Banned words, genericized brands, and organ donation opt-out policies

Plus: A Texas lawsuit targets Tylenol

October 29, 2025 Check out STAT+

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By Theresa Gaffney Morning Rounds Writer and Reporter

Remember Bugaboo Creek Steakhouse? A colleague in the newsroom said the name yesterday, and even though I hadn't thought about it in decades, the smell instantly came back to me. Also, the talking Christmas tree.

policy NIH says there are no banned words. Hundreds of grants were changed anyway. Lexey Swall for STAT There's no formal list of banned words or phrases at the NIH, officials say. And yet, researchers changed the titles of more than 700 multiyear grants from 2024 to 2025, according to analysis by former agency leader Jeremy Berg. The vast majority of those edits involved removing words like "equity" and "disparities" that denote an area of study that's been clearly, consistently condemned by the Trump administration. These aren't trivial wording changes. Such compromises can alter the course of a project and the questions scientists address. STAT's Anil Oza spoke with nine current and former NIH officials as well as five outside researchers, who described the often demoralizing and ambiguous process. "What is infuriating about it is the fact that we cannot access the ground truth. There is no ground truth," one NIH program officer said. "Was it necessary to censor this person's work? I don't know." For another sense of the stakes: Anil told me that he reached out to 150 outside researchers to find five who would speak to him, "which I think shows the fear people have about losing their funding," he said in a DM. Read more on implicitly banned words, and what it all means for the future of science. courts Texas lawsuit targets Tylenol Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) filed a lawsuit yesterday accusing Tylenol's makers of deceptively marketing the drug to pregnant mothers and asserting unproven claims linking its main ingredient, acetaminophen, to autism risk. The suit alleges that the companies violated Texas consumer protection laws by hiding the danger that acetaminophen posed to fetuses and young children (again — unproven).  Texas also alleges that Johnson & Johnson fraudulently transferred liabilities arising from Tylenol to Kenvue to shield assets against lawsuits. The suit was filed in rural Panola County and requests a jury trial in the Republican-leaning East Texas county of about 23,000 people. Read more. medicine The surprising impact of organ donation opt-out policies Many countries around the world have adopted an opt-out approach to organ donation, where every eligible person is a donor after they die unless they opt out. This policy has been shown to increase both registration rates for deceased organ donation and actual donations made by deceased donors. But a study published yesterday in PNAS Nexus found that overall, countries can still be left undersupplied using this strategy, because fewer people become living organ donors. Researchers analyzed data from 24 countries that implemented opt-out programs from 2000 to 2023. The results showed a 7% increase in deceased donors, but a significant 29% drop in living donors overall, driven by a reduction in altruistic donations (meaning organs donated to non-family members). The researchers believe this is due to an assumption by communities that the opt-out policy has eradicated any previous organ shortage. Clearer communication about the effectiveness of the strategy, and the continued need for living donors, may be the best way forward, the authors conclude.

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video What are those weight loss drugs called, again? Alex Hogan/STAT On a recent weekday, STAT's Alex Hogan went to the epicenter of biotech: Kendall Square in Cambridge, Mass. When he asked industry workers on their lunch breaks what those blockbuster weight loss drugs are called, most of them said the same thing: Ozempic. But of course, that's not technically the generic name for GLP-1 medications. In Alex's latest video for his Status Report series, he explores the possibility that Ozempic could someday lose its trademark if the name becomes the generic term for an entire category of product. (See: dumpster, aspirin, thermos.) "If you're a trademark lawyer, you have this conflicting instinct," law professor Robin Feldman told Alex. You want the name to be on the tip of people's tongues so they buy it without inciting "genericide," as it's called. Watch the video now. It's a fascinating topic, and Feldman provides some great insight, including why genericide is less common in the pharmaceutical space. On top of that, you'll also get to see Alex shred on some (name brand!) Rollerblade inline skates. first opinion The wrong name for a huge problem? In 2021 (when everything I knew about AI chatbots was from Vauhini Vara's brilliant, prescient personal essay in The Believer) Valerie Black was a Ph.D. student researching how people use chatbots for help coping with thoughts of suicide. Black argued then that it wasn't necessarily crazy or unusual for people to do so, and that it highlighted how few outlets there are otherwise to discuss suicidal ideation. But these days, the language of insanity is exactly how many people describe our society-level problems with chatbots. The bots hallucinate, while people report AI psychosis. That language both sensationalizes and trivializes the actual problem, Black writes in a new First Opinion essay. For example, "the term AI psychosis shifts focus away from misinformation as an addressable issue, implying that the problem is something inherent to AI — or the user's psyche," she writes. Read more on what Black sees as the bait-and-switch strategy of LLM companies navigating these discussions. And in another, related First Opinion essay published today, two researchers and clinicians argue that doctors need to start asking patients about chatbots.

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What we're reading Campbell, 21 other AGs sue Trump administration over looming SNAP suspension, Boston Globe After an injury, I had to wear adult diapers. Now, I kind of miss them, New York Times Magazine Some people can't see mental images. The consequences are profound, New Yorker RFK Jr. orders CDC to study alleged harms of offshore wind farms, Bloomberg Listen: A 'devil's choice' on vaccines and pandemic preparedness, STAT

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Thanks for reading! More next time,

theresa.gaffney@statnews.com

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