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As the Democratic primary campaign heats up, the conversation is taking an unfortunate turn when it comes to discussion of candidates’ ages. Late-night hosts such as Jimmy Fallon “joke” that Bernie Sanders, age 77, is sponsored by Metamucil and was present for the signing of the American Constitution. The pundits are hardly better than the comedians when discussing candidates’ ages: In columns like these, they compare old age to a “shipwreck” and worry that “old duffers” are a danger to the republic.As two humanists who study the culture of old age, we view such rhetoric as a distraction from serious issues and feel it reproduces inaccurate stereotypes about aging. (James Chappel and Sari Edelstein, 4/25)

For seven years, the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act required America’s schools to serve children plenty of fruits, vegetables and whole grains, and kept tight limits on added sugar and sodium in their lunches. These rules were a signal success of the Obama administration: According to one estimate, they would have prevented almost 2 million new cases of childhood obesity. That’s “would have,” because Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue has rolled them back. ...Perdue’s changes flout the federal Dietary Guidelines for Americans and ignore the alarming reality that nearly one in five children in the U.S. are obese. The American Heart Association, the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics and 98 percent of those who formally commented on his intervention opposed it. (4/24)

Just for the record, we ought to note that trustees for Social Security and Medicare recently released their annual reports. The two programs alone constituted 45 percent of the non-interest federal budget in 2018, a share that the trustees say is being driven up by the continuing retirement of baby boomers and the high cost of health care. The trustees issued their usual dire warnings that, absent congressional action, the trust funds that finance these programs will run out of cash: Medicare in 2026 and the Social Security in 2035. (Robert J. Samuelson, 4/24)

Pfizer’s board of directors will gather in New Jersey on Thursday for the company’s annual shareholders meeting. They will celebrate the enormous success Pfizer had in 2018, having made $53 billion in revenue and over $11 billion in profits, on top of the $11 billion windfall they posted from the Trump tax cuts alone at the end of 2017. Those numbers make Pfizer one of the most profitable companies on Earth.Despite these enormous profits, or perhaps to generate them, Pfizer raised prices on 41 of its prescription drugs in January. This includes the company’s big-selling breast cancer medication, Ibrance, a pack of 21 pills used to treat breast cancer, that cost $12,000 in 2017, up 5% from the previous year. (George Goehl and Felicia Wong, 4/24)

The “world’s first malaria vaccine,” which is being rolled out in a large pilot program in Malawi, is rightly being lauded as a major milestone in the war between humans and the malaria parasite. If successful, the vaccine may be given to millions more children across Africa and save young lives that are needlessly lost every day. But in this war, which has been waged over millennia, we should be cautious not to vest too much hope in a single weapon. (Chris Plowe, 4/24)

When the Ebola virus appeared in Congo last year, the 10th outbreak in four decades, there was some hope of progress against what very often produces a trail of death. The hope was that a new vaccine developed by Merck after the epidemic in 2014-2016 would be effective and contain the outbreak, if enough people could be inoculated. Many months later, the news about the Merck vaccine VSV-EBOV in a clinical trial is promising indeed: It has shown to have an almost 98 percent efficacy. But lately, worrisome developments have overtaken the good news. Ebola infections are rising. (4/24)

A recent agreement between the medical school of Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center and the Trump administration that forces the school to stop considering race as a factor in its admissions processes is a step backward for improving health care in the United States. The agreement ends a 14-year investigation by the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights into the university’s use of race in admissions. It represents a sharp reversal to the university’s holistic applicant review process, which includes the consideration of race and ethnicity. The agreement is, however, consistent with the current administration’s advocacy of “race-neutral” admission policies as well as its efforts to rescind Obama-era policies on affirmative action. (Marcella Alsan and Owen Garrick, 4/25)

Technology has been woven into the very fabric of our daily lives, leaving us bombarded by the screens of the many devices with which we interact. For example, the other day I was sitting with my family at lunch when I looked up from my meal and noticed that everyone, including my five-year-old nephew, was staring at a screen. I am not alone in the concern that human interaction should not be superseded by technology screens. Studies have shown that excessive screen time, or time spent playing video games, watching TV/DVDs, or on computers/tablets/smartphones has harmful effects on our children’s development. Spoiler alert, it’s not just our children’s excessive use of media that’s the problem! (Josh Prol and April Wertz Prol, 4/24)

Why is measles making a comeback, especially in the U.S. almost 20 years after it was officially declared eradicated? Much media attention has focused on the erosion of herd immunity due to pockets of unimmunized children and deservedly so. But another important reason is the public perception that measles is a mild childhood disease — uncomfortable for a few days but not serious. (Jonathan Fielding, 4/24)J

After a measles outbreak at Disneyland in 2014, the California Legislature eliminated the religious and “personal belief” exemptions that allowed parents to easily opt their kids out of the standard course of immunizations required to attend public school. It was a wake-up call, highlighting for those who hadn’t been paying attention how the anti-vaccination movement had been slowly eroding confidence in childhood immunizations by scaring parents with discredited science and dubious data. (4/25)