Sep 14, 2026 3-5pm ET
Monday on The Robert Scott Bell Show:
Hour 1
Ohio Schools Can Send Unvaccinated Kids Home for 25 Days – Even If They’re Not Sick Ohio schools can exclude healthy, unvaccinated students from school for 21 to 25 days following confirmed cases of certain infectious diseases under a public health order signed in February 2026 by Ohio Department of Health Director Bruce Vanderhoff. The policy applies after confirmed measles or rubella cases and during outbreaks of mumps or chickenpox, and exclusion extends beyond classroom attendance to sports and extracurricular activities. The exclusion period can restart whenever another qualifying case or outbreak is reported, potentially keeping students away from school for considerably longer periods. Ohio requires routine childhood vaccination against 10 diseases but permits exemptions for reasons of conscience, including religious beliefs. The article highlights a legal dispute over whether the health department has authority to impose these exclusions. Attorney Greg Glaser argues that Ohio law specifically authorizes exclusion of exempt students during a declared chickenpox epidemic but does not expressly provide comparable authority for isolated measles, mumps or rubella cases. Critics, including Ohio Advocates for Medical Freedom and the Health Freedom Defense Fund, characterize the policy as coercive because families could face significant childcare, educational and employment disruptions if children are excluded for weeks. The article also challenges the scientific rationale for treating vaccination status as the principal basis for exclusion, pointing to evidence that vaccinated people can occasionally contract and transmit measles and that vaccine-derived immunity can fail or wane. However, the article largely presents arguments from organizations and individuals critical of vaccine mandates and exclusion policies rather than a balanced presentation of the state’s public-health rationale. It additionally raises concerns about the psychological and educational consequences of prolonged school exclusion, citing pandemic-era experiences with school closures and youth mental health. The central controversy is therefore not simply whether Ohio can temporarily exclude students during infectious-disease events, but whether vaccination status alone provides a scientifically and legally sufficient basis for excluding otherwise healthy children who possess lawful vaccine exemptions.
Study of 1.9 million people finds a striking link between ADHD and gut problems People with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder appear substantially more likely to experience gastrointestinal problems, according to a systematic review and meta-analysis involving more than 1.9 million people across 23 studies. University of Warwick researchers found that people with ADHD were almost 50% more likely overall to experience gastrointestinal symptoms than people without ADHD. The associations were stronger for several specific conditions: people with ADHD had nearly twice the odds of constipation, 58% higher odds of irritable bowel syndrome and more than four times the odds of encopresis, or loss of bowel control. The research, published in the Journal of Attention Disorders, included studies from countries such as the United States, Sweden, Germany and South Korea and participants ranging from age 2 to 65. Researchers emphasized that the findings demonstrate an association rather than establishing that ADHD causes digestive disorders. Several possible explanations remain under investigation. ADHD-related behaviors, including impulsivity and irregular eating patterns, could influence digestive health, while medications prescribed for ADHD can cause gastrointestinal effects such as constipation. Researchers also point to the gut-brain axis and possible differences in the intestinal microbiome as another avenue of investigation, since gut bacteria may influence communication between the digestive system and brain through pathways that include the vagus nerve. The findings extend previous observations of gastrointestinal problems among people with autism and suggest digestive symptoms may deserve greater attention across neurodevelopmental conditions. Clinically, the researchers suggest that physicians treating people with ADHD consider routinely asking about gastrointestinal symptoms, particularly when those problems affect quality of life, and that patients with complicated digestive symptoms may benefit from evaluation by gastroenterologists or dietitians. The study does not determine whether gastrointestinal abnormalities contribute to ADHD, ADHD contributes to gastrointestinal problems, medications or lifestyle account for part of the relationship, or shared biological mechanisms influence both conditions.
