.

His most recent paper was published in August 2023 in the journal Parkinsonism & Related Disorders, and focuses on the “early-stage” of the crippling disease.

Since Biden’s health is O’Connor’s primary responsibility, it is highly probable the meeting was about the commander in chief, according to Rep. Ronny Jackson (R-Tx), the doctor for both Presidents Obama and Trump.

“It’s highly likely they were talking about Biden,” Jackson told The Post.

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President Biden has been dogged by questions about his cognitive health since a disastrous debate last week.Getty Images

“He should only be [regularly] treating the president and the first family.”

O’Connor has been Biden’s official physician since he took office in January 2021 and is in daily contact with the president.

His most important job every day is saying “Good morning, Mr. President,” — just to get the commander-in-chief off on the right track, he told one trade publication in March.

O’Connor gave Biden a clean bill of health at his annual physical in February.

The physical included a neurological exam which specifically ruled out Parkinson’s disease, O’Connor said at the time.

On Friday, the White House said Biden had a post-debate, “verbal check-in” with O’Connor.

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Dr. Kevin O’Connor sees President Biden regularly in his capacity as personal physician.vcom.edu

Jackson — who has never treated Biden — claimed the president’s doctor, along with the First Family, is trying to “cover-up” the diminishing cognitive health of the president, who on July 4 made several odd gaffes and misstatements at holiday festivities at the White House.

“I believe he and Jill Biden have led the cover up. Kevin O’Connor is like a son to Jill Biden — she loves him. It’s crazy. Kevin O’Connor was in that job on day one of the Biden administration because they knew they could trust Kevin to say and do anything that needed to be said or done and cover up whatever needed to be covered up. He is part of the Biden family,” Jackson said.

Jackson has for years warned that Biden’s mental health has been declining.

After the disastrous June 27 debate, Jackson said it was evidence Biden was suffering from a “cognitive disease” — and urged him to resign.

Dr. Rob Howard, a professor of old age psychiatry at University College London, said that President Biden displayed many symptoms indicative of Parkinson’s disease.

The president’s “fluctuation in attentional function, his facial appearance, and his gait,” were all signs that something is amiss, said Howard, who has never examined Biden and added he was not offering a formal diagnosis.

“I am not saying its Parkinson’s disease, I am just pointing out that there are features to him that are consistent with Parkinson’s disease.”

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Rep. Ronny Jackson say Dr. Kevin O’Connor is participating in a “cover-up” of President Biden’s health.Global Images Ukraine via Getty Images

Sen. Roger Marshall (R-KS), who is a physician, said “many” in the medical community have “suspected for several years that the president might be suffering from Parkinson’s disease.”

“Sadly, over 500,000 Americans are afflicted by this progressive neurological condition. If the president of the United States is among them, the American people deserve to know before voting in November,” he told The Post.

Cannard and Atwood declined to comment.

“A wide variety of specialists from the Walter Reed system visit the White House complex to treat thousands of military personnel who work on the grounds,” according to a White House spokesman who refused to answer questions about who O’Connor, Cannard and Atwood were meeting with.

https://nypost.com/2024/07/06/us-news/president-bidens-physician-met-with-parkinsons-disease-specialist-in-white-house/

The latest public-subsidy scam: Joe Biden’s expansion of free ObamaCare policies

 It’s the story of every government subsidy: Offer folks handouts if they meet certain requirements, and suddenly a lot of people . . . meet the requirements.

Cover the full cost of something — especially it’s something pricey, like health insurance — and the number zooms off the charts.

That’s what’s happening in the case ObamaCare subsidies President Biden and fellow Democrats generously expanded, with those getting handouts actually exceeding the number entitled to them, a new report from the Paragon Health Institute found.

The improper claims are costing American taxpayers an estimated $15 billion to $26 billion a year, prompting House Republicans to demand a review by the Health and Human Services inspector general and the Government Accountability office to determine “the breadth of improper enrollment and its underlying causes.”

Legislation passed by President Biden and fellow Democrats “resulted in tens of billions of additional taxpayer dollars being spent to prop up ObamaCare plans by increasing subsidies given to insurance companies far above those originally authorized by Congress,” their letters to HHS and GOA officials stated.

