Tag: News Approved

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Opinion: RFK Jr. allegedly ‘collected’ a dead raccoon’s penis. Was it bioethically justifiable?

During one of health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s recent appearances on Capitol Hill, Rep. Adelita Grijalva (D-Ariz.) brought up an unusual allegation: that in 2001, he collected a dead raccoon’s penis. The incident was first described in the new book “RFK Jr.: The Fall and Rise” by Isabel Vincent, which quotes from a journal of Kennedy’s: “I was standing in front of my parked car on I-684 cutting the penis out of a road killed raccoon, thinking about how weird some of my family members have turned out to be.” According to Vincent, Kennedy cut off the penis “to study [it] later.”

While Kennedy did not respond to Grijalva about the raccoon incident, focusing instead on the National Institutes of Health budget and DEI, it has been widely treated as sensational news. But the jokes about it obscure an important question: whether his described actions meet fundamental standards of bioethical judgment.

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AI-Guided CBT for Depression and Anxiety

Conditions: Depression – Major Depressive Disorder; Anxiety Disorders

Interventions: Behavioral: AI-Guided Cognitive Behavioral Therapy; Behavioral: Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT)

Sponsors: Aleksandra Stojanovic

Recruiting
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Focused Ultrasound Ablation for Neurological Disorders

Focused ultrasound (FUS) was explored for neurological indications more than half a century ago, but only recent technological advances have enabled its practical transcranial use for movement and neuropsychiatric disorders. FUS can produce stereotactic thermal lesions via focused ultrasound ablation (FUSA), while non-thermal lesioning (e.g., FUS histotripsy) and non-ablative approaches such as neuromodulation and blood-brain barrier opening are under active clinical investigation. FUSA is FDA-approved for essential tremor and Parkinson’s disease, and is now being evaluated for additional syndromes, including epilepsy, dystonia, and treatment-resistant psychiatric disorders.

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Phenotype, Genetics, and Interpretation: Further Considerations on Atypical Depression

We read with great interest the recent article by Shin et al. (1). The authors leveraged the substantial Australian Genetics of Depression Study (AGDS) cohort to provide compelling evidence for the clinical and biological validity of the atypical depression subtype. Their integrative analysis of clinical features, polygenic scores (PGSs) for mental, metabolic, and circadian traits, and self-reported treatment outcomes is a significant contribution to the field. The particularly robust finding of an association between a genetic predisposition for eveningness (lower-chronotype PGS) and atypical depression, which persisted after adjustment for body mass index (BMI), is noteworthy and points to a potentially core, BMI-independent pathway.