Autism linked to early exposure to a common plastic additive Prenatal exposure to di-(2-ethylhexyl) phthalate, or DEHP, was associated with changes in the regulation of hundreds of genes and with increased signs associated with autism and ADHD during early childhood, according to research led by Australia’s Florey Institute of Neuroscience and Mental Health. DEHP is a widely used phthalate added to polyvinyl chloride, or PVC, to make plastic softer and more flexible and can be encountered in products ranging from food packaging and medical equipment to raincoats and hoses. Researchers compared measurements of DEHP exposure in pregnant women with gene-regulation patterns found in umbilical-cord blood and behavioral assessments of their children at ages 2 and 4. They identified a network involving more than 500 genes in which epigenetic changes correlated with maternal DEHP levels and behaviors associated with autism and ADHD. Nearly all women included in the Australian study showed evidence of DEHP exposure. Additional analysis using independently collected blood samples and post-mortem brain tissue supported the conclusion that DEHP can influence gene expression, although researchers also observed differences between changes detected in blood and brain tissue, complicating interpretation of the proposed biological mechanism. The study therefore provides evidence of a possible biological pathway through which prenatal environmental exposure might influence neurodevelopment, but it does not establish that DEHP causes autism or ADHD. Independent researcher Mirko Uljarevic emphasized that the observational design prevents proof of cause and effect and that autism and ADHD are multifactorial conditions involving numerous genetic and environmental influences. The researchers consequently frame DEHP as one potential contributor among many rather than a singular explanation for either condition. Because individual avoidance of phthalates can be difficult given their widespread use, the researchers argue that exposure is substantially influenced at the population level and suggest that regulations governing plastics, food processing and packaging should consider emerging evidence concerning exposure during pregnancy and infancy. The research was published in the journal Med.
Autistic Adults On Medicaid Are Dying 14 Years Too Soon, Study Finds Autistic people enrolled in Medicaid had an estimated life expectancy of 64.9 years, approximately 5.6 years shorter than the broader Medicaid population and nearly 14 years shorter than the general U.S. population, according to a study published in JAMA Network Open. Researchers analyzed national Medicaid records linked with federal mortality data covering all 50 states and Washington, D.C., from 2000 through 2020, identifying 2,048,046 beneficiaries with recorded autism diagnoses. Autistic Medicaid beneficiaries had an overall risk of death 44% higher than other Medicaid enrollees, with particularly large disparities involving several potentially preventable or treatable causes. Death from influenza occurred at more than 10 times the expected rate, malnutrition at nearly eight times the expected rate, aspiration-related lung disease at nearly seven times the expected rate, nontraffic accidents at more than four times the expected rate, accidental drowning at more than three times the expected rate and pneumonia at roughly three times the expected rate. The analysis also revealed substantial sex differences when autistic beneficiaries were compared with same-sex populations. Autistic women had an estimated life expectancy of about 65 years but lived approximately 8.2 fewer years than other female Medicaid beneficiaries and 16 fewer years than women in the general population. Autistic men lived approximately 1.9 fewer years than other male Medicaid beneficiaries and 11.6 fewer years than U.S. men generally. Life expectancy among autistic Medicaid beneficiaries improved modestly between the early 2000s and late 2010s but dropped sharply in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic. Researchers caution that these findings should not be generalized automatically to every autistic American because Medicaid disproportionately serves people with lower incomes, disabilities and substantial healthcare needs. The study also cannot determine precisely why the mortality gap exists. Nevertheless, the unusually high rates of death from infections, malnutrition, aspiration and accidents suggest that improved preventive care, medical access, nutrition, safety interventions and continuity of care could potentially address some of the excess mortality identified in this population.
12 Questions You’ll Be Glad You Asked Your Grandparents Conversations with grandparents can preserve family history while revealing personal experiences, beliefs and relationships that are often absent from conventional family stories, and carefully focused questions tend to produce richer answers than broad requests such as asking someone simply to describe their childhood. TIME presents a series of questions designed to uncover how grandparents changed throughout their lives, what shaped their values and how ordinary experiences reflected the historical periods in which they lived. Suggested conversations include asking grandparents what beliefs they held at the same age as their grandchildren but later abandoned, which can reveal how experience changed their worldview. Asking about the dinner table in their childhood home can uncover family dynamics, economic circumstances, traditions and everyday routines, while asking what their family considered a waste of money can illuminate attitudes toward scarcity, security, status and spending that may have carried into later generations. Questions about childhood trouble, treasured objects and people who believed in them can reveal stories involving risk, relationships, mentors and formative experiences that grandchildren may never have heard. Other questions focus less on biography and more on reflection, including decisions others considered wrong, accomplishments that would never appear on a résumé and issues grandparents are still trying to understand. The article emphasizes that older people should not be treated solely as repositories of the past. Asking what they are currently figuring out acknowledges that identity, relationships and uncertainty continue throughout life. This becomes particularly important when communicating with grandparents experiencing dementia, because meaningful connection need not depend entirely on recalling distant events. Questions about what name they would give a baby today, what song should represent the relationship or what an ideal day together would look like can invite imagination rather than memory. Finally, allowing grandparents to ask questions in return transforms an interview into a reciprocal conversation. Asking what they wish they had asked their own parents or grandparents can also reveal gaps in family history and identify stories they hope younger generations will preserve before those opportunities disappear.