That includes expanded eligibility for totally free ObamaCare policies to people making up to 150 percent of the federal poverty level — an incentive, Paragon researchers found, that’s spurred as many as 5 million people to “improperly” claim income below that threshold.

To make matters worse, Team Biden has eliminated “program integrity controls,” which “appears to have created both the incentive and opportunity for individuals and brokers to misstate enrollees’ income.”

The result: Some states are now reporting “hundreds of thousands, and, in one case, millions more individuals enrolled in these plans than are reasonably likely to be eligible.”

“More than half of all enrollees in the federal exchange” claim incomes between 100% and 150% of the poverty level, enabling them to qualify.

That’s “notably higher than the historical average of roughly 40% for these plans.

The fraud “appears to be a significant problem in nearly half” the states, the researchers found, though it’s “much more severe” in states that declined to adopt ObamaCare’s Medicaid expansion and in those that use the federal exchange (HealthCare.gov).

HealthCare.gov states report 8.7 million signups, even though only 5.1 million people are “likely eligible.”

Ironically, this fraud’s mainly in red states: Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and Utah. (In states like New York and California, the fraudsters likely target generous Medicaid programs instead.)

Paragon’s researchers offer several recommendations to curb the “waste, fraud and abuse” — such as reversing Biden policies that enable “widespread fraudulent enrollment, particularly the “continuous open-enrollment period for people” claiming income below the threshold.

Yet none of its suggestion are as important as allowing the Biden-era “enhanced subsidies” to simply expire next year. These subsidies already total nearly $40 billion a year — part of $2 trillion in annual federal outlays for health care.

And they’re clearly an invitation for fraud.

Meanwhile, Uncle Sam is spending $2 trillion this year more than it’s taking in, a deficit of 7% of GDP — nearly double the 3.7% rate over the past 50 years.

Trimming that hole by as much as $26 billion a year won’t stem all the bleeding but it’s definitely valuable start.

https://nypost.com/2024/07/06/opinion/the-latest-public-subsidy-scam-bidens-expansion-of-free-obamacare/

Mental health impacts of prenatal cannabis exposure

 Scientists are trying to understand how cannabis may affect long-term neurodevelopment when babies are exposed to it in the womb.

Previous work by WashU researchers Sarah Paul and David Baranger in the Behavioral Research and Imaging Neurogenetics (BRAIN) lab led by Ryan Bogdan found associations between prenatal cannabis exposure and potential mental health conditions in childhood and adolescence, but potential biological mechanisms that could possibly explain this association were unclear.

In research published in Nature Mental Health this month, Bogdan, the Dean's Distinguished Professor of Psychological & Brain Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, and Postdoctoral Fellow Baranger, outline some of those potential mechanisms, the intermediate biological steps that could play into how prenatal cannabis exposure leads to behavioral issues down the line.

"We see evidence that cannabis exposure may influence the developing brain, consistent with associations with mental health," said Baranger.

Trying to draw out the long-term impacts of cannabis exposure during pregnancy is not a simple knot to untangle. There are many confounding factors that affect mental health and behavior.

For example, say someone was exposed to cannabis in utero and later develops attention deficit disorder as a teen—how do you differentiate that as an inherited trait, or a trait influenced by environmental factors, versus a trait that was influenced by cannabis exposure early in development? Or all three processes could contribute to eventual psychopathology.

Another complication is the increasing prevalence of cannabis use, including among the pregnant population where cannabis use has increased from 3% to 7% from 2002 to 2017.

Researchers used statistical methods to filter out some of these confounding factors and to suggest potential biological measurements between prenatal cannabis exposure and types of adolescent behavior.

Nothing can 100% establish causation "but we can look at the plausibility of causation, and identifying potential biological correlates that are associated with cannabis exposure and these mental health outcomes suggests it's plausible," said Bogdan about the study results.

Researchers have been using data from the Adolescent Brain and Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study, an ongoing research project that includes nearly 12,000 children across the United States.

