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Major VA study to examine effectiveness of psilocybin on depression, PTSD

The Department of Veterans Affairs is launching research to determine whether psilocybin — the psychoactive ingredient in “magic mushrooms” — can be used safely and effectively to address veterans’ treatment-resistant depression and post-traumatic stress disorder.

The trial, known as the Psilocybin Intervention for Veterans Overcoming Treatment-Resistant Depression,” or PIVOT, study aims to include at least 240 veterans, all of whom have difficult-to-treat major depressive disorder and some who also have PTSD.

The study will take place at five VA medical centers through June 2031 and will assess patients’ levels of depression before and after treatment, side effects and overall response among participants.

“Far too many veterans are living with mental health conditions that don’t respond to available treatments,” VA Secretary Doug Collinssaid in a statement. “Under President [Donald] Trump, VA is pursuing all avenues to evaluate new treatments and offer meaningful relief for those who have worn the uniform. This clinical trial reflects another step toward this goal.”

Last month, researchers with Ohio State University’s Center for Psychedelic Drug Research and Education published the findings of a small, 12-person study on the safety of using psilocybin to treat severe PTSD in veterans.

After receiving eight hours of psychotherapy and two doses of synthetic psilocybin and integrative therapy, nine participants, or 75%, no longer met the clinical criteria for having PTSD.

According to the research, published July 30 in Communications Medicine, participants showed no serious adverse effects, including suicidal ideation or behavior. Non-serious side effects included headache, anxiety and dizziness.

“For a population with severe treatment-resistant PTSD, these results are striking,” said Stacey Armstrong, associate director and senior researcher at the center.

The PIVOT study will involve veterans with major depressive disorder who have not responded to current treatments, including those with or without a diagnosis of PTSD. In the double-blind, randomized trial, veterans will receive one dose of psilocybin or a placebo, along with therapeutic support. They will receive a second dose one month later, also with support, and will be evaluated two to four weeks following each session.

They also will receive follow-up six months after their participation.

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FDA Reverses Course, Approves Moderna’s Experimental mRNA Flu Vaccine Months After Initial Rejection

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved Moderna’s experimental mRNA influenza vaccine, reversing an earlier decision that blocked the application over concerns about the company’s clinical trial design.

The approval marks a significant turnaround after regulators, under Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., initially refused to even review Moderna’s submission.

Officials at the time said that the company had failed to compare its vaccine against what officials considered the best available standard of care.

Back in February, FDA vaccine chief Dr. Vinay Prasad concluded that Moderna’s study was not “adequate and well-controlled” because it used GlaxoSmithKline’s Fluarix Quadrivalent vaccine as its comparator rather than a stronger-performing alternative.

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Is a Federal Autism Committee Ignoring Vaccine-Autism Research?

A draft strategic plan publicized by a federal autism committee last month outlines a framework for developing “precision” medical treatment and supporting better long-term care for autistic people — but, according to critics, makes no provision for studying a possible link between vaccines and autism.

The Interagency Autism Coordinating Committee (IACC), which advises U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on autism policies, released the draft plan for public comment last month. The plan recommends defining autism as a condition that may have more than one cause, and that may lead to multiple medical conditions.

The draft plan is also linked to ongoing federal research examining the possible causes of autism and the reasons for its increased prevalence in the U.S. — rising from 1 in 150 children in 2000 to 1 in 31 children in 2022.

According to a statement by the Autism Action Network reviewed by The Defender, while the role of vaccines in autism “is the most contentious and important of the many unanswered questions about autism,” the draft strategic plan includes no mention of studying a possible link.

“Nowhere in the current draft … are ‘vaccines’ or ‘immunizations’ even mentioned, nor are they identified as research subjects for causing autism,” the statement reads.

According to the statement, the report cites environmental factors and medical products as possible factors contributing to the onset of autism. But while these are “broad categories which could include vaccines,” the plan lacks “unequivocal, explicit language” calling for vaccine-autism research.

