“An increasing reliance on digital and social media channels, including undisclosed paid influencer promotion, has blurred the lines among editorial content…”
The Trump administration is seeking to ban drug ads on television. How many times have you been sitting watching your favorite show or a sporting event only to have the breaks be filled with ads for drugs, the purpose of which is entirely baffling? That’s what President Trump, in signing a memorandum on Tuesday, is trying to stop. The FDA will also take aim at social media advertising through influencers who are not disclosed.
The memorandum asks staff to revive a policy that would prevent big drug ads from being shown on TV. In 1997, there was a policy change that made it possible for pharmaceutical ads to be shown on TV, boosting both drug company and television network profits. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr is against the ads because he thinks a great deal of health can be gained through preventative measures, such as exercise and nutrition.
“Pharmaceutical ads hooked this country on prescription drugs,” Kennedy said. “We will shut down that pipeline of deception and require drug companies to disclose all critical safety facts in their advertising. Only radical transparency will break the cycle of overmedicalization that drives America’s chronic disease epidemic.”
Kennedy has called for a ban on big drug ads on TV, but pharmaceutical companies and television networks are against it due to the hefty profits they see from these ads. Courts, The New York Times notes, have long been on the side of big pharma in cases such as these by claiming their First Amendment right to marketing prescription drugs directly to consumers.
In regard to “undisclosed paid influencer promotion” on social media, a letter to pharmaceutical companies states, “A 2024 review in the Journal of Pharmaceutical Health Services Research reveals that while 100% of pharmaceutical social media posts highlight drug benefits, only 33% mention potential harms. Moreover, 88% of advertisements for top-selling drugs are posted by individuals and organizations that fail to adhere to the FDA fair balance guidelines.”
It was in the 1990s that the push was made for direct-to-consumer (DTC) advertising of pharmaceuticals and drugs. These ads tout the benefits of a specific drug, but often the ads are vague and confusing about what ailment the drug is meant to treat, just saying “ask your doctor” if the drug is “right for you.” These drug ads also end with a lengthy, speed-read summation of dangerous potential side effects, covering everything from diarrhea to suicide.
The plan, per the memorandum, is to “remove the 1997 ‘Adequate Provision’ Loophole, which has enabled pharmaceutical companies to withhold vital safety information in advertisements,” be “aggressive in enforcement of DTC violations,” and to “close digital loopholes by expanding regulatory oversight to encompass social media promotional activities.”
The Trump FDA said, “In addition to enforcing existing law, the FDA is initiating rulemaking to close the ‘adequate provision’ loophole created in 1997, which drug companies have used to conceal critical safety risks in broadcast and digital ads, fueling inappropriate drug use and eroding public trust.”
Former FDA commissioner Davide Kessler said, “The industry will obviously challenge this on First Amendment grounds,” and the television industry, which relies on advertising dollars for survival, will likely back the drug makers.
“The FDA,” reads a press release, “will no longer tolerate such deceptive practices. Going forward, the agency will aggressively deploy its available enforcement tools. The FDA is already implementing AI and other tech-enabled tools to proactively surveil and review drug ads.
“The Trump Administration and HHS Secretary Kennedy are committed to restoring transparency, accountability, and trust in health care. By closing loopholes and stepping up enforcement, the FDA will protect patients, safeguard public health and hold the pharmaceutical industry accountable.”
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Biden’s Final Flop: 911,000 Fewer Jobs Than Reported in the Year Through March
The U.S. economy added nearly a million fewer jobs in the year through March 2025 than previously reported, according to preliminary figures released Tuesday by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The revision, the largest on record, suggests job growth during that period was running at roughly half the pace initially believed.
The BLS said payrolls will likely be revised down by 911,000 jobs, or 0.6 percent. That reduces total employment gains for the 12 months ending in March to about 850,000, compared with the 1.8 million originally reported. On a seasonally adjusted basis, average monthly job growth drops from about 147,000 to just over 70,000.
The downward adjustment hits nearly every industry and most states. Wholesale and retail trade accounted for the largest share of the shortfall, followed by leisure and hospitality, professional and business services, and manufacturing. Information employment was revised down by more than 2 percent, the steepest cut in percentage terms.
A Weaker Inheritance
The revision recasts the economic backdrop at the start of President Donald Trump’s second term. Far from inheriting a booming labor market, Trump stepped into office amid an economy that was already weaker than believed. What was described at the time as a historically strong job market now appears far less robust.
In June 2024, White House economic adviser Jared Bernstein told the New York Times that “it’s beyond question that this is one of the strongest labor markets that we’ve ever seen.” Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said in December that “the U.S. economy has just been remarkable… performing very, very well.” Both statements rested on payroll data that has now been sharply revised down.
At the time, analysts argued that voters were discounting plentiful jobs in favor of focusing on inflation. The new data suggests voters weren’t overlooking strength — they were detecting weakness obscured by inflated statistics.