As part of that study, researchers collected data about each mother's substance use prior to the birth and neuroimaging data at ages 9–10 and 11–12. Some 370 children were exposed to cannabis prior to the mother's knowledge of pregnancy, and 195 were exposed both before and after learning of pregnancy.

The researchers looked at a variety of neuroimaging measurements that are important in brain development, including measures of brain thickness and surface area, as well as measures of water diffusion in and out of cells. The patterns found in the group of children exposed to cannabis before birth are consistent with potential reductions in neuroinflammation.

"It's possible what we're seeing is an anti-inflammatory effect of cannabis which is leading to differences in how the brain is being pruned during neuro development," said Bogdan.

Much has been touted about the anti-inflammatory effects of cannabis, but it's not always good to reduce inflammation. It's all about the timing. Too much of a reduction of inflammation at the wrong time could affect how the brain is pruned and primed.

Another theory is that cannabis exposure leads to accelerated aging. But don't expect to find the smoking gun of biological clues pinning mental health conditions to early cannabis exposure.

It might not even be about pruning. It might also not be from the cannabis use itself, but rather the post combustion products from smoking cannabis that might set off accelerated aging and the downstream cognitive effects, said Bogdan.

Or, it's all down to sociological factors.

Trying to find the one-to-one connection that proves that prenatal cannabis exposure has negative effects during the teenage years is a challenge and may not be possible with retrospective studies. Baranger notes that the major limitation of this data set is that it was retrospective; mothers reported what their cannabis use was 10 years ago, so he's looking forward to new data from prospective, longitudinal studies that will offer more recent, accurate and detailed information about cannabis use in pregnancy.

"That will potentially give us more answers to these questions in the future."

In the meantime, results from this study reaffirm that if you're thinking about using cannabis while pregnant, "talk to your doctor about your choices and what other options there might be," said Baranger.

More information: David A. A. Baranger et al, Prenatal cannabis exposure, the brain, and psychopathology during early adolescence, Nature Mental Health (2024). DOI: 10.1038/s44220-024-00281-7

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2024-07-biological-clues-mental-health-impacts.html

'WHO agency says talc is 'probably' cancer-causing'

 The World Health Organization's cancer agency on Friday classified talc as "probably carcinogenic" for humans, however an outside expert warned against misinterpreting the announcement as a "smoking gun".

The decision was based on "limited evidence" that talc could cause ovarian cancer in humans, "sufficient evidence" it was linked to cancer in rats and "strong mechanistic evidence" that it shows carcinogenic signs in human cells, the WHO's International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) said.

Talc is a naturally occurring mineral which is mined in many parts of the world and is often used to make talcum baby powder.

Most people are exposed to talc in the form of baby powder or cosmetics, according to the Lyon-based IARC.

But the most significant exposure to talc occurs when talc is being mined, processed or used to make products, it added.

The agency said there were numerous studies which consistently showed an increase in the rate of ovarian cancer in women who use talc on their genitals.

But it could not rule out that the talc in some studies was contaminated with cancer-causing asbestos.

"A causal role for talc could not be fully established," according the agency's findings published in The Lancet Oncology.

Kevin McConway, a statistician at the UK's Open University not involved the research, warned that for the IARC's evaluation, the "most obvious interpretation is actually misleading".

The agency is only aiming "to answer the question of whether the substance has the potential to cause cancer, under some conditions that IARC do not specify," he said.

Because the studies were observational and so could not prove causation, "there isn't a smoking gun that the talc use causes any increased cancer risk," he added.

The announcement comes just weeks after US pharmaceutical and cosmetics giant Johnson & Johnson agreed to pay $700 million to settle allegations it misled customers about the safety of its talcum-based powder products.

Johnson & Johnson did not admit wrongdoing in its settlement, even though it withdrew the product from the North American market in 2020.

A summary of studies published in 2020 covering 250,000 women in the United States did not find a statistical link between the use of talc on the genitals and the risk of ovarian cancer.

Also on Friday, the IARC classified acrylonitrile, a chemical compound used to make polymers, as "carcinogenic to humans", its highest warning level.

