US health secretary announced new members for Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, after firing all 17 experts who held the post

Robert F Kennedy Jr, the US health secretary, named eight new vaccine advisers this week to a critical Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) panel after firing all 17 experts who had held the roles.

New members of the panel include experts who complained about being sidelined, a high-profile figure who has spread misinformation and medical professionals who appear to have little vaccine expertise. Kennedy made the announcement on social media.

Pioneering drug can halt advance of multiple myeloma for three times as long as standard treatments

Thousands of patients in England with blood cancer will become the first in the world to be offered a pioneering “Trojan horse” drug that sneaks inside cancer cells and wipes them out.

In guidance published on Friday, the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (Nice) gave the green light to belantamab mafodotin, which can halt the advance of multiple myeloma for three times as long as standard treatments.

Research looked at records of 14,800 people in Bradford to see what happened after they moved to more polluted area

What happens to your mental and physical health when you move to an area with worse air pollution? That’s the subject of a fascinating new UK-based study.

Prof Rosie McEachan, the director of NHS Born in Bradford, asked: “Do already unhealthy communities, who are often poorer members of our society, end up in unhealthier environments because no one else wants to live there; or is it the places themselves that are making people ill?”

Government announces £9m funding to make specialist blood machines more widely available across NHS

People living with sickle cell disease in England are to benefit from quicker and more accessible treatment due to a £9m investment, the government has announced.

Apheresis services, which are a type of treatment that removes harmful components from a patient’s blood, are to improve across England through the funding of more specialist treatment centres. The funding will ensure the wider availability of machines that remove a patient’s sickled red blood cells and replace them with healthy donor cells.

Millions of people are taking weight-loss drugs like Mounjaro and off-label Ozempic. But with so many unanswered questions, are we in the middle of a giant human experiment? In this episode, journalist Neelam Tailor asks two doctors what these drugs are really doing to our bodies, our minds, and our society – from muscle loss and mental health to beauty standards and the blurred line between medicine and aesthetics.