Hour 2
Did CDC Just Reject Moderna’s New mRNA Flu Vaccine? The CDC has not issued a product-specific recommendation for Moderna’s newly FDA-approved mRNA influenza vaccine, mFLUSIVA, for the 2026-27 flu season, instead leaving the agency’s previous influenza recommendations in effect because of what the CDC describes as “legal uncertainties and inquiries.” The FDA licensed mFLUSIVA for adults 50 and older roughly a month before the article was published, but the vaccine does not appear among the CDC’s recommended influenza vaccine options. The CDC continues to recommend annual influenza vaccination for most people six months and older, with no preference among several vaccine types for people under 65 and preferential recommendations for certain high-dose, recombinant or adjuvanted vaccines for people 65 and older. The article characterizes mFLUSIVA’s omission as a significant setback for Moderna but does not report that the CDC formally rejected or withdrew the vaccine. It also notes that mFLUSIVA apparently remains covered by the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program because federal information states that all seasonal influenza vaccines are covered. The article connects the CDC decision to controversy surrounding the vaccine’s pivotal Phase III trial, reporting that a statistically significant excess of serious adverse events appeared in that trial compared with the conventional flu-vaccine group at six months. According to the article, the FDA nevertheless described serious adverse events as balanced after considering pooled data from four Phase III trials. The situation could have implications beyond Moderna because GSK and Pfizer are also developing mRNA influenza vaccines. The article further reports that the CDC’s vaccine advisory committee, ACIP, has been unable to act following a federal court decision affecting member appointments, suggesting that new vaccine recommendations may effectively remain on hold until the committee can resume its work.
The Next Wave of Censorship Won’t Look Like Censorship Sayer Ji argues that the next major free-speech conflict may arise not from platforms deleting or suppressing content but from artificial-intelligence systems increasingly mediating what people read, write and communicate before their ideas are fully expressed. He describes AI-generated search answers, autocomplete, writing assistants and personalized digital services as an emerging “AI mediation” layer and contends that concentrated control of this infrastructure could create subtle opportunities to influence beliefs and speech. Ji cites research by Robert Epstein and colleagues concerning search rankings, answer boxes and personalization as evidence that digital presentation can affect users’ attitudes, then extends that concern to generative AI systems. His central policy argument concerns legislation introduced by Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Greg Casar that would restrict artificial superintelligence and establish federal enforcement authority. Ji argues that language covering systems that can be modified to achieve broad human-level capabilities could disproportionately threaten open-weight or open-source AI developers while leaving large closed-model companies better positioned to comply. He further points to relationships among AI companies, foundations and AI-safety organizations as reasons to scrutinize who could benefit from a federal licensing structure, while acknowledging that some of the connections he describes do not establish direct coordination or financial transactions. The article presents these concerns through Restore the First, a First Amendment advocacy coalition, which proposes keeping open-source AI legal, requiring transparency about models and training, promoting interoperability, creating legal remedies for undisclosed algorithmic manipulation, rejecting federal licensing of AI development and establishing congressional oversight of what it calls “speech infrastructure.” The broader thesis is prospective: AI systems increasingly positioned between citizens and information could become instruments of influence even when no conventional act of censorship occurs.