It cited "sufficient evidence" linking acrylonitrile to lung cancer.

The polymers made with acrylonitrile are used in everything from fibers in clothes to carpets, plastics and other consumer products.

More information: Leslie T Stayner et al, Carcinogenicity of talc and acrylonitrile, The Lancet Oncology (2024). DOI: 10.1016/S1470-2045(24)00384-X

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2024-07-agency-talc-cancer.html

Study links social and non-social synchrony to romantic attractiveness

 Romantic relationships and attraction among humans have been the focus of numerous psychological and neuroscientific studies. While these studies have unveiled some of the neural and mental processes associated with romantic bonding, many questions about their underlying mechanisms remain unanswered.

Researchers at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem recently carried out a study exploring how physiological synchrony between individuals contributes to their romantic bonding. Their findings, published in Communications Psychology, suggest that greater synchrony with another person can boost the extent to which they are perceived as romantically attractive.

"We aimed to discover a biological mechanism that impacts mate selection in humans and how the ability to synchronize can signify fitness," Dr. Shir Atzil, co-author of the paper, told Medical Xpress. "We hypothesized that the ability to synchronize stems from fundamental sensorimotor abilities and that this adaptability might be perceived as beneficial in romantic contexts."

The idea behind this recent study by Dr. Atzil and her colleagues is that physiological synchrony between individuals could contribute to their mutual attraction. The rationale behind this is that synchronized physiological states between two people can facilitate the regulation of bodily systems, ultimately enabling more fulfilling interactions between them.

"Since we hypothesized that the complex social behavior of synchrony is actually anchored in domain-general sensorimotor features, we measured participants' ability to synchronize, both socially, where we measured the participants' ability for physiological synchrony with their partners during a date, and in a sensorimotor synchronization task, where we measured the participants' ability to synchronize their finger tap to a metronome bit," Dr. Atzil explained.

"We also acquired attraction ratings for all of our participants."

The researchers first carried out an initial online experiment involving 144 participants. These participants were asked to watch short videos in which a male and a female actor interacted with each other, exhibiting either a low or high physiological and behavioral synchrony.

After watching this video, they were asked to rate the attractiveness of the male and female actors. In addition, they were asked to rate how attracted they felt the male actor was to the female actress, and vice versa. Finally, as a last question, they were asked how behaviorally synchronized they believed the two characters in the video to be.

The researchers found that greater synchrony between the actors in the videos increased the attractiveness ratings provided by the study participants. Dr. Atzil and her colleagues then conducted a follow-up study in person, involving 48 participants.

These participants were asked to interact with potential partners in a speed dating experiment. Each interaction lasted five minutes and once it was complete, participants were asked to rate the attractiveness of the person they had just dated with and complete a tapping task designed to measure their synchronization.

During the speed dates, the researchers collected physiological data from the participants using a wearable device called the Empatica E4 wristband. This device measured the activation of the sympathetic nervous system, the secretion of sweat and changes in electrodermal activity.

"We see that the ability to synchronize is stable across tasks and across partners. Some people are super synchronizers, and super synchronizers are consistently rated as more attractive," Dr. Atzil said.

Overall, the findings gathered by these researchers suggest that greater physiological synchrony with another person increases the extent to which this person is perceived as romantically attractive. This observation confirms their initial hypothesis, suggesting that synchrony with others could have evolutionary and cognitive advantages, which could make more appealing as potential mates.

The recent research led by Dr. Atzil, along with colleagues Matan Cohen and Prof. Merav Ahissar, could soon pave the way for further studies exploring how physiological synchrony impacts romantic attraction. Collectively, these works could lead to new fascinating discoveries about the complex processes underpinning mate selection among humans.

"The most important finding of this study is that synchrony is a domain general individual aptitude, which signifies romantic attraction," Dr. Atzil added. "We plan to study and characterize super synchronizers and their neural, behavioral, and physiological profile."

More information: M. Cohen et al, Social and nonsocial synchrony are interrelated and romantically attractive, Communications Psychology (2024). DOI: 10.1038/s44271-024-00109-1

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2024-07-links-social-synchrony-romantic.html