Beware of brain-eating amoebas
A spate of illnesses involving a Virginia lake highlight the need for outdoor swimmers to be cautious about diseases lurking in water. The unanimous Supreme Court said the anti-abortion doctors who challenged the FDA’s rules for abortion pill mifepristone lacked a legitimate basis to bring their suit. Game 4 of the NBA Final Friday promises to be historic.
🙋🏼♀️ I'm Nicole Fallert, Daily Briefing author. What's the song of summer 2024?
Should you worry about getting sick from a lake?
An alarming spate of infections at a lake offers a stark reminder for swimmers to use caution and good hygiene at outdoor water spots this summer. Health officials are investigating after nearly two dozen cases of illnesses have been reported in Virginia involving people, mainly children, who visited the same lake over Memorial Day weekend. As of Thursday, there were no swimming advisories at Lake Anna, but health officials said more tests on the lake water are underway this week to determine whether a public health risk may be ongoing. The case highlights the need to be vigilant of key water-borne threats that may not be visible to the naked eye — including brain-eating amoebas.
Abortion pill access stays the same — for now
Two years after erasing the constitutional right to an abortion, the Supreme Court went the other direction. The justices tossed out a challenge on Thursday to the widely used abortion drug mifepristone that would have curbed access to the drug and jeopardized the independence of the Food and Drug Administration.
Despite the court’s deep ideological split over abortion, the decision was unanimous. The justices ruled that the anti-abortion group which brought the case, the Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine, didn’t have standing to sue.
The group's lawyers couldn’t provide an example of their argument that by making mifepristone widely available, the FDA had increased the chance of complications.
Celebration among abortion advocates was cautious: While the court said the anti-abortion doctors hadn’t shown sufficient cause for a suit, the justices didn’t rule out the possibility that someone else could make a better case.
The abortion battle will soon return to the high court: A decision is expected on whether doctors can provide emergency abortions in states that banned the procedure after the court overturned Roe v. Wade.
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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Daily Briefing: Beware of brain-eating amoebas