Pressure on the Fed
The revision also highlights the risk that the Federal Reserve miscalibrated policy in late 2024. The central bank lowered interest rates three times between September and December, but has left them in place since Donald Trump took office. In recent months, job growth has slowed to a crawl and the revisions show that it was weaker even before Trump took office, meaning the Fed was already behind the curve. With unemployment rising to 4.3 percent in August, the highest in nearly four years, the case for further cuts is now even stronger.
A Pattern of Large Revisions
Tuesday’s announcement marks the second unusually large benchmark revision in a row. In February, the BLS lowered its estimate of job growth through March 2024 by nearly 600,000. The new revision, which will be finalized and incorporated into official statistics in February 2026, underscores that the earlier overstatement was not an anomaly but part of a pattern of inflated initial payroll figures. Some economists expect that final revisions will not be as large as the preliminary estimate, repeating the pattern from last year when the first estimate was for 818,000 fewer jobs.
The revisions have also intensified scrutiny of the Bureau of Labor Statistics itself. President Trump last month dismissed the agency’s Senate-confirmed commissioner, Erika McEntarfer, citing the repeated large revisions. He has nominated economist E.J. Antoni, a longtime critic of the bureau’s methods, to take her place.
The revision does not directly affect data after March 2025. But combined with recent weak monthly reports — just 22,000 jobs added in August — it paints a picture of a labor market that is faltering faster, and from a weaker starting point, than most forecasters assumed.
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Scientists pinpoint food favourites that send dementia risk soaring, after 15-year study
Eating lots of meat and drinking sugary fizzy drinks speeds up the onset of dementia and other chronic illnesses, a major 15-year study has found.
Scientists tracked nearly 2,500 older adults and discovered that those with the unhealthiest diets – high in red and processed meat, such as bacon and burgers, and carbonated drinks – developed brain and heart conditions at a faster rate than their peers.
By contrast, people who followed a Mediterranean-style diet, rich in vegetables, fruit, wholegrains, nuts, legumes and healthy fats, ended up with significantly fewer chronic conditions than those with the poorest diets.
Crucially, diet appeared to make little difference to age-related joint problems such as arthritis.
The research, published in the journal Nature Aging, followed participants from the Swedish National Study on Aging and Care in Kungsholmen (SNAC–K). The average age at the start was 71, and just over half were women.
They were monitored for up to 15 years, with diet quality assessed repeatedly using food questionnaires.
The study did not put people on specific eating plans. Instead, researchers looked at the participants’ normal diets and scored them according to how closely they resembled several recognised healthy patterns.
The Mediterranean diet, traditional to southern Europe, centres on vegetables, fruit, wholegrains, beans, nuts, fish and olive oil, with little red meat or processed food.
Meanwhile, the MIND diet was created to protect brain health and combines elements of the Mediterranean approach with the DASH diet, which is designed to reduce blood pressure by lowering salt.
MIND places particular emphasis on leafy greens and berries, as well as limiting fried food, butter and sweets.
The Alternative Healthy Eating Index (AHEI), a scoring system developed by Harvard researchers to reflect the foods most consistently linked with reduced risk of major diseases, was also used.
It rewards higher intakes of fruit, vegetables, nuts, legumes and healthy fats, while penalising red and processed meat, sugary drinks and trans fats.
All three diets were linked with slower build–up of disease.
In contrast, a diet that scored highly on the Empirical Dietary Inflammatory Index (EDII) – with large amounts of red meat, processed products and sugary drinks – was tied to faster disease accumulation.
The researchers analysed not just single conditions but ‘multimorbidity’ – the total number of chronic illnesses someone lives with as they age.
This included heart disease, dementia, depression, Parkinson’s, diabetes, cancer and musculoskeletal problems such as arthritis or osteoporosis.
By the end of the follow-up, people with the healthiest diets had on average two to three fewer chronic diseases compared with those who scored lowest for diet quality.
Diet was strongly linked to the build-up of cardiovascular and neuropsychiatric illnesses – which include dementia, Parkinson’s disease and depression – but not to musculoskeletal conditions.
The protective effect of healthy eating patterns such as the Mediterranean and MIND diets was particularly marked among women and the ‘oldest old’ (those aged 78 and over).
Co–author Adrián Carballo–Casla, postdoctoral researcher at the Aging Research Centre at the Karolinska Institutet, said: ‘Our results show how important diet is in influencing the development of multimorbidity in ageing populations.’
The news comes as experts warn that poor diet and ultra-processed foods are fuelling an epidemic of lifestyle diseases, from obesity and diabetes to Alzheimer’s.
In April 2025, a major study reported that ultra-processed foods account for more than half the British diet and may be responsible for 18,000 premature deaths each year, linked to illnesses including diabetes, cancer, heart disease and depression.
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