However, a person familiar with the workings of the IACC who asked to remain anonymous told The Defender that “nothing is excluded and nothing is off the table.”

The source said it was “very important” for the committee to avoid focusing on any one particular potential cause, and for “multiple members of the committee not to be reductionistic and not to reduce autism to one cause or one factor, because I think it’s very clear at this point that this is a sort of a multifactorial process.”

The individual said that the community of autistic people and their caretakers is “drowning” — and requires care and support instead of negative attention.

“Our community is drowning. We have parents, support givers and caregivers who are just inundated with behavioral and caregiving stress … it was very important to the many members of the committee that we make headway on those areas without encountering the massive onslaught of negative attention and coverage that would come from naming any particular environmental exposure.”

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How Often Does Congress Show Up To Work? Will August Recess Be Cancelled? – Lawmakers Weigh-In

As the midterm elections loom and Republicans are at risk of losing at least one chamber, President Trump is pushing hard to pass his legislative agenda these next few months. Most notably the SAVE America Act.

Every single year, both the House and the Senate leave for the month of August for this yearly tradition known as “August Recess.” The House left at the end of July and the Senate is set to leave at the end of the week.

Given that Members of Congress will typically arrive in Washington DC around Monday afternoon the earliest and they usually fly back to their respective states by Thursday afternoon, they come to work an average of three days a week.

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End Nuclear Proliferation: A Call To Make The Anniversary of Hiroshima Bombing ‘Disarmament Day’

At 8:15 a.m. on Aug. 6, 1945, the morning rush had begun in Hiroshima. Streetcars rattled through the city, office workers settled at their desks and children prepared for another day of school. Then, in an instant, a blinding flash brighter than the sun engulfed the city.

A U.S. B-29 bomber, the Enola Gay, had dropped the world’s first atomic bomb used in war. Tens of thousands died within moments as a mushroom cloud climbed into the sky. By the end of 1945, an estimated 140,000 people had died from the blast, burns and radiation.

Among those who witnessed the bombing was Tameto Uemori, a member of a suburban guard unit sent the following day to help victims at the center of the devastation. In his 40s at the time, Uemori witnessed the detonation from miles away, but the next day began searching through the ruins for members of his family. Along the way, he tried desperately to help the wounded. Everywhere he looked were scenes almost beyond imagination: people burned beyond recognition, victims crying out for water and entire neighborhoods reduced to ashes.

Flies and maggots had begun to infest the remains of those who perished, Uemori recalled in a 1987 interview with The Associated Press at the age of 88. He eventually discovered that members of his own family had died in the bombing, including his younger brother. “It was a hot summer day,” he told AP. “So I used a parasol — and the flies came under to escape the sun.”

The memories never left him.

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RFK Jr. DECERTIFIES Kentucky Organ Harvesting Group After It IGNORED Signs of Life in Dozens of Patients

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. just dropped the hammer on one of the most disturbing scandals in the American organ transplant system.

On Wednesday in Lexington, Kentucky, RFK Jr. announced that HHS is decertifying Network for Hope, the federally designated organ procurement organization (OPO) serving Kentucky and parts of Indiana, Ohio, and West Virginia, after federal reviewers found the group repeatedly ignored clear signs of life in patients who were about to have their organs cut out.

According to the official HHS release, the Health Resources and Services Administration reviewed 351 Network for Hope cases between 2021 and 2024 in which organ donation had been authorized but was ultimately not completed.

In 103 of those cases, nearly 30%, investigators found “concerning features.” That includes 73 patients who showed neurological signs completely incompatible with organ donation.

Some of these potential “donors” may not even have been dead when the procurement process started.

One case that helped trigger the investigation involved Anthony Thomas “TJ” Hoover II. His sister, Donna Rohrer, has said Hoover opened his eyes before the planned retrieval procedure and later thrashed, cried, and grabbed at a doctor during cardiac testing. The process reportedly ended only after a physician refused to proceed. Hoover survived.

