Man sentenced for selling counterfeit cancer drug to undercover agents; public health and state tax policies; is spring fatigue real? — Morning Medical Update

Man sentenced for selling counterfeit Keytruda to federal agents

A federal judge has sentenced Sanjay Kumar, 45, of India, to 43 months in prison after he pleaded guilty to conspiring to sell counterfeit versions of Keytruda — the cancer immunotherapy approved to treat melanoma, lung, head and neck, gastric, cervical and breast cancers — to undercover federal agents. Kumar and co-conspirators sold the fake drug between 2018 and 2024, receiving roughly $89,000 from investigators for shipments that lacked Keytruda's active ingredient. Kumar himself acknowledged the risks posed by the counterfeit drugs, telling undercover agents that it would not work to treat cancer and it was “just like water.”

Money talks, even in a pandemic

A new observational study out of North Carolina State University finds a strong correlation between a state's reliance on sales tax revenue and the duration of its COVID-19 stay-at-home orders — with higher sales-tax dependence linked to shorter orders. Researchers analyzed data from all 50 states and the District of Columbia, controlling for political factors including governor party affiliation and historical voting patterns, and found the same correlation held for countries in the European Union and in county-by-county data in Virginia and Georgia. The study, published open access in Contemporary Accounting Research, does not establish causation but raises pointed questions about what was really driving pandemic policy.

Is spring fatigue real?

That sluggish feeling people blame on the change of seasons may be more social construct than biology, according to a new study from the University of Basel in Switzerland, published in the Journal of Sleep Research. Researchers surveyed 418 people every six weeks for a year and found no meaningful differences in fatigue, sleepiness or sleep quality across seasons — despite roughly half of participants saying they regularly experience spring fatigue. The authors suggest the phenomenon self-perpetuates because the term is culturally accepted, prompting people to notice and interpret tiredness through that lens when spring arrives.