POLITICS

What the U.S. exiting WHO means for global health — and WHO’s bottom line

Robert Hradil/Getty Images

By the time you read this, the U.S. will have formally ended its decades-long membership in the World Health Organization.

Global health experts warn that the move, announced a year ago, could make the world less secure and more poorly equipped to respond to health emergencies such as ebola outbreaks or the Covid pandemic. 

When the U.S. served notice it was withdrawing from WHO in Trump’s first term, other countries stepped into the void to increase funding for the organization. That hasn’t happened this time. Wars, the abrupt cancellation of U.S. international assistance with the dismantling of USAID, and increased defense spending have led to funding challenges across the board for organizations like the WHO, which is already facing staff shortages.

The U.S. is leaving WHO with a parting gift, too: an unpaid $278 million bill. 

The U.S. has effectively stiffed the WHO on its contributions in the last few years, and has also reneged on several hundred million dollars in promised voluntary contributions. Will the U.S. pay the bill before it leaves? Could a resolution block its withdrawal? Read Helen’s story from yesterday.

HEALTH TECH

FDA clears AI tool that detects 14 different conditions from CT scan

The FDA cleared a new AI tool yesterday that can triage up to 14 findings in a single abdominal CT scan, everything from bowel obstruction to appendicitis.

The news is less notable for the specific tool — the FDA approved hundreds of AI-based medical devices in radiology before approving Aidoc’s offering — than it is a signal of how the agency will approach this regulatory issue. For now, the FDA is using its traditional piecemeal approach while sometimes expanding the number of indications it will authorize. 

Real-world performance of AI tools can be lower than claimed in the materials submitted to FDA, some hospitals say. And the more conditions AI can detect, the greater the chance for false positives — and the more useless a tool can become, especially in the context of a fast-paced emergency department.

But the trend of bundling and aggregating multiple findings in one tool seems here to stay. Read more from STAT’s Katie Palmer.

AUTISM

The rise of unproven, potentially dangerous autism treatments

Nearly a year into Kennedy’s tenure as health secretary, misinformation from the federal government about the cause and treatment of autism is starting to pile up. 

At the end of 2025, the FDA quietly took down a page that talked about the harms of administering a controversial therapy for autism. Proponents of chelation therapy — including Kennedy’s right-hand man on autism David Geier, who’s long clung to debunked assertions about autism — say it can help remove heavy metals from a person’s blood and “cure” autism, despite little evidence and serious side effects. A five-year-old boy died after receiving chelation therapy in 2005. Officials said the article was “retired” along with other articles.

Meanwhile, two researchers in the New England Journal of Medicine discussed the dangers of expanding the use of leucovorin without proper protocols in a new article published Wednesday. Top health officials touted the cancer medication as a potential treatment for autism in September, despite limited evidence showing its efficacy. The researchers worry that leucovorin will be prescribed off-label at high doses that can persist for long times in the blood. Scientists don’t know how this will affect a person’s body. If the FDA wants to expand leucovorin’s use, it needs more large-scale studies studying the long-term effects, they say.