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Fresh Panic As Pentagon Has Used ‘Virtually All’ Its Long-Range Precision Missiles On Iran

US forces “used up virtually all” of their precision, long-range missiles during the course of the Iran war, and during the earlier heavy US-Israeli campaign of Operation Epic Fury, Reutersreported Tuesday.

This has raised serious “concerns about the military’s ​readiness for future conflicts,” informed sources told the outlet. In particular it is the Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS) and Precision Strike Missiles (PrSM) which are said to be running critically low.

“Washington has used virtually all of these weapons,” two sources told Reuters, after several media reports and think tank studies had already sounded the alarm over dwindling missiles amid both the Iran war and in the years-long process of supplying Ukraine. Low Patriot defense missile supplies have also been a persisting issue in the headlines.

They are costly and time-consuming in terms of manufacturing replacements. For example a single ATACMS munition costs about $1 million.

One immediate consequence could be that if heavy bombardment of Iran starts up again, the US would have to conduct riskier piloted aerial bombings – instead relying on longer range precision strikes afforded by the land-based systems at safer distances.

And another, somewhat obvious consequence, is highlighted in the following: “But as ​the war drags on, the three people familiar with the matter expressed worry that the falling missile supplies could limit the U.S. ability to deter adversaries, including Russia and China.”

The report added: “A fourth person ⁠familiar with the matter said that while Central Command — which oversees U.S. forces in the Middle East — has nearly used up the land-based missiles it had before the war began, it has been able to reload from U.S. military supplies elsewhere in the ​world.”

President Trump has of late responded to these now widespread reports of badly depleted advanced munitions, explaining that “Our defense companies are, at this moment, making more munitions than they have ever made before, ​in addition to expanding their plants and equipment at record levels.”

Additionally,  Secretary of War Pete Hegseth took to social media to refute the report, calling it false news.

“That banner is NOT TRUE, CNN. Shame on you,” the Pentagon chief said in a post on X. “We don’t hate the Fake News media enough.”

Hegseth was specifically referring to a CNN on-screen banner that read: “Sources: U.S. has used nearly 80% of key missile interceptors in Iran war, top commanders warn stockpiles dangerously low.”

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The Rulers of the Nuclear Powers Are Slow Learners

Although 81 years have passed since the atomic bombing of Japan in August 1945, the rulers of major nations continue their reckless march toward a nuclear holocaust.

The nine nuclear powers (the United States, Russia, China, Britain, France, Israel, India, Pakistan, and North Korea), possessing some 12,100 nuclear warheads, are all busily upgrading and expanding their nuclear weapons arsenals at an accelerating pace.  Nuclear weapons spending rose to an all-time high of $119 billion in 2025 – a 19 percent increase over the preceding year.  The U.S. government alone, which accounted for more than half of this spending, is embarked on a $1.7 trillion, decades-long nuclear weapons buildup.

As the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) has observed, “this overwhelming spending on nuclear weapons shows a willingness to research, develop, finance and build tools to exterminate humanity.”

Moreover, international nuclear arms control and disarmament agreements among the nuclear powers have collapsed.  Russia and the United States own 86 percent of the world’s nuclear weapons and, although they signed numerous treaties in the past to limit or reduce the size of their nuclear arsenals, the last of these treaties, New START, expired this February.

The accelerating nuclear arms race is accompanied by repeated threats of nuclear war.  Russian officials are particularly notorious in this connection.  According to the Voice of America, from early 2022 to late 2024 Russian officials publicly issued 135 nuclear threats, with 27 of them coming from Vladimir Putin.  But America’s Donald Trump has also publicly and repeatedly threatened other countries with nuclear destruction, as has North Korea’s Kim Jong Un.

Early this year, the editors of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, assessing this deteriorating situation, moved the hands of their famous “Doomsday Clock” to 85 seconds to midnight, the most dangerous setting in its history.