Medicine and Public Health Have an Obsession, and It Is Not Health John W. Ayers argues that political advocacy has increasingly entered medicine, public health, medical education and scientific institutions in ways that can interfere with clinical priorities and undermine public trust. He begins with an experience involving his father’s cardiology appointment, where a disagreement over inclusive terminology displaced discussion of his father’s heart condition and ultimately contributed, in Ayers’ account, to a three-month delay in care. He broadens the argument by citing research showing differences between Democratic and Republican physicians in how they evaluate certain clinical issues, along with initiatives involving voter registration, terminology guidance, climate-related counseling and structural competency. Ayers also points to political involvement by major scientific publications, including election-related positions taken by the New England Journal of Medicine, Scientific American and Nature. His primary concern is not that health disparities, environmental factors or politically consequential health issues should be ignored, but that medical institutions risk shifting from providing evidence to promoting particular political values. He cites declining public confidence in physicians and hospitals and experimental research suggesting that political endorsements by scientific publications can reduce trust among people who disagree with those endorsements without producing corresponding increases in trust among supporters. Ayers additionally warns that politicized medical literature could influence AI systems trained on scientific and clinical publications. He argues that researchers should investigate politically sensitive subjects, including abortion and gun violence, while distinguishing empirical findings from prescriptions about what society ought to do. His proposed alternative is institutional and professional political neutrality, grounded in the principle that physicians should treat patients without allowing political affiliation or other personal characteristics to interfere with care. He concludes that medicine best serves the public by prioritizing evidence, patient welfare and scientific inquiry over partisan or ideological advocacy.
Kennedy Blasts Democratic Party for Losing Faith in American Democracy Robert F. Kennedy Jr., speaking at the Republican National Midterm Convention in Dallas on September 10, 2026, described his political transition from a lifelong Democrat to an ally of President Donald Trump and argued that the modern Democratic Party had abandoned principles he associated with the party of his father Robert F. Kennedy and uncle John F. Kennedy. Kennedy portrayed the earlier Democratic Party as supportive of labor, civil liberties, free speech, limited corporate influence, scientific integrity and skepticism toward excessive government power. He then presented a sharply critical account of Democratic governance during the COVID-19 period, arguing that restrictions, vaccine policies, censorship controversies and other government actions violated constitutional and individual rights. These assertions represent Kennedy’s political arguments in the speech rather than independently established conclusions of the article. Kennedy also focused extensively on the 2024 presidential campaign, alleging that Democratic Party organizations used litigation, ballot-access challenges and primary procedures to disadvantage him and other candidates. He described his subsequent conversations with Trump as changing his perceptions of the former president and said shared priorities involving chronic disease, food policy, regulatory reform, government transparency and corporate influence led him to suspend his independent presidential campaign and endorse Trump in August 2024. Kennedy went on to praise the Trump administration’s performance and cited claims concerning obesity, longevity, government efficiency, international affairs and public health, some of which the article presents from Kennedy’s speech without independently substantiating them. He concluded that political values he once associated with Democrats had migrated toward the Republican Party and explicitly urged convention attendees to elect a Republican Congress. The piece is essentially a transcript of Kennedy’s partisan convention speech rather than an independent news analysis, making the distinction between Kennedy’s claims and independently verified facts important when interpreting its conclusions.
Common Pregnancy Pain Reliever Linked To Smaller Ovaries, Uterus In Baby Girls Prenatal exposure to paracetamol, known as acetaminophen in the United States and commonly sold as Tylenol, was associated with measurable differences in reproductive development among infant girls in a Danish observational study, although the research does not establish that the medication caused those differences. The COPANA study enrolled 685 pregnant women in Copenhagen and collected reports of painkiller use every two weeks while also measuring paracetamol metabolites in urine. Researchers subsequently examined 302 daughters at approximately three months of age during “minipuberty,” when reproductive hormones temporarily become active. Ultrasound examinations measured ovarian and uterine size and ovarian follicles, while blood tests assessed hormones including anti-Müllerian hormone. Exposure timing appeared important: girls exposed before 17 weeks of pregnancy had smaller ovaries and uteruses, while later exposure was associated with fewer ovarian follicles. Higher maternal urinary paracetamol concentrations were also associated with smaller reproductive organs. Researchers compared these findings with a separate Copenhagen mother-child cohort followed into adolescence and observed some similar patterns, including smaller uteruses around puberty and smaller ovaries later in adolescence. The researchers note that animal experiments have previously suggested prenatal paracetamol exposure can affect ovarian development, but the biological mechanism in humans remains uncertain. Significant limitations prevent causal conclusions: medication use was not randomized, reasons for taking paracetamol could contribute to observed differences, infant ovaries are technically difficult to measure, and some findings were not consistently replicated across cohorts. Crucially, researchers do not yet know whether the anatomical and hormonal differences translate into reduced fertility, earlier menopause or other reproductive consequences later in life. The article therefore presents the findings as a potential safety signal requiring replication and long-term follow-up rather than evidence that acetaminophen use during pregnancy causes reproductive impairment in daughters.
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