RFK Jr. is launching a podcast; California clinic operator sentenced to 18 years for opioid ring; what pythons can teach us about weight loss – Morning Medical Update

RFK Jr. is launching a podcast

“The Secretary Kennedy Podcast” will feature the Health Secretary in conversation with doctors, scientists and agency staff every other week.

Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is launching a podcast called "The Secretary Kennedy Podcast," which HHS officials say will debut this week and drop new episodes every other week. In a teaser video, Kennedy said the show will expose "the forces that obstruct the paths to public health." HHS officials say the show is part of a broader effort to spread the administration's message on chronic disease, nutrition and health costs to a wider audience.

Kennedy hosted his own podcast before entering office. Perhaps needless to say, this will be the first podcast hosted by a sitting health secretary. Read more from The Associated Press.

California clinic operator sentenced to 18 years for opioid prescription ring

Justin Cozart used his ChiroMed clinics to sell thousands of fraudulent oxycodone prescriptions to drug traffickers who shipped the pills across the country.

A Southern California man who operated a network of medical clinics was sentenced to 216 months in federal prison for running a drug trafficking ring that sold illegal oxycodone prescriptions for cash. Justin Douglas Cozart, 48, of Woodland Hills, used his ChiroMed clinics in Inglewood, Santa Ana, and Anaheim to supply fraudulent prescriptions to recruiters who brought in sham patients, collected the filled pills and shipped them to a distributor in the Boston area for black market sale. Cozart employed physicians at the clinics, including John Korzelius, M.D., Ph.D., 74, dubbed "Dr. K,” who wrote oxycodone prescriptions without conducting physical examinations and advised an undercover law enforcement officer not to fill a prescription at a major pharmacy chain.

Prosecutors said Cozart "converted otherwise lawful chiropractic clinics into drug trafficking businesses, and pulled their existing employees into his scheme."

Korzelius pleaded guilty in February 2025 and is scheduled for sentencing June 8. Nine convictions have been secured in the case overall.

What pythons can teach us about weight loss

A molecule that spikes thousandfold in ball pythons after eating caused mice to eat less and shed 9% of their body weight.

Researchers at Stanford Medicine and the University of Colorado, Boulder, have identified a metabolite called pTOS, which surges more than a thousandfold in pythons after a meal. When given to obese laboratory mice at similar concentrations, the metabolite caused them to eat significantly less and lose 9% of their body weight over 28 days, mimicking the appetite-suppressing effects of semaglutide drugs. The molecule, a byproduct of gut bacteria breaking down the amino acid tyrosine, travels to the hypothalamus, where it activates neurons that regulate feeding behavior.

"Obviously, we are not snakes," said senior author Jonathan Long, Ph.D., of Stanford Medicine. "But maybe by studying these animals we can identify molecules or metabolic pathways that also affect human metabolism."

Whether pTOS will translate to a human weight-loss therapy remains to be seen, but the findings, published in Nature Metabolism, open a new avenue of research into appetite regulation.