Of course, there have been a great many warnings that nuclear weapons portend global disaster, including many beginning right after the shocking annihilation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  “Seldom, if ever,” reported CBS radio commentator Edward R. Murrow, “has war ended leaving the victors… with such a realization that… survival is not assured.”  The Chicago Tribune warned that a future atomic war would leave the world “a barren waste, in which the survivors… will hide in caves.”  In France, the resistance leader Albert Camus declared that the modern world had “reached the last degree of savagery,” in which nations were faced with the prospect of “collective suicide.”

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STUNNING NEW EVIDENCE Reveals 68 Cities Where Dem-Funded GBI Strategies Sent Over 104 Packages Filled With MI Voter Registrations…Muskegon Was Only Where They Were Caught

Top Michigan media outlets, like the Detroit News and Free Press have done a grave injustice to the country by enabling Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson’s efforts to bury one of the most thoroughly documented investigations into organized election fraud in recent American history. Not only did members of the media downplay the statewide probe into GBI Strategies—launched just one month before the November 2020 election in Michigan—but they made no serious effort to examine or expose the full scope of the scheme or the number of cities and municipalities whose elections may have been compromised by the injection of an unknown volume of fraudulent registrations onto Michigan’s voter rolls.

Prior to the 2020 election, Michigan clerks were furious with Jocelyn Benson for telling them to IGNORE signature matching on absentee envelopes, in violation of election law.  Not only was Jocelyn Benson breaking the law with her “guidance” to the clerks, but at the same time, she was hiding the largest investigation into voter registration fraud in the state’s history from the clerks tasked with ensuring the integrity of the election.

Although the report shows Ann Meisch contacted the Muskegon Police Department on October 16, 2020, we have evidence she appears to have known about the fraudulent voter registratons as early as October 5, when she shared an image on a private Michigan Clerk’s Facebook page we were given access to following our exclusive report on the GBI Strategies/Empower Michigan bombshell investigation.

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The Vanishing Art of Presence

Medicine is always changing. In my career, I have seen intensive care units go from simple rooms with oxygen, monitors, and clinical intuition to places where artificial intelligence can predict problems before we notice them, bedside ultrasound helps us avoid guessing, and robotic systems help surgeons work with great precision. Telemedicine now lets specialists care for patients who are far away. These advances have saved lives, made care more accessible, improved efficiency, and helped doctors reach patients who might not have seen a specialist otherwise.

Many studies show how valuable telemedicine is, especially in underserved areas and critical care settings where specialists are scarce (1). I welcome these innovations and use many of them daily. I am convinced that artificial intelligence (AI) will become one of the most important tools doctors have ever had. Recent reviews also suggest that AI will help doctors make decisions, not replace them (2). Still, no matter how advanced our tools get, they should help us do our jobs better, not change what our jobs are about.

A recent lawsuit about the death of a very sick young man has sparked a lot of talk in the medical community (3). Reports say that one question is whether the doctor in charge ever actually examined the patient in person. The courts will figure out what really happened, so I won’t guess or assign blame. What worries me is not the lawsuit itself, but the bigger question it raises. Are we starting to think that because technology lets us care for patients from a distance, being there in person is no longer necessary?

When I started practicing medicine, this question would have seemed impossible. We took blood pressure by hand, read chest X-rays on lighted boxes, and depended on physical exams because we had no other choice. We were always close to our patients. We shook hands, sat with families during hard times, and listened not just to heartbeats and breaths, but also to the pauses, the worry in a spouse’s voice, the fear behind hopeful words, and the small signs that told us more than any lab test. Sometimes I think those moments taught us as much as any textbook.

Today, we have abilities my mentors never dreamed of. We can look at scans from across the world in seconds. A neurologist can check on a stroke patient from far away. An intensive care doctor can watch over several ICUs at once from a central location. Algorithms constantly review patient data and spot patterns we might miss. These advances are real progress, and many people are alive today because doctors were willing to try new technology. Ignoring these innovations would not just be unwise—it would be wrong.

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