In today’s newsletter:In today’s newsletter: Psychiatric hospitals illegally discharging patients; Pentagon tightens cybersecurity after our reporting; an epidemiologist forced out by funding cuts; and more from our newsroom.
Discharging patients who are at risk of harming themselves or others is illegal. But dozens of psychiatric hospitals aren’t honoring the law — and the government isn’t following up.
The Defense Department has tightened cybersecurity requirements for tech companies that sell cloud computing services to the Pentagon. The updates, issued this month, ban IT vendors from using China-based personnel to work on department computer systems and require companies to maintain a digital paper trail of maintenance performed by their foreign engineers.
The changes follow a ProPublica investigation that exposed how Microsoft used China-based engineers to maintain government computer systems for nearly a decade — a practice that left some of the country’s most sensitive data vulnerable to hacking from its leading cyber adversary.
Following ProPublica’s reporting, Microsoft announced in July that it would stop using China-based engineers to service Defense Department cloud systems. In a statement for this article, a spokesperson said the company was committed to implementing the department’s new requirements.
Epidemiologist Erin McCanlies spent much of the past two decades studying autism and how parents’ exposure to chemicals affects the chances that they will have a child with the condition.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, cut her entire division at the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health even though he had promised to identify the causes of autism by September.
RFK Jr. has touted the new Autism Data Science Initiative, a $50 million effort to fund scientific research grants. But some autism researchers fear the initiative will manipulate data to blame the condition on vaccines.
At the same time, Kennedy is helping lead an administration that is canceling autism research grants and rolling back protections against pollution and toxic chemicals, including some linked to the condition.
Kennedy did not respond to requests for an interview, and an HHS spokesperson did not answer specific questions from ProPublica but wrote that “NIH is fully committed to leaving no stone unturned in confronting this catastrophic epidemic — employing only gold-standard, evidence-based science. The Department will follow the science, wherever it leads.”
