Caroline Catherman

@MorningBrew health reporter. Past: @OrlandoSentinel, @CNN. Alumna @MedillSchool, @EmoryUniversity. [email protected] || 🏳️‍🌈

[Jackie Llanos @LlanosJackie]

NEW: The number of kids placed in foster care because immigration agents detained or deported their parents increased by nearly 49% in the 2025 fiscal year.
https://t.co/U8opma3fIT

[ProPublica @propublica]

Experts estimate the death toll from babies not receiving vitamin K shots may be greater than reported.

More than 700 newborns died from spontaneous bleeding in their brains in 2024, a common result of vitamin K deficiency.
https://t.co/4RU29cAHyr

[Joan Alker @JoanAlker1]

👀Nebraska has chosen to go early with implementing Medicaid work reporting requirements on every state 5/1 -- which is Friday!

Screenshot below just taken at 4:15 ET 4/29. The state's Medicaid website is going down for maintenance Friday.

[Gabriel @gabriel_horwitz]

You open ChatGPT. You type the question. A clean, structured answer comes back in three seconds. You read it, it makes sense, you move on. You feel like you learned something.

Forty-five days later, a professor walks in and hands you a test you weren't expecting. You don't remember most of it.

André Barcaui at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro ran the experiment to find out if the feeling was accurate. 120 undergraduate business students, ages 18 to 24. All told to spend two weeks researching AI concepts, ethics, societal impacts, technical foundations, and prepare a 10-minute presentation.

Sixty used ChatGPT freely. Sixty used textbooks, library databases, articles, and standard web search. Then, 45 days later, with no warning, a retention test.

The ChatGPT group scored 57.5%. The traditional group scored 68.5%. Cohen's d was 0.68, a medium-to-large effect. In most grading systems, that's the difference between passing and failing.

This is called cognitive offloading. When your brain delegates thinking to an external tool, it reduces the mental effort required during encoding. Effort is what makes memories durable. Struggling to find, synthesize, and connect information is not an inefficiency in the learning process. It is the learning process. ChatGPT removes the struggle and takes the encoding with it.

Barcaui calls what the AI group experienced "borrowed competence." The answer was structured, the vocabulary was right, the reasoning felt sound. It just wasn't theirs. And 45 days later, it was gone.

The AI group's forgetting curve was steeper and didn't stabilize the way the traditional group's did. The memories weren't just smaller. They were more fragile from the start.

You didn't learn it. You borrowed it.

[Caroline Catherman @CECatherman]

Thinking of getting an Apple Watch with a hypertension alert feature? Maybe read this first. 👀

https://t.co/LfsTa5Dju4

[Caroline Catherman @CECatherman]

https://t.co/SIzYXJZtiB

[Ben Pauker @benpauker]

🚨🚨🚨FBI executes search warrant at Washington Post reporter’s home https://t.co/byCnxUmbev

[Dan Diamond @ddiamond]

I stand with @hannah_natanson, a terrific reporter whose excellent coverage speaks for itself.

[Mark Cuban @mcuban]

It's happening

https://t.co/UBie4ChQXH

[Dan Diamond @ddiamond]

Wow: George Tidmarsh, brought in by Trump admin to lead FDA’s drug division, is on leave after he says he questioned FDA’s plan to speed drug approvals, @By_CJewett reports

Also says he clashed with Vinay Prasad

https://t.co/MPmJLJx8sE

[Matthew Herper @matthewherper]

So @LizzyLaw_ and @adamfeuerstein's story about the FDA's to drug regulator resigning has been updated again. And you need to read it again.

CDER Director George Tidmarsh was placed on administrative leave after an investigation was opened into his conduct based on a complaint filed by Kevin Tang, a San Diego-based health care investor and business owner. One of Tang’s affiliated companies, Aurinia Pharmaceuticals, filed a lawsuit against Tidmarsh on Sunday, accusing him of a “longstanding personal vendetta against Kevin Tang.”

The story also includes this quote from Vinay Prasad, director of FDA's CBER division, after tension between Prasad and Tidmarsh.

“Let me be clear,” Prasad wrote. “If you continue to choose not to do what I tell you. I will spend all of my political capital gets [sic] you fired. Do not take people from my team. When I ask you to ask the reviewers a question you will do so.”

Meanwhile Tidmarsh says there is "an existential threat to the FDA."

I need to go have dinner but it is going to be difficult with my jaw on the floor.

https://t.co/a5d75Ukpr1

[Catherine Rampell @crampell]

USDA sent an email to grocery stores telling them they are prohibited from offering special discounts to customers affected by the SNAP funding lapse. I'm aware of at least 2 stores that had offered struggling customers a discount, then withdrew it after receiving this email

[Caroline Catherman @CECatherman]

https://t.co/ThEbl7N7CN

[STAT @statnews]

A STAT Investigation: To avoid fines for reporting excessive hospital-acquired infections, some facilities are discouraging testing. https://t.co/cjEWAbUk0N

[Caroline Catherman @CECatherman]

https://t.co/bC1p9isTQp

[Caroline Catherman @CECatherman]

https://t.co/Y2MW3uAqKH

[Matt Fiedler @MattAFiedler]

New data from CMS show that many individual market enrollees (35%) had no claims in 2024. That’s led some (eg @WSJ and @BrianBlase) to argue the individual market is awash in “phantom” enrollees, costing the federal government tens of billions. This argument is deeply flawed. 🧵

[Caroline Catherman @CECatherman]

https://t.co/gNQ4WJ58ES

[ProPublica @propublica]

In June, ProPublica reported that the FDA has given more than 20 foreign factories a special pass to send drugs to the U.S. even though they were made at plants the agency had banned.

Today, we’re publishing a list of those exempted drugs.
https://t.co/9zft0Zp7Zv

[Reshma Ramachandran @reshmagar]

A must-read piece from @statnews @caseymross @bobjherman @TaraBannow @LizzyLaw_ on how UnitedHealth has misleadingly shaped the evidence published in medical journals around Medicare Advantage and have used this as a lobbying tool to expand its reach: https://t.co/AfFI